liberal provocateur’s Neighbors

Mommy Bloggers Hit the Road

nobody@vox.com(Team Vox) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:38:06 -0700

Although we typically post on Team Vox to let you know about things that are going on with Vox (to, uh, state the obvious), once in a while, we like to let you know about other cool things that are happening around the blogosphere. And we think the idea of four hilarious mommy bloggers traveling across the U.S. on their way to the BlogHer '08 conference - all the while blogging and video blogging the journey - is one trip you will not want to miss.

Four adventurous bloggers from the Silicon Valley Moms Group were selected to participate in the Summer Road Trip '08 and blog about their travels, hotel stays, media appearances, time away from their families, and life on the road. Six Apart helped them partner up with General Motors, who provided the blogging mommies with a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid SUV to help make their journey comfy, safe, and a little more green.

In case you're not familiar with them, SV Moms is a group of over 200 bloggers who showcase the ups, downs, outrages, struggles, victories, and everyday humor of motherhood. There are currently nine regional and demographically tailored sites that give mothers from D.C., New Jersey, the Deep South, Rocky Mountains, L.A., and Silicon Valley a powerful voice and sense of camaraderie across the country. Whether you're a mother, a child, or just a person who enjoys a good blog, you'll really love reading the words of these amazing women.

Packed and Ready!

The moms buckled into their Chevy Tahoe Hybrid SUV on July 11th and even got an encouraging message from Katie Couric to kick things off! They are currently somewhere in the middle of America making their way to San Francisco where they'll attend an SV Moms Group Party, as well as BlogHer '08.

You do not want to miss these entertaining and irreverent bloggers -- or their spontaneous contest giveaways! -- as they blog from the road. Experience the journey at MomRoadTrip.com.

And let us know about your summer road trip - or plane/boat/bus trip - in the comments! (I like to live vicariously.)

~daisy

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90s Music Monday

nobody@vox.com(Simon Wistow) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:25:22 -0700

So, in order to scratch the itch I dug through the giant pile o' stuff and dug out the Nightmares on Wax album. And lo, it's as chilled as my feverish brain remembered. Bizarrely I also dug out a copy of Paula Abdul's "Forever my Girl", a second copy of the Sneaker Pimp's seminal "Becoming X" and an unopened, still shrink wrapped copy of "Miss Kittin and the Hacker".

Oh, and the CD with the best. case. EVAR

Album

So, in celebration and keeping in the downbeat tone of this cold, grey, San Francisco morning

Nightmares On Wax - Les Nuits

a resampling of Quincy Jone's "Summer In The City" it is, to completely rip off someone elsewhere on the web,

"a cinematic stab at trip-hop with a mix of retro soul strings, canons, and live instrumentation (bass, keys, guitar, organs, and vocals [by Sara Winton] are live). You can almost see the warm bodies, smell the smoke rising, and feel the listless sensuality in this song. It feels epic in scope yet tight as a clenched fist."

which just about sums it up.

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The things you own end up owning you

nobody@vox.com(Simon Wistow) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:12:00 -0700

Almost a year ago I packed my wordly belongings up into a motley collection of cardboard boxes and stashed them in a storage locker in North London waiting to get shipped to the US.

Now, after various trials, tribulations, diversions and disasters too copious and distressing to enumerate ... I finally have it back and, fingers crossed, the only thing that appears to be broken is a Le Creuset roasting tin.

Everything I own in the whole wide world

How do I feel? Bit of an anti-climax really. I've managed to live without the stuff for a year so clearly it can't be that important. I missed some of my books and my DVDs and my CDs - sometimes because I wanted to lend them to someone but sometimes because I had a sudden hankering for something I know I own. You have no idea how much I've been jonesing for the Nightmares on Wax "Dj Kicks" album in a completely weird way.

I've missed my carefully accumulated collection of cooking stuff and all my recipe books (up to 76 now I think). I've missed some of my games consoles (although not as much as I thought). And my camping and climbing gear's going to get used a fair bit now that it's here.

But I've also enjoyed the zen feeling of a nearly empty room and being one bag away from being to able move everything.

I suppose a first step is to triage each box as I unpack it and start seriously thinking about getting rid of some of it. Second step will be to rip the CDs and DVDs and then pack them neatly out the way.

I do love books though - the tactility and the smell. It's just that I've got so many of them.

Hmm, we shall see.

That said, now that I have my didgeridoo back I can forsee a spot of daytime neighbour bothering coming on.

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Vox Meetup This Saturday: Cincinnati, Ohio

nobody@vox.com(Team Vox) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:12:24 -0700

Cincinnati, Ohio Vox Meetup

Do you live in or around Cincinnati, Ohio? If so, you're in luck because Scott and the Queen City Voxers Group have organized a Vox user meetup!

WHEN: This Saturday, July 12th

WHERE: Ault Park Playground. 3600 Observatory Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45208. "We'll look for each other at the playground marked by the red X below. If it's raining, head for the shelter to the north of the [red] X."

Ault Park Map

EATS: Bring your own picnic and, if you're so inclined, bring something yummy to share with the other Voxers.

To RSVP (which is not essential, but is appreciated), reply to Scott's announcement or send him a private message. All Voxers, as well as their friends and family, are welcome to attend.

If you do attend the meetup, have a great time and please take lots of pictures and send them to me so I can post them in Team Vox for everyone to see!

Thank you so much to Scott for organizing this meetup. Wish I could be there!

~daisy

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The Sayings of Chairman Owen

nobody@vox.com(newt) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:35:29 -0700

"Spiderman killed all the dinosaurs because they were too stompy"
"Spiderman has a manager, he tells him what to wear"

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90s Music Monday

nobody@vox.com(Simon Wistow) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:24:16 -0700

I started working 10 years ago today. Or, at least, this Monday of the month 10 years ago.

It all started with a football match and probably some beer and ended up with me and a friend named Gareth walking up Liverpool Road to an interview at something called a "new media" company. Which sounded terribly Wired.

This was back when Wired was still very, very cool. Especially if, like me, you were arse deep in a course at Imperial College - the UK equivalent of MIT but with, if it's possible, even fewer women. Staring down the barrel of a job in investment banking, IT consulting or something in the vague but yet horrific-on-a-Lovecraftian-scale world of Java B2B I was rapidly starting to fear that the jig was up and that I was sometime soon I was going to be exposed as a consumate slacker.

Walking in front of us was quite possibly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen - poised, ethereal and, I swear to god, glowing. I was completely smitten.

She turned out to be Fiona Brice and she was the office manager for the rather generically named New Media Com.

Remember that all interviews I had up until this point were in typical corporate offices - bad carpet, ceiling tiles, harsh overhead lights and cubicles as far as the eye could see - stuffed with stressed looking people in bad suits.

Therefore the New Media Com offices came as a bit of a shock.

The floor was polished hard wood and all the light came from a floor to ceiling patio windows with organicly shaped window panes. Since then it's been turned into a rather hip dance studio

Liverpool Road office

And the people! Young. Good looking. Not a single one of them wearing a Iron Maiden tshirt over old school trousers, their pasty white faces framed by oversized glasses and lank, greasy hair. Oh how I longed to be like them!

And the detail I remember most was that it was the first time I heard "Teardrop"

Massive Attack - Teardrop

Again, remember every other place I'd interviewed until then (one of which had made it very clear to me that even listenting to music via headphones was banned) and then imagine being in this amazing space with the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen (and who was offering us coffee like we were actual real people rather than rather dodgy chancers on the blag), hip young people with an air of quiet confidence and this achingly, achingly beautiful song.

Rather suprisingly they hired the both of us as employees number 9 and 10. It soon transpired that they were blagging it as much as we were. No-one new anything about new-media back in 1998 - you made it up as you went along and if it worked then you pretended that you'd known it would all along and if it failed you came up with an excuse on the fly and lied until you almost believed it yourself.

During the boom I hired everyone I knew and Profero, as it was soon renamed (the name being chosen, literally, by thumbing through my old Latin GCSE dictionary until we found a word we liked) started doing much actual, real, important campaigns such as Sky Digital and CNN. I tried my hand at everything - there's an old joke that goes "Can you play the piano?", "I don't know, I've never tried" and I was 20 years old and some combination of fear of being found out and youthful arrogance meant that I'd give anything a go - build a website for Miss World including a voting script in a weekend? No problem - the team came in on Monday morning to find me asleep on my keyboard. Client wants a promotional screen saver? Of course. I've never written one before but how hard can it be?

I worked there for over 2 years, juggling college work and usually 3 days in the office a week. Profero survived the bust that afflicted many of the bigger, trendier agencies out there and now has 12 offices from London to Madrid to Sydney, Singapore, Shanghai and, as of this year, New York. The last friend I hired (who came in to do 2 days of HTML work 9 years ago and forgot to leave) finally quit - albeit to work for one of the original 9 employees. Gareth's doing clever things with television in Australia and I'm here in San Francisco with a CV that once caused someone to remark that it reminded them that "... career was a verb as well as a noun".

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And today's thought is...

nobody@vox.com(newt) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:26:39 -0700

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them. -Patrick Henry, revolutionary (1736-1799)

That's one of the reasons that I read A.Word.A.Day (wordsmith)

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The Nozzle

nobody@vox.com(Simon Wistow) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 11:29:14 -0700

The Nozzle

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Take Your Dog to Work Day

nobody@vox.com(Team Vox) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:25:07 -0700

Although almost every day at Six Apart is Take Your Dog to Work Day, Friday was extra special because it was the official Take Your Dog to Work Day! Plus, as lovers of blogs and animals, we think it's great that active blogger and Human Society's President and CEO, Wayne Pacelle, thinks having dogs around the office is a good reminder of "who we're working for."

We realize some people have it ruff and aren't lucky enough to be able to bring their dog to work, but hopefully these pictures taken at Six Apart last Friday will get your tails wagging... And let me tell you, it's harder than it looks to get all the doggies and their fetching owners in one picture.

(L to R) Ben and Maddy, Staci and Jax, Sergeja and Sushi, Steve and Rudy:

6adogs

And Penelope Trott took Rudy for a quick spin in her wagon while Mom and Dad were hard at work

Penelope and Rudy

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Crimes against humanity

nobody@vox.com(Simon Wistow) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:50:48 -0700

This not improving my mood

Celine Dion-You Shook Me All Night Long

We must burn all copies of this before it infects others.

OH GOD, it's spreading. We're too late! Oh the humanity!

Shania Twain - You Shook Me All Night Long

I honestly cannot decide which of these is worse - all involved must be killed. It is a moral imperative.

via Billy and this BBC News article about the worst cover songs ever.

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