April 17, 2001

5:12 PM

We all know the rules —no self-linking on MetaFilter. And yet I've often enjoyed peeking into people's User Profiles and checking out the sites they've put together. So, I'll risk creating a giant love-in thread, and I'll ask: what sites made by MeFi-ers have you enjoyed? (Besides the one you're looking at right now, I mean.)
posted by jbushnell (38 comments total)

My new favorite is Dean Paxton's site. He had a hilariously irreverent Easter graphic up on 4/13 (read the discussion post by clavdivs for a bonus laugh). He's got a wonderful variety of interesting, fun and useful stuff. It's just a well-done site, imo. Another one I've been checking out quite a bit lately is Mars' edgecase. Great news-driven content.
posted by gimli at 5:40 PM on April 17, 2001

I like dhartung's Lake Effect. (I'll take mine in small, unmarked bills...)
posted by owillis at 5:52 PM on April 17, 2001

(Jeremy, always pushing boundries, but in a good way)

I get giddy with happiness when I see a community site linked on a member's page. Mo Nickel's worldnewyork and Mars' edgecase spring to mind. I like to see how big the sites are, what kind of content they have, how they arrange things, what the comment pages look like, what software they're using for it, etc. It's mostly because I like to see how others solved similar problems.

The most interesting userpage? Probably Alan's. There's one other person with a hilarious joke in their profile, with the story of their introduction to the web, which fades into the background. It's brilliant, but I can't think of their username right now (someone refresh me).
posted by mathowie at 5:53 PM on April 17, 2001

Wow! I of course like mine the best but I guess I am biased. I did an experiment, I scrolled down the page with my mouse wheel with my eyes closed and randomly clicked on 10 links. Here is what I found;

* I liked 4 of 10 (this is good, I am pretty picky)
* 3 of 5 were run my women, much higher then the "industry average"
* 1 of 10 I had seen before
* 6 or 10 were weblogs of one sort or another (Who do you think the contributing audience of this site are? Uhhh)
* 3 of 10 linked back somewhere or another to MeFi, this seems low.
posted by me myself and i at 6:10 PM on April 17, 2001

Oh, gosh, it's so hard to choose when all 6703 of them are so darned good.....
posted by briank at 6:14 PM on April 17, 2001

I clicked around and found pirated-sites run by o2b.

I thought it was pretty cool. Two of them are Matt's creations.


How come nobody ever copies me? :(
posted by perplexed at 6:39 PM on April 17, 2001

The background-fade is in rodii's profile, Matt.
posted by redfoxtail at 6:56 PM on April 17, 2001

Er, that's rodii. Duh.
posted by redfoxtail at 6:58 PM on April 17, 2001

When I first looked into the reemergence of what I considered personal hot list pages - suddenly called "weblogs," which I thought sounded a little silly or "blogs," which I thought sounded utterly ridiculous - I found among the practitioners a British guy named Tom who published a highly personal site, then called Barbelith, now called plasticbag.org. He links some; he writes about himself some; he dialogues with his visitors some. The others I started reading have fallen by the wayside, but for whatever reason, I don't let more than a couple of days go by without checking in to see what he's been up to.
posted by m.polo at 8:39 PM on April 17, 2001

After a long pause Matt is back and has always found good stuff to write about. I regularly check Darren's site for comic goodness. Null.dev and Apathy post a lot of tasty links. Finally, there are few places with more depth then Ethel.
posted by john at 9:10 PM on April 17, 2001

m.polo, this is favorite metafiltrian sites, not just favorite sites. Has Tom ever posted here?

Let's start by excluding. A-listers don't need the publicity, and there are personalities who have nice sites who have posted here, but aren't regulars.

The one MeFi member whose blog I couldn't do without is anildash's eponymous Anil Dash. Another nice one I've been visiting is lia's blog cheesedip (too bad she has a Boy, too). Jason Levine (delfuego) posts here regularly depending on hospital rotation, but keeps up better with queso.
posted by dhartung at 11:19 PM on April 17, 2001

Sorry. s/cheesedip.org/cheesedip.com.
posted by dhartung at 11:21 PM on April 17, 2001

The site I find most entertaining is bradlands. Which I'm not going to bother linking because it's been temporarily closed down by the health department. Or something. Grrr.
posted by anapestic at 11:25 PM on April 17, 2001

dutchbint is where i'm guest posting while marcia's on holidays, so this is not a gratuitous "self-link". it's her site. her content consistently cracks me up, plus her design and useability are way up there.
posted by giantkicks at 12:04 AM on April 18, 2001

m.polo, this is favorite metafiltrian sites, not just favorite sites. Has Tom ever posted here?

Just a little.
posted by rory at 12:21 AM on April 18, 2001

Thanks, m.polo! And thanks to rory for mentioning to dhartung that actually, I post fairly frequently. I'm a regular Metafilter reader and/or poster. I should probably change my user-name to be honest, but I don't want to appear like a newbie...

And you can't really go wrong with the old staples: Jason and Derek.
posted by barbelith at 12:49 AM on April 18, 2001

Linklove right back at dhartung! I read lakefx too (and I'm not just saying that). calamondin is a regular read, as are caterina (her book section is fantastic), harrumph and prolific. I also read queso -- I'm just waiting for a blog named fromage, brie, or camembert to pop up so I can start a webring (kidding, kidding).

My absolute favorite new weblog is dollarshort.org; I found out the author read MeFi because of a post about the scholarship, so I did a reverse look-up, and she's mgtrott. Great stuff happening on there, so go check it out!
posted by lia at 1:17 AM on April 18, 2001

Ugh, this is going to rather quickly degenerate into a circle jerk, isn't it? Well, far be it from me to not lend a hand. I guess I should give props first to the guy who influenced me to start blogging in the first place, Peter's Peterme. Although my attention has wandered a bit from his areas of interest, and so nowadays I tend to obsessively check Lake Effect and Queso.

Another site that got me into this game in the first place was the late, lamented blog at jjg.net. Which leads me to perennial favorite Rebecca's Pocket, the blog with the conscience I always intended to have.

Gosh, too many to list. I'll end with Alison's bluishorange, which is as beautiful and elegant in form and content as any site could hope to be.
posted by anildash at 2:41 AM on April 18, 2001

It's gotta be k10k - a great little site filled with inspiration, thanks toke.

btw, how do I create links within my comment
posted by twistedonion at 4:02 AM on April 18, 2001

We hit on this a little bit on this thread, what with the overlap between favorite 'blogs and what MeFi folks have done, and at the risk of sounding like a crazed (as opposed to innocuous) stalker, I'll throw another shout-out for Lileks.

Oh, and twistedonion, look at this for help on creating links.
posted by Avogadro at 6:02 AM on April 18, 2001

cheers Avogadro, didn't realise you could use html in the comment box

posted by twistedonion at 6:27 AM on April 18, 2001

I a big baylink fan, but he's been too damn quiet lately. I also read succaland religiously. Or rather I do when it's working properly.

Hobbsblog II is a great read, and U.S.S. Clueless is always informative. It's one of those places you can feel your brain growing at.
posted by cCranium at 7:04 AM on April 18, 2001

ding likes Redcricket. Best board ever. Jennyb.org is a wonderful read too.
posted by ding at 7:04 AM on April 18, 2001

What, nobody likes

mspansel's http://www.dealermotors.com/

***DON"T *DO* IT!!!!! I WILL RETURN THE "FAVER"!!!!***
posted by dcehr at 7:57 AM on April 18, 2001

Rebecca Blood's Rebecca's Pocket and Rafe Colburn's rc3.org are two of my long-time favorites that I would recommend to anyone. Hack the Planet is great for links and discussion if you're a techie.
posted by daveadams at 8:14 AM on April 18, 2001

I'd have to say Evhead. Cliched as it is, he's always got an article that I enjoy, a full understanding of quality links and resources that seem to slip large news sites, etc.

Also, Little Yellow Different is always great for a laugh.
posted by Yardsale at 8:45 AM on April 18, 2001

Now that I've recovered fully from his alter-ego postings, I'd have to say that I check-out Ryan's site each day hoping for a little gem. Shame he doesn't post as often as he used to... here, or on his site.
posted by silusGROK at 10:45 AM on April 18, 2001

I read dangerousmeta lots. I see there are lots of other good suggestions here.
posted by mutagen at 11:46 AM on April 18, 2001

owillis just started a football discussion site with a link/comment format. I think it has loads of potential, since most fan sites seem to be flame-fests lacking in intelligent discourse. Good luck!
posted by gimli at 1:25 PM on April 18, 2001

And Prol. Jeez - I forgot Prol. I'm a bad person. Don't hate me Caroline!
posted by barbelith at 1:25 PM on April 18, 2001

Plasticbag is the only thing I check everyday that has a soap opera style about it. Don't know why. I guess soaps are addictive.
posted by davidgentle at 1:52 PM on April 18, 2001

Thanks gimli! It's moved here now. (tell your friends! :)
posted by owillis at 2:09 PM on April 18, 2001

I just went through and added all of the above (that I could) to my Subhonker Filter. If you don't know about this, well, it hasn't gotten much publicity in a while. It reads the weblogs.com XML information to present you with an IE side-pane (or popup) bar showing all the most recently updated blogs. All you need to do to participate is create an account on weblogs.com for your blog; then it will appear on the front page, on any userland favorites lists that include you, and in the SHF.

It's by dan_of_brainlog.
posted by dhartung at 3:54 PM on April 18, 2001

Yeah, the SHF is a lifesaver for me. I wish everyone would get weblogs.com accounts so I could just ditch lousy spyonit and use the SHF exclusively for all of my blog-surfing needs. Thanks Brainlog Dan, for providing a wonderful and useful service.

As far as my personal faves, Rabi's Wockerjabby is one of the best out there that nobody seems to talk about. Ditto for the aforementioned Ryan and Alison. Oh, and Awol's California 2001 experiment is quite interesting too. Of course, I'm biased on all of those, since we all know each other and collaborate on web stuff and whatnot.

As far as people I don't know, Caterina, Rebecca's Pocket, Ethel, and Ghost in the Machine always make me feel horrifically uninformed, and then proceed to take steps to correct that deficit, which is always a good thing(tm).
posted by jdunn_entropy at 11:50 PM on April 18, 2001

The praises of Dan's Lake Effect and Tom's Plasticbag have already been justifiably sung. Other than those, my favorites list is pretty long, but I like LinkMachineGo, Lots of Co., Pop Culture Junk Mail, and Do You Feel Loved for good pop-culture stuff, while I peruse Medley, Now This, What's On It For Me?, and Caught in Between for meaty social and political links. Of course, there's tons I'm missing. Are they all Metafilterians? Unsure...sorry if I screwed up the rules.
posted by kevincmurphy at 7:57 AM on April 19, 2001

I'd forgetten temporarily about Clog and Caterina.
But can it be true? Does nobody love my great works? Have you never perused my extensive Blog styled efforts and held them in wonder? You haven't? You think there just poorly written shit? Oh. Okay. Point taken. I'll just go over here and lie down under this big heavy rock.
posted by davidgentle at 4:53 PM on April 19, 2001