February 2007

You know what? I still love the Internet. Love it. Love it! The other day I got a message in my Vox blog message center from someone named Regina. She found me while she was poking around Vox looking for likeminded humans who write about Boston, music, etc. She’s local and it seemed odd we hadn’t already met. Then we find out my former roommate is a good friend of hers and la la la. I love the small worldness of the web when it connects you with people in your own backyard.

It turns out Regina is not only awesome but also working on a new newspaper+website startup called BostonNOW. Their plan is to publish a newspaper that includes both pro and citizen journalists plus a website, too. If you’re a blogger curious about what they (and maybe you) are going to be up to, join the conversation at All Asia Cafe in Central Square on Saturday, March 10th from 11-2. They’ve got an RSVP page on Upcoming.org and a blog with more info.

If you’re using Twitter, here’s where you can find (and add) me.

I like how Chris Brogan described it:

Twitter, to me, is a real pulse point on the online people I know. Twitter broke Macworld news to me while I was at CES. It seems necessary.

Halcyon and his 94-year old Grandpa Caleb do a weekly “HugNation” webcam thingy and in honor of Valentine’s Day today they are spreading the good word of hugs through the huggable campaign.

The backstory from Halcyon:

A 13 year old girl sent me a message on MySpace. She was a regular participant in HugNation, and needed advice.

Her school had just outlawed hugging. She (and her parents) felt it was an excessively harsh response to the fear of inappropriate touching.

“There are 1000’s of things children need to be protected from,” her mom said, “Hugging is not one of them.”

So we brainstormed via email some course of action. We agreed that hugging someone against their will, or hugging inappropriately was not cool. So we decided that we should figure out some symbol that means, “I believe in the power of touch. And within appropriate context, I am open to a platonic embrace.”

Read the rest of the story …

I’ve been tracking music I listen to via last.fm off and on for a while. They’ve got a nifty flash player that will let you listen to a bunch of the songs I’ve tracked. Handy! If you want to add me as a friend at last.fm, here’s my profile over there.

I was sick with a bad cough for most of January. Nothing says fun like falling asleep at 8pm on your birthday. But now the cough is leaving and my quest to be human again has returned.

In the middle of my coughing haze I took a bunch of photos for Kier Byrnes from Three Day Threshold at the Rodfest V benefit concert that his family and cohorts hosted at the Paradise Rock Club on January 19th. Kier’s cousin Rodney hosted the first and second Rodfest as a birthday party for himself. When he died in a car crash three years ago, the concert transformed into a benefit show to fund a memorial scholarship. They had a goal to raise $8,000 at benefit #5 and ended up raising $20,000. Very cool, indeed!

The next Exploit Boston Game Night is coming up on Tuesday, February 6th next week from 7-11pm at Soul Fire BBQ in Allston. We’ve been doing this game night thing since the Summer of 2005 and this is definitely the best location yet. We’ll hopefully be adding another monthly night in Cambridge sometime soon.

Michael’s been doing a lot of his usual funny/witty/awesome writing over on BunkoSquad. (If you aren’t subscribed to his RSS feed — go fix that!) As of this week you can also read his words on Bostonist every Tuesday and Friday in the Sports Redux column. I don’t know how he does it, but the guy makes sports sound interesting.