Danae Shell -- Knickersblog

ukdanae (User #38639) is the editor of Knickers, a lingerie weblog. I have actually never seen a lingerie weblog before. This one has great photos -- yes, of women in their underwear -- and a crisp clean design. The writing is informative, a little funny but not always-on-ribald. There's even a subsection of the site called "Ask Knickers" with questions about bra sizing and tracking down tough to find underwear. While the photos may be strictly speaking NSFW, Knickers is full of solid information on good underwear.

Joshua McFadden - Mindsound

mindsound (User #63168) is pretty new. Actually he's been a member since... Monday of this week. But I just peeked at his eponymous blog which seems to have posts from April and November of this year and saw that he and his wife are pregnant. Congrats mindsound and welcome to MetaFilter!

mimi—Dynagirl 5.0

mimi (User #1174) has a great blog called Dynagirl 5.0. Her archives are a lot of fun, I particularly like her entries about cooking Julia Child recipes (and her cassoulet has me salivating), but all the cooking stuff is great. The little essay she wrote to get Henry Rollins tickets is fun. I really wish the pictures were still working in the Squirrel Car project. Oh, and this entry is AWESOME.

Greg Nog -- gregnog.com

Greg Nog (User #36852) draw comics. I heard about his site during the podcast where the thread about his comics about him being a host at Olive Garden were discussed. If you like the powersuit comic, you'll love this page where you can dress Greg Nog. He does other comics too.

Bazman—They Should Die

Bazman (User #5926) has made no comments and no posts at MetaFilter, and his site is a link farm. But I'm desperately curious about what it once was since the title They Should Die has me hooked. Ah ha, apparently it was a place where you could vote about wanting certain celebrities to die. The banner is a Great Leap Forward style propoganda poster. Meh.

bigdumbHoosier—big eastern

bigdumbHoosier (User #2792) has a very comprehensive blog about Indiana environmental issues called big eastern. The reporting is good and the writing is also decent. He only ever made one comment at MetaFilter, that closes a thread about the bursting of the dot com bubble.

seawallrunner—seawallrunner

seawallrunner (User #18854) is a mefite I first became aware of because she sent me a cd I liked during a cd swap. I looked at her website and discovered that she does the same kind of running I do. Her photo blog is filled with gorgeous landscape shots of backcountry vistas. It's well worth spending some time looking at what she's posted (I particularly like this snowy shot of dawn).

jurczyk—joe jurczyk

jurczyk (User #51113) has a simple website where he posts brief links and descriptions to things which interest him. Most of the items are tech items. I came across his user name randomly, and was excited because I recognized his name from running stuff. He's the RD for a race I almost did in August, and which several of my friends did. There's one other MeFi ultrarunner that I know of, seawallrunner. That makes at least three.

ewagoner—Kestrel's Nest

ewagoner's (User #1387) blog Kestrel's Nest is infrequently updated these days, but it's worth spending at least the three minutes there that it would take to watch his delicious video on making North Georgia Beef Stroganoff. The video is a demo for The Next Food Network Star, and I really hope he gets onto the show. He manages to be both engaging about local food, and informative enough that I could imagine making the recipe.

TheLastPsychiatrist—The Last Psychiatrist

TheLastPsychiatrist (User #46425) publishes a refreshing website called The Last Psychiatrist. I like many of the small essays he writes. Psychiatry, at least the many psychiatrists that I work with regularly (at a very well respected teaching hospital which prides itself on its Department of Psychiatry), suffers from both an inferiority complex and an undeserved self-assurance. Many psychiatrists don't seem to take the time to read or understand the literature central to their field; and, much worse, they frequently don't take the time to understand patients, relying on fuzzy and unproven notions about the biology of mental illness. In general, the epistemology of psychiatry is so muddled that psychiatrists don't even seem to have the conceptual tools necessary to seriously think about mental illness and mental health treatment. (There are many reasons for this muddle, and I don't think it's ill-intentioned, but that's a discussion for a different sort of blog.)

TheLastPsychiatrist's website, is quite good, even if I don't agree with everything that he writes. Sometimes his tone is a bit reductive and dismissive, but that seems to be mostly a symptom of his general frustration. His essay from July about Seroquel does a great job of describing why failing to understand a medication's mode of action means that doctors prescribe it incorrectly. His essay on what the Number Needed to Treat is and why it's important is great (here's a similar essay from Slate last year), and I quite like his longer essay on the future of psychiatry "The Massacre of the Unicorns." Although most things on the site are worth reading, his analyses of medication studies and trends in psychiatric diagnosis and prescribing are very strong.

(I saved this in draft as I was writing it, to see an actual patient for actual psychotherapy, and an essay on his site got posted to the front page.)

jscalzi—Whatever

jscalzi (User #15351), another MeFi SF author, John Scalzi, has a long, long standing personal website called, Whatever. It's a good site, filled with everything from discussions of his books, to pictures of his dogs. It's hard to pin it down, and it certainly deserves a visit.

I only went to Whatever after spending a lot of August reading several of Scalzi's novels. I loved them, I thought they were great, and I can't wait to read more. I wrote him to say so, and he never wrote back.

cstross—Charlie's Diary

cstross (User #20966) is the username of the SF writer Charlie Stross. His mefi page points to a blog that hasn't been updated in a year, but that's just because he forgot to update his profile to point to his new blog url. His Published Fiction page points to a lot of free stories on the web, and if you poke around you can get to the site for his novel Accelerando!, where you can download that whole novel for free.

I've read a bunch of Stross stories, and two of his novels. The first (Singularity Sky) I picked up off a sale rack in Brussels on a whim, and I loved reading such an excellent book about which I had known nothing.

jennydiski—Jenny Diski

jennydiski (User #56747) is a British author who has a pretty standard author's website. It's well designed and shows the many praises she has received for her eight novels and several books of non-fiction. The Recent Journalism section has a couple of book reviews to read, including one of a biography of Martha Freud, and there are a few interviews, too. It's neat that she's a Mefite.

(She also happens to live with Ian Patterson, whose translation of Finding Time Again is fabulous, and made my last reading of Proust more fun.)

stavrosthewonderchicken -- wonderchicken.com

stavrosthewonderchicken (User #2238) seems like he'd be a hardass, but he's mostly an expat softie with a keen design sense and a tendency towards good writing. His profile URL is wonderchicken.com but that's just a portal page to his main blog at EmptyBottle.org his Korea clearinghouse at OutsideInKorea and this site which is a great URL but with very little content at the moment and this which is mysterious but great. Those of us who were around the site in 2002 remember his site acutely for his reporting on the Bali bombing that killed his friend Rick and his poignant remembrance of that event a year later.

woodblock100 -- woodblock.com

woodblock100 (User #53371) has one of the nicest looking user sites I've seen since I started this blog. David Bull is a woodblock printmaker living in Tokyo. His blog shows off his work (too many examples to list, but I like the scroll project and the Hanga Treasure Chest). David also has a woodblock webcam and a lengthy subsite about the progression of his work.

wallstreet1929 - john taylor ships

wallstreet1929 (User #30785) - in his own words, John Taylor "obsessively resurrects forgotten vessels of America's maritime fleet." He's got a one-post blog, but his main site has great photos inlcuding my personal favorites, the penguins and Ark 3.

snofoam -- everyone loves free stuff

snofoam (User #29097) came to my attention via his amusing entry in the snake music challenge. I went to his blog Everyone Loves Free Stuff (hey, I sure do) and found it much more fun than your usual marketing and schwag linkfarm. In fact, Mark's been at it two years as of this week and posted 600 entries which is damned near one a day. Lots of neat stuff in here, dig around.

tking—kinghamilton

tking's (User #6426) kinghamilton is a slideshow of fashion photos. It's nice.

obedo—XTEZE

obedo (User #11588) has a link blog called XTEZE that he updates fairly frequently with interesting stuff mostly centered around the sciences. There are also some decent programming resources. It's all pretty transparent. And check out his cool, texture-centric, Flickr stream.

gregorg—greg.org

gregorg's (User #18194) greg.org is a great site about (mostly) modern art and film and video. His reviews and observations are well-presented and interesting, and he's got some real gems (like an interview with Errol Morris). I like that today when I came across the site the lead article was about the Richard Serra show at MOMA, as I've been sending out a series of postcards commemorating Tilted Arc lately. This is a website worth spending some time reading, but it isn't light or quickly digested.

christine—maganda.org

christine (User #639) has a sweet little website called maganda. I like the design, which isn't a surprise, as she also runs Darling design & illustration. The nicest parts of her website are her link to her Flickr stream, and her intermittent and brief blog.

AccordionGuy -- the Adventures of AccordionGuy

Joey deVilla (User #15623) got a little famous this week for his Craiglist wedding post and follow-ups (here) but he's been around and blogging since November 2001, practically the blogging stone ages. You can browse by categories such as accordion instrument of the gods or possibly just the accordion category which has one post with this excellent photo. With 5,000 posts, you might need the Best Of page to help you find some more good stuff.

coldmarble—ColdMarblePhoto

coldmarble (User #8458) is a photographer who lives in Baltimore. Precisely the kind of serendipitous find that I was hoping for. His website is predominantly pictures of the cemeteries of Charm City, which is just fine with me. I've run a lot through the Baltimore Cemetery, and I love the William Tell statue there. In the nature of these things, his IR photos of the Druid Ridge cemetery (which, unfortunately, does not seem to be the cemetery I run past in Druid Hill Park), are pretty goth. The blog hasn't been updated in a while, but scrolling down produces a nice list of Baltimore bloggers.

jasonlatshaw—the Look Machine

jasonlatshaw's (User #26695) site is for the band for which he is the lead singer, The Look Machine. There are links to merchandise and an mp3 version of their new album. There are several songs available for download. They're all very earnest and heartfelt.

punkrockrat -- fed-up.com

punkrockrat (User #3008) shut down fed-up.com after ten years, just this month. Seems he's no longer fed up. You can still look at some kitten pictures ripe for lolcatting and a photo of him with G.G. Allin. He's got some great photos of the Buffalo Central Terminal up on Flickr.

noloveforned -- noloveforned

noloveforned (User #39526) is an internet radio sensation. The noloveforned website is a treasure trove of five years of archived radio shows and in-studio performances.

YoBananaBoy--patrick

YoBananaBoy (User #42191) has a website that claims that "every bit is fiction". It's split into categories that make this seem true: reading, memorize, fiveminutequickhit &c, but the presence of the people in the writing is so real, so true-seeming, that I was sure it was a personal blog until I got to the tagline.

"Don’t tell someone to fuck off if you can’t live with the consequences," it tells me, and that seems pretty true to me.

Gideon - MythicCulture

Gideon (User #45056) has a very 2.0-ish looking site at religionism.net about religious topics generaly, but more about how people search for meaning. It's a deep site, covering topics ranging from Wittgenstein to the philosophy of intelligent design and even some GTD stuff like 5 steps to exercising your academic brains…. He's also a new contrinbutor to BlogCritics. His first post A Theistic Dfense of Atheism, deserves a close read.

geekyguy -- drunkenass

geekyguy (User #14813) Olen Sanders is in China. His main website is a portal to other smaller part of his site, but his blog talking about being in China is elsewhere. His Naked in China photos are elsewhere still, but this photo of his is my favorite.

AndrewStephens--sandfly

AndrewStephens (User #30980) has a website where he makes some of his projects available including a Windows version of Snake a java jigsaw puzzle and WordMap, a totally fun little word game which was posted to Projects a while back. I also like the big wooden clock. He has a blog too.

pamccf—splagkhna

pamccf (User #33823) has a weblog called splagkhna. The sacrificial guts. It's a series of dense but elliptical posts about living. I'd like to describe it more fully, but I think that would do it a disservice. It's good, but not at all light. This post on Anxiety Performance is perhaps indicative. It's well worth scrolling down to find her lists of books read and movies watched, they're impressive.

More soon

seriously.

buriednexttoyou -- Dave Makes Music

buriednexttoyou (User #19848) came to my attention on MeFi Music where he performed HI I'M ON METAFILTER AND I COULD OVERTHINK A PLATE OF BEANS. Turns out he really makes music. His website is Dave Makes Music. It's funny, it's attractive, and the songs are enjoyable. If you have a limited amount of time, check out Arboretum and the catchy but a little annoying Untitled in 5.

headspace -- Making Stuff Up for a Living

headspace (user#8924) is a published author and screenwriter who has written a story that was nominated for this year's Pushcart Prize. She has an attractive blog with short pithy posts and long serious posts. I like her opinions on fair use and her list of books she has checked out from the library.

Spatch—spatch.net

Ok, so Spatch's (User #30183) site seems kind of defunct, and the front page blog posts are of limited interest, but there is brilliance here. Minor brilliance in Martha the Pirate Cat, minor brilliance and black comedy in Oh Die Menschlichkeit, minor brilliance in the love song (mp3) I Do To, and MAJOR brilliance in Cattown! (Ok, the first episode you see will be the best, but it's very funny.) There are also interactive text games, writing, in short, a lot of good stuff.

jarrodtrainque—Jarrod Trainque

jarrodtrainque (User #19939) has his site over at Jarrod Trainque. I like the front page a lot, for it's simplicity, mostly. That's the best thing about the site, though. There are some links which are pretty interesting, and directions to all the other places jarrodtrainque spends time on the web.

quibx—CollectionDX

quibx (User #15338) collects Japanese robot toys. He's got a site reviewing them, and while it isn't all that pretty, it has a ton of reviews. He's now able to incorporate clips from anime's showing the character that the figure represents. That's pretty cool. The power animals are also cool. It isn't all anime figures, though, there's also stuff like the Playmobile Scary Ghost.

Sites like this, which demonstrate such sustained attention and knowledge are always impressive to me. I think they are one of the best things about the internet, no matter their subject matter, because they expose those of us not, say, obsessed with Japanese robot toys, to a whole new world.

kokogiak—KOKOGIAK

kokogiak (User #1747) has a cool site that was linked on the MeFi front page today. His picture of all the known bodies in the solar system larger than 200 miles in diameter, ranked by size, is stunning. But that's just the tip of the iceberg! He's made a bunch of stuff, from a way to overlay two Google maps, to this awesome list of mega-fauna, to a visualizer for huge amounts of pennies. This is just a sampling of the neat hacks and projects on his page, for instance, be sure to go searching for the MegaMoo.

paxton--radioball dot net

paxton (user #29772) came to my attention for mentioning that he bought a clawfoot tub for $100 on craigslist. He lives near where I grew up, in Worcester Mass, or as we all liked to call it: wuh-STA! His blog, RadioBall (what does the name mean? nothing much.) is full of all things Worcester (and non-) from talk about the incoming Wal-Mart to an odd observation concerning censorship of ... well you read it. He's also veep to the Vice-Chair of the Worcester Cultural Commission and, according to his "who is this jerk" page, handsome.

carsonb--ne parle

carsonb (User #7721) has a little blog with a bunch of mixes and little stories, but he hasn't updated it in quite a while. He's still bopping around on MySpace though.

dobbs—Wrestle the Future to the Fucking Ground

dobbs's (User #13877) site is great. The splash page is a bit intimidating, demanding an email address, but the links at the top (check WTF? to figure out WTF) lead to an explanation and some archived writings from what turns out to be a splendid email list. After reading bits from the archives (I liked I'm on Fire, and check out Untitled #6) I signed up for the list. The writing from his Victory Shag project is also quite good: I don't want to know if this is truth or fiction, but it's a hell of a story. And, to top it all off, the music link has a great set of songs available. I hadn't heard The Handsome Family before, but after reading the Sally Timms story, I had to hear, and they're great!

solistrato—kineticmuse.com

Unfortunately, there's nothing at solistrato's (User #850) site yet. It's too bad, 850 is a low user number, especially for someone still active.

dong_resin—dong resin's joint

dong_resin (User #8895) has an infrequently updated joint. It's a shame, because what's here is good. I laughed out loud at this post about why Steve Irwin was right to hold his baby while feeding that croc, and I think Dong Resin vs. Altoids Cinnamon Chewing Gum shows flashes of brilliance. In general, the archives are worth trolling through. The links in the side bar and along the bottom of the page are almost all excellent.

mmhaffie—Mike's Musings

mmhaffie (User #17538) has a personal site where he records thoughts and displays photographs. His pictures, many of which are of natural scenes, are charming. I particularly liked this one of some snow hiding out under a bench.

miss lynster—The Patron Saints of Graphic Design

miss lynster's (User #20640) site is a cute send-up of the notion of the patron saint. There are six saints represented here: Anxiete, Concepta, Exacto, Pantone, Pixela and, my favorite, Typo. The stories and pictures are well-done, and there's a cafepress store for your reliquary needs. You can even get the saints as a desktop icons for a free download.

amyms—MSN World of Rock and Roll

amyms' (User #47328) site is the home page for MSN's The World of Rock and Roll group. Apparently you can join it. There's some information here, but the design is so poor that it makes my head hurt.

grapefruitmoon -- nervousmotion

grapefruitmoon (user #19856) is an artist who likes cold places. She's been to some of the same places as me, including Vermont and Hampshire College. She has an art site up called nervousmotion with the Projekt30 people and she's been showing her work at AS220 in Providence this month. She does collage work including two sets of Iceland-inspired pieces.

Wendell - WendellWit

Wendell (user #206) is one of those rare people who has a humor site that is actually very funny. He had a tripod site back in ancient blogger days and now he's got an empire. Great satire, awesome repartee, and the odd gross graphic or two add up to a funny site by a funny (funny ha ha, mostly) man.

TonyRobots - so-sad & manwithatan

TonyRobots (user #20429) had an old website with a broken poetry machine and a functional bunny machine. I like playing the number stumper game with single digit numbers. He's got a blog now which sings Aaron Neville at you. He also has a CitrusFortress, but I don't know what it does; looks fun though.

younggreenanne—YOUNGGREENANNE.COM

younggreenanne (User #26312) has a short, pithy site that reads like a personal ad.

freudianslipper—Joey Trimmer.com

freudianslipper's (User #20325) site chronicles his travails as a working actor. He does a good job of describing the joys and pains of trying to get acting gigs, from getting a call to perform in an Arthur Miller read-through, to flubbing a line at an audition.

jonson—jonsonblog

jonson (User #14271) should need little introduction, he's one of MetaFilter's best posters. His posts display range and depth, but, most of all, wit. His blog is no different. While his presentation in 'Cory Doctorow should be punched in the nuts' might be a bit abrasive, it's hard to argue with his reasoning, or with the conclusions he comes to. His memories of growing up are worth reading (who wasn't similarly underwhelmed by the square egg machine), and his interspersed links are always great.

GreenTentacle—Test Page

GreenTentacle's (User #23519) site is a test page for Apache. Classy.

Crushinator—Hi, My Name Is Sarah...

Crushinator's (User #22693) site is a link to her livejournal page, which is mostly made up of snapshots of her and her friends. They aren't bad snapshots.

susanbeeswax—Hip Mama

Hip Mama appears to be a website started by susanbeeswax (User #18123) (I get confused by possible changing pseudonyms). It's a cool idea, but a bit frenetic. It's pretty much about being, well, a hip mama, in the procreating sense. Not something I'm likely to achieve, despite being told I can be anything I want to be while I was growing up. I found this post (Where's the Love?) quite affecting.

owhydididoit—steben's blog

owhydididoit (User #41046) has a small vox blog that artfully combines photographs and descriptions of his wandering. This truck full of shoes is compelling, but the nature shots are the best part of the site.

mygothlaundry—The Hangover Journals

mygothlaundry (User #17735) has, in addition to a great username, a very personal site filled with writings about her life. She writes well, her insights are almost always worth reading, and her daily photographs are often very good. (See this shot of daffodils at night.) One of the best things about the site is the wry way that she talks about her kids: there's plenty of love, but little awe. It's refreshing.

thomas j wise—The Little Professor

I may be in love. thomas j wise's (User #1296) site, The Little Professor, is excellent and far exceeds the diminutive. Much of the blog is outside of my expertise, but it's still well-written and interesting to read. The personal touches (blogging about cats, turning me on to another great crime writer) are judiciously spaced and worth searching out. Check out this cool Victorian Halloween post; and this advice to grad student book buyers is commonsensical but good. I'm charmed by the whole extensive project. The side-bar is also fabulous.

Faint of Butt—MicroHorror

The excellent Faint of Butt (User #18128) has an excellent site dedicated to publishing short short horror stories. "Short stories. Endless nightmares." There are about 200 stories here, but they're all quick reads, many of which send a little chill up the spine. I like Fun Fun Fun, particularly, and also Death by Needlepoint. I have to admit that Bad Santa was the story that gave me the biggest frission of horror.

(The whole site reminds me of the extremely excellent, defunct website, Plots with Guns.)

Ufez Jones—ufez's bookmarks

Ufez Jones (User #12849) just lists his delicious page as his site. It's got some good links on it, but then so do most delicious pages.

Alex Handcoding—Handcoding

Any website where the tag line is "Refenestration Daily" is alright by me. (Although, actually, if I see it on another site I'll be really disappointed.) Alex Handcoding (User #20487) has a nice, personal blog that contains well-written comments on his daily life, and the news, as well as links to his photographs. His design is clean and smooth, the writing is decent, and the archives go on forever. A good sort of personal site.

chasing—Auscillate.com

chasing's (user #20052) Auscillate.com is filled with insightful and interesting posts, like this recent one on the DPRK, with cool stuff hidden away in the archives, like this Tufte Jersey Generator. Check out the gloryhole tapes for all the, well, glory, of a three day ride to Burning Man. His photo galleries are good, as well.

willc—willchatham.com

A personal site with a bit of everything, from programming CSS to music musings, willc's (User #18114) site seems innocuous on its face. There is a dark underbelly, however. On the sidebar are links to his other sites: the incisive magazine reviews at Dumpworthy, the fabulous mp3s at his music site, and the very disturbing pictures at My Nail Collection. The latter is essential viewing.

moonbird—bird on the moon

moonbird's (User #16767) blog is a collection of personal musings, links to songs and videos, commentary on politics and science, and some interesting synopses of the latest brain science. I particularly like this breakdown of some of the problems, including explicit homophobia, with the movie '300', which I haven't seen yet, but which strikes me as the most blatant race-baiting going.

cortex—Josh Millard Speaks!

cortex (User #7418) Josh Millard Speaks! WTF can I say? I've been avoiding reviewing his site, I've had this post in draft for two weeks, but now he's a mod and I guess I can't avoid the matter anymore.

I mean, certainly you must pay attention to cortex's RPM Challenge album (the David Bowie song is a masterpiece!), and what MeFite doesn't know about 88 lines (here is where I say how disappointed I was not to get a mention). The problem is that this page is just the tip of the cortex media empire, and it's all great! Check his side bar for his other sites, although my current favorite, Pen and Inklings, isn't yet listed.

What I'm trying to say, without being coy, and with too many words, is that JM's website is the model for project driven quality websites. Absolutely fabulous.

goodnewsfortheinsane—Wolkenvelden

gnfti (User #20191) a self-described Child of the Eternal November has several websites. I can't review his Dutch blog, as I don't speak dutch, and his music recording blog seems a bit stalled, but Wolkenvelden looks like it's still going strong. (The index page is really quite nice.)

I'll admit that I've been dreading reviewing it, precisely because I like the songs and the attitude so well. Any bio page that begins

If 2006 were 1920, and Holland were Ireland, Paul Hunt would be drunkenly strolling along the banks of the Liffey, taking off his hat for beautiful women and turning his Dublin encounters into brilliant, unintelligible prose

is alright by me, even if it smacks a bit of heresy. This website is one that I always wish were updated more frequently, because I like it so well.

I'm not sure if my favorite gnfti song is on his site, but you can catch it at Aural Times, it's about a letter, and the Swedes, and serendipity and redemption. But it's better than that.

gloege—fractalmind.org

gloege's (User #10472) minimal site is nothing but a pretty cool picture. The page title is nice, though: "Life is a journey. Fuck the destination." I don't particularly agree with the sentiment, except in the sly sense that death is the destination, but I like the boldness of that as a page title.

dsaint—gnumatt.org

dsaint (User #12740) has been a member since 2001, but has never made a comment or post. There isn't a lot on the front page of his website, but what's there is interesting. The small side-bar has some good stuff. His projects page looks like it could produce some promising stuff, sometime.

letourneau—jlet.org

letourneau's (User #1208) website is simple and well-designed. It amounts to three lists, the predominant two are feeds from his Flickr and delicious accounts, with brief commentary on each entry. The third is a link to his Amazon wishlist. It all provides what I don't doubt is a deceptively complete picture of his interests and concerns.

chicobangs—Smell That?

The venerable chicobangs's (User #1010) Vox blog is mostly a place where he recaps the action at his weekly NYC trivia night, Drunken Smartass Olympics. There are enough little gems salted away on the pages here, however, to make it worth a trip through. Of particular note are this Randy Newman song, which I found quite affecting, and this strange comic of Emily Dickinson.

Sticherbeast—Sticherblog

Sticherbeast's (User #17889) livejournal page has not been updated since the fall of 2006, which is shame, since the collection of links and commentary contained therein is worth reading. His post on Cabinet Magazine links to a load of fascinating articles. The link to his Flickr account is worth following, if for no other reason than to see his vaguely Gorey-esque sketches.

Katemonkey—Katemonkey.uk

A transplant to the UK from LA, both Los Angeles and Louisiana, Katemonkey (User #17096) has a small personal site that's updated infrequently. There is evidence there of another site she's been working on, also a personal site, which includes more of her writing. She seems to have a good attitude and wide interests, even if her recipes don't always work out.

algreer—Al Greer Imaging

algreer's (User #35289) site is the portal to his photography business. As with all such businesses, the prosaic predominates. However, his music portfolio, and especially his breakdancing portfolio, are worth a look.

aaron—Don't Mention The War!

aaron's (User #975) site. Promising title, three entries (from 2003) with no content. Too bad.

brundlefly—blacksundae

brundlefly (User #17897) @ blacksundae. A well-written, well-designed, reasonably standard collection of commentaries and links. I liked this post about movies a lot, it has just the amount of the wry humor I'm looking for. I love the feed from Wordie (which I didn't previously know about), and I can't believe I didn't know about Ninjawords before. And, y'know, I NEEDED to know about the vagina dentata movie.

The entries that really shine, like this one, tell the personal story of evacuating in the face of Katrina.

curtis-barrett—Insubordination.com

curtis-barrett (User #2242), member since November 2000 but with no comments or posts on the site, has a website that's a picture of a cat contemplating havoc upon a miniature Christmas tree. The picture is blurry, but the colors are outstanding.

sick—more soon.

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.