Friends of the Blog

I’m very fortunate to have a lot of people who have my back, both in my life and on the internet.  As a tiny sign of gratitude (because a link alone can’t suffice for how awesome these people are), I’ve created a “Friends and their Blogs” list in my sidebar.  These are people who inspire me with their passions, motivate me with their own creative pursuits, and impress me on a regular basis.

So, I thought that I would “introduce” you to a few of these people and encourage you to add their sites to your Google Reader, bookmarks, or whatever.  (NOTE: If I’ve forgotten you or if you end up starting a blog, let me know and I’ll add you to the list).

Proceeding alphabetically (by site name):

Paul is a colleague of mine and very generously gave me technology advice on numerous occasions, including one morning in 2007 at 6:30 AM.  He writes an informative and passionate blog about educational issues titled Blogush (a play on his last name).  Right now, he’s up for a “Best Education Blog” award at the 2008 Weblogs Awards and would be deserving of your vote.

Rob is a colleague, collaborator, and friend.  He’s an informational technology teacher with a wide range of interests and insights (including literature, photography, and collaboration.  His blog is titled Burgundy Productions and he’s also building a site called Multimedia Storm, which aims to be a compendium of how-to videos and other guides for technology and web development skills.

I’ve become friends with Brendan through many seasons of fantasy sports.  You can read what he has to think about technology, music, and other assorted topics at his blog Do What You Love (at least until he builds his own personal domain – anyone with insight into that process should leave a comment on his blog).  Brendan also recently wrote a book as part of the National Novel Writing Month challenge and had a review of the TweetDeck application published in a Mac Software blog.

Jenny possesses one of the most creative souls of anyone I’ve ever met.  She’s frequently snapping breathtaking photos with her phone, jotting down things in her moleskine notebook, and looking for different craft projects to work on.  Most significantly, however, Jenny makes awesome beaded jewelry that you can gaze at on her webpage J.Mack Gems.  Stay tuned to her site for the grand opening of her Etsy shop where you’ll be able to buy some of these works of art for yourself.  Also, she is a social media maven, as displayed (along with other links of interest) on her new Tumblr site, not to mention that she knit me a killer hat for Christmas.

My good friend Mike and I have been blogging together on and off through several different sites.  A year ago we started a blog titled Make Me Fries, and after far too much slacking on my part, I’m bequeathing the blog to him on a full time basis.  This is for the best though, as my sporadic posts (and I might have one from time to time) only interrupted his well-researched and thoroughly amusing posts about music, politics, and sports.  For an example of his unique insight: Mike recently wrote a post comparing significant 2008 albums to specific seasons of professional athletes.  Only on Make Me Fries will you find Lil Wayne compared to Carl Everett (or, similarly, Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis compared to Chris Weber).

As long as I’ve know him, Dave has oozed a passion for pop culture.  So needless to say, I was thrilled when I discovered that he started his own blog NineDaves, where he posts on a wide range of topics.  For instance, NineDaves keeps an eye on all of the closings on broadway, recaps the weekly episodes of Gossip Girl, and keeps an eye on all types of Brooklyn/NYC happenings.  Read any one of his hundreds of posts, all written in his distinctive lowercase style, and you’ll understand why his blog gets mentioned all over the internet.

And the most recent entry (not to mention one of the most anticipated) comes from my friend Dan.  Few can match his biting wit, charming sense of humor, and encyclopedic knowledge of sports, mid-90s hip hop, and awesomeness in general.  His blog this is the city line (another blog named after a Pavement lyric!) has already taken off, with its third post being featured on Yahoo’s basketball blog Ball Don’t Lie.  Expect more of the same in the future as well.

Some Songs Considered: My 2009 Project

While driving back to CT on New Year’s Day, I had an idea.  I’ve been kicking around the thoughts of hosting a podcast but far too many concerns (“where would I host it?”, “would people actually listen?”,  etc) prevented me from doing it.  Then, I had this crazy idea.

What if I wrote about a different song every day?

I’ve done this in the past in a variety of places.  I always tell people that one of my favorite parts of making a mix for someone is writing the track-by-track “notes” that accompany it (and often stretch to 4 or 5 pages).  I always want to find different ways to make myself write too.  So out of this idea comes Some Songs Considered (NPR pun intentional, sorry folks).

As it stands now, it’s a place where I will write about a new song every day.  What I write will largely change based on the day and the song – on days that I’m “too busy to write”,  I’ll do what I do when I write mix notes – I’ll put the song on and write until the song ends, then go back and clean it up a little bit.  Other days, when I’m feeling more inspired I might write more.  It won’t always be track reviews either.  Sometimes, I’ll tell a story that the song reminds me of or maybe even write something a bit more creative.

Right now, there’s a lot that I haven’t figured out about Some Songs Considered, but that’s ok.  I have all of 2009 to figure it out!  As of right now, these are my goals for the site:

1.  Write every day.

This seems obvious, but a lot of advice (and advice I give my students) is that good writers write frequently.  By setting this goal of writing “something” every day, I hope that I can sharpen my own skills as a writer.  By using the songs as a jumping off point, I’ll hopefully have something to write about each day.

2.  Share songs with other people

I love sharing music with others, and this gives me an opportunity to explain how these songs affect me.  I’m not sure I’ll always write about songs that I love, but they will (probably) always be songs that inspire some sort of emotional response or philosophical thought or something.  I’m also going to try to have some sort of AV content too – whether it’s an embedded stream or a YouTube video or something.  That way, we’ll have some common ground to discuss (and, perhaps naively, I hope that discussions spring up occasionally – please come and comment on the songs!)

3. Learn about my own taste in music.

One of the things I want to do with these entries is attach a whole bunch of tags to them based on genre, era, style, label, etc.  That way, I can look back and see what songs I liked during a given period as well as the types of things I write about more often and less often than others.  The plan right now is to write “recap” posts in this blog – whether it’s every other week or once a month – looking at some of the “trends” I’ve seen in my own writing.  This is a strange form of self-reflection, but I’m curious to see what I learn about myself as a music fan over the next year.

So go check out the Some Songs Considered blog and chime in on the songs.  I’ve already written the first two entries and I’m already thinking about where I’m going next.