Etcetera

So, where else do you like to like to waste wisely spend your time?

skeeter1.

Posted to Etcetera on Sat Jan 12, 2008 at 09:04:30 AM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

Now that we've had some time to look through the "SoHo Doorway" thread and have an idea who many people here are, where besides TnT do you like to spend your time and thoughts?  For some (many?) I imagine that means spending your employer's time and bandwidth

I know I recognize many of your handles from some of my favorites, particularly Plastic.  I also waste (er, spend -- my own nickle) time on Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, and The Firing Line (I'm a shooting sports fan).  Heck, I've even caught MayorBob occasionally slumming on Fark.

So, any other favorite sites to waste (er, I mean spend) time on?

Tags: edited by Port1080, written by skeeter1, alternate sites, wasting time, discussion sites, news sites, meta (all tags)

This story: 14 comments (0 from subqueue)
Post a Comment
2

lotta music blogs...

1fastdog.

Sat Jan 12, 2008 at 11:02:54 AM EST

4.00 (interesting)

TnT, and Plastic for discussion stuff. The Washington Post is my home page, so I get my news in general from there, though I also cherry-pick from Google news.
After my news quota is filled, I start hitting music sites and MP3 blogs.
Popmatters - Reviews, politics, pop culture, etc.
Chromewaves - MP3 blog from Toronto. Friendly writing style spotlights up and coming Canadian bands as well as bigger artists. Posts about movies, DVDs and comics, too.
Cokemachine Glow - Music and concert reviews mostly. Wide variety of music styles covered.
The Rocking Refuses To Stop - MP3 blog that dabbles in a little bit of everything, even has a regular sports column.
Benn loxo du taccu - MP3 blog specializing in African music.
Bag Of Songs - MP3 blog from Philadelphia spotlights local and regional PA bands as well as national artists.
Absolute Powerpop - Reviews, etc on both well-known and little-known purveyors of Power Pop.
The Recording Industry Vs The People - All the latest legal news on the RIAA and their ongoing war against music consumers.
RIAA Radar - Database and tools to help discover which bands and artists are holding hands with the RIAA. From their front page:

Why is it important to know if an album was released by an RIAA member or not?
That's possibly a fairly long answer, but just the highlights of the RIAA's practices involve price-fixing, blaming its poor financial state on unfounded digital piracy claims (and in turn, blaming and suing its own consumers), lobbying for changes that hinder technological innovation and change copyright laws, underpaying the artists it represents, invading personal privacy to enforce copyrights, and dismantling entire computer networks just because of their ability (of their users) to share copyrighted files.

Flickr greyhound group - Greyhound pictures and discussion. My hound.
The American Prospect Liberal political magazine. I met one of their contributors, Harold Meyerson (he contributes op-ed pieces in the Wa-Po, too), several years ago at a local Democratic speaking engagement, so I check in occasionally to see what's up.
Joe Bageant - Liberal redneck philosophy.

Somewhere in my soul, there's always Rock -n- Roll... Joe Strummer

4

Yes, I admit to farking around.

MayorBob.

Sat Jan 12, 2008 at 04:50:06 PM EST

4.00 (interesting)

I must admit a weakness for the caption and photoshop contests (I will fool around with the captions but my photoshop foo is weak).  In addition to TnT, I'll visit metafilter from time to time.  As far as news aggregators, I find Arts & Letters Daily to be superior to others.  As far as blogs go, I don't usually frequent them that much, except for the J Walk blog, which I love for its links to banjo sites (IMHO, you should never go a week without some banjo info).  For business or consumer stories, I'll go to this site.  For the oddball, I usually start with this site.  In truth, if I spot a story or item that intrigues me, I'll use it as the main link for a story and go where the internet leads me to flesh things out.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

3

Picturing

Coelacanth.

Sat Jan 12, 2008 at 04:34:12 PM EST

3.00 (interesting)

Aside from the discussion sites (and never, never Newsvine, gods almighty), I like these for paid wandering:

The F Blog
Conscientious
From This Moment

and (looks over shoulder), er, Wonkette and Deadspin.  Because snark is never out of style.

1

Re: So, where else do you like to like to waste (e

port1080.

Sat Jan 12, 2008 at 09:16:18 AM EST

none

I have a daily list of sites that I go through.  Treesandthings, Plastic, and Slashdot round out the more discussion oriented sites.  Sites in the online magazine format that I read include Salon, Slate, and The New Republic.  On very rare occasion I pop over to the National Review to get a conservative perspective on some issue.  For standard news coverage I generally go with Yahoo News and BBC News, with occasional supplemental coverage by CNN for "breaking news" stories (like election nights).  That pretty much rounds it out, except to admit that, yes, I do read Fark.  

9

^ 1

Re: So, where else do you like to like to waste (e

pO157.

Sun Jan 13, 2008 at 09:21:46 PM EST

none

Speaking of Fark, the last (and probably final for a long time) 'Renegade' ad campaign netted us a grand total of ~1,650 click throughs. I am unsure how many actual new users this generated, but we shall see. Onward and upward.

...and as always, TnT prevails!

5

Re: So, where else do you like to like to

snwodttam.

Sat Jan 12, 2008 at 10:13:28 PM EST

none

Obviously, like everyone above, TnT and Plastic are my first two.

After that I usually hit up Newsvine, Slashdot, and Metafilter.  There's a discussion board here in Japan, famous like Fark amongst expats in the same way that you rarely admit visiting (but know everyone does from time to time), called BigDaikon that I will admit to reading on a daily basis.

After that, I tend to visit discussion sites for various games I play.  Recently I've started playing MMOs a bit, and check out the sites dedicated to those games.  Unfortunately, the one that I'm really interested in, The Saga of Ryzom is in legal limbo in France due to the bankruptcy of its distributor.  You can still sign up and play the game and don't have to pay.  Those with paying accounts before the bankruptcy have access to everything for free, while those who sign up now only have access to the starting area, which is quite big and has lots of stuff to do.

Don't read any blogs at all.  And for news, I just use discussion sites and hit up Google News for breaking stuff.

Rinse and repeat, and you've got my browsing habits.

6

^ 5

Re: So, where else do you like to like to

1fastdog.

Sat Jan 12, 2008 at 10:26:18 PM EST

3.00 (funny)

Don't read any blogs at all.

Gotta call bullmotherfuckingshit on that. Since you've made a few comments on my blog from time to time, well, ya know, there's something hinky about your prior claim :-)
And just because I update infrequently doesn't mean it's not a blog, dammit!

Somewhere in my soul, there's always Rock -n- Roll... Joe Strummer

7

^ 6

Re: So, where else do you like to like to

snwodttam.

Sun Jan 13, 2008 at 12:46:02 AM EST

none

Ha! :D

Actually, while I was writing that I though well, I do visit 1fastdog's blog and some of my friend's personal blogs from time to time.  So, yeah, I was caught bullshitting--I visit friends' blogs.  However, I don't visit many of the political blogs that I hear about on the various discussion sites I go to. ;)

8

Soho doorways, mostly

logan.

Sun Jan 13, 2008 at 03:01:21 PM EST

none

I don't spend anywhere as much time reading online as I used to. My commute increased from 7 to 45 minutes and for various reasons I spend less time at work surfing. Also, I found this amazingly addictive flash game that's sucked up so much of my time I may have to block the site. I feel sure, however, that as we approach the election I'll spend more and more of my time obsessing over politics online.

Sites I do check out on a more or less daily basis:

For politics: Talkingpointsmemo.com, wonkette.com, dailykos.com. I've found lifehacker.com to be stellar for insights on productivity, time management, working with my Mac and generally making life easier. In a similar vein, consumerist.com is the number one site on the net for fighting back against corporations trying to screw us over. I also check out Salon pretty regularly.

I've deliberately limited myself to a small number of webcomics. At one point I was following 50, so between news, politics and comics I got nothing done before lunch. Now the list is: Midnight Macabre, Punch an Pie, Doonesbury, Applegeeks, PVP, Something Positive and Questionable Content.

-=Logan
Research, facts, a Republican needs not these things.

10

Re: Where else?

novy.

Sun Jan 13, 2008 at 09:56:08 PM EST

none

Aside from TnT and Plastic, theglobeandmail.com, cbc.ca, bbc.co.uk, guardian.co.uk, economist.com, newscientist.com, and nytimes.com, plus occasional music and movie review sites. And I sometimes look at naked women.

11

wireless in class is a terrible idea

DEMachina.

Mon Jan 14, 2008 at 03:12:26 PM EST

none

Other than TnT and Plastic (and of course Fark), my daily rounds include:


Q: What do you think of western civilization? Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

12

My M.O.

keta.

Mon Jan 14, 2008 at 04:42:40 PM EST

none

Depending on the time of year, I first check on line my hockey/football/golf/whatever-the-hell-else-I-suck-at-predicting pool update.

Then I go to Plastic, or come here, and vent my rage and frustrations via thinly veiled anger transference. Cathartic, it is.

13

I Don't Really Surf That Much Anymore

thefadd.

Mon Jan 14, 2008 at 06:03:33 PM EST

none

Mostly I just sit around and think how cool it would be if suck where still around. I pretty much start the day by firing up TnT. Before the recent outage, it was TnT and plastic at the same time but haven't gotten back into the swing there this year. Although, I just noticed my relative lack of participation netted me some mod points so perhaps that will drag me back in. If it's the heat of fantasy season, of course, I'll log into cbs or yahoo first to check out my teams there. Somehow I have managed to guide my team back into third place respectability in notyou's trusty annual plastic hockey league. Sometimes that'll get me picking up a random news piece like this one from yahoo, where I otherwise wouldn't. Then I read the sports section of the philly papers, glancing through the front headlines there, and if that doesn't fulfill my sports interest, I drop on over to espn. If I'm interested in the odds on something, I use usatoday's odds section. Even though I haven't bet in a long time, I like to get a feel for the populace's take on a big game. Then I might check out ebay or craigslist for a bit.

If I'm bored after that, I use stumbleupon. I'm not so hot on digg, definitely not newsvine, and it's an odd day that I'm bored enough to be on fark. Once every couple weeks, I'll see what the latest news is on Second Life. I used to read more widely but several places lost their readability/reliability to me several years ago, namely: moscow times, debka and slate. The last time I really enjoyed slate was when Robert Wright was doing a column on there pre-9/11. I recall him specifically decrying the Bush admin's lack of terrorism preparedness throughout the spring of 2001. He was one of the few. I know most major American sport fans check out Bill Simmons at least here and there but I actually find some of the best social commentary period on espn's Page 2. I'm a major Dan LeBatard fan for one.

Things I'd like to find some better (legal) resources for on the net include poker and music.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

14

Where does all the time go?

secretpath.

Mon Jan 14, 2008 at 06:47:35 PM EST

none

Plastic and TnT are the only discussion sites I regularly follow, though I do sometimes read (and occasionally post in) the discussion threads at BoingBoing.

For graphical interest, I usually check FFFFound, Wooster Collective, and various art and design blogs.

For new music, browse through people's playlists on anywhere.fm until I find one that seems interesting, then just let it play. Or for music I already know, I just listen to my own playlists. Anywhere.fm is a pretty neat site. They don't appear to have a business model, but it'll be interesting to see how long they can last before getting sued out of existence or crippled by bandwidth/hosting bills. I also like KCRW's DJs. They have the best music I've ever heard on the radio, bar none.

I get most of my general news from NPR. For science news, I check Wired Science and The Great Beyond. I'm most interested in conservation science, so I keep an eye on Conservation Magazine's Journal Watch for high-profile articles and Mongabay for stuff that might otherwise slip through the cracks. For environmental "thought pieces," I also check in on the cloyingly leftist Grist and Andy Revkin's cloyingly centrist Dot Earth.

And in case you didn't know, StumbleUpon is the devil's work.

Everything that needs to be said has already been said, but since no one was listening, we must begin again. -Andre Gide

This story: 14 comments (0 from subqueue)
Post a Comment