A Whole Lotta Nothing

It's a me!

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a reporter at the Willamette Week, asking if I was open to an interview before MetaFilter's 12 anniversary and I said sure. Then I got a note that a photographer would pop in during our interview and take a few shots. Then hey, you're done and have time, do you mind standing in front of this makeshift studio backdrop for a few more photos? We might use them next to the story. It won't be on the cover or anything. Ok, we need to ask a few more questions, the story just got lengthened. 

Then last night I got an email saying that my photo did end up being on the cover.

Here's the story on the Willamette Week's site. I like how it turned out (aside from calling my friend Anil, Neil, but they said they'd fix it) and it was fun to do.

Today I sat in a coffee shop and got interviewed for a research project by someone that had a copy of this on the table and it freaked me out to stare at myself the whole time.

Meta-Who?

Treme, the HBO show by David Simon (of The Wire fame) is a show set in post-Katrina New Orleans and follows the world of musicians, chefs, and residents. Sunday night, the third episode "On Your Way Down" had this exchange where a jazz musician hip to the internet tries to convince a record exec to help promote him on places like "Facebook, Myspace, the blogosphere, MetaFilter..."

It blew me away to hear it mentioned on a show of such stature and I figured maybe one of the writers was a fan but we're lucky enough to have the music supervisor on MetaFilter who said he had nothing to do with it, and the show's writer was just trying to pick out an increasingly obscure internet references to reinforce the character's internet cred.

I'm glad I got to catch David Simon talking about Treme right before they started filming, on a trip to New Orleans a couple years back. Who knows if being in that audience lead to this (seriously doubt it).

My SXSW 2011 talk on lessons from 11 years of community

Lessons from 11 years of community (my SXSW 2011 talk) from Matt Haughey on Vimeo.

 

This past Saturday, I gave a talk at SXSW Interactive on some lessons in moderation and growing a community that was sparsely attended (I was half a mile away in one of the outlying hotels, no biggie -- it happens). People liked the talk and plenty of people that missed it asked for my slides but I use minimal text in my slides. 

So this is me doing my presentation in my home office. I miss the benefit of an engaged audience so I might sound kind of low-energy doing it alone and I do miss the live Q&A afterwards I'd get at a real conference, but if you have any questions feel free to ask them on Vimeo in the comment thread.

Here are all the tweets archived from the live talk, marked with #RWModeration:

North America - Western Europe equivalent latitude maps

When I first moved to Oregon I often heard local Pinot Noir wineries proclaim "we're at the same latitude as the best wine regions in France! That's why our wine is great here too!" Every weekend in the Fall, I get muddy in local bike races then go home to watch similar races taking place around Belgium, with similar weather and I've often wondered how my latitude compared with theirs.

Now I know that latitude determines length of daylight pretty consistently but isn't a great comparison to weather -- The west coast of the US has a cold ocean current and a jet stream to match while the Atlantic that makes up the west coasts of the European continent has a warmer ocean current and different weather to match. Still, it's interesting when making rough comparisions to know if Los Angeles is really like the south of France/Italy (it's actually in Northern Africa, latitude-wise), and I've wondered ever since a friend moved to Helsinki if that was as far north as our Alaskan cities (it is).

Today I asked on Ask MetaFilter and a GIS expert member whipped up exactly the maps I envisioned.

Here are major European cities overlaid on North America, corrected for the identical latitude (click to view full sized):

Here are North American cities, overlaid on Western Europe and Northern Africa at the identical latitude:

Pretty cool stuff. I never knew Paris, France was at a latitude farther north than Fargo, North Dakota, or that so much of Western Europe was farther north than the US-Canadian border.

2010 at MetaFilter: that's a lot of stats

I've been doing MetaFilter for over 11 years now, and I'm almost always proud to share that with new people I meet that ask me what I do for a living. I get to live out my dream of goofing off on the internet and running websites and it somehow pays the bills. It took many years and lots of work to get there, and it takes even more to keep it going.

About the only time I don't like mentioning it is when I run into an old friend I haven't seen in some time and they ask me what I'm working on lately. "Still doing MetaFilter? Really?" is often the response I get, and I understand it may seem like I'm standing still these past few years given that I haven't launched a ton of new projects (beyond Fuelly, and releasing newish sections of MetaFilter).

A couple weeks ago I figured I'd compile some stats on MetaFilter to let old friends now how much of a monster the project has become. It's a corporation now with employees. We have healthcare and a 401k plan now. Also? It's a shit ton of work to do by hand, for the five people that help keep the site and servers sane. In the past few years I've been contacted by representatives at some major companies sniffing around for acquisitions, but when they find out the moderation and maintenance of the community is all done by hand and we have to talk to thousands of people like grown-ups instead of some amazing whiz-bang python script doing it all for us, the conversation ends and we go back to work.

Thanks to the hard work of Paul Bausch, Josh Millard, and Jessamyn West (and vacapinta!) we compiled a bunch of stats on usage of the site and community contributions for 2010. I threw it into photoshop and started making a monster sized infographic to share these interesting stats in an attractive package. I had to wait for December 31st to get final 2010 numbers, which I plugged in last night and published this morning. Click on the thumbail to see the whole thing.

Thanks as always to the excellent community that make MetaFilter great. Every day I get to wake up to dozens of interesting links and discussions and a handful of amazing questions and answers I thank my lucky stars I get to do this day in and day out.

Milestone: five years without a day job

A little over five years ago, I gave my notice to my last employer, Creative Commons. I'd been waiting for the day for over a year, but even with outside income from blogging it was pretty crazy at the time. We had just bought a new house and we had a six month old baby, and there I was, thinking it was the perfect time to quit my cushy telecommuting job and strike out on my own with no real idea of what the future would be like.

Thankfully, a lot of luck landed in my lap in the form of advertising income. It took six penniless years to get MetaFilter going, but soon after I started doing it full time it became big enough to pay other people to help out and we continued making MetaFilter the best site we could, as income grew with traffic.

2010 is the first year that hasn't seen double digit growth, but I'm chalking it up to the stagnant recession economy and I'm seeing glimmers of things improving again so I have high hopes for 2011.

I'm stoked that I went from something that could barely pay the bills to a company with employees, it's really beyond my wildest dreams when I made the decision in 2005. Here's to another five years (and hopefully a lifetime) of never having a boss ever again.

I didn't feel like copy/pasting

I made what would have been today's blog post over on MetaFilter, about Phil Gyford's fun project Pretend Office.

Elvis Costello: adenoidal

I want to share a small snippet from the latest MetaFilter Podcast. To anyone but the most hardcore users of MetaFilter, the podcast I do with the other moderators of the site (Jessamyn and Josh) is oddly impenetrable to most. We talk about the things we see on the screen, so it makes it difficult to listen to anywhere besides in front of a computer. But I don't want this snippet to be lost forever so I've plucked 30 seconds out of our hour long recording to share this:

It's based on this comment at MetaFilter, which uses NYT's own search to skewer them slightly (Daily Show megaclip-style) for repeating a phrase about a great performer.

The unfortunate mainstreaming of internet douchebaggery

Today someone spammed MetaFilter on behalf of Conde Nast publications, and it pissed me off way more than the average occasional spammy self-promoter on MeFi. We have a strict rule at MeFi (since there's no editorial vetting upfront) that you can't post about your own stuff, you have to make posts to interesting random stuff you found on your own. Unfortunately, that doesn't matter to the douchebags intent on ruining the web for everyone else with search engine gaming, as long as they benefit their clients, so we end up having to delete these keyword-laden posts that feature over the top fake testimonials about sites they "found" when they really worked for them.

What pissed me off today was seeing a normally reputable outfit like Conde Nast stooping to hiring a dodgy firm that employs such lame spammy activities. I know the response from Conde Nast or the spammy SEO company will be the same I've heard a thousand times: "It was one rogue employee" or "We didn't know the firm would employ such tactics." I heard the same thing when the Times (UK) was found spamming social sites earlier this year.

The point that seemed to be lost in the Times story was that a cornerstone of journalism that had been publishing for hundreds of years would stoop to such lame-brained antics. You'd think that someone higher up at a place like that would think maybe getting a couple percent more advertising revenue by ethically shady means wasn't worth jeopardizing the reputation or position of a 223 year old newspaper -- that institutions with a long-term vision shouldn't be interested in a quick buck by any means possible.

It's a bummer to see Conde Nast hiring someone to "optimize" search engines for them (where "optimize" means spam the web and generally make social sites and tools less useful for everyone in the hopes they do better for certain key search phrases) but given the way the economy is going and where it is headed, I suspect we'll see a lot more big name outfits and longstanding institutions making these same mistakes and resorting to problematic methods of increasing their bottom line, and frankly it sucks for everyone involved. It sucks for anyone using the web and wanting decent honest search results based on real quality of information (not just the information promoted by self-interested parties). It sucks to see industry leaders with dozens or even hundreds of years of successful business think this is a sensible approach to the web. Finally, it sucks to see some chucklehead get paid to spam websites in ways that are becoming so normal that people think this is something every business should do.

"when a man wearing skintight pants is behaving more sensibly than you..."

Here in Portland, Maine there are plenty of people still using derailleurs, but very few people wear helmets. The only consistently helmeted group are the road bikers/spandex pod people; when a man wearing skintight pants is behaving more sensibly than you perhaps it's time for some self-reflection.

-- selfnoise on "What's up with all the fixies?"

Globalization is freaking awesome

Chinese Hammer fucking rules, originally uploaded by mathowie.

I stumbled across Chinese Hammer tonight and fell in love with it for a thousand reasons. Just the thought of someone halfway around the world mimicking a video from 1989 in a move-for-move remake. Also, the mom on the couch crocheting, oblivious to the awesome dancing. Then I posted it to MetaFilter only to find there's a such thing as YouTube Doubler to play them side by side.



I captured the best bits in a short movie here. About 30 seconds in, things start matching up and it just keeps staying awesome for another minute or so.

update: cool, the dude has a ton of other videos (Thriller, more MC Hammer, etc)

More fun than a pile of powdered sugar

Do I Look Cool Like They Do in the Movies?

originally uploaded by Max Sparber.

You might have seen a hilarious / bizarre / historical set of found photos someone picked up at a swap meet of a 70s cocaine party. It's really oddball stuff.

Even more odd, Astro Zombie (and friends) from MetaFilter started recreating the photos with their own mirrors and powdered sugar and a ridiculous new flickr pool was born.

Domain related junk mail

Domain related junk mail, originally uploaded by mathowie.

In the beginning, I listed my home phone number and apartment address on all my domains. By the late nineties, the marketers/spammers showed up and after the tenth early morning phone pitch and junkmail blast, I gave up and fabricated a generic-sounding address and slapped a movie-style 555 phone number on all my domains.

Last Fall I finally buckled down and got a PO Box and I decided to try putting a real business address and phone number (at least my SkypeIn number) back on my domains. Today I did my monthly PO Box check and it was full. For the first three months of my mailbox, I got almost no mail but today it was stuffed with special offers for the owner of metafilter.com. I guess I shouldn't be surprised since there's almost no cost to blasting out ads to every domain owner but it was still unexpected.

My biggest worry when looking at this stack of mail? I hope the person living at 123 Fake St. in San Francisco knows how truly sorry I am for the past eight years of junk mail.

Planning to attend the MeFi party in Portland, July 14th?

For MetaFilter's 8th anniversary, we're throwing a party at Ground Kontrol (511 NW Couch St.), a bar/80s arcade in downtown Portland. It'll be from 7pm until 2am on Saturday, July 14th. It is strictly 21 and over because there will be free drinks (roughly 5 free drinks per person, $1.50-$2 per drink after we run out the tab) and games will also be on free play mode. The venue can accommodate about 100 people so I need to do a head count beforehand (at this point I'm not sure if 50 people or 500 are actually coming).

The party is open to any and all current members and you can bring one guest if you want. Please mark "Yes" if you've made plans and would like to attend, "Maybe" if you're not sure yet. If you can't make it, no worries, feel free to ignore this. Thanks, and I look forward to seeing everyone on the 14th!

RSVP here

What does "MeFi" mean in the background of Mythbusters?

(photo by heather)

I figured I should write the answer to this entry in case some fans of the TV show Mythbusters ever wonder what a small easter egg in the background of the show set means. For anyone typing the title of this post into Google, here's your answer:

Adam Savage, the co-host of the show is obviously a geek and spends some time online each day between shooting scenes for the show. Among many popular blogs, he reads MetaFilter, which goes by the shorthand "MeFi" by its members. Most of his participation takes place on Ask MetaFilter, a question and answers area of the site. This is his profile on the site.

Early this year, he posted a question asking members of the site to suggest some myths they could test from the Old West. The show had already covered a bunch of standards in previous shows and Adam wasn't too happy with the suggestions for new myths from his producers, so he asked on the site. There were over 200 answers, but these three made it onto the show:

• Can a horse pull the bars out of a jail cell window? What about a stick of dynamite? Can you blow a hole in the wall of the cell without killing the prisoner inside?


• Can you shoot a cowboy hat off somebody's head?


• Are the Loan [sic] Ranger's silver bullets any better than lead bullets?

Adam talks about how the myths were chosen and how they were filmed in a podcast interview I did with him a couple months after the original question. In it, he talks about how he wanted to thank the website by having some small "easter egg" mention of MetaFilter, Ask MeFi, or MeFi somewhere in the blueprint and credits at the end of that episode.

Turns out that instead of a temporary small mention on that one specific episode that aired this evening, it was done in masking tape on a door in the set's background several episodes before and has since stuck around. Time will tell how long it lasts, but now you know what it means and why it's there and thanks again Adam for the shoutout. Mythbusters continues to be my favorite show on TV due to the great simple science and geekiness displayed each week. Mythbusters is probably doing more to help steer kids into engineering and adults into DIY/hacking projects than anything else on TV today.

outside.in

I've been playing with Outside.in for a few minutes (here is the Portland feed), and my first thought was that this is exactly what friends told me to do in 2000. MetaFilter was just taking off being barely a year old, and San Francisco friends urged me to make city-specific local news hubs that interested people could find links and news for and post to. Tom Coates had a great write up in fall of 2000 asking for precisely this. I was (and still am) too busy to take on such an effort, but it's good to see someone trying to pick up the reins and try it.

I'm surprised they didn't use CityName.outside.in URLs instead of outside.in/City_Name though.