21/06/04
20Daily Check Ritual
Every morning, the first thing I do is click on a tab group called ‘check’.
These are the sites it brings up:
Shortstats
Shaun Inmans Shortstats are what I’ve been looking for a for a long time. It displays just the information I need – in one page. From this I can see that there are still a lot of IE6 users visiting the site (shame on you!), and that there are people still using the pre-beta Safari. Eh?
Anyway. I’m watching you.
Technorati Link Cosmos
Who’s linking to me and what are they saying about me? Call me paranoid, but I like to know these things. Its also an easy way of discovering new blogs.
Camino forums at Mozillazine
While I don’t have time to post as often as I used to, I still dip in every day to see whats going on with Camino – hoping that there is a new unofficial build of Camino 0.9. No other OS X browser (‘cept maybe Firefox of course!) has got such a good discussion forum.
NetDiver
I lose count of how many design portal sites there are, but nobody does it quite like NetDiver. I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here, but the outstanding quailty of design showcased here is nothing short of inspirational. Whenever the creative fridge has just got some mouldy cheese left in it, this is where I stock up on the fresh stuff.
Shiira project homepage
The nightly builds seem to come very regularly, so I always check to see what those crazy Japanese have done this time.
Textpattern forum
This is relatively new addition, but I’ve gained some much from it. There is a really good community here.
3hive.com
I’ve saved the best till last. 3hive has been the musical equivalent to NetDiver for me. The deal is this: every day, links to free mp3 downloads are added. Many bands offer free downloads via their sites, and this is resource to list all these freebies. Its a no-risk opportunity to try out new music, and I’ve discovered the band ‘Low’, who I’ve gone crazy for. It’s also helped me categorise the kind of music I like – Slowcore! (So nice that I’ve now got a name for it)
What sites do you fire up first thing in the morning?
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paul haine said 1660 days ago:
http://sinfest.net/http://www.reallifecomics.com/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/
http://www.dilbert.com/
http://www.pvponline.com/
http://achewood.com/
Then I spread the multitude of blogs throughout my working day :)
Paul Robertson said 1660 days ago:
http://www.theregister.co.ukhttp://www.arstechnica.com
http://www.macsurfer.com
http://www.myapplemenu.com
http://www.thedvdforums.com
Paul D said 1660 days ago:
News:http://www.slashdot.org
http://www.cbc.ca
http://www.mises.org/blog
Creativity:
http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal ;)
http://www.mezzoblue.com
http://www.zeldman.com
http://www.iconfactory.com
http://www.worth1000.com
Fun:
http://www.penny-arcade.com
http://www.homestarrunner.com
http://dilbert.com
Music:
http://www.allofmp3.com
Jeff Clark said 1660 days ago:
First I check my site and make sure it’s still up. Because come on, sometimes you just never know…Then I get some music:
launch.yahoo.com
Then the online RSS reader (http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs) which checks:
www.designbyfire.com
www.hicksdesign.co.uk
www.stacyaustin.net
www.cameronmoll.com
www.slashdot.org
www.google.com/googleblog
www.zeldman.com
www.justwatchthesky.com
a.wholelottanothing.org
Yahoo! News
Then the current student happenings:
you.okstate.edu
The SINAPSE site:
www.sinapse.org
Then I try to find the cajones to click the purchase button (going on two weeks now):
store.apple.com
Da EEEEEmmmaaaaaaaaiiilllllllll:
www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail.html
Jon Hicks said 1660 days ago:
Ah, for me, Strongbad gets checked every Monday, rather than daily…Dan Cederholm said 1660 days ago:
Jon – Just have to chime in regarding Low. What a great band—I’ve been a longtime fan. Such subtle genius. I could go on and on… A band that deserves more attention—and it’s great to see them mentioned here :-)Dan said 1660 days ago:
Uhh…Yeah that ie6 is me sorry. I’m ashamed but at school thats what we got. And my site is an old one from school made in Dream Weaver and I didn’t know about web standards at the time. Actually I put it there not out of shame but as a perfect example of how much wasted bandwidth you get from DW JavaScript. COOK UP YOUR OWN, KIDS!Matthew Kelley said 1660 days ago:
Heh.waferbaby.com
ten23.net
versiontracker.com
macupdate.com
(i’m a software update freak, okay?)
cnn.com
apple.com
and my own, of course.
biggest APPLE said 1660 days ago:
can’t say there are many that I check daily.Blogwise:
forgetfoo.com
collylogic.com
airbag(or airbagindustries.com as it’s now known)
chaoticpattern.com (just recently as he keeps posting little word games+ he’s a good egg)
News:
cnn.com (about every 15 minutes)
BTW – Technorati link cosmos is nice find though it hasn’t picked up what I’ve been writing about you ;)
Jeff said 1660 days ago:
I don’t really check strongbad every day, I was just thinking about what I checked when I was writing and SBE was one of them. I as well am a Monday morning SBE checker, not a freak.Peter Zignego said 1660 days ago:
Blogs:http://www.mezzoblue.com
http://www.zeldman.com
http://www.kottke.com
Design:
http://www.k10k.net
http://www.computerlove.net
http://newstoday.com
http://www.lowopacity.net
Art:
http://www.deviantart.com
Jack said 1660 days ago:
Yes, I check my own site religiously because… well, I’m such a gifted blogger. =oPIt seems everyone here is well-tuned into the web design blogosphere. One of my very favourite sites that’s not already listed by anyone is:
http://girlsarepretty.com
Updated daily with fiction and humour from New York comedian/writer Bob Powers. Give it a try for a few days and you might fall in love.
Chris J. Davis said 1660 days ago:
Hey thanks for pointing out the shortstats magic, it really complements a plugin I wrote for WordPress.Oh and I just now read your question in the move to textpattern entry, and yeah I am the same guy from the Eternal Tedium Boards! Good to see a fellow sojourner from those byegone days.
Jon Hicks said 1660 days ago:
So it is you! Your site seemed to be unavailable for a while, so I wasn’t sure where you’d gone! Nice to see you’re still alive anyway…sil said 1660 days ago:
Bloglines. I’ve got most of the rest of the stuff I read in RSS form in one way or another: the Technorati cosmos for links to kryogenix.org, searches on RSS for my name, for LugRadio and the LugRadio forums, the weblogs I read. The only other thing is my mail, for which (when at work) I use SquirrelMail.Roland Tanglao said 1660 days ago:
I recommend subscribing to a PubSub RSS feed (using the “URI” feature) to know who’s linking ANYWHERE on your site. This will save you lots of time.Technorati is great, but its cosmos thing only works on one URL at a time unlike PubSub which will work on any URL in your site AND give you an RSS feed for free.
I use Technorati for finding out what’s hot.
The cosmos feature in my humble opinion is only good when you have a link to it on each individual post like Tim Bray does.
Ryan Blaind said 1659 days ago:
http://www.kexp.organ amazing radio serving up the latest in alternative.. heres some of the bands they’ve been playing this afternoon … Unkle, Sun Kil Moon, Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter, Broken Social Scene, The Beta Band, Modest Mouse, Pedro The Lion, Death Cab For Cutie, etc, you get the deal, anyways click it and check out, and become a loyal listener!
Jon Hicks said 1659 days ago:
Roland, I just use my home url in Technorati, and that seems to include all links to the site.Ryan – thanks for the tip-off, I’ll check that out.
indieb0i said 1651 days ago:
I’m just happy to see other people get into such a fantastic band as Low. They truly are brilliant – you must get the album Things we lost in the fire – so amazing. On the more obscure side you should look for their cover of Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” – words fail to describe. (If you can’t find it, just drop me a note ;) )Jon Hicks said 1651 days ago:
Thanks – yeah I’m pretty crazy for Low. They’re just my bag!