Friday September 7, 2007
My pal Mr. Leif went to meet Bill Clinton yesterday, and got his picture both in the Herald and the Sun-Sentinel. Nice work, celebrity baby! Update: 1,200 photos from China.
Thursday August 30, 2007
I don’t know if anyone besides me cares about this, but CM search results now direct to a page with a regular article list, rather then article titles+an excerpt. I think this makes stuff much easier to find on the site, and bridges the gap between tags and the search function. And since we haven’t done this in awhile, please to use this post as a place to vent other frustrations w/r/t the CM interface.
Tuesday August 21, 2007
Problems with the CM main computer; posting will be nonexistent light today.
Wednesday August 15, 2007
2 Live Looks gets the grand profile treatment from the Herald’s Jaweed Kaleem, including photos of the guys in action and a narrated slideshow. Congrats. (Oh, and I get quoted.)
Monday July 30, 2007
Truth that throws some meat to the dogs is no less worth telling for doing so
Indulge me:
Truth that throws some meat to the dogs is no less worth telling for doing so.
That’s what I said here, much to everyone’s amusement. And admittedly, it’s a pretty twisted formulation, constructed under the influence of alcohol (TWI?). Be that as it may, it’s sensical, and I’m sticking by it. And so let me explain:
- “Truth” — this is a noun, the subject of the sentence. It means “A true statement . . .”
- “ . . . that throws some meat to the dogs” — in other words, making the statement satisfies a group of people that is really not worthy of being satisfied. Not an unheard of colloquial expression.
- “ . . . is no less worth telling for doing so.” — making the statement satisfies a group that is not worthy of being satisfied. However, that fact ought not to prevent its being made.
In other words: “Be honest, even if your honesty gives satisfaction to someone you don’t particularly want to give satisfaction to.” I may be convoluted, but I’m not gibberishizing.
Update: This line is to live on in infamy: it’s [slightly mis]quoted here.
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Tuesday July 24, 2007
My used Nikon stuff for sale on ebay: MB-D80 grip/battery pack, SB-400 flash, and MH-18a charger. All gently used and available to a good home, and yes, I did kvetch about getting my D80 stolen in every single listing.
Miami Beach defends crappy new lifeguard stands
Illustration by Mike Gorman, New Times.
While I was sleeping, last week’s New Times quoted me as saying “Whoever thought this piece of shit up missed the spirit of the originals by a mile, and should be kicked in his patriotic balls.” It accompanies this article by Janine Zeitlin, which defends the new lifeguard stands as cheaper, and opens, “Tourists love ‘em. So say Miami Beach city officials.” Well duh, they haven’t seen the originals. “With art deco, everything goes.” Um, don’t even get me started. People come from all over the world by the millions, as much for the beach as for anything else, and you’re justifying your cheapness while spending lavishly on park overhauls, Washington Ave. “beautification” (as if anybody cares about Washington Ave.), and tax refunds. The lifeguard stands should have been restored or recreated according to the original designs. And Scott Timm should have said so when asked, not begged off because the stands are not technically in the historic district.
Anyway, the quote (“Ript from the blogs,” not in the online version) provides a link to the photo (where the above quote is from). NT also helpfully linked to my Sun-Sentinel website writeup (so did Elad, thanks) and a recent weekend todo. Wow.
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Friday June 15, 2007
Yay: The Google embargo has been lifted. Attention Google visitors: Critical Miami is safe.
Monday June 11, 2007
Badware
It has been brought to my attention that Critical Miami has been flagged by StopBadware and by Google. All I can say at this point is that I’m operating on good faith, and nothing malicious that may be happening is a result of anything I’ve deliberately done. I’ve appealed to the respective authorities for help in tracking down and eradicating whatever problems exist, but I also need your help — if anyone’s noticed any peculiar behavior out of this site lately please use the comments. Hopefully this is all a misunderstanding; watch this space for updates. (Thanks to everyone who pointed this problem out.)
Update [6/11/07, 10 pm]: Requests for help have been filed at StopBadware, the Textpattern forum, and Dreamhost tech support.
Update [6/12/07 8:11 am]: Aha! The answers are coming in. It appears that CM was, in fact, hacked! Along with 3,500 other Dreamhost customers (curse Dreamhost — maybe time to switch?). Information at Dreamhost’s blog and numerous other sources. I’ve removed the offending code, and will keep an eye on the situation, so CM is now once again safe for your computer. Watch this space for information as it develops. In the meantime — alternate hosting suggestions?
Update [6/12/07 8:45 am]: I’ve gone through all the various domains and sites I host, and sure enough, the offending “iframe” code was in every single index.php and index.html file. I’ve variously fixed or yanked down all the sites. The first sign of this was when Steve’s blog disappeared last week (so no, Steve, it wasn’t your fault (for once) — sorry), because it seems that in some cases the script that’s doing the hacking replaced the files rather then appending (which of course makes it much easier to spot). I’ve also changed my ftp password. The good news is that Steve’s files were not re-infected over the last week, so hopefully this was a one-time thing. Stay tuned.
Update [6/13/07]: The coast is clear. The malicious links have all been removed, and StopBadware has been notified, so the block that Google has placed on CM should be lifted whenever they get around to reviewing the case. Thousands of sites were hit with the same code, this one coincidentally was crawled by Google in the week or so the the code was there. Meanwhile, this code (essentially, it loaded hidden versions of other web pages, which may have included malicious javascript) has been all over the place, so everyone is encouraged to update their anti-virus definitions and do a thorough scan.
Update [6/15/07]: Yay! The warning has been removed from Google. It’s still listed at StopBadware, which is odd since I the appeal was submitted through them.
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Monday June 4, 2007
Critical updates
I spent most of the day Sunday neck-deep in code and stuff like this, trying to make you a new and improved Critical Miami. I mostly got done the more “coding” type stuff, and left the sorting/data decisions for another time, because I can officially only use one half of my brain per day, and I need to do this geek-out stuff during my rare forages into sobriety. Anyway, here’s a summary:
- Date archives are fixed. So when you click “January 2007” in the sidebar under “Archives by date,” you get all the articles from that month on one page. This is what I always wanted those links to do, and now it works. Hooray!
- “Related articles.” Individual article pages now show a list of links to articles with similar tags. I want to refine this some more — it’s for people who land on a permalink to a specific article, to help them find similarly interesting content. Not sure it’s there yet.
- Random articles. This is a link that currently lives right below the tag cloud. Shows 30 completely random articles from the archives. Kind of fun.
- Speaking of tags, I’ve cleaned them up a little, and added a little functionality. Props once again to Nathan Arthur, who’s plugin makes CM’s tag engine go. The big job of tagging all the old articles remains.
- Number of users currently online displayed in the sidebar. Silly, and probably very temporary.
- Aforementioned satellite feed in the sidebar.
- And just so you don’t think we’re slouching around here, May had 274,945 page views from 54,522 distinct hosts. Click the graph above for larger view.
- Alas, no blogroll yet. Hopefully next weekend.
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Thursday May 31, 2007
Welcome New Times readers
Oh, so it occurred to me that some new folks might be dropping by to check the site out, and maybe they could use a little more then an MF-bomb to get oriented. I’d say the best way to get a sense of the site is just to skim through in reverse chronological order. When you get to the bottom of the page, click “Older articles” to go to the next page, and so on. Click lots of links (open them in new windows/tabs so you can find your way back).
If you’re particularly interested in a subject, you can click its tag at the bottom of the article or in my super-retro tag cloud (thing in the sidebar with different-sized words) to get all the articles with that tag. (Tags only go back a little over a year right now and are a bit of a mess, which I promise to fix this weekend. I’ll fix the archive pages, too. Maybe even the stinkin’ blogroll.) Too much work? Here are some recent favorites:
- My adventure in Downtown.
- Redlands/Homestead development photos.
- Cocaine Cowboys movie review.
- Post and slideshow of a silly thing I got from Bellsouth in the mail.
- Hey, I was on a panel.
- Photos from May’s gallery walk.
- Water shortages are dire, but a building moratorium is a really bad idea.
For stuff from before that, check out the year two wrap-up, which has links to some of the better stuff from the last year. You know, reading the Best-of award, I can’t help but think the NT’s poked around some of the oldest pages, from back in April 2007: “You’re as likely to find updates on major construction as anecdotes about visits to offbeat ethnic eateries.” Look: Earth day, 2005, and La Vraie Difference.
Stop by tomorrow, when CM will tell you how to run your weekend. Oh, and I still think New Times should bring the “best blog” category. My unofficial pick for best blog: Transit Miami.
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Wednesday May 30, 2007
Best Miami website, motherfuckers
I’m not quite sure I’m believing my eyes, but Miami New Times’ best of 2007 is out, and Critical Miami took ‘Best Website’. I guess w00t and thanks are in order. The operant link may be my rant from last year, wherein I embarrassingly whined about not winning the award then, and further complained about the lack of a ‘best blog’ category. But if 54 references aren’t enough, let me spell it out: I love you too, guys. (I’m also glad that NT noticed the commenters here, who’s contributions are just as important as mine for making the site worth visiting. Thanks.)
Update/PS: I’m sure the print version is perfect, but your online listing doesn’t technically include a hyperlink. And the Biscayne Times award doesn’t even include the name.
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Friday May 25, 2007
Special Note! (or, 'Memorial Day Weekend')
Urp! I was away from computer thursday evening and friday morning, hence you have no idea what to do with your weekend. Please to consider going down to random clubz on tonight friday saturday and sunday nightz and digging the hiphops weekend. Elsewize help the ACLU by coming down anyway and keeping an eye out for Miami Beach PD (love you guys — most of the time!) from whatever overzealous crackdowns may have been handed down. ktnxbi.
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Wednesday May 9, 2007
Panel homework
In preparation for tonight’s panel, I’m reading and re-reading recent work by my fellow panelists. Here’s what I’ve got:
- Joanne Green: the New Times is the only publication here that has an adequate website which allows things like searching by author. Here she is on the Justin Caldwell incident, and here is an article about bodyguard Iztok Plevnik.
- Anne Tschida: Anne writes for Category305, re who’s website nuff said (although I’ll point out that archives of her writing on artist Xavier Cortada’s website show up much higher in a Google search on her name then the actual articles on the c305 site). Anyway, here she is about CIFO, Dubai, and Brünte Klaus/Katzenjammers/David Rohn.
- Elisa Turner: The Herald’s website makes up for a lack of archives with a good search function that sorts in reverse chronological order, so it was easy to find Elisa’s articles on recent art donations to the MAM and the Sol LeWitt exhibition. I’m particularly interested in the latter, because I’m planning on writing about that exhibition soon.
- Omar Sommereyns: Getting at Omar’s recent work at SunPost turned out to be almost impossible. Because the Sun Post’s article pages don’t have a date (!!), neither their own internal search nor Google can deal with a request for, say, “Omar Sommereyns May 2007”. To boot, the SP’s home page doesn’t give bylines for articles, only little blurbs, so the only way to see who wrote what in recent issues is to individually click each article. Spare me: Here are two recent cover stories Omar has written: Pervis Young, and the MAM/MAC merger.
OK, sorry, I’m getting a little carried away venting my frustrations with these publications’ websites. I’m not addressing the writing; these are obviously all fine writers, I just hate to see good work be put into crappy packages. Anyhow, see you there at 7 pm.
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Monday May 7, 2007
I'm on a panel this Wednesday
Joanne Green of the New Times, Omar Sommereyns of the Sun Post, Anne Tschida, Elisa Turner of the Miami Herald and I will be doing a panel on arts writing in Miami, and media in general, at Locust Projects this Wednesday. Stop by and say hi.
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Wednesday May 2, 2007
Critical Miami is blocked under AOL’s “safe browsing” software.
Monday April 16, 2007
A commenter suggested this.
Any takers?
Sunday April 15, 2007
Twitter (in the side bar). Don’t expect this to last.
Wednesday April 4, 2007
Blah: The internets were down at CM headquarters when I got back yesterday, and Atlantic Broadband can’t get anyone out until Saturday to look at it, so light posting continues. Their service is generally excellent, but it’s a bit irritating, since because they use independent contractors to do the installation, there was no problem setting that up for the weekday evening of my choice. (Site stats have been pretty strong the last couple of weeks — maybe sporadic posting is the way to go.)
Monday March 26, 2007
On 'Critical'
When the whole Carnival Center thing happened, I remember being sneeringly asked something like, “what qualifications do you have to be a critic, anyway?” Well, for the record, I have none (nor do I agree that writing about thing should be left for so-called qualified professionals). But the question has stuck with me, and from time to time I’ve introspected about what I meant by the word ‘critical’ when I named this site. It really breaks down into about four distinct meanings, which I consider to have the following order of relative importance:
- There is an almost slang-like sense in which the word was used in the late-80s/early-90s to mean ‘important.’ See also “crucial.” It turns out that this corresponds roughly to the first definition of the word in Webster, but for me the word still has a casual connotation. Also, to the extent that critical=important, it’s writing about important things — or things we pretend are important because they’re fun to argue about — not that the site itself is supposed to be important.
- The critical thinking sense. In other words, writing for the sake of the fun of picking apart ideas. Plus: “How can I know what I think until I see what I say,” a quote so good it variously gets ascribed to W.H. Auden, Raymond Carver, Oscar Wilde, Richard Hugo, Winston Churchill(!), Graham Wallas, and E. M. Forster (the latter is apparently correct). I hadn’t gotten to write a whole lot since college, and picking localness as a subject gave me a wide field of topics to work with. (Well, and plus there was no Miami omniblog at the time — had SotP been around, I doubt I’d have started.)
- The “writing negatively about things” sense. Because it’s fun to criticize things, even if you couldn’t do it any better yourself. Heck, sometimes it’s important to. I think this is the sense that people get first when they hit the site — note the Metafilter link, and the Destination Blog kiss-off: “not critical enough.” Hmph.
- Finally, the “writing judgmentally about cultural stuff” sense. I actually try to tread lightly when I do this, and again, I don’t claim any particular qualifications. But what’s the big deal, anyway? We all go look at, listen to, and do stuff, and it’s only natural to talk about whether we liked it or not, and why. There’s no persuasive reason why this should be left to professionals.
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Monday March 19, 2007
Year two wrap-up
I’m off to Bogotá for a couple of weeks, and even though the two-year CM anniversary (cotton!) is a month away, let’s do a recap of the more prominent articles some newer readers may have missed. Chronological:
- Parking at Carnival Center, which has never actually been a problem for me — maybe because I go to the less mainstream productions? But even for the sold-out Cleveland Orchestra show the lot just to the west of the center had spaces.
- Plans for the non-museum part of Museum Park.
- After this, the Carnival Center website got completely re-designed, though some problems linger (I sent them an e-mail a couple of months ago pointing out a few of the lingering problems; maybe a writeup on what they’ve fixed sometime soon).
- South Beach synagogues.
- Yambo.
- Rick Ross album review. I think I’ve listened to that CD maybe once since writing that.
- Tap-tap.
- One of the gallery hop picture series — with a quality passed out guy!
- Ignorance the book review.
- Michael Froomkin’s guest-post: Captain’s Tavern.
- Make Miami-Dade wireless meeting writeup.
- The future of newspapers.
- Big Carnival Center guided tour.
- Driving with Mr. Alesh, my woozy video.
- Who’s afraid of a little fight?: the UM/FIU football brawl.
- Irritating Dogma Grill.
- Los Tres Amigos.
- Algae in Biscayne Bay explained.
- How a marina works.
- Babalu deletes a comment.
- Speaking of which, Babalu vs. SotP.
- Link to all articles tagged “Basel” for those so inclined.
- The New York Times and Castro.
- Miami Vice movie: better on DVD.
- MAM/MAC partnership.
- Busted WLRN website (nothing has changed, btw).
- On flickr: The Houses of Morningside — here is the post.
- Herzog’s talk and implications for the new MAM building.
- Bored? How about a 135 comment thread.
- Cleveland Orchestra at Carnival.
- Art Center SF Super Bowl Super Store.
- Fruit and Spice Park (to which, BTW, Liz Donovan has some clarifications ).
- Consider the trans-fats ban.
- I suggested recycling garbage cans, and people actually objected!
- Miami 21.
- Miami cops beat up photographers fiasco.
- I dropped the ball on the Are newspapers shallow or is it the readers discussion, but it’s worth revisiting.
- The Miami tree master-plan.
Whew! I guess I need to do that more often then once a year. Here is the previous list (and yes, Haardvark is going on 4 years without getting updated). Other then that, don’t worry, there are a few articles pre-written and scheduled for the next two weeks. Otherwise, I’ll see you on April 4th.
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Thursday March 15, 2007
Correction: madebythem says: “You mention a space that had a big opening with a boy with neon orange briefs. I would like to let you know that that space as well as the show was is in no way related to the Moore Space. My friend and I wrote a proposal to get the space and decided to have a show with no theme, flyers, invites or any sort of publicity. It would be great if you could correct your update in order to prevent any sort of misunderstandings with the good folks at the Moore Space.”
Friday February 9, 2007
In SunPost, Erik Bojnansky quotes my snippiness regarding the South Florida Art Center’s SuperStore. He also quotes Wormhole and a couple of SFAC artists, who express unhappiness all around. Vague light is shed on the center’s financial situation, but no numbers.
Sunday February 4, 2007
About the ads: I recently got an e-mail from Google nudging me to put one of these big ads on my site. “The medium rectangle is the most demanded size among our brand advertisers,” they say. So I’m trying it out. One silver lining out of this is that it forced me to clean up the CSS a little, and some of the mistakes that made the margins a little off in IE6 are now fixed. The bad news is that I had to widen the sidebar by about 50 pixels, and it looks a little out of balance now. Complaints? Update: The black BG will be up for exactly 24 hours unless there’s overwhelming support for making it permanent.
Friday February 2, 2007
Wayback Machine entry for Critical Miami, circa May 2005. Masthead and right sidebar appear broken, but everything else is where it should be. There are no links to other blogs because, with the exception of Babalu and Infomaniac (which I didn’t know about yet) and Artblog (linked) there were none.
Wednesday January 24, 2007
Saturday January 13, 2007
Little changes at big Critical Miami
I need your suggestions and complaints, but yes, I’m fiddling with the site lately. The little ad in the navbar doesn’t seem to be displaying anything relevant, so it’s probably not going to last long. The calendar thing, which I made myself, seems to be working about like I’d want, except I need to make a custom navbar for the calendar items. Links have temporarily disappeared because there were too many, but they’re coming back in some way or another. I’ve been using tags for awhile, but haven’t gone back to tag all the old items. Nonetheless, I need to switch to “clean URLs” to get my tags recognized by Technorati as tags, and that happens as soon as I publish this post.
Things will break. Please let me know. Comment on this article with broken things as well as general complaints and suggestions. Thx.
(The problem with clean URLs is that while old links will still work under the new system, links created under the new system will not work under the old system should switching back be necessary. Hence my stress level — I’ve tried this before and eventually had to to go back, and broken links to CM are still out there.)
Update!
Yep, the consequences are unpredictable. For expample, there’s now a Calendar page, as well as an article page and a linklog page, none of which work in a way that particularly makes sense. Suggestions as to what these pages should do are hereby solicited. Maybe refer to Waxy links for guidance (not to mention some kick-ass links.
Update:
For those following that sort of thing, http://www.criticalmiami.com/atom/ and http://www.criticalmiami.com/rss/ now work. Click the buttons at the bottom of the navbar or the subscribe button in your Firefox address bar.
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Thursday December 14, 2006
Looks like The Dirt hasn’t posted anything in awhile and — wait, WHAT?! Critical Miami got a namecheck in New York magazine?? w00t to that shit, plus my eternal public thanks to anyone who can send me a scan of the full page with said reference. Update: Here’s the “oh, SNAP!” link: New York Travel, Miami. Since The Dirt is dead, and MB-Miami is strictly coasting on the coattails of the worldwide MB empire, does this mean that Val and I are the big men in town?
Monday December 11, 2006
Fuck Microsoft
I just installed Internet Explorer 7 on my work computer, and it made the bullet points on the CM navbar lists disappear (this after all the hoops I jumped through to make CM look reasonable under IE6). I have no intention of upgrading on my computer at home, so the odds of this getting fixed are pretty slim.
IE users, listen to me — you’re perpetuating bad stuff by not switching to Firefox (on Windows). There’s a reason why the phrase “internet explorer is evil” returns more then a million hits on Google. Switch to Firefox. You’ll be doing right by yourself and by the whole world. Feel free to use the comments section to tell me why you don’t want to.
Update:
Let me just dispel one misconception: it’s NOT Firefox that’s messing up websites.
We have these things called standards, which are a consistent set of rules for how a web browser is supposed to work. Smart people from all different places put them together. You’ve heard of a “standards compliant” browser? Firefox is one (it’s not perfect, but it’s 99% right). Safari is one. Opera is one.
With Internet Explorer, Microsoft chooses another way — to do whatever the fuck it wants. Accept some of the rules, ignore others, and implement still others in a way that’s deliberately different. There are ways to make a website look right in all the browsers, but they require workarounds, hacks, and other standards-violating tricks on the part of web developers.
Any internet search on this topic will bring up thousands of rants by people who build web sites about how terrible this is, the “evil” link above is just one extreme example. Putting these workarounds means that building a website that looks good in the major browsers can take twice as long as it otherwise would or more.
So, web developers are unhappy, but regular people don’t need to care, right? We can just use whatever browser’s best for us, right?
No. This hurts everyone, because it raises the bar to putting something on the internet, and keeps information away from all of us. To the extent that it’s difficult to build a good website, it’s largely Microsoft’s fault.
There is a slight learning curve for someone switching to Firefox, but it’s worth it. And not just because you’re supporting the people who are doing the right thing, and snubbing the people who are doing the wrong thing: Firefox is a better browser, too. It’s more secure, and it has better features — as evidenced by the fact that Internet Explorer 7 “borrows” many features from Firefox (and still doesn’t implement them very well).
I would suggest that when Windows asks you to download IE7, you download Firefox 2 instead (use the link above).
Microsoft can get away with this because a lot of people use Internet Explorer, so web developers have to cater to it. But fewer people are using it every day. In the comments, R. links to a usage graph for Europe. Above is a graph for Critical Miami so far in the month of December. I say everyone else should consider getting with the program.
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Tuesday November 28, 2006
Yesterday was a record-breaking day, with over 10,000 page views, I guess because of the “Blogger Deletes Comment!!!“ post (which, incidentally, was post 1001, so two milestones there for CM). But since I’m sure very few people are still following that thread, I thought I’d point out Manuel A. Tellechea’s comment, which says something very interesting and important, and is quite eloquent, too. Everyone should go read. Less importantly, I feel compelled to point out that you are currently reading a comment about a comment about a comment about a comment about a comment. My friends, that’s five levels of meta-ness. Update: as though on cue, Kottke shows me I’m an amateur, easily finding seven levels of meta-ness on del.icio.us. Oh well.
Friday November 10, 2006
Critical Miami status
Looking at this post from last year, and looking at how things have changed. It’s a graph of search terms (from October, the last complete data set) that people use that land them here; there are fewer entries on the graph because there are actually more seraches, and as each slice gets proportionally smaller it becomes impossible to show them on the graph. So here’s a table version:
| 301 | critical miami | 25 | alabama jacks |
| 132 | miami ink | 23 | miami ink tattos |
| 70 | miami performing arts center | 21 | money stacks |
| 64 | nancy spungen | 20 | watson island |
| 56 | ticket clinic | 19 | ticket clinic miami |
| 47 | carnival center | 18 | bodies miami |
| 46 | miami blog | 17 | miami carnival center |
| 35 | uli herzner | 17 | gil dezer |
| 30 | carnival center for the performing arts | 17 | carnival center miami |
| 29 | miami blogs | 5090 | [not listed: 3,278 search terms] |
| 29 | johnny winton |
Observations:
- There hasn’t been a Miami Ink post since the show started. Maybe there should be — obviously there’s a demand for information about Ami, Darren, Yosji, and the Chrises. Anybody reading that has inside dirt on the show? Drop me a line. And, the Dirt jacked my photo.
- 181 total searches of people looking for info on the Carnival Center. Unfortunately, Google only shows the first two results from any given site, and the first two posts that come up are not the most useful ones. This is what they’re looking for. Anyone with a website care to donate a link to help Google understand that that’s the page to point to? Ideally, the link would look like this: Carnival Center for the Performing Arts. Yes, I’m being annoying. Sorry.
- The Nancy Spungen thing was a mistake. Cringe.
- Ticket Clinic — official second post ever, and some of Steve‘s best work.
- Uli Herzner. Another sad google search. People want information, and they’re desperate enough to get three screens down, and they ain’t getting it. The CM link is right under the Wikipedia link, and neither of us knows shit about Uli.
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Sunday October 22, 2006
A few ‘meta’ things to point out:
- Problems surrounding the recent upgrade to Txp 4.0.4 with caps and comments have been fixed. Anyone still having problems that started in the last week let me know in the comments.
- Heck, if anyone has any problems at all feel free to let me know.
- You are now the proud owner of a tag cloud. Yep, just like if it was 2003. Scroll down, and you’ll find it towards the bottom of the navbar. I’m still going back and tagging old articles, as well as cleaning up tags, so the whole thing is very experimental. And FYI only tags with more then one associated article show up in the cloud.
- Google recently showed Critical Miami some love and bumped the pagerank from 5 to 6.
Monday October 16, 2006
Driving with Mr. Alesh
I’ve been out of pocket the last few days, sick and in bed. Here’s a video I made a few days before, driving down an unnamed street in south Broward, among lots of police activity. I’ll tell ya, though: trying to film and control the ol’ vehicle is like driving drunk, or driving and talkin’ on the celly. Anyway, I hear there’s been some sports-related controversy lately, but I stay out of that. More bloggin’ soon.
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Thursday October 5, 2006
Python eats aligator and pops: the one year aniversary. Good times.
Wednesday October 4, 2006
Look: the remaindered links (aka “news bytes”) now indicate when they have comments! Thanks to Rick for the suggestion.
Friday September 29, 2006
Sometimes a comment really hits home, and provokes a lot of reflection, as this one, suggesting “wow, alesh why don’t you tell us what you ate last night.” Not a bad idea, and so here pleased to be presenting: i eat food, my new blog. Updated probably maybe twice a week or so, and sporting a design which I consider to be an homage to Preshrunk, though with more red.
Tuesday September 26, 2006
The funniest thing I’ve seen so far today: In a recent online poll, 81% of the respondents thought online polls should continue. (Rick thinks I’m a spoilsport to suggest that online polls are a waste of time, even “just for fun.”) Update: Everyone agrees that I’m an ass for “making a big deal” out of this. See Fanless and the entire argument in the comments. BTW, I like to “click on buttons and look at graphs” as much as the next guy, and in that spirit I offer a link to the implicit association test at Harvard.
Thursday September 21, 2006
I submitted my old wind energy rant to Digg. 3 diggs so far!
Wednesday September 20, 2006
Strange pods
In the field next to where the old Miami Beach library used to be, by the Bass Art Museum, there are these amazing huge old trees. People often hang out under them, reading, and generally frolicking. A couple of weekends ago I was one of those people, and took this photo of one the weird pods that fall off the trees (here is the other part; there was also a white, fleshy bit—it’s amazing what grows in the tropics during the summer wet season). Anyone know what these are called?
Also, after much fiddling and experimentation, I have what I believe to be working links to add CM articles (just the ones with titles) to del.icio.us and Digg, for those who like to mess with those services. It makes me feel like I have a real blog. Would someone let me know whether they work (hint: experiment with an article you actually think is worth linking to; ie not this one)? I’m also trying to get my tags (still experimental for now) to work with Technorati tags. Any other services anyone uses that I might should try to set up?
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Tuesday August 8, 2006
Attention Miami bloggers! After this, I want to have some sort of ability to communicate. If you didn’t get a message from me this morning, e-mail me. This message will self-destruct.
Monday August 7, 2006
Um, no, sorry, the Miami bloggers will NOT be gathering
I got a weird e-mail link to this weird invite yesterday, and I ignored the living shit out of it. This morning, when Christian and Rick have posts about it (and so do probably a bunch of other bloggers I haven’t looked at yet – Fanless is my first stop when he has a new post, and Rick is comprehensive, hence my checking there to see if anyone else noticed it), I dug it out of my inbox trashcan and took another look.
So, yes, hi guys! I agree with Rick: this is a great idea. I also agree with Rick that it’s mainly great at getting your restaurant, vineyard, or whatever it is, some inexpensive publicity. Clever.
But no. You don’t get to throw the big party where all the Miami bloggers finally get together. Too many of us are anti-corporate, some of us are adamantly anonymous, and most of us have an aversion to the 33139 zip code. I have hung out with a few of the Miami bloggers, and I’m sure we’ll have more things where more of us get together. But when it’s organized by some out-of-town corporate interest, I don’t think I’m the only one who’s going to be able to find something more interesting to do.
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Saturday August 5, 2006
Had trouble getting on Critical Miami in July? Here’s why.
Wednesday July 19, 2006
Yes, the site has been down intermittently for the last couple of days. Dreamhost claims that the problems are all cleared up now. Thanks for your patience.
Monday July 17, 2006
Tweaked
First of all, appologies to Internet Explorer users, who have been suffering on and off for weeks with a misbehavin’ left column. Now use that big button on the right to get firefox anyway.
I hate change as much as the next guy, but it was time for that three-column layout to go. Actually, the navbar is going to split into two little columns again, but nevermind for now. What we have, then, is a slight layout change, with a few other little modifications:
- The main column goes to 500 pixels wide from 450. May not sound like much, but it’s going to be great: panoramic vistas you can sink your optical teeth into. (The original design was 450 pixels because Franklin, oldpro, and I used to get into arguments about judging artwork on the basis of a 400 pixel image. Nobody got the joke, and life goes on.) Another benefit of this is that I can bring my flickr images straight over without resizing.
- Google ads are gone. For now. But not really: click the ‘permlink’ for any article, and there they are. And not to fear – they’ll be back on the homepage in no time, too.
- Dates at the top of the whole series of posts for that day. Normally I hate blogs that are this way, but with all the short little posts it was necessary. Hopefully with the pink it’s easy enough to find where you are.
- We have tags popping up. Not sure where that’s going, but there may be a tag cloud in your future. (As of right now, only the last few months worth of articles are tagged.)
- New Rollyo search, which gives you the option to search the Miami blogosphere or just CM.
- and no, it’s not finished. The way Textpattern works,
the only waythe only easy way to make changes like this is on the live installation, so a couple of things are dramatically broken (ie single article view!!), and a lot still needs to be done. Gripes and suggestions accepted in the comments section.
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Saturday July 1, 2006
A midsummer night's navelgaze
We’re halfway through the year, kids! And since there’s so many new folks reading, a mid-year review seemed like something to do. There’s been some “does anyone read my blog?” speculation going on lately, and I’m pleased to say that the answer is ‘yes.’
Whatever. In lieu of congratulations, please send acerbic letters to Republicans (before I start to sound like this guy). Meanwhile, here follows a somewhat absurdly replete ‘best-of’ from the last 6 months (and see Critical Miami year-end chin stroking for a similar treatment of 2005) in forward-chronological order:
January
February
- Piola
- Jim DeFede Topical Currents interview mp3
- South Beach parking guide
- Who’s afraid of buying a house?
- The SoBe library’s gone + buying furniture in Miami
March
April
- What we’ve learned from the University of Miami Janitors’ strike
- Artblogging panel
- A tale of two t-shirts
- Billboard fever
- What is a renewable energy source?
- What’s with Sunguide ads?
- Lucky Oriental Mart
- Right back at ya, SunPost
- YOU get over law
May
- Big Cypress
- The thing about the alligators
- The blogacious hipster politics
- Miami 21 meeting
- Still think it’s an adjustment?
June
- Gables Diner vs. Prezzemolo
- Laptop Battle
- What’s up with ‘A Visit to Cuba’?
- An inconvenient splotch
- Crazy Mercedes photo
- What’s up with the Miami Intermodal Center?
- Alabama Jack’s
As a parting thought, I might point out that my favorite blog of all time hasn’t been updated since November of 2003.
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Thursday June 29, 2006
New Times Broward ran my crazy Mercedes photo.
Monday May 15, 2006
Critical flickr
In another life, I decided to do a photoblog, and had all the wealth and fame that comes with it, all with a minimum effort. Oh, well. In the interest of at least some approximation of that, I’ve begun to upload a few of my snapshots to flickr. Think of it as a more visual, less narrative side of CM. And do whatever else you’re supposed to do on flickr – tag, comment, etc.
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Sunday May 7, 2006
Tweakz
The big state-of-the-art redesign is still pending, but meanwhile, there are some small changes afoot. As always, reader input is appreciated (disregarded: sometimes; ignored: never).
- Comments now have permalinks (a little ”#” next to the date in the list). Not too interesting, but if someone wants to link to a specific comment (as Rick did to this one), it’s now possible.
- Fancied up the “Recent comments” listing. Now it’s more difficult to read, but also more content-rich.
- The “archive by date” operates completely differently now, though the only visible difference is the disappearance of bullets (which needs to be fixed, actually).
- A new about page.
More to come . . .
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Thursday April 27, 2006
Right back at ya, SunPost
Tiffany Rainey’s article on Miami blogging is out in this week’s Sun Post. A pretty great rundown of some of the more prominent local blogs, illustrated by the totally awesome Chris Meesey.
During the art blogging panel, and in a few other conversations I’ve had with journalists, the supposed merging of blogging and journalism comes up often. But the conversations I’ve had with Tiffany, and other journalists, lead me to believe that the opposite is true: what I do looks a little like journalism, but the process is almost the exact opposite. Journalists are usually assigned stories (maybe sometimes they suggest them, but still there is editorial input at every stage), do a whole bunch of research, place phone calls, gather facts, and present a balanced piece that conforms to a previously established format and length. I, on the other hand, write about whatever the hell I feel like, at whatever length I want, and my research, if any, consists of a google search. I could count on one hand the number of phone calls I’ve made to gather information for CM. More then that, though, there is a distinct lack of planning about the whole thing – the average length of time between an idea for a post and the “publication” is maybe an hour. My saving grace is being able to cast a wide net – everything from personal experiences to a long-ass list of RSS feeds (some of which are extremely secret) makes it relatively easy and fun keep finding stuff that’s interesting to me to write about.
Oh, but and so I wanted to talk about the SunPost… I first read the Post a few years ago, when it was sort of shit. It was around the same time CM started that I noticed it getting more fun to flip through, and my first post about it was back in June of last year. Since then much of the Post’s core reporting staff has turned over, and the new team, consisting of Tiffany, Omar Sommereyns, Rebecca Wakefield, and Alfredo Triff (the latter three are all, curiously, New Times transplants), along with a few others, are pushing the rag in a new direction, more community-oriented then the New Times, yet much hipper then ‘straight’ newspapers. The paper has also expanded it’s reach (previously, it was limited to only a few sections of Miami/Dade), and updated its look (some fancy design firm thing).
What’s missing is a modern web site. I’ve railed on about the lack of proper permlinks on numerous past occasions, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg – the Post’s site insists on attempting to duplicate the feel of reading the “real” paper, sacrificing the benefits of the web. And no RSS feed? Give me a break: the Herald has close to 200 different feeds. But whatever; they’ll figure it out, and the SunPost will continue to be an asset to the community.
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Thursday April 13, 2006
Uno
Oh, by the way, today is the first aniversary of this’ere site. I started CM because at the time there was no Miamist, no Metroblogging Miami, and no other Miami based blogs of that sort. Today, there are dozens, and there’s a Miamist and MB-Miami (though they both blow), so technically, there’s no more need for Critical Miami. Nonetheless, though, I see no reason not to keep it up so long as it’s fun.
In honor of the anniversary, some changes are happening. Nothing drastic, but you may notice some things moving around over the next couple of weeks. To get you started, there’s a “one year ago today” feature in the left bar (thanks to Mary on the Textpattern forum for that one). The big thing will be that the Tuesday linkfest will be exploded and scattered throughout the week, ala kottke.org. There may be a slight design overhaul. The archives will be made easier. That sort of thing.
This would be a good time to kick in any suggestions, gripes, pet peeves, or advice you may be harboring. Thanks for reading.
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Friday April 7, 2006
Artblogging panel
The panel was fun. There was a little of an information gap, but overall, my worst fears were not realized. To wit: I wondered, since the five of us are obviously articulate in writing and perfectly fine expressing whatever we need to on the blogs, whether there would be about this forum that would add to that. The answer turned out to be “yes.” And while I’m sure there were moments that were painfully dull for the audience, there was also some good back-and-forth. The library didn’t close promptly at 8 pm as was threatened, and so the conversation was allowed to run its course very naturally. One of the questions that came up afterwards was “so what do we do for part 2”? The answer seems clear to me now: different bloggers!
One of the points I found myself making was how different blogging is from journalism (this was particularly apparent during a great chat I had with Omar Sommereyns and Tiffany Rainey of SunPost at the post-panel chowdown at Parilla): a journalist starts a story with an idea, then goes to gather the facts through phone calls and research, then fits it into the space allocated, and into a fairly well defined “story arc.” As a blogger, my approach is almost the reverse of this – I start with experiences that I’ve had, and things that I’ve done or thought because of my personal interests, then fit them into posts; in a sense, the “idea” for the post comes last. I can write as much or as little as I want, and I can do it whenever I want. So, well, it’ll be interesting to see where this stuff is 10 years from now, when blogs and newspapers have gone through whatever integrating they’ll go through, and the percentage of human beings with blogs has plateaued, and this stuff’s place in society is established and not feared.
Oh right, the panel… Well, KH and Alfredo got into a little back-and-forth with Franklin, but there was too much love for real sparks to fly. Helen Kohen was a great moderator; she approached it with the freshness of an outsider (who, as a journalist, did her research!), and was very good about passing the [proverbial] mic around.
Oh, and so Rebecca Carter liveblogged the first hour of the talk (and summarized much of the rest) at Greener Miami, and I think caught much of the more interesting content (the photo above is also hers). Nice work, Rebecca! Meanwhile, over at this Artblog thread Jack gives his assessment at comment #18 (note to Jack: at the dinner after the panel, someone suggested checking Artblog to see what you’d said about it, so we all saw your comment moments after you posted it, about an hour after the end of the panel).
Update: KH has some reflections here and here.
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