Meta Archives, page 4

Not only do I blog about blogging, I also blog about this very blog! So meta!

Shutting down White Noise Lounge

For six months in 2008, Stephanie and I collaborated on a photo/audio blog project called White Noise Lounge. We’d record five minutes of some interesting sound in our environment, and then we’d take a black and white photo of the source—or something loosely related—and post them together online.

The old about page explains how we came up with the idea:

I must have been making some sort of beatbox noises one night when Stephanie called me “DJ Justinsomnia.”

Suddenly both our minds went off in opposite directions. She heard insomnia, and started mimicking a superfast techno beat, while I heard DJ Justin Somnia and imagined something way more soporific. She riffed on that idea and started making a low continuous drone. Over which I said in my best radio announcer voice,

“DJ Justin Somnia tearing it up at the White Noise Lounge, playing today’s freshest white noise tracks…”

We went back and forth like this for a while, cracking each other up with ideas like “white noise radio,” that played nothing but a continuous low hum, all—day—long. The next morning she was still giggling to herself about it.

There’s just something about crazy ideas that make me want to try them. So I looked into the feasibility of setting up an internet radio station, but even without copyright concerns it seemed too expensive (for an unproven niche). Almost simultaneously the thought occurred to us, why not start a white noise audio blog (aka a podcast)? How weird would that be? On a whim I registered whitenoiselounge.com, ordered a Zoom H2 Recorder (that I’d been eying for some time), and the rest is history.

As an aside: acoustically, white noise refers to a very specific type of sound, but since this is a lounge, we welcome all sorts of ambient, found sounds.

It was a fun project, but it was also a lot of work. Over time it became more difficult to find novel or interesting sounds to record, so we eventually stopped posting.

After a year and a half laying dormant, I figured it was finally time to close up shop. I sold the Zoom H2 microphone, and I absorbed all the old White Noise Lounge posts (photos and audio) into Justinsomnia. Here’s a screenshot for posterity:

White Noise Lounge Screenshot

Write the blog you want to read

It’s funny to say, but it’s true. The things I blog about tend to be the things I’m most interested in. I love this policy. For one it’s flexible. As my interests change, so goes the blog. For another, it allows for diversity. I can post a photo of a car, followed by something technical, followed by something about cheese, followed by something I cooked, followed by something I did outside, without batting an eye. I frequently look back at what I’ve posted and think to myself, “Damn, this is such a great blog! I love this stuff.”

I would go so far as to say that having this blog has made my life more interesting, because I’m often motivated to do something unusual or kind of wacky by virtue of its inherent blogability. The generally positive feedback I receive in return creates a virtuous circle which leads me to seek out yet more off the beaten path adventures—to blog about.

Many people advise would-be bloggers to focus on a single subject and stick with it. I applaud the people who are able to do this well, and there are some very good, and very lucrative subject-specific blogs out there. But man, forcing me to narrow my focus down beyond just “stuff I like” would be disastrous. I would lose interest.

I’m sure I’m not the only person out there who likes the exact same combination of things as I do, but at the same time there doesn’t have to be even one person with the same taste as mine. That’s not the point. The whole difference between blogging and just keeping a journal is the intent to share. As I see it, the value of Justinsomnia is not only in the individual post, it’s also in the sometimes surprising difference between posts. You might have stumbled upon my blog searching for something technical or food-related, and if you’re tickled by the fact that my interests extend beyond that one thing, hopefully you’ll continue to follow along.

Even though blog writing is closely related to newspaper column writing in function, I actually tend to view Justinsomnia more as an ongoing, interactive art project. Each post is like a small canvas that I can fill with words, photos, code, and occasionally even sound and video. Anyone on the internet can interact with my posts by leaving a comment, which actually changes the very nature of the work, particularly in the “eyes” of the search engines. Over time trends emerge in my posts, not unlike Eric Tabuchi’s Typologies, and it wouldn’t surprise me if at some point in the future there aren’t exhibitions dedicated to the blog post as work of art.

End of an era: Blogger shutting down FTP service

Blogger logoWhen I started Justinsomnia back in the summer of 2002, I setup Blogger to publish to my university webspace via FTP. In the spring of 2005 I started playing with WordPress because that’s what Ruby was using for OrangePolitics. My last post published using Blogger was watching unc beat duke on March 7, 2005. A few days later I posted Say Hello to WordPress, and the rest is history. Sort of. I actually continued using Blogger to publish my “neatlinks” via FTP (which I included dynamically in my blog) until February 12, 2007, when I incorporated them into my WordPress setup.

Anyway, it seemed only appropriate that I should pay my respects to a service I owe so much. Google will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26, 2010. Couple this with the recent news of Haloscan going the way of the dinosaur, and this truly is the end of an era.

Mise-en-abyme Halloween

Justin as as his halloween blog post on Justinsomnia.org

For Halloween this year I just dressed up as my blog post about what I dressed up as for Halloween this year. See also: Lost Wormhole.

My history with WordPress

At WordCamp San Francisco today I learned that WordPress celebrated its 6th anniversary this week. That and my badge, which proudly stated that I had spent “5 years with WordPress”, made me think back on my early history with WP.

My 2009 WordCamp San Francisco badge

I have to confess that 5 years is a bit of an overstatement. I believe I selected the “4-5 years” option from the registration drop down, but just for the record I moved Justinsomnia from Blogger to WordPress 1.5 in March of 2005. So I’ve really only spent the last 4 years with WordPress.

However, I did install WordPress 1.2 in January of that year to help Ruby Sinreich develop a dynamic blogroll for Orange Politics. So I have Ruby to thank for getting me to dig into WordPress in the first place. Thanks Ruby!