[blogs] 25 Random Thoughts about 25 years of LinkMachineGo:

1. Does anybody remember E/N “Everything and Nothing” sites? And before E/N there were the early internet diarists and people like Justin Hall and Maggy Donea. Blogging before blogs.
2. I started LinkMachineGo because I looked at Jorn Barger’s Robot Wisdom Weblog and thought I could do something similar and focus on comics. I wasn’t as good as Jorn but lasted longer. (Jorn’s still active on Twitter.)
3. I have a very faint memory of the Saturday afternoon in 2000 I sat down and tried to pull together a Blogger template. I did not realise at the time what a life changing moment it was for me.
4. I was obsessed with Big Brother in the early 2000s!
5. There are some earlier LMG posts that I find in real poor taste. What was I thinking? I can’t bring myself to remove them.
6. I do miss classic long-form blog posts. There really was something slightly magical in that format / community of bloggers / moment in time.
7. There was a really exciting moment early on with blogging where it looked liked it would take over the internet. The Cambrian Explosion of Blogs. Then social media came along and all the exciting variety died off.
8. In the early years of blogging I always felt terribly old when I met other 20-something bloggers. I was thirty! lol.
9. I will never forget this Metafilter comment about 911 posted as it was happening. I remember looking at it not grasping the enormity of it.
10. The magic of the early years of blogging mostly ended when the warblogs came along during the Iraq War. Warbloging seems like patient zero for a lot of what went bad in social media later.
11. I often wonder how responsible blogs are for social media and everything that came out of it. So many of the different components of social media were trialed on blogs first and it seems unarguable that Mark Zuckerberg came out of the world of blogs.
12. I try not to think about all the time I’ve spent on blogging or how much I’ve spent on hosting LMG over the years.
13. Even though I have never blogged professionally I do wonder how much impact blogging has had on my working life. It’s hard to quantify but I do think it’s been a big benefit.
14. LinkMachineGo spawned Moment of Moore and The Evening Standard Headline Crisis. I got a tweet out of Alan Moore! :)
15. Three links that have stayed with me: Falling Man / The Sinking of the Estonia / Since 1979, Brian Murtagh has fought to keep convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald in prison
16. Essential late-stage blogging tools: Firefox. Newsblur RSS Reader, a bunch of bookmarklets (remember those?), some iOS Shortcuts, Notepad++, CLCL, Irfanview, Pinboard.in, WordPress.
17. I find it really hard to blog on a phone. Fat fingers and the eyesight is not what it was! :(
18. Favorite quote: “On page 39 of California Living magazine I found a hand-lettered ad from the McDonald’s Hamburger Corporation, one of Nixon’s big contributors in the ’72 presidential campaign: PRESS ON, it said. NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN TAKE THE PLACE OF PERSISTENCE. TALENT WILL NOT: NOTHING IS MORE COMMON THAN UNSUCESSFUL MEN WITH TALENT. GENIUS WILL NOT: UNREWARDED GENIUS IS ALMOST A PROVERB. EDUCATION ALONE WILL NOT: THE WORLD IS FULL OF EDUCATED DERELICTS. PERSISTENCE AND DETERMINATION ALONE ARE OMNIPOTENT. I read it several times before I grasped the full meaning.”
19. When I die I’m pretty sure whoever eulogizes me is going to mention blogging. I’m okay with that.
20. I’ve published 9000+ posts which is nearly one-a-day over 25 years. Why do I sink so much time and effort into it? I definitely find the process of link blogging soothing. Maybe the simple answer is that I just wanted to record and categorise some of my web browsing.
21. I sometimes wonder what the blog in gestalt reveals about me. I’m not sure I want to find out.
22. I apologise if I’ve stolen a link, or posted something annoying or pissed you off over the years. I hope you can forgive me.
23. I’m pretty sure nobody is reading this anymore really. I’m doing it just for myself.
24. When I say blogging changed my life, I mean it. It really changed my life.
25. Ten thousand posts seems pretty achievable. Wish me luck! :)

[quote] LMG @ Twenty – The Inevitable Hunter S. Thompson Quote:

On page 39 of California Living magazine I found a hand-lettered ad from the McDonald’s Hamburger Corporation, one of Nixon’s big contributors in the ’72 presidential campaign: PRESS ON, it said. NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN TAKE THE PLACE OF PERSISTENCE. TALENT WILL NOT: NOTHING IS MORE COMMON THAN UNSUCCESSFUL MEN WITH TALENT. GENIUS WILL NOT: UNREWARDED GENIUS IS ALMOST A PROVERB. EDUCATION ALONE WILL NOT: THE WORLD IS FULL OF EDUCATED DERELICTS. PERSISTENCE AND DETERMINATION ALONE ARE OMNIPOTENT. I read it several times before I grasped the full meaning.

[lmg] Twenty Years of LinkMachineGo – “I DID IT!”

[quote] LMG is 20 years old: The Inevitable Alan Moore Quote … ‘Anything of any value in our lives, whether that be a career, a work of art, a relationship, will always start with such a leap. And in order to be able to make it, you have to put aside the fear of failing and the DESIRE of SUCCEEDING. You have to do these things completely purely, without fear, without desire. Because things that we do without lust of result are the purest actions that we shall ever take.’

[blog] LinkMachineGo – 15 Years Of “A Hypertext Reference Equals” – I did it! :) …

[lifeblog] It’s not a lorry with a crane – it’s a Urban Grabloader Concept.

[comics] For Sale on eBay: Cerebus: High Society #1-25 Reprints by Dave Sim.

[lmg] Ten Years Of Link Blogging … Ten years and 5407 posts to be exact – I did it. As we say on the internets: OMFG! w00t! FTMFW!

[comics] For Sale on eBay: Maxx #1 by Sam Kieth.

[lmg] LMG’s Ninth Blogiversary … nine years?! I must be mad – it doesn’t help that my enabler nearest and dearest sends me blogiversary cards …

[friendfeed] Friend Feed of LinkMachineGo … if you are web stalking me you will find this integrated feed with LMG, Flickr, Delicious and other assorted links interesting. I’m finding Friendfeed useful and wish more bloggers I follow used it.

[blogs] Sashinka: ‘It’s today.’

[comics] For Sale on eBay: Queen and Country #1 from Greg Rucka and Steve Rolston.

[twitter] Twitter Feed of LinkMachineGo — if you use Twitter you might find this stripped down feed useful.

[london] An A to Z of the Evening Standard …

A is for Attack, B is for Bastards, C is for Chaos, D is for Death, E is for Evil, F is for Funeral, G is for Go, H is for Horror, I is for Iraq, J is for John Prescott, K is for Killer, L is for Legend, M is for Murder, N is for Nightmare, O is for Olympics, P is for Pictures, Q is for Quit, R is for Raid, S is for Sex, T is for Terror, U is for U.S., V is for Victim, W is for War, X is for X-Rated, Y is for Younger, Z… there seems to be no Z in the Evening Standard Alphabet!

[rss] I updated LMG to WordPress a couple of months ago. It was pretty painless and I hope no one actually noticed the change but one of the downsides was that I had to redirect my RSS feed. The permanent home of the new feed can be found here:

http://www.timemachinego.com/linkmachinego/feed/
The old feed will still work but if you’re anal about these things you might want to update it. While I’m at it – you can email me via this form if you wish and if you’re stalking me you might find my Del.icio.us Linklog and Flickr Photostream interesting.

[london] Evening Standard Headline Crisis 2006 — Recent Posters …

[4] The Four Things Meme … [I was tagged by Sasha]

• Four jobs I’ve had: I’ve been a Free-paper Delivery Boy, a part-time Butcher’s Assistant, a sorter in a Baked Bean Canning Factory (White Beans = Good. Black Beans = Bad) and a PC Support Guy at Leicester University.
• Four movies I can watch over and over: Kelly’s Heroes, Alien, Heat and Apocalypse Now.
• Four places I’ve lived: King’s Lynn, Portsmouth, Leicester and London.
• Four TV shows I love: 24, The Sopranos, Blackadder and Quincy.
• Four places I’ve Been on Holiday: Great Yarmouth, Florence, Ireland and Derbyshire.
• Four of my favorite dishes: Full English Breakfast, Gnocchi with Gorgonzola, Fish and Chips and anything Pickled.
• Four sites I visit daily: del.icio.us, Flickr, Bloglines and BBC News.
• Four places I would rather be right now: The Smiley Face Crater on Mars, 2003 UB313, the Apollo 11 Moon Landing Site and Europa.
• Four bloggers I am tagging: Belle de Jour, Neilalien, Robyn and Chris.

[london] Evening Standard Headline Crisis 2005 — I’ve been taking pictures of the Evening Standard’s Headline Posters and posting them on Flickr for about a year now…

Click on the images for the full set

[lmg] On Holiday. In the meantime you can check out the archives, the Evening Standard Headline Crisis or other British Blogs…

[lmg] Kilburn High Road, For one night only…


Link Machine Here
Originally uploaded by DarrenS.

[lmg] LinkMachineGo is Five — I made it. What do I link to now? How many links must a man click on? More links to pictures of Keith Chegwin naked and quotes from Grant Morrison? Definitely … ‘Veni, Vidi, Blog.’

[blog] del.icio.us/linkmachinego — I have a del.icio.us linklog… [RSS Feed]

[quote] Robert McKee in Adaptation: ‘Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There’s genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ’s sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can’t find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don’t know crap about life. And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don’t have any use for it. I don’t have any bloody use for it.’

[quote] Dr. Evil’s Childhood: ‘Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we’d make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian woman named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it’s breathtaking, I suggest you try it.’

[post] September 11th. 2001 … (suggested by Tom)

[quote] Alistair Cooke: ‘Last Tuesday night, for the first time in thirty years, I found myself by one casual chance in a thousand, on hand in a small, narrow serving pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, a place that I suppose will never be wiped out of my memory: a sinister alley, a Roman circus run amok, and a charnel house. It would be quite false to say, as I should truly like to say, that I’m sorry I was there. It’s more complicated than that…’ [thanks Graybo]

[quote] Tony Soprano: ‘Uncle June and I, we had our problems, with the business. But I never should’ve razzed him about eating pussy; this whole war could’ve been averted. Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this.’

[quote] Grant Morrison, Animal Man: ‘What’ll it be next? Choice extracts from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations? Trotting out the Nietzsche and the Shelley to dignify some old costumed claptrap? Probably.’

[quote] Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72: ‘On page 39 of California Living magazine I found a hand-lettered ad from the McDonald’s Hamburger Corporation, one of Nixon’s big contributors in the ’72 presidential campaign: PRESS ON, it said. NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN TAKE THE PLACE OF PERSISTENCE. TALENT WILL NOT: NOTHING IS MORE COMMON THAN UNSUCESSFUL MEN WITH TALENT. GENIUS WILL NOT: UNREWARDED GENIUS IS ALMOST A PROVERB. EDUCATION ALONE WILL NOT: THE WORLD IS FULL OF EDUCATED DERELICTS. PERSISTENCE AND DETERMINATION ALONE ARE OMNIPOTENT. I read it several times before I grasped the full meaning.’

[lmg] LinkMachineGo Syndicated on LiveJournal — LMG’s content available to Livejournal users. Thanks to Pete who set it up… [Related: LinkMachineGo’s RSS Feed]

[blogs] Guardian’s Best of British Blogging 2003 — My reaction:


[a remixed panel from GYWO]

[ukkblogs] Updated UK Weblogs — I’ve spent the last few weeks updating the list of Recently Updated UK Weblogs. There are plenty of interesting UK blogs to check out …

• XFM Breakfast Show Blog… ‘We’re in trouble with the Muppets, apparently. After the interview yesterday, when Christian, erm, questioned Fozzie Bear closely about his sexuality, the Henson people have apprently gone tits. I hope they don’t set Animal on us. The bear doth protest too much, methinks.’
  
  
• Belle de Jour — Diary of a London Call Girl …‘The client was in law enforcement, and the first time out he’d taken me to a semiformal work event. From the ratio of nubile cuties to paunchy detectives, I may not have been the only paid girl there. Or perhaps the Met’s PR efforts are paying off in unexpected ways.’
  
  
• Memex 1.1 — John Naughton’s online diary … ‘I’ve discovered that I appear in Colin Jarman’s The Nasty Quote Book! [I described Radovan Karadzic, the infamous Serbian politician as “a rambling, inconsistent, sentimental, bouffanted crook”. Nasty, perhaps; but also true.]’

[web] LinkMachineGo… in Bizarro-World! … ‘real love bond of union’ [via Black Ink]

[blogs] Some blog’s I’ve added to Updated UK Blogs Updated list recently…

• Diamond Geezer … ‘life viewed from London E3’
• Rise … ‘whereby the worst may be inferred’
• The Edge of England’s Sword … Conservative Pundit Blog
• Die Puny Humans … Warren Ellis’ Blog
• Beatniksalad … ‘Bug powder dust and mugwump jism…’
• Conservative Commentary … Conservative Pundit Blog
• My Ace Life … ‘or a tale of self-sufficiency, serendipity & sardony’
• Momentary Lapses of Dilution … ‘Infinitely less interesting in real life’
• Arseblog … ‘It’s fuckin’ excellent’

[comics] Ebay Auction — Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland … I’m trying to prune back my comic collection a bit so expect a few auctions to show up here. This is an Alan Moore Batman comic from 1988… The Joker: ‘All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.’

[google] Intriguing Search Request … Tidy Version: ‘My brother is disenchanted with his position as an advertising artist and has told you that he plans to leave this job to open a small business. He knows that he has an excellent reputation and is known as an outstanding artist. He also has a friend in the advertising industry who will provide him with a loan to start the business. These three factors (reputation, talent, and start-up financing) are the most important if he is to succeed at is new endeavor. He has asked you for your opinion regarding his plans. Agree / Disagree? Explain.’

[blog] Blimey! LMG is Three Years Old! It all began with a quote (very apt) …

‘I’ve done questionable things.’ — Roy Batty.

[blogs] UKBlogs Aggregator — follow ukblogs via an updated feed … Also available as an RSS Feed.

[lmg] What LMG was linking to in January 2001 and January 2002.

[lmg] What LMG was linking to in December 2001 and December 2000.

[blogs] Updated UK Weblogs — moves to a new home … Thanks to Jez, Ben and especially to Jen. Tom raises some interesting points after the demise of GBlogs … ‘I can’t tell whether it’s because we’re English or because we’re bedroom-bound webloggers that being part of such a community seems to terrify so many people.’

[issues] Word Association Test — my inner turmoil revealed … [via Dreadberry]

I have issues with…

work fate genetics past anxiety

[numbers] LinkMachineGo is Evil … ‘This number, when read backwards, gives 00438. This, written in octal, gives 666 – the number of the Beast. Enough said – QED.’ [via Dutchbint]

[lmg] An RSS Feed of LinkMachineGo is available here.

[comments] I’ve been playing around with the commenting system on LinkMachineGo so let me know if you have any problems… Also, go checkout the Deconstructing Buffy Comments — very insightful. ‘Faith’s just dirty whore sex. Oz is zen personified. But I can’t stop worshipping Cordelia.’

[current playlist] What I was listening to late last night, courtesy of BlogAmp [via not.so.soft]

Beastie Boys – Sure Shot, Oasis – Stop Crying Your Heart Out, Jeff Buckley – Last Goodbye, Prodigy – Out Of Space, Depeche Mode – Never Let Me Down Again, General Public – Tenderness, The Verve – Lucky Man, Samantha Mumba – Body 2 Body, Nelly Furtado – Turn off the Lights, A.O.S. – History (Repeats Itself), Oasis – Stop Crying Your Heart Out, Sophie Ellis Bextor – Murder On The Dancefloor, Oasis – My Big Mouth, Serge Gainsbourg – Bonnie and Clyde, Bryan Ferry – Crazy Love, New Order – True Faith, Ride – Taste, Mint Royale – From Rusholme With Love, The House Of Love – Crush Me, All Saints – Black Coffee, The Monkees – Porpoise Song, Oasis – Whatever.

[lmg] New feature — Check out the new mini-blog on the left in the sidebar underneath the LMG Search Button…

[birthday] Guess who is thirty-two next Sunday? The wishlist is here. :)

[lmg] LinkMachineGo is two today. Got any favourite quotes from LMG? Let me know. Below is a quick review of the last year in quotes (and one picture) …

March 2001 … ‘Uncle June and I, we had our problems, with the business. But I never should’ve razzed him about eating pussy; this whole war could’ve been averted. Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this.’ — Tony Soprano.

April 2001 … ‘Pamela came round with an egg-decorating kit. William’s eggs were a riot of primary colours; Glenn’s depicted Jesus on the cross. He wrote a bubble out of Jesus’s mouth, “Father, why hast thou forsaken me?”, which disturbed Pamela: “For God’s sake, Glenn lighten up. It’s Easter!” Later, while William played with the packing of his Barbie egg and Glenn watched The Greatest Story Ever Told, she led me to my room and gave an erotic Easter egg, the centre of which contained a pair of edible knickers. She was keen for me to break it open and retrieve them. I was less keen: a glance at the ingredients told me they were choc-a-bloc with obscure chemicals and multisyllable flavourings.’ — Adrian Mole.

May 2001 … ‘Have you ever wanted to shove a glass rod right up Nick Jordan’s cock?’ — Venusberg.

June 2001 … ‘…do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters.’ — Dave Eggers.

July 2001 … ‘Oh no! You’re not still seeing her, are you? You’ve been wanting to get out of this relationship for years, and now the mother speaks of marriage? You must do something drastic my friend. Make a pass at her father! Go on…. just give his knee a little squeeze…’ — Tango Advert.

August 2001 …



September 2001 … ‘I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.’ — Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.

October 2001 … ‘Okay. I have a vestigial tail. It’s more of a nub, really. The spine just goes on a little longer than it should. Also, I’ve dabbled. I mean, perform fellatio once and you’re a poet, twice and you’re a homosexual. I remember once I was being fisted by Sebastian Cabot- but here’s where the story gets interesting…’ — Dr Evil.

November 2001 … ‘Sat in a sandwich bar in Westminster I meet the sharp south-London wideboy occultist that I’d created some years previously for a U.S. comic book. He looks at me. He nods, and smiles, and walks away. Years later, in another place, he steps out from the dark and speaks to me. He whispers: I’ll tell you the ultimate secret of Magic. Any cunt can do it.’ — Alan Moore.

December 2001 … ‘If the hijackers had been able to imagine themselves into the thoughts and feelings of the passengers, they would have been unable to proceed. It is hard to be cruel once you permit yourself to enter the mind of your victim. Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality. The hijackers used fanatical certainty, misplaced religious faith, and dehumanising hatred to purge themselves of the human instinct for empathy. Among their crimes was a failure of the imagination.’ — Ian McEwan.

January 2002 … ‘What kind of man are you anyways? I’m talking comics and you bring up chicks and romance.’ — Brodie.

February 2002 … ‘What the fuck is Voltron talking about? Is this some religious thing? Am I fucking being baptized by Voltron?’ — Get Your Voltr On.