Entertainment For Lively Minds
What websites are you addicted to?
It's a bit like Desert Island Discs. You are allowed the BBC and The Word websites. What other websites would you take with you? What can you not live without? Which ones do you visit every day?
The first task I do when cranking up the ole desktop is open up the BBC, Word blog & Hotmail. Everytime. I can almost log into them blindfolded. Twitter, YouTube & Spotify are only occasional delights.
But the one I find I am addicted to is Ebay. There I have said it. I can go cold turkey but when I am selling stuff through 2 different accounts I can't get enough. Now I am cock-a-hoop because one of my lots is currently 5th most watched item in Disneyana. Sad or what.
When I'm not selling I'm researching what has sold. Did you know there are 63 copies of The Word for sale right now. On past sales they seem to go for £1 each + P&P. So no pot of gold there then. The Secret History Of Entertainment by David Hepworth looks a bargain at 99p though.
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Regular Visits
- Fantasy Premier League
- BBC (Football (mainly))
- YouTube
- Post Punk Progressive Pop Party - Good Blog, and then leads to other blogs listed thereon
- Amazon
- Stiff Little Fingers (www.slf.com)
- Why Music Matters (recent addition)
Thats basically the Favourites bar on the Browser, and these sites tend to be visited daily.
Interweb usage for me is about killing time doing not much
My Addictions
apart from here are http://8tracks.com/home It's an online mixtape community; instead of making a mix for one person I can get the attention of several. I'd like to claim hundreds, but it's not true. Sadly, I enjoy playing my own mixes more than listening to other people's. I don't know what that says about me but it's probably not good.
You Tube is the other. I don't go there that often but when I do, I tend to stay for ages.
Like Rigid Digit, it's what I do intead of what I should be doing..
8 tracks
You are not alone in this,wayfarer. My mixes contain music i like.
Aside from the obvious.
Facebook
BBC (for news and sport)
Radio Times (just to see if it's worth putting the TV on that evening)
All Music
YouTube
Wikipedia (that can often take a good chunk out of my evening)
And that's generally about it.
TV Guide
http://www.tvguide.co.uk/
I find this is useful for planning the next week's viewing and seeing what fillum premieres are coming up on Sky.
I read Popbitch daily
but I'm not a contributor.
I used to be addicted to Monsterland.co.uk - a drawing site - great fun if you like that kind of thing. I look at PhotoshopDisasters and Warren Ellis's blog pretty frequently, otherwise I just Stumble.
My regulars:
Here
Sound On Sound (http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=VinGear)
Matrixsynth (http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/)
Sofa Cinema (http://www.sofacinema.co.uk/)
I used to frequent the excellent Music Thing blog (http://musicthing.blogspot.com/)
Plus Amazon (books) and Ebay (synths and Land-Rover bits)
The Word, Facebook,
and The Guardian, mainly. There's some good comedy out there too - especially The Onion. This often makes me laugh too :
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/
and this, though I do have an odd sense of humour :
http://unhappyhipsters.com/
The Institute Of Official Cheer
http://www.lileks.com/institute/index.html
The Sistine Chapel
In the last few hectic days I've been going back again and again to the calm of the Sistine Chapel:
http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html
Thanks to The Word's Something for the Weekend newsletter!
Guardian (esp
Guardian (esp football)
Slashfilm.com
popjustice.com
Richard Herring.com
wherediditallgoright.com
Flork around
Don't get a lot of time on line,a half hour or so here and there,use Flork sometimes,mostly insane egomaniacs but have struck up a few interesting conversations on Literature and Music.The B.B.C. always worth a visit and Spotify of course.I have not been receiving my "Something for the Weekend" e-mail for a few weeks now,beginning to think I've upset Someone.
Other Regular visits include
Brainwashed.com - for my experimental music fill
drownedinsound.com - nice music site
pitchfork.com - as above
wikipedia - always something to look at
youtube.com - same again
Daily Websites
The few that are visited probably daily (aside from the Word) are....
www.telegraph.co.uk - strange that I was a Guardian reader when I was in the UK, but I find the Telegraph's web site is the best.
www.arstechnica.com - see what's happening in the word of technology
www.gizmodo.com - ditto
Aside from that, I will regularly dip into Amazon and various Internet Banking sites. Don't tend to bother with Hotmail these days, as I have all my mail accounts consolidated into Firefox with my work gmail account.
Favourites
Dusty Sevens
http://dusty7s.blogspot.com/
Lovely soul and sixties tunes
A Swift One
http://www.aswiftone.com/
Beer and pubs in Huddersfield
Swiss, Cheese and Bullets
http://swisscheeseandbullets.com/
Graphic design/stunning photos
My Bookmarks Toolbar (Firefox)
is where I park my most frequently-used bookmarks and they are:
tompeters.com - website of the management guru and a good source of debate.
fantasy.premierleague.com - my team is currently languishing in the dreaded 1,035,206 position.
macworld.co.uk - I know, sad...
timesonline.co.uk - but that will change when they start charging for access.
news.bbc.co.uk - probably my most visited site.
bedfordrugby.co.uk - home of the Bedford Blues, my local team. (We beat promotion favourites Bristol yesterday and it was a terrific game. Come on you Blues!!!!)
Fantasy Premier League
And I thought I was doing badly in 343,691 place.
That has boosted my confidence - Thank You
Fantasy Premier League
Speaking of which, is there a league for the Word massive in there? If not, then there should be - it looks like there's a few of us.
Fantasy League - Word Mag Massive league
Good idea Malc - have just created one and here's the code - 502346-445416
not many weeks left but it can whet our appetite for the new season
Cheers,
Vinnell aka Gavin aka Blaming the kit FC
Cheers
Joined League - Ta Very Much
Nice one
that's already one more member than I anticipated
Bookmarks:
Metafilter http://www.metafilter.com/
Interesting if USian aggregator
Ask Metafilter http://ask.metafilter.com/
How do I...? Usually informed and very funny when they get on a rip.
Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/
Informative and interesting, apart from the infuriating Cory Doctorow.
Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html
Best UK tabloid site.
Meteox http://www.seafordweather.co.uk/wl/UKCloudRadar.htm
When will it start/stop raining?
popsike http://www.popsike.com/classes/access_user/members.php
LP and single auction records. If you use up all your goes try
http://www.collectorsfrenzy.com/Default.aspx
Bookfinder http://www.bookfinder.com/
Where can I find that book cheaper?
Yvette's http://yvettesbridalformal.com/index.htm
The Worst Website in the World.
Yvette
Frightened me.
just remember kids
drugs are bad.
but scrim shaw and red hats are funny...
Apart from your good selves
Miniclip games, infuriantingly addictive games to while away theworking day
stumbleupon.com, try it, you wont regret it
Me? A few.
Twitter. As Mr Lewry has fallen out of love with it, I've become hooked. I still think it's pointless rubbish, though.
The Seattle Post-Examiner. I read the cartoon "Zits" from there.
The Telegraph website for Alex.
S3V.com to look at webcams in the Alps. Yes. I do this most days..
Also SnowForecast.com. Please don't ask me why.
eBay. I don't buy much but I do look at a lot.
Pittsburgh Pirates during the summer.
28dayslater.com Urban Exploration site. Fascinating.
*cough*
I still like Twitter - I just don't tweet.
tv cream...it takes a bit of
tv cream...it takes a bit of delving but its all good fun to people of a certain age.
Here's mine.....
Mojo4music
Expectingrain (bob dylan)
Facebook
Blackcatbone
Fantasypremierleague
ebay
stevehoffman.tv
rateyourmusic.com
allmusic.com
mudcrutch.com (Tom Petty)
crowesbase.net (Black Crowes)
football365.com
amazon.co.uk
play.com
hotmail.com
stevehoffman.tv
An odd forum, that. Steve Hoffman seems to constantly contradict himself; likes informing us that he has "had lunch" with a wide variety of unlikely celebrities and back-room boys, pretty much all of whom are now conveniently dead; and occasionally turns on his own subscribers in a venomous way before he gets his moderators to remove the evidence. Sometimes it's difficult not to pity him, as he seems to be drowning in his self-created online notoriety.
Some knowledgable people there nonetheless. Not counting the supermarket checkout operator who seemingly can't sleep unless he posts at least 50 pointless messages a day, many of them racially motivated.
No Rain Today
I guess if I was on a desert island then my regular visits to raintoday.co.uk will probably stop as will all the gig venues that I check regularly just in case there's something been added. So it will be The Guardian, RichardHerring.com, The Word, NME, Emusic, Sporting Life and the BBC Iplayer.
Here, Facebook and YouTube
I'm here far too much.
I check into Facebook most days but it really is for kids so I feel slightly awkward with it. However a lot of my friends are on it and a lot of them are overseas so it is useful. Also most of them are witty coves whose status updates keep me entertained.
Mostly though it's YouTube. It's an Aladdin's Cave as far as I'm concerned. I use it to watch bands play.
For years and years I've been a very keen but very amateur and extremely unremarkable guitar player. I'm not very good but I don't really care because I enjoy it so. As a consequence I am genuinely fascinated by watching other far better musicians play. I have a shelf full of live music dvd's which I can pop on at any time and become instantly absorbed by - just watching how that drummer changes time just there, or how the bass player plays a run under the riff just there, and so on.
I loved Whistle Test and The Tube and Later because it they were/are, for me, so interesting.
You Tube, God bless it and keep it, is an endless bottomless well of treasures. All those clips and performances I either missed or never knew existed. Johnny Winter playing 'Sound The Bell' on Swedish TV? Check. JJ Cale on Later from 1994? Certainly sir. Richard Thompson playing 'She Twists The Knife Again' solo on Whistle Test in 1985 and never seen since? Just type it in.
Bliss.
Google Reader
Fabulously useful. I can keep up with all my favourite websites in one place.
I use it to get new blogs on the Word website as a feed, then I can decide which ones I actually open and read / contribute to. (Like this one) (Obviously)
Not many
Youtube
b3ta (particularly the links page)
Wikipedia (can spend hours in here)
digitalspy (although I despair of it more and more)
everyhit
Not Every Day...
...but still worth a look regularly...
robertpopper(best filter for all sorts of mad stuff)
martinkelner(somewhat 'unreconstucted' but still very funny)
theonion(or course!)
whythatsdelightful(Graham Linehan's musings)
TVark(nostalgia ahoy!)
Two archive TV and radio sites:
Missing Episodes: http://missingepisodes.proboards.com/index.cgi
The Mausoleum Club: http://www.mausoleumclubforum.org.uk/xmb/today.php
Can't get enough of...
http://rateyourmusic.com
You can make an online copy of your collection - handy if visiting a shop on hols and are unsure whether you already own a particular LP.
And the comparing collections feature is useful too as a way of discovering new music.
the sure sign of a collecting tragic
buying stuff you already own
Several of these...
But a site not already mentioned which I visit every day is
lifehacker.com
mainly tech but lots of other real world / work world stuff. Just interesting without fail.
I also go to
Twit.tv
this does have a live stream, but also has several downloadable "netcasts" on various topics, again mainly tech related. This way of broadcasting is the future and it's run by some very knowledable and committed people.
Twit (This week in tech, by the way) is a bit east coast USA biased I'm terms of the people, but I warn you, if you are into tech it's addictive
TWiT
is amazing - I wish more Leo Laporte had more UK exposure, he'd be very well-liked by a big crowd here I'm sure. Not crazy about some of the ill-informed UK reps they have on the show but otherwise extremely interesting.
On-topic, I've just found the massive timesink that is TVtropes.org - what a mistake to go there when you have deadlines :-(
The iphone factor
The sites I go to most are probably The Guardian (even more so since their excellent iphone app appeared), Facebook (ditto), Word (natch), BBC (mostly sport, especially tennis) and Wikipedia. Others include David Hepworth's blog, The Dunwich Dynamo and the websites of the four tennis Majors while they're happening.
Gmail...
and Popbitch, though that's more of a force of habit. B3ta Question of the Week is pretty addictive. You Tube and dear old wikipedia.
Also a bunch of boring Microsoft sites for work-related stuff
Good to see none of you are regularly using the internet to find naughty people doing rude things.
Nah
I steer clear of the Parliament Channel.
This is the nearest I get to rude people doing naughty things.
www.camra.org.uk/ ideal for tracking down the next local beer festival.
Apart from here
Other people's blogs, too numerous to mention
Also
MediaGuardian
eBay
Amazon
BBC News
Wikipedia
Mention the blogs, Five.
I forgot to mention Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog, another of my favourites.
Excellent London based daily read
http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/
and another that's worth a more lengthy browse to find out just how much we're losing
http://www.classiccafes.co.uk/
Football365.co.uk
www.football365.co.uk . Its Winners & Losers on a Monday is essential reading. This was my first web 1.0 addiction, back in 98-03. Twas a brilliant discussion forum until it went registration-only.
Plus usual suspects - newspapers, eBay, Amazon etc. Not succumbed to Facebook or Twitter, thank G.
This.
Plus Facebook and www.offsetguitars.com
I'm one of the sort of founder members of OSG, but I don't post any more - there's only so much you can say about guitars after four years, and I found that periods of heavy posting over there was directly correlated with me spending myself stupid on guitars, amps and pedals. It was set up for enthusiasts of Fender Jazzmaster and Jaguars, by some people who used to post on the FenderForum. I was one of those, and although I had nothing to do with the setup or moderation, I'm accorded an honorific "senior" status over there.
Other than that, not a lot.
Pharyngula
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
Science, atheism, liberal politics, subverting dumb internet polls and the ruthless exposure of stupidity.
You Por...
Actually, no, nothing, forget it.
Retronaut
I've spent most of the week browsing this site
http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/
Full of fantastic images and film of the past, here's a great example
rateyourmusic
I've been using rateyourmusic.com pretty much daily for 7 years and have enjoyed helping build up their artist pages, discogs, biogs etc.
- last.fm has become a more recent addiction, both of these sites I find a useful way to answer "what have you been listening to / purchased recently".
Visiting here more often than i'd think.
www.bbc.co.uk
www.espncricinfo.com
Anyway, just wanted to plug rym.
My internet guilty pleasures
David Icke
Awful Plastic Surgery
My Internet guilty pleasures.
Not about to share them on here, but suffice it to say David Icke is not involved.
This one -
http://www.ukrockfestivals.com
It's an archive of British music festivals from the late 60's to the early 90's. Everything from the little free festivals to the Knebworths etc. People write in with their own memories and photos and it's updated (fairly) regularly. It's the most comprehensive history of British music festivals and musical "tribes" I've ever seen - and all first-hand accounts.
Awakened!
I do like it when old threads are revitalised, hence my passion for charity shops. Anyway, the two I'm currently sneaking back to every chance I get are the Only Connect site for the connecting walls; and the completely wonderful Questionable Content, for which I'd like to thank Gauntlet for first mentioning it here. I went right back to the start and have been slowly catching up. It's the first web-based comic strip I've got into, and I have a feeling it won't be the last.
Questionable Content for me too
Everything you ever wanted to know about the world
but were far too distracted by modern media to ask:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/
Mine
Lovefilm
Amazon
eBay
Twitter (intermittently)
LinkedIn
Wikipedia (more and more)
YouTube
Banks
Suzuki Van Van Forum (my motorbike) - http://suzukivanvan.forumandco.com/forum genuinely the nicest forum including this one. Noone ever gets the arse, has a pop, flounces, etc.
At the moment, job sites (dire...)
Telecaster forum (http://www.tdpri.com/)
Home recording - www.Homerecordingshow.com
A few
Twilight Zone for music
UK Polling Report - opinion poll frenzy. I look at it most days for the latest you.gov poll.
AVForums - as it sounds
Facebook
BBC News
Edinburgh Evening News
Football Ramble
good blog and good podcast too although I could do without the constant stick for 'arry.
Arseblog always amuses me as well. Especially when they're getting beat, what a bunch of whingers.
Welcome back old friend
I seem to be spending too much time on Disney websites, devouring the latest news of Avatar Land to be built in the Animal Kingdom park in Florida. I've just returned from Walt Disney World and am planning to return January or February. My latest sad venture into the world of Disney memorabilia collecting has (sadly) nothing to do with records. I've got the bug after resisting for so long.
http://www.vinylnation.net/whatis.html - vinyl designs on the basic shape of Mickey Mouse.
Incidentally, if you over in Epcot from the end of this week for the International Food & Wine Festival these are the acts performing in the free Eat To The Beat concerts. You have been warned.
-- September 30 - October 2: Taylor Dayne
-- October 3-5: .38 Special
-- October 6-7: Jon Secada
-- October 8-9: Roger Hodgson, formerly of Supertramp
-- October 10-12: Billy Ocean
-- October 13-16: Starship Starring Mickey Thomas
-- October 17-19: Sugar Ray
-- October 20-21: The Orchestra, starring former members of ELO
-- October 22-23: Howard Jones
-- October 24-26: Boyz II Men
-- October 27-28: Gin Blossoms
-- October 29-30: Sister Hazel
-- October 31-November 1: Hanson