jema—pristine.nu

jema's (User #3529) old domain is available.

kowalski—the Vanishing Point

I can't use enough superlatives to describe how great kowalski's (User #18227) site, The Vanishing Point is. A collection of write-ups of the exploration of urban infrastructure and decay, mostly around Ontario, the site features stunning photography and evinces a dedicated pursuit of unlikely beauty. The feature on the Niagara Falls Tailrace is absolutely stunning and should not be missed. (Here's a MeFi thread on the subject.) There's a (semi-)daily photo feature.

neuroshred—Shrednow

neuroshred (User #8018) is an 11 time world champion in Pro Disc Freestyle (Freestyle Frisbee)! He started a website for freestylers called Shrednow. Right there on the About page he namechecks MetaFilter. It looks like a good community site, but as is frequently the case, seems a bit arcane to me since I'm not a member. The photos pages are good. (This guy is muddy and serious!) There are also podcasts and instructional videos. Worth a look if you're into Frisbee.

mosspink—^^osspink.demystified

A combination journal and professional website, mosspinks' (User #9977, coll number!) ^^osspink looks defunct. The last journal entries were in March of 2006. The design is nice, and some of the side-barred art projects look good. A lot of the portfolio comes back 404, but I quite liked this "I will not hurl!" concept for a barf bag.

Zed_Lopez—MemeMachineGo!

Zed_Lopez's (User #16552) MemeMachineGo! is the best sort of blog made up of links and personal reflections. His observations are acute, his sense of humor is evident, and his range of interests is broad and developed. His short essay on science fiction and the real history of Berkeley protest movements is well done. The archives go on and on, and are all the same high-quality commentary on the events of the day.

nanojath—The Fairly Secret Song of the Day Blog

nanojath (User #18794) has a blog, which is Fairly Secret, on which he posts a song a day (just about). It's a bit hard for me to evaluate some of these lyrics without actually hearing them as songs. I do like the pastoral Sick, Weary, and And Necessity is cool because it explains the whole project (and you can hear the song at MeFi Music, his song Jonestown on MeFi Music is also quite good, but I can't find the lyrics on his blog). I like The Inspector, and Babel, too. nanojath is taking part in the RPM challenge this year, and says that he's maybe going to put his blog on hiatus in March.

iNick—nick.color.nu

iNick (User #11293) is that rare user, member since 2001, not a single comment, post or question. His personal site comes back linkfarm.

interrobang—A Year in Comics

Does anyone not know that interrobang (user 14200) is doing a comic a day for all of 2007? That's cool enough, but the comics are fun to look at, fun to read and he actually draws one every day. Really. You can catch up with the comics on Vox or as a Flickr set. My favorites are the ones that either feature Potato the cat, or the "I wake up with one eye at a time" (and here). They have also given me a hankering for saffron ice cream.

kerning—Pretty Ashley

kerning's (User #41732; one of three users in a small corner of WV, iNick & aaron are the others) Pretty Ashley is a personal journal type site. It's actually pretty good, although Ashley complains about being boring a lot. Her entry on loving her boyfriend was fabulous, and I liked "Things That Are Wrong With Me" a lot. There's not a thing wrong with an "I like make-up, Thanksgiving was good" weblog. Although it probably isn't for everybody.

aaronchristy—Surface Damage

aaronchristy's (User #975) site, Surface Damage, is set up as a photo slideshow. It's completely compelling. The photography is, in many cases, quite good, and the main subject matter is a gimme. It's a well designed site, too, with a clean interface and a sleek look. I particularly like the set of nine random images to choose from at the bottom. "Oh, Beaker. What happened to you?!"

ooga_booga—Missing Mel

ooga_booga's (User #26885) site is a very personal remembrance of his friend (lover?), Melissa Berridge, who died in skydiving plane accident (with five other people) in July of 2006. I'm sure there are a lot of these types of sites on the web, but this is the first one I've come across. The writing is simple and honest, prosaic in the best sense. This very short post was wrenching. The last two entries, from November 2006, which note the results of the Congressional elections on which Melissa had been working, seem to capture the spirit of the project.

In a little bit of strangeness, it seems that Melissa and the main blog author both went to CMU during the time I was there for one year. I don't recognize her from her picture.

Creosote—Betwixnet

Creosote's (User #18532) very old school personal site for he and his wife. Just a bit of text on a nice background, an attempt to convince us all that betwixnet is the middle English translation of Internet, and a few links to family professional websites.

tastybrains—Tastybrains

tastybrains's (User #18077) site is basically just an aggregator of links to her other presences on the web, including her myspace and livejournal, etc. The highlight is the link to the McGriddle Fan Fic community on livejournal. That's right, fan fiction for a breakfast (?) sandwich. The internet is a strange and wonderful place.

Her picture of the brain eating young woman is also pretty great, especially the stains around her mouth.

Mrs. Pants—featherbed Flickr stream

Hey, it meets the criteria as it's linked in her profile (User #18800)! mrs. pants has a sensibility that just warms my heart. I look over her imported sketches, cartoons, paintings and "hasties" frequently just to get a fix. I'm obviously attracted by her subject matter, especially her old time music interests, but her blocky drawing style and sly wit are things I really like in their own right. I even snapped up a copy of this from Tiny Showcase when it went on sale. That's how much I like her stuff!

I wish she had a website that was all hers, but for now, these pictures will have to do.

misteraitch—Giornale Nuovo

misteraitch's (User #16151) excellent book and art blog is always worth a visit. Updated a few times a month, misteraitch's tastes run to engravers and book artists of the Renaissance, or those from more recent times whose works catch an echo of the esoteric in man. One of his most fascinating posts is about how he acquired his copy of the Codex Seraphinianus, and the comments where readers tell their own tales are great as well.

His ongoing series of posts on figurative alphabets is fabulous, as is his highlighting of modern masters like Max Ernst and, especially, Bruno Schulz, who is too little known as an artist.

More of the entries used to be a bit more personal, like this journey through his basement, but misteraitch seems to mostly stick to other's work now.

Do not miss his list of links (crammed together like the marginalia it is) on the left hand side of the page.

languagehat—Languagehat.com

Certainly one of the first MeFi user sites I read with any regularity, languagehat's (User #14752) blog is also one of the best. It's difficult to describe just how broad and deep are his interests and knowledge. Just today on the front page are entries about an old Scottish dialect still spoken by only two people in the world, several glosses on entries at the wonderful Polyglot Vegetarian language blog, a matching game using proper names and pinyin, and a speculation on the etymology of the word Moscow (in which lh correctly corrects the OED!). My favorite of languagehat's entries is still his demolition of David Foster Wallace for DFW's snooty idiocy about English usage.

And let me not stop there. His sidebar is filled with links to the cream of the website crop. Everything there is well worth a visit.

Josh Zhixel—Yes Ma'am

I really like sites like this, minimalist (verging on non-existent) with no information at all. Josh Zhixel's (User #22074) site, Yes Ma'am, is simply three great repeated photos of Dusty Springfield in a farm shirt. It's a compelling picture. That's it. Classier than an 'Under Construction' banner.

Here's his username explanation: "I needed an IRC nick in 1996, so I wound up hitting random letters on the keyboard and adding some vowels to it. I later adopted it as a surname." Does he mean he actually changed his name?

Rawhide—Covert Designs

Rawhide's (User #18465) professional site, Covert Designs. A functional and clean professional site. Anyone looking for a web designer around Charlottesville, VA? The first of what will probably be many professional sites. I like the cool graphs and graphics on his CardioVillage design. (PDF)

I almost forgot. The best thing about Rawhide's user page is this explanation of his username: "My nickname comes not from the song or TV show, but from my favorite character in Buckaroo Bonzai, the only movie you ever need see." That's so true about Buckaroo Bonzai. Why don't I only ever watch that?

Quartermass—The Annotated Everything

The Annotated Everything, another blog I looked at only because of this project, and it's a good one! Quartermass (User #11848) may be best pointed to as the user who studied MetaFilter for his Master's Thesis. His blog is of the personal reflection/humorous and slightly sly/annotated link variety. You know what I mean.
He's clearly a smart guy whose writing is clean and well-wrought. Checking it out today, I smiled at the juxtaposition of Pierre Bourdieu and Britney Spears over a few posts. His breakdown of the breaking down of Britney Spears is done with just the right touch. His post on Foucault's Discipline & Punish is also quite good (and spot on), and seems part of a series that promises more good commentary to come.

peacay—BibliOdyssey

A post about peacay's (User #770) site, BibliOdyssey, should have definitely come directly after the Matt & Jessamyn posts. It's a beautiful site about the book arts, lovingly curated and stunningly presented. peacay uses a standard Blogger layout to its best advantage. The truth is, there's something about his site that intimidates me. It shows too much excellence, it gives me a little bit of vertigo at the material that I know I don't have enough time to do justice to. I should look at it more! (I made a post about it at MetaFilter, a little while after he started it.)

It's hard to recommend any particular post, as they're all so excellent, but this week I was struck by the Erik Nitsche post.

It's Raining Florence Henderson—Rain Shadow People

It's Raining Florence Henderson (User #23407) is a hard guy not to like. He's consistently funny (which is really very difficult to pull off), and his humor comes fast and thick (which is meant to sound a little gross). His blog, Rain Shadow People, which I didn't even know existed until just now, is also pretty exceptional. It's consistently funny, well-written, and a good mix of different elements that keep it from seeming like so much paltry platitude. I particularly recommend the passive aggressive ninjas and anything that says "Suicidal ideation just screams for high def."

Suicidal ideation just screams for high def.

This thing is already paying off.

madamejujujive & quonsar—Everlasting Blort

madamejujujive (User #15971; her user page has a great list of great User sites) & quonsar (User #986, who also lists meepzorp as his personal page) share posting (with other people I don't know) at Everlasting Blort. I don't visit enough. The format is frenetic, with each link a picture and more archives than you can reasonably feel good about scrolling down the left side of the page. The posts range from the sublime to the ridiculous (I might have gotten those links confused, it's so hard to tell), and I always have the feeling that the utter weirdness of the internet is most appropriately captured there.

jessamyn.com—my most consistent MeFi User Site read.

One of Jessamyn's (User #292) personal sites, jessamyn.com, is the personal website I read most frequently on all the web. The whole wide world wide, web. Partly that's because Jessamyn is a friend of mine, partly that's because I don't really read personal websites. I include that caveat because she doesn't update her site that often, so I don't actually read it that often. A couple of times a week.

But ok, how is it as a site? It's pretty great. The design is top-notch: simple but loaded with information for the clicking. I like the Flickr and delicious streams, and the header is a good size and color (which sounds like faint praise, but isn't). Jessamyn is a good writer, so her entries are fun to read and informative without being overly personal or trite. (Her recent disquisition on the levels of her boots was great.) It is an unabashedly personal site, so if you don't care about her, you're unlikely to really like the site that much.

#1—A Whole Lotta Nothing

I have to start with mathowie's personal blog. It isn't mind-blowing or extraordinary, it doesn't focus on some strange subset of ephemera, or a forgotten backwater of history. It is, however, a simple, cleanly-designed set of links and brief comments that gets the point across and serves up consistently good links. My favorite tag of his is "do not buy", even though it only has one entry. His other site, well, what can you say?

The impetus

When MetaTalk gets to be too much, I click through to user profiles and search for web-pages. I thought about logging the results for a while, a la mjj's list of good user sites, or lh's list of resources around the web, but, as usual, I was too lazy to get started. It was only after finding the serendipitous genius of the link farm at electrobacon [dot] com, via dgfitch's profile (user #89, six comments total, no posts, last comment 2/16/01), that I decided to give it a go. Electrobacon is something only madlibs or spam could produce.

It's a big user base, somebody has to do it.