September 2007 Archives (all archives)
September 30
Greta Simone is home!
Wasting Away
On the green people sometimes refer to 'wasting a question'. Am I missing something here ? [more inside]
16: $40 Bridge to PEI
Show #16 of the podcast recaps from the last three weeks of MeFi and Ask MeFi. It was recorded on September 27, 2007 and runs about an hour long. [more inside]
N-Y-C-U-There
September 29
Shoreline Meetup (Gilbano Grinders all around)
Shoreline, Washington meetup! [more inside]
Playlist pony
Last.fm pony please: I'd like to embed the "Recently Listened" (or similar) chart into my profile, much like the flickr photo scroll.
(Alternately, if someone knows how to do that now, I'd appreciate it). [more inside]
Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta
Are any mefites coming to this year's Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, Oct 5th through 14th? [more inside]
Are any MeFites going to Iceland Airwaves?
NYC Meetup: Astoria.
It's MetaFilter time!
Thank you, MetaFilter, for being the fastest site to load over a dial-up internet connection. [more inside]
SF meetup?
Anyone up for a San Francisco or East Bay meet-up? [more inside]
Labels
Why is the term "USian" used on MeFi in place of "American" so often?
September 28
All hail DaShiv.
NY Times: "DaShiv is a star, an internationally famous portrait photographer". The article also mentions ThePinkSuperhero and some guy named Matthew Haughey.
"All-Stars of the Clever Riposte"
MeFi's own " All-Stars of the Clever Riposte"
aww. come on.
Not Exactly a Meetup
Is anyone planning on hitting the Adams Ave Street Fair this weekend? (San Diego, Normal Heights)
Commuter paper Metafilter shoutout
Metafilter's work on this "Mad Men" AskMe has not gone unnoticed. Across Canada, commuters are asking "what's a metafilter?" [more inside]
September 27
Prenez soin de l'anonyme
In light of this art project, UbuRoivas went to 59,469 Mefites, chosen for their intarnerdiness, to analyze, translate, or reinterpret a selected anonymous AskMe. The resulting collection of responses filled the grey place at MetaFilter with beauty, music, snark & mirth. [more inside]
PICTURES ASTORIA NEW YORK MEETUP THAI FOOD
Metafilter: Amusing lists outside of google's power
I was thinking it would be good to see a complete list of all those "Metafilter: eating babies and porking hamsters" things that crop up from time to time constantly, but my google-fu i dont know how to so i hereby throw myself on the mercy of the court
Metafilter documentary
I had spoken with Matt about a month ago about the idea of doing a Metafilter documentary in time for the tenth anniversary. I'd still like to do it but am looking for help. [more inside]
Topic-specific filter sites
FilteredFilters? How would the community view a site that catalogued posts from MeFi on a specific subject? [more inside]
Muster Up for Halo 3, MeFites!
Attention Halo-ites: Please update the wiki with your GamerTag. I tire of being clubbed to death by mouth-breathing 12 year olds. [more inside]
September 26
Suspicious minds
Maybe I'm being paranoid... [more inside]
clarifying mystery links
Occasionally links without any real description are posted to the front page. It would be nice if any user could add a short description that would appear when you moused over the link, so users don't have to click on eight different links to find out what a post is about. [more inside]
Follow-up to "Single Forever?"
I want to do a follow-up to the anonymous post What do you do with your life if you never get married? and confess to being....The Anonymous. [more inside]
Ravelry?
September 25
Google search instead of built-in search
How do I get Google search instead of built-in search on Ask MeFi? [more inside]
Boston Meetup, Friday 5th October
Boston meetup! Myself and wimpdork happen (independently!) to be visiting the area at the same time, so how about a meetup on Friday 5th October? [more inside]
Fight iPhone Lag, disable comment autopreview
iPhone-y pony please: a way to supress the automatic inline comment preview to mitigate typing lag. [more inside]
Favorite counting bug?
I think there may be a bug in the "# favorites" accounting code. [more inside]
Link to metatalk
Feature suggestion: If a thread or comment is referenced in MetaTalk thread, display a little indicator on the referenced thread/comment and have it link to the MetaTalk discussion.
book me
Could Shelfari be added as a social networking selection?
I'm not printing it, I'm reading it.
Please don't link just to the print format version of long articles. [more inside]
Two requests: sorting threads and social linking!
Two requests: sort threads by number-of-favorites, and a bit of social linking in profiles. [more inside]
Tracking tehloki faves.
Is there anyway to determine the number of times tehloki has favourited me? [more inside]
September 24
Virginia Beach Meetup
Anyone interested in an informal Virginia Beach meetup this Friday, Sept 28th? [more inside]
Fighting words make for a heck of a derail.
Will the blatent and offensive derail at the end of this thread be allowed to continue? [more inside]
How close is "close"?
This thread was deleted for being a link to the poster's friend's site. The FAQ includes material produced by "close friends" in the self-link category. Does this mean we can't post anything made by people we know? [more inside]
LOLTAGS are not useful
Could we add the ability to flag posts as "these tags are dumb, please would somebody with a brain come and fix them?" [more inside]
I'm sure people would like to delete him in real life.
September 23
Better Google searching for MeFi?
Has Google changed/improved the way it indexes Metafilter? When looking up answers for some recent AskMe questions, I've been surprised to see the questions themselves show up in Google's search results. [more inside]
Three cheers for AskMe
What’s the best question you’ve heard on AskMe? [more inside]
September 22
NY Meetup: Ithaca
Traverse City, MI: Meetup
Are there enough mefites for a Traverse City, MI meetup? I am in town until October 11 and am curious to know if there are others in the area. Anyone? Anyone?
NYC Meetup: Revival, Manhattan.
September 21
Giant stone statues shrink Recent Activity
When this post shows up in Recent Activity, the long small-text quote gets truncated, the <small> tag is never closed, and the rest of Recent Activity is rendered small.
No. 18 Matthew Haughey
NxE’s Fifty Most Influential Bloggers (whoever NxE is). Anyway, Matt made no. 18. [more inside]
Jenny Diski wastes acres of time online!
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
September 20
Thank you for the books
I just want to thank the MeFites who faithfully answer all the book questions that get asked here, like this one.
And very special thanks for those who include an Amazon link. I know not everyone supports them, but I don't usually buy from Amazon; I export my wishlist to a spreadsheet via Librarything, and take it whenever I go used bookshopping. Thus, I've had many, many hours of great reading thanks to AskMeFi. Having good books to read means a lot to me, and I just wanted to thank you all. [more inside]
Wide-body preview plea
Feature request: Is there any way to make the preview box almost as wide as the real comments are? [more inside]
Embedding YouTube in [more inside]
Bug/Feature Expansion Request: YouTube links in MetaFilter's [more inside] don't display the optional embed icon. [more inside]
RSS vs. Page formatting
Why does this question lose all formatting even though it is formatted in my RSS reader? Doesn't appear to have happened to other questions nearby.
Chelsea headhunter.
What makes this a good FPP?
September 19
Take your protein pills & put your diapers on
Update on this thread - defence calls in spin doctor in an attempt to humanise nappy-wearing astronaut.
What the world need now is crap, more crap?
ok, flag it as crap we know you want to. But do we both need you flagging it as crap and then posting a crap "flagged as crap" message in the allegedly crappy thread? Comment should be flagged as masturbatory noise.
Cavemen demand fair treatment!
How do I "up vote" an AskMe response?
Feature suggestion: some way to flag an AskMe response as "good" if you are not the OP. [more inside]
The Grey Lady on The Blue
The Grey Lady on The Blue
Now the The New York Times subscriber wall has come tumbling down, I though it might be interesting to see what she's had to say about us over the years. [more inside]
September 18
Ottawa meetup?
Invite Me!
Is asking for invites to private/beta sites an inappropriate use of AskMe? [more inside]
Uninvited questions
Why are "do you have an invite to [web 2.0 site]?" questions allowed in AskMe? example 1, 2 [more inside]
I'm demanding this because it's clearly very important!
Pony request: being able to favorite comments from the Recent Activity page? [more inside]
September 17
Word Clouds: proportional summaries of user comment histories and thread contents.
New toy: Word Clouds, a script that creates a proportionally-sized list of user- or thread-specific words used relatively frequently compared to the (approximate) mefi average. [more inside]
Chicago meetup
Time for another Chicago meetup? [more inside]
dextrose
It's not ok to be fat. Yet, if anyone gets anywhere near this medical, social, and genetic consensus, people go apeshit and like magic, the comment is deleted. It just doesn't seem right to me.
Belittling me only dwarfs my concerns.
Since Metafilter seems to be a self-policing paragon of sensitivity with regard to body type issues, I am genuinely curious as to why cracking jokes about those who are, say, modest in stature, is totally wink-wink "I'm just giving you shit" fine? [more inside]
Meetup in Hamburg, Germany?
Are there enough Mefites in or around Hamburg, Germany to have a meetup? [more inside]
September 16
Mefites at FlashForward 2007?
Any mefites going to be at FlashForward next week? If so, I hear they have beer in Boston. We should drink it.
Is this chatfilter?
Why is this question not chatfilter? I re-read the FAQ and the question seems to be the definition of chatty and open-ended. [more inside]
VIFF Meetup?
Schadenfreude by proxy?
What are the limits to absolute hilarity when "in bad taste" comes into play before posting something to the blue? I ask because I'm itching to share this video with everyone. It's wholly repugnant, but ridiculously high on the Unintentional Comedy Scale. [more inside]
Mathowie in London
I'm gonna be in London from Oct 1-6th. If there's a meetup that week, I'll be there. - Mathowie
Can we firm up the plans? [more inside]
Need help finding poignant AskMe answer regarding the road to lawyerdom
Trying to find what I think was an AskMe (or possibly MeFi) comment from a while back, wherein the commenter outlines the fictional life story of someone whose aim is to make a lot of money so they can be happy, but ends up missing the mark along the way and turns into someone rather unhappy (but with the money). [more inside]
Hubcap Diamond Star Halo
Notes on the 30th anniversary of the death of Marc Bolan.... [more inside]
September 14
South Florida Meetup
South Florida Meetup - Mid October 2007 - Post your date/place preferences below... [more inside]
de-bugs?
does anybody else see this? (Firefox/2.0.0.6 (Ubuntu-feisty))
*cue spooky music*
September 13
Not cool.
I didn't request my password?
I got a "Your MetaFilter password request" e-mail but I didn't request my password? [more inside]
Open Letter to the Mods
Thank you, Matt, Jessamyn, PB and Cortex. I don't idolize you. I don't always agree with you. Sometimes your decisions confuse me. Sometimes they anger me. Sometimes your ban hammer needs fine-tuning. More often than not, you are spot on. But no matter what, every little thing every one of you does is analyzed to the nth degree, and I wouldn't want your job. So, thank you for doing the dirty work so I can come in here and obsessively reload every day.
Halifax NS meetup?
Halifax NS meetup next week? [more inside]
October Philly Meetup?
Would anybody be interested in a meetup in Philadelphia for mid-late October? [more inside]
Ten days on #mefi
We used PieSpy to visualize the social structure of #mefi. Here's an animation of the last ten days.
Older and Newer links
Can the “
« Older
” and “Newer »
” links at the bottom of post pages use the post titles of the adjacent posts rather than the first few words truncated with an ellipsis?dashiv in new york welcome party
I heard that DaShiv is coming to NYC from September 17 through the 27th. NYC already has his goodbye meetup on the 26th planned. When and where is the big HI DASHIV! meetup?
Great work, spiderwire.
I just wanted to take a moment to thank spiderwire for his fantastic contributions to this thread. [more inside]
September 12
Upstate NY Meetup?
Upstate NY meetup, take two, anyone?
I'm thinking a) Ithaca, and b) before winter gets here.
JavaScript Error Drama
favorites.js refers to document.getElementById("fav") which is null. This will lead to error pop-ups on every page for some users. If this is not immediately fixed I will resign my membership in protest.
Country/Region/Location tags?
If there were a way to signal what locality ask.mefi posts pertained to, would that be a useful piece of data to know? [more inside]
Help me find an old post
Can anyone help me find a post that I'm sure I saw (and perhaps I even posted myself) here on Metafilter a while back with a commercial done by a regional county sherrif's office encouraging the viewer to narc on their significant others? [more inside]
Overmoderation.
Hi there, mods. Yes, you. Mathowie, jessamyn and cortex. Please stop closing MeTa threads so early and so often. I think you're forgetting the "community" part. [more inside]
September 11
TuringFilter
I would like to mark this day as one in which something profound happened on MetaFilter. [more inside]
Any chance of explaining this: "This post was deleted for the following reason: clearly my filter for these isn't working properly. But wait, Hitchens AND Dawkins you say...? * taps pager * Damn this thing is broken. -- jessamyn"
Wait.. a longtime user criticises the deletion of a post about one intellectual's review of another intellectual's book - a deletion with obscure sarcastic reason "clearly my filter for these isn't working properly. But wait, Hitchens AND Dawkins you say...? * taps pager * Damn this thing is broken. -- jessamyn" ... then you close the Meta thread? [more inside]
so long
In reaction to jessamyn's apparently arbitrary deletion of the Dawkins/Hitchens fpp, I am hereby retiring this account. [more inside]
MarkovFilter: Lemme see if any American supermarkets have taken in this stuff to decorate my dorm room.
How many flags do I have?
Can we find out how many flags our posts get? [more inside]
September 10
Bob's Your Uncle
AskMe Follo Up
Goodbye, DaShiv
He's not even here in NYC yet, and we're already planning his gooodbye party- come to DaShiv's Goodbye Dinner on September 26th. [more inside]
Hysterical Bligh
Is there a shrink in the house? I'm just curious what your diagnosis would be for this: (1, 2). Does somebody need a time out? [more inside]
15: Call-ins and recaps
Show #15 of the podcast includes call-in questions from a handful of members and recaps from the last two weeks of MeFi and Ask MeFi. It was recorded on August 30, 2007 and runs about 50 minutes long. [more inside]
SLO Meetup?
San Luis Obispo, CA Meetup in late September? [more inside]
Prank War 6
UpdateFilter: So, you thought Prank War was hilarious? Lame? Either way, it's tough to imagine topping pranking (/ruining the life of) your friend in front of a sold-out Yankee Stadium.
EJ in NYC
Yes, another NYC meetup. [more inside]
congratulations, pb!
pb, MetaFilter fixer-upper and generally awesome dude, welcomed a new addition to his family. congratulations! [more inside]
[more than you wanted to know inside]
September 9
item for your attention
Is there a shrink in the house? I'm just curious what your diagnosis would be for this: (1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Does somebody need a time out?
NY hearts plep
The enigmatic plep, originator of many remarkably fine FPPs, now resides in NYC for an indefinite length of time, on unspecified business. This calls for a meet-up, if only to pin him down as to location, and how much he's paying for rent.
Metafilter Walking Challenge
What happened to the walking challenge? [more inside]
Coming out of the MetaCloset
MeFi Meetup Q: have you ever run into someone you know? How do you deal with someone reconciling your online and offline persona? [more inside]
Clicking links ≠ open new?
Clicking links ≠ open in new tab/window? [more inside]
Hello, Radios!
I'll be doing a short, on-air, phoned in interview with Ronald Jenkees of youtube fame this Wednesday starting at 3pm (eastern standard time). You can listen to it live here. There will be a recording on that site shortly thereafter. If there are any questions the MeFi crowd would like me to ask, post them.
keeping with the subject of things
September 8
Markovfilter
Cortex restarted genefilter. It's in beta but still good. Forgive me if this has already been mentioned.
coney island meetup pictures .: us > you.
Pictures from the world famous Coney Island Meetup.
Improperly formed MetaTalk RSS.
MetaTalk RSS doesn't validate, isn't properly formed XML--due to unquoted special characters. This seems to be getting irritatingly common, is something missing out of the auto-quote list, or could we have auto-quote for the RSS beefed up in general? AskMe never seems to have problems, just MetaTalk almost every week or so.
Would anyone care to join me in the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk?
Is this the end ?
It's been 19 hours and no posts to the front page today - have we reached the end of the internet ? [more inside]
Glitch
Has anyone else had this problem with Internet Explorer while logging onto Metafilter? [more inside]
XK Cee you Dere
Scary...
Can I just say this question rocked me to sleep. But it also made me think about what I would do in this situation
September 7
A pony called "Thesaurus"
glbt (6) / lgbt (2); color (98) / colour (30); theatre (72) / theater (78). Previously. [more inside]
Mefi frontpage is blank in Opera 9.23
I'm using Opera (9.23, Windows NT 5.1; U; sv) and all I see at the Metafilter frontpage is nothing at all (image). Mefi works fine in IE. Whatever has caused this, it must have happened during the past 12 hours.
Lawrence MeFites, let's meet up.
Lawrence MeFites, let's meet up. [more inside]
Question about deals: Bad deletion
How was the AskMe about "your favorite frugalities" chatfilter? Seemed like a legitimate question to me with some decent, interesting answers. Bad deletion.
September 6
Stood up at the meetup?
What happened, Tucson? [more inside]
no fans my ass
Allow me to nerd out briefly on behalf of one of our own. Say, Mr. William "I invented cyberspace" Gibson, what were you listening to while writing your new bestseller Spook Country?
Why, I was listening to Brad Sucks, nanojath! (see Sept. 1 entry) [more inside]
More inside picky?
I just posted in a thread on the blue and the more inside wasn't visible in preview. I'm on Safari. Anyone else seeing this?
Podcast call-in
We're podcasting tomorrow and would love to get some questions beforehand. As always, call Call +1 (503) 487-0014 and leave a message. We'll play back the good ones on the show and answer them.
First we take Manhattan
Hello fellow MeFites. cortex called my music ass-bumping orwello-euro electropop (still one of my favorite reviews ever). You may have heard a bit of it on MeFiComp. And now (somewhat to my surprise) I will be performing it live this Saturday night at The Knitting Factory (NYC).
More Inside? You bet.
More inside everywhere! [more inside]
ZBS Podcasts Update
Update: back in this post on the podcast version of the radio series Moon Over Morocco a few people expressed disappointment that ZBS wasn't giving away the earlier and better known series The Fourth Tower of Inverness. Well, now they are.
Is calling a poster a cheap jerk appropriate for the green?
This guy is getting an awful lot of insulting and unhelpful responses, most calling him petty, a jerk, and cheap (based upon the supposed cost of his wedding and inferred wealth). Appropriate?
It just seems wrong somehow.
Great thread and everything, but shouldn't we be a bit concerned that the post itself is just the first two paragraphs (even the same links) of the main atlantic article, without even attribution? Seems a bit off to my delicate sensibilities.
September 5
music challenge topic
Can't seem to find this month's music challenge topic. Is there one?
wendell!
What's this whole "wendell!" thing about? Why do mefites shout out wendell in the middle of threads?
It's Jessamyn's birthday. Greet her.
Happy birthday to the lifeguard of our hearts.
September 4
xkcd's internet map tool implemented. Can we have?
Someone went and implemented xkcd's internet map - it generates pictures like this.
Matt, would you be willing to dump a couple days worth of access_log IPs into this tool?
please don't kill the thread while i'm replying
i imagine that kelvin-helmholtz is so long because there's some kind of balance related to radiation pressure (vaguely vaguely like eddington limit?) but i may be way off - never thought about it before. if it is radiative pressure (or anything related to being hot) that holds things up that means that you'll still get an initial collapse and ignition. so i think initial "inner" thermal equilibrium will be much faster, but final steady state could take a long time.
and why on earth (or sun) is this chatfilter? delete the stupid answers, not the question. i realise it's not one of your valued "what stupid piece of crap for my kitchen should i waste money on today because i can't cook for shit but boy i know how to use my credit card like a pro?" questions, but it still has a valid answer.
September 3
Get to Know Your Fellow MeFites.
We have a fandom post feature now, which of course is excellent. Now how about a random user feature? It could be called 'Get to Know A MeFite' or something like that. I think there are a lot of interesting user profile pages which many people have not and may not ever see, which is a shame, and this would be a potential way to highlight some of them. As an added bonus, this feature could lead to more Metafilter meet-ups as people stumble upon other users who they may not have known lived so close by. It could also lead people to explore their randomly chosen MeFite's posting history which may, in turn, lead many to discover several excellent (and awful) posts, questions and MeTa screeds which they may never have come across before.
34 Mefites think Mach3avelli is an asshat.
What do you guys think about instituting "personality points" towards users? You know, something along the lines of: 15 members think user x talks out of his ass too much. 6 members think user y suffers from a holier than thou complex. 24 members have been helped by user z. etc. Really, it's all about helping create context, especially for new and less frequent users. I would love an option where I could scroll my mouse over a name when I read advice in an AskMe thread and see something like, "173 users recommend against this user's advice." It could be all spelled out in a user's profile next to the "this user links to" category.
Steep and Deep: Mefi Whistler Summit 2007
Now that Labor Day is here, and Summer is on the way out. I thought it might be an auspicious time to discuss the Whistler Mefi ski trip proposed in this thread. The tentative date is for the weekend of December 15-16.
Back-Taggers, Back to Work!
The back-tagging team seems to have languished in their zeal to backtag all old Metafilter and AskMetafilter posts (I know I have fallen behind). I think we should set a goal end-date for ourselves, and really push ourselves to get it all done. Details inside.
Metafilter Wiki: New and Improved!
After prolonged badgering and complaints from certain individuals (you know who you are!), I've finally upgraded the Metafilter Wiki to MediaWiki [more inside]
Does the Mefi Navigator Greasemonkey script work in Opera?
Does the Mefi Navigator Greasemonkey script work in Opera? I followed the instructions on this page and put the script (with the original name) in my userjs folder, but nothing happens. I checked that the correct userjs folder is specified in my site preferences. Does it work for anybody else?
I guess I could google-cache the page for "Jessamyn"...
MeTa-pony-request: Can we highlight the mods' responses in MeTa threads? [MI]
Meetup Eire?
Given the fantastic quality of responses I got on AskMe recently, how about a Dublin Meetup?
September 2
Please help me name my mix CD about kittens.
The AskMe guidelines make a simple-sounding request: 'Please avoid "help me name my kitten/computer/website" and "help me make a mix CD" questions.' But these kinds of questions are posted fairly frequently, and seldom seem to be deleted. How many of these kinds of questions are posted, and what proportion of those are removed? If the guideline isn't being enforced because people love the name-my-whatever questions, maybe it would be better to just get rid of the guideline. Alternately, if the guideline is to remain, maybe it would be better to make it more prominent, and/or to delete a larger proportion of the questions which break it.
Copyright discussion
jessamyn has invited us to have a discussion about copyright issues in MetaTalk. So here it is.
September 1
Could we get rid of the bunny craps in posts?
I'm not going to make any callouts, but could short comments like "that was ghey" or "boring" be deleted as policy? They seem way too... youtubey. I wouldn't want to see an end to criticism or snark, but grunts of dissent tend to damage my perception of the Metafilter brand.
Kaytrem says googlebomb!
What the hell kaytrem?
MetaFilter in looooove
Ain't we a whole bunch of sweet romantics, eh?