Knappster - The Genealogue

Knappster (User #77551) maintains a blog called The Genealogue which makes the usually staid topic of genealogy fun in a bloggy sort of way. Subtitled "Genealogy news you can't possibly use!" it's a fun read. The first page includes posts on topics like "the first possible use of the emoticon?" and someone cleaning out their mom's basement and finding a civil war discharge signed by Abraham Lincoln. You might also enjoy the collection of Top Ten Lists including Top Ten Banned Family History Books. Chris's Blogger profile lists his profession as "Unprofessional Genealogist" so you may want to take his Exclusives with a grain of salt.

emjaybee -- grabapple and smalltruethings

emjaybee (User #18778) has a hopscotch of websites past and present. Her profile links to Grabapple with six years of posts and another few years of blogging before that. Then it takes a turn and becomes, briefly Grabapple on Wordpress with a few more posts and another redirect. Finally we touchdown at SmallTrueThings, longer posts same strong reflective voice and hey a Flickr sidebar. A nice meander through the personal blog of a longtime MeFite.

the_epicurean -- republique cricket

the_epicurean (User #35809) does a blog about cricket. I don't know a darned thing about cricket except vaguely how to play it but you don't need to know much about cricket to enjoy the six word reviews, for example or FAILCRICKET.

Faint of Butt -- MicroHorror

Faint of Butt (User #18128) runs the MicroHorror website which is a repository for good horror microfiction, "stories no longer than 666 words." Of particular note are the contests (2007, 2008) and the microhorror pieces by Faint of Butt (aka Nathan Rosen) himself.

Vaike -- Alex in Welderland's Pet Urns

Vaike (User #63027) is also known as Alex in Welderland who, with other artists, makes custom pet urns and a lot of other nifty looking metal stuff.

moxiedoll -- Ambitious Outsider

moxiedoll (User #64952) watches movies, actually she specifically watches "documentaries about ambitious outsiders" When I first saw her blog, the top few reviewes were all about religion (1, 2, 3) making me wonder whether that was her theme (before I'd read the about page) but no, she also goes on to talk about Prince, Roman Polanski and this Herzog film I've been wanting to see.

Jeanne - Swarm of Beasts

Jeanne (User #1941) on MeFi is also Emily Horner, Brooklyn librarian, in real life. Her website, Swarm of Beasts is a straightforward YA book review site. She reads a lot, and she's frank. She states "The only thing I have is my own ornery and honest reactions." which is a decent explanation for the last sentence to her One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest review (also appearing on Goodreads which ends "It's hard to like a book that expects me to seriously believe that the world is ruled by an evil matriarchy. At that point it's hard for me to have any response other than 'Aaaaaaaargh.'"

Allen Salkin -- AllenSalkin

AllenSalkin (User #60254) has been a MeFite since 2007 and made his first comment today! His eponymous website has a cute photo of him, his mom's blog, some Salkin geneaology and links to all the stuff he's written for the New York Times.

Tim Walters -- doubtfulpalace

doubtfulpalace (User #82680) came to my attention via this great song in the music challenge. Apparently Tim has a holiday music web site up year round with holiday songs going back to 1993 as well as a roundup of other talented artists.

Christopher L. Jorgensen—jackassletters.com

cjorgensen (user #59453) follows in the same great tradition as Lazlo Toth, satirically typing and mailing actual letters in an enthusiastic, friendly persona. Who do these letters go to? Corporations, cultural icons, pills, the Care Bears... and many more. The site is intended to explore the ensuing correspondences, but it seems he gets way fewer replies than Lazlo Toth ever did. Still, cjorgensen's initial volleys are pretty funny.

Jesse James Garrett's Hidden Agenda

So I decided I'd aim for the low MeFi user numbers. The lowest numbered user I could find who also has an associated webpage is jjg (user #16). And this is where he keeps his hidden agenda. It is a site that really works, fulfilling his strategic objectives while meeting the needs of his users. (OK, I just lifted that off the page that hawks his excellently-reviewed book, The Elements of User Experience.) But really, the "Hidden Agenda" isn't hidden too well; I found it, and it's full of useful aphorisms.

Eric Gjerde—Origami Tessellations

EricGjerde (user #52280): Escher + papercraft = awesome.

Logan Ingalls—Plutor.org

Plutor (user #17646) is MetaFilter's Greasemonkey Script Guru. Plutor.org's front page has a very MeFi-ish feel, chock full of links to interesting stuff, sprinkled with flickrs and twitters, sorted by date. Clicking on the "Photos" tab leads to... whaaaaat?! 404'd?! Oh Plutor... oh my... **shaking head sadly** Anyway, moving right along, there's a tiny fiction section that leads you to community-type fiction sites, a section on the history of Logan's web-presence, a place where he lists his computer hardware (circa 2006), his resumé, and finally, a brash statement on the contact page that Plutor does not fear spam!!

Mmmmm, steak.

Paul G. Hunt (revisited)—Electicker 2008

goodnewsfortheinsane (user #20191) was last profiled on this blog about 16 months ago, but has since added a website to his arsenal, and it's a doozie. Electicker 2008 aggregates just about anything you can find on the web about the 2008 US presidential election into convenient categories (a poll-ticker, videos, metamedia, blogs, podcasts, twitters, flickrs, wingnuts, just to name a few), all in real time. It's pretty easily skimmed or scanned—still, it's mind-boggling, the amount of stuff there is.

And here's the GoogleTranslation portal into his personal Dutch-language website. It seems to be about music, mostly.

Alison Conard—Voodoo Economics

nosila (user #60765) has a website that... that... well, what does it do? Nothing that I can control, it seems, but it's a screenfull of spooky, shifting imagery and random echoey bleats of musical snippets. The figures and the sounds seem to respond to mouse motion, and clicking on the absurdist words and sentences in the upper left corner only exacerbate the situation. It's quite disorienting; I feel sorta dizzy and oogy. The only meaningful words on the screen are "Download Album." So I click on that, and the site spits out a .zipped album, by her band Voodoo Economics, which turns out to be actually quite interesting and quirky and snakey--and Alison has a cool voice! To think I almost missed this music due to frustration at the artsiness/incomprehensibility of the containing website. Afterward, I notice further down on nosila's mefi profile page that there is a warning: "creepy, uncanny sounds play automatically." d'oh!