What Were The 90's All About?: Behind The Music

I'm having a hard time bringing the 90's album series to a close, although 1999 is just around the corner. There are other posts I plan on creating revolving around the music of the 90's. One aspect I thought might be interesting would be how I've put these posts together to this point. Other than the many faces of Bono post, the others all entailed a particular structure. Going in order of year helped, because I knew exactly what the topic of my next post was going to be. Sometimes structure is a good thing in blogging...sometimes it's just what you need to push through a pretty uneventful month.

I have a smart playlist created in iTunes that sorts out albums by year released. I edit the smart playlist to the year I'm researching. I press play and shuffle the songs. Sometimes this has taken longer than other times either because of the amount of great music or the number of distractions. Listening to the music while I do other things really helps me get into the time machine and journey back to the 90's. The project that I started out to do was to look at the most influential albums of the 90's, so there are lots of great songs that didn't make the cut, so I'll put together a 90's songs list for the one, two and three hit wonders that came to fruition in the decade. Several albums got left out because they weren't influential until much later or they might have been great albums, but I don't consider them influential. In the same way the decade is hard to define, so is an influential album without an entire post per album to justify my opinion, so a lot of biting of the tongue occurred. I take a look through the albums released during that year that I might not have representation of in iTunes (I have 115+ gigs of music with 26+ gigs falling between 1990 and 1999, so it's fair to say there's lots of representation) via Wikipedia. I try to put the top 5 in some sort of order but feel a lot better when I think that they aren't necessarily in order otherwise I'll want to go back and change them back and forth all the time. The topic generated a lot of discussion on and off (mostly off) the blog, so it struck a chord somewhere.

What's the next series for MKinMotion.com? Whoever suggests the best topic wins the generous prize of thanks and recognition. And by the way, I've been listening to 1999 music for what seems like forever now, so the post will come along soon.

On Blogging Part Five: Blogger's Block

In Stranger than Fiction, Emma Thompson's character is suffering from writer's block because she has painted herself into a corner with the ending of her novel, but she isn't satisfied with the ending that is expected of her. I don't think I could be a novelist that only writes one kind of story, but a lot of authors write a successful book and it's expected that they continue. The same thing happens to film directors. People are often shocked to find out that Steven King wrote the book that Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption or even The Running Man because of his reputation and our expectations. Writer's block can only ultimately be cured when a writer feels either the quality or the direction to the words they're currently on are correct. The same principles in writer's block apply to blogging too. Some of it you can chalk up to blog fade, where a blogger just slowly loses interest in the medium, some of it you can chalk up to circumstances that change or take priority over their blogging, but sometimes it's just because the blogger feels they've run out of things to say. I think for the person who's suffering from blogger's block, some remedies may be found in common remedies to writer's block and then there are some that might be specific to blogging too.
The pros suggest changing the setting in which you're writing, so in blogging, maybe it means taking the laptop to a park or a coffee shop or just go to the library and use a public computer. Any change in the setting may spark a new perspective from which to blog. Remember that you don't need to write directly into your blogging interface. Some of my best posts have been typed up in Word and later formatted for Blogger.
I suggest making some lists to jar your creativity. It doesn't take much looking to find a list on a blog. I know I do it from time to time with songs or albums or top ten this' or thats. Maybe you can write down your top five jobs you've had (or maybe you've had 5 jobs period) but then expand on each job on what you liked and didn't like. Not only are you getting something out there, but you're likely giving your readers new information about you and maybe even industries that they're thinking about.
Authors outline a story when they can't seem to get it going. Believe it or not, authors and writers have unfinished stories, articles, poems, movies and songs just rattling around their heads that could fill a library. When they get in a jam, oftentimes they'll outline the piece so that if they can't get started, they can at least work on a climax or an ending or just develop the conflict. The same can be said for blogging. Let's say you have a post rattling around about a restaurant you just discovered. You can outline that with headings like service, location, ambiance, appetizer, entree, dessert, wine selection, etc. Maybe writing about the location or the server will jar your mind to explore the food itself.
Sometimes blogger's block is due to not having a topic at all. For this, I simply suggest reading, reading, and reading. Sometimes if you look at what is popular or what's being blogged about you can at least blog about what everyone else is blogging about to weigh in and it usually leads to other ideas. Technorati's WTF (Where's the Fire?) feature is an interesting look into what people are blogging about, looks like Richard Jeni's apparent suicide is a topic. So here's my quick thought on celebrity suicide: Why is it that the public and the press when looking at a celebrity suicide they automatically think there's foul play if the celebrity has anything to consider a success? I think Kurt Cobain taught us that sometimes it's the success itself that spins someone to take their life. But there I go too, comparing one celeb suicide with another, with the only common ground being more people know who they are than the average person. See how easy that was?
I don't know about you, but sometimes I'll observe something out in the world and it will spark me to think, I should blog about that, but 96% of the time I don't because it slips my mind and I move on to something else. Why not carry a little notepad with you and write down ideas you have. Then when you do sit down at the computer and think "Man I wish I had something to say, all these people keep stopping by my blog, they must be so disappointed when they see the same ol' article" you can look at your notepad and boom there's your great commentary on SUV behavior in inclimate weather from your notes.
Above all you should feel freedom in the medium that most of the pressure that you feel to make a great point or share some amazing piece of information with your readers is all in your head. That's the glory of the blog is you're only accountable to yourself...unless you get paid to blog, but the principles above still hold true in that case too.

On Blogging Part Four: The Industrial Blog

In order to cure a case of the blogger's block, I'm revisiting some ideas that I started but didn't finish.

Industrial blogging is a term that I believe I coined. There are two categories of Industrial blogs and sometimes a third category that combines the first two. The first category of Industrial blogging is a blog that focuses on a particular topic or industry exclusively. Many times these blogs have multiple authors who write consistent articles in one space. There are thousands of these. There are gadget blogs, tech blogs, food blogs, wine blogs, guitar blogs, music blogs, political blogs and just about everything else you can think of. I'm a little too schizophrenic with my blogging to settle on one topic, so I stick to my own thing, but I could see having a Red Sox Blog like Laura and the Red Sox or Surviving Grady, or a fly fishing blog, or a gadget blog, but I'm discouraged from doing that not only by my topic schizophrenia but also because those ships have sailed and there are already plenty of people doing a good job with most of the topics I follow. The more specific the topic, the more challenging I think it is to be original.
The other category of industrial blog is one in which the blogger is paid or blogging in order to make money. Now, we all wouldn't mind making money blogging, and I've made a couple bucks here and there through iTunes, Amazon and Adsense ads, but I've never been paid to blog about something. Directly and indirectly there are people who are paid to blog. Most of the time they blog for a bigger company like AOL or Gawker but there are some people out there who accept payola in order to blog about particular topics or products. Part Three of this series looks at people who blog as a function of their role in a company in Corporate blogging, so I'm not talking about your company's CEO or PR joker having a public space, but rather their job (some people even do it full time) is to blog on a specific topic. You can see how Industrial blogging can cross over.
Another type of blogging that can sometimes fall into the Industrial blogging category is the A-List blog. If you googled for A-List bloggers are people who have or had a career in technology or tech journalism, but it goes beyond tech. Tech, as I've mentioned before, has its own self inflated ego of thinking that blogging and podcasting are terrain reserved for the techies, but you know where I stand on that. I think anyone willing to share their voice should. I may not read or listen, but I salute you for doing it.
A point that should be made before I cut off this ramble is that not all bloggers who blog about a specific topic are being paid, some do it for the love of sharing...imagine that.

On Blogging Part Two Point One (2.1) Linking and Deep Linking

I know that I've promised to return to my series on blogging, and I will, even more than this addendum. Over the past couple of months I've been linked to by some odd places. My post about Coffee People was briefly linked on Diedrich's Google Finance page, which generated some traffic. As previously mentioned, I was linked on Joseph Arthur's website for calling his album and his song "You Are Free" one of the best of 2006. On the other hand, I was also "scraped" for my hands on experience with the Zune for an ad farm and for my essay on the fall of the Portland Trailblazers.
Linking is what makes a blog have more authority in search engines, which aside from having a large family or circle of friends is one of the biggest factors in making your blog feel like it's worth it to spend the time on. Links can come in Blogroll form or just name dropping in a post. Most bloggers obsess over traffic on their blogs, whether they're attempting to make a living at blogging, just being creative, or just blowing off steam. An indirect way of gaining attention from other bloggers is to link to them. This implies you're reading blogs outside of your family and your circle of friends, of course. A number of times when I've linked to someone, the blogger I've linked to has noticed traffic coming to their blog from mine, which leads to them reading my blog, which at times has led to them linking to me (if for no other reason than to say "MKinMotion thinks this about what I think"). I'm pretty horrible about keeping up with a blogroll, but I am working on getting my Google reader organized enough to set up the sharing function of it which will give anyone who wants to know what I'm thinking is cool out on the net. So the lesson of linking is if you want to be linked to, the first thing you can do as a first step is point out who/what you are reading either in your blogroll or in your posts.
Deep linking is a somewhat controversial topic. It's most commonly used to refer to the use of media. For example say you see the latest leaked track from the upcoming Arcade Fire album on someone's blog, deep linking would mean you put a link on your blog not to the other blog or the other blog post, but to the file itself on the other blogger's server. People oppose deep linking because they make their ad money based on how many people visit their site or by the odds of people clicking ad links on their site...basic math says: more people equals more clicks. I don't deep link to text based "Printer Friendly" articles or to media files. I am guilty of deep linking to photographs. In fact most of the photos you see on this blog are deep links from other sites. I generally try to find AP pictures or grab from the biggest source (i.e. Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, Amazon and big news sites) or from Wikipedia (I read somewhere that pictures uploaded to Wikipedia become public domain or at least fair use, so that's the story I'm sticking with). Occasionally I link to a photo on Flickr or on a similar site, and even less occasionally I link to a photo on another blog. If I do, I try to figure out who took the picture and give them credit, but it isn't always that easy. If you subscribe to the MKinMotion RSS feed, you'll notice that my post from December of my review of Glen Hansard's show was updated this evening. If you read the comments associated with that post, you'll see Jana say that the picture belongs to them (I'm unsure of Jana's gender and don't want to make any assumptions as the IP address is in the Czech Republic). I knew something was up when I saw several hits coming from a Czech forum for The Frames, but I can't read Czech so I was in the dark until the comment. I updated the post to reflect the photographer and location, and would have included that had I been able to figure it out in December. Most people have the same philosophy as Jana and just want credit. I'd link to Jana, but I was only given a link to the photo and not to a flickr page or a blog. I have the same philosophy about the photos I take, and I know someone out there is deep linked to my photo of the saddest care bear, because I see the traffic floating by.
And now back to the rest of your surfing....while you're at it, check out this for a link.

On Blogging Part Two: The Personal Blog

As I continue to encourage all of you to blog, I can't go further into the discussion without talking a little about the personal blog. My history tells me that this is how it all started: the weblog. I may be wrong, but the early blogs I remember in the early 00's were mainly online diaries and links. The beginnings of both blogging and social bookmarking. Just as digital cameras have made photographers out of everyone, blogs have made webmasters of us all too.

The personal blog is the easiest of my three types of blogs to involve yourself in. The subject is easy: It's all about you. MKinMotion is an example of a personal blog. Whether it's commentary on current events, movie reviews, music recommendations or just rambling and ranting, it remains a place for people to keep track of what I'm up to but maybe more clear, what I'm thinking.

Personal blogs, as mentioned in Part One, can revolve around an event or series of events. Personal blogs can also be shared by multiple friends or family members. Personal blogs rarely break a news story, but more likely react to a news story. They come in all shapes and sizes. I have several personal blogs loaded in my RSS reader of people who I've never met, but have somehow been introduced (perhaps through the "Six Degrees of Blogging") or they got featured or just mentioned somewhere else I read. Two examples:

Betsy is "Blogging the World Over" currently from Galapagos.

Will is hilariously being the boy at "Be the Boy."

I've never met either of them, but I feel a little like I know them from keeping up with their blogs. Several friends have personal blogs, you can find them in the sidebar. Professionals not blogging as professionals, teachers blogging about their schools, and friends blogging about their lives. Just another reason to get started on your blog today; while you've got something to say.

On Blogging Part One: Begin the Begin

I am not a professional blogger; nor do I consider myself very good at it for that matter. I've been at it for a little over 2 years and it has brought me neither fame nor fortune. I have, however, kept my ear to the tubes and paid a lot of attention to blogging and the more I learn the more I confirm my thought that everyone should have a blog. There are lots of different types of blogs, but I want to categorize them into three main categories: Personal, Corporate, and I'll call the third type Industrial. Over the next few days I will be publishing a series of posts on blogging as it relates to those three types of blogs.

I think there are three things that most bloggers would agree would be the hardest to do. The first is the easiest of the three and that is to get started. The second is to create content that is compelling to your audience and compelling enough to build a larger audience. The third is to continue to blog despite blogger's block and busyness.

Getting started.

1. Pick a Service. There are a number of free services out there that are as good as anything you'll find with the most professional of bloggers. One of the hottest services lately has been VOX. It's very user friendly and makes for a good way to network with your friends and family that also blog. Other free services are Blogger and Wordpress. From my experience, Blogger and Vox walk you right through the process of creating the blog without having to know any CSS or HTML code. For some of you this may be the biggest obstacle and I'm telling you to get over that fear and jump right in.

2. Pick a Motive. There are a million and one reasons for someone to blog, you just need to pick one. It could be to track a particular event in your life like tracking a pregnancy to birth, or a trip to Europe, or taking yoga classes. No one should ever tell you that you need to focus on one thing, but it does help if you want to create and keep an audience. My blog has always been a personal blog in which I share events and ideas that come along. I have another blog that focuses on the world of sports. As I get into the coming posts about types of blogs, I will go more into this, but know that whatever your motive for blogging, it's justified.

3. Pick a Name. There are three names that I suggest focusing on. The first is the name by which you will go by in your new blogging life. Most people who are blogging in category one (Personal) prefer to remain a little anonymous; usually going by a handle or alias or just a first name. Others who are doing it corporately or industrially find it more helpful to disclose who they are. The second name to pick is the name of your blog. You can be as creative as you want. I would suggest your blog title containing at least a hint of what your motive is, though. The third name to pick is the piece of the URL that is unique to your blog. If you get too fancy with the URL, it might be hard for people to find it. I remember when I used to manage the BLB website years back. It was before you could buy a domain for a couple bucks so I relied on my ISP for a domain and it was always a chore to give the address and hope people would type what you said (who even knew what a tilde was?). Down the line you might want to buy a domain and have it forwarded to your blog, or if you're even more adventurous, host the blog yourself at your domain.

Pick 2 and 3 are irrelevant if you don't take that first step and get started. Remember to send me your link when you've taken my advice...I'm always looking for new blogs to read and also to promote to people who read my blog.