Category: Blogging

My buddy Brad has started a weblog. Check out Rumours of Glory, named after a great Bruce Cockburn song. Though he’s not technically a Toronto blogger (he lives about an hour and a half northwest, in the lovely municipality of Kitchener-Waterloo), he is in the “Greater Toronto Area”, so look for him in the sidebar under GTABloggers.

Well, I’ve been putting this off for some time now, but I figured it’s finally time to let the cat out of the bag.

Back in April, I began a new weblog. It’s called Runner-Up. As you’ll notice, it’s a collection of stories, mostly sports-related, about “non-winners”. I’ve often found that the most interesting stories never get heard in our “winner-take-all” culture. I was particularly inspired by the Olympics, that now oft-maligned celebration of sport and idealism that comes around every few years.

But it’s not only in sport that we find these interesting people and experiences. They’re all around us. From the start, I envisioned Runner-Up as a group blog, with contributions from the worlds of sports, the arts, politics, wherever. I’ve held off publicizing it until now mostly because I’m too lazy and/or unskilled to design the sort of attractive templates that I feel the site needs. So, I’m making an appeal, for two kinds of help:

1. Most urgently, if you’re a web designer comfortable with Movable Type, I’d love to see some gorgeous standards-compliant web templates that would fit the overall theme and spirit of the site. The tagline (“Where 2nds Count”) will probably stay.
2. I’m also looking for more long-term help, with contributing writers for the site. You need not contribute often, but if you think you can contribute a story that is in the spirit of the site, please get in touch. I’d especially like some non-sports-related stories that would fit the themes of the site.

And this is it. Neat.

I think it’s downright hilarious, and oddly touching in a geeky way that after the blogging “explosion”, two blogging “personalities” can still be awed by meeting each other in person.

Recently, in San Francisco, Matt Haughey and Heather Armstrong met for the first time. Though both have been blogging for years and surely must have become jaded with their modest celebrity, each gushed without shame:

mathowie: “[OMFG] IT’S THE DOOCE.”

dooce: “We could barely breathe through gasps of air, and I caught myself bowing and kneeling on the ground beneath him, Oh God of The Internet and the Web and the Thing. I so badly wanted for him to reach out and place his hands on my unworthy head and cleanse me of all the sins I have committed against the Internet.”

Perhaps the most touching example of blogger admiration occurred a few weekends ago, when two web superstars I’m glad to call friends committed their lives to each other. Congratulations and Mazel Tov, Heather and Derek!

After another comment spam barrage (1,800 this morning!!), I think it’s time to do the upgrade to Movable Type 3.0. I’m a little apprehensive, but I really don’t have several hours to spend deleting this crap every time. Has anyone got any experience with MT3 yet? Will it kill this comment spam problem?