I thought about skipping my blog post tonight as a sign of solidarity with my colleagues here.

But I was always a rebel, always flying in the face of convention and social norms. Also — hey, screw them, buncha lazy bums.

I will say that it’s been surprisingly difficult to come up with something every week that interests me enough to write about it, much less hoping that it will entertain you. I’m more limited than I thought. And I spend four to six hours a week working on my posts, which seems way too long to me. I know that some of the other Brainiacs here put in as much effort.

The trigger for this post is that we’re reaching a milestone. We’ll have eliminated 10,000 spam comments by tomorrow. They love us; they really love us!

We debuted on October 22, 2006, with a quick post by Morgan. We quickly outgrew Blogspot, not to mention that its editing tools egregiously pissed me off almost every time I tried to use them. We got our own site and domain name and migrated here on November 19. Steve has been the tech-brain behind it all, designing our look, setting up our settings, sacrificing the chickens, and so on. I step up and delete spam as often as possible, because if you let it alone for a day, it becomes a mountain, and you have to sift through it all to rescue the incredibly rare genuine comment that was wrongly identified.

We’ve all been busy little weasels. As I write this, we have 435 posts, with 3,385 comments, though that count should be a bit higher, as the 30 or 40 posts and associated comments from our old site only count as one after the move.

According to Technorati’s quarterly ‘State of the Blogosphere’, they’re tracking about 70 million blogs right now. They track by popularity, and our Technorati Rank is 89,162 today. It has dipped into the mid-70,000’s on occasion. We’ve been linked by 56 other blogs in the past six months, and that’s probably why our rank isn’t higher. We don’t actively promote EOB in any way, including by hanging out at a lot of other blogs and playing nice with others.

As a matter of fact, we could do with having better manners and visiting those who are kind enough to link to us. Also, if I do that twisted thing with Erin involving the bustier, the canola oil, and the parachutes, she might link to us more.

We’ve had 1,381 downloads of our free music and podcast content. Steve’s podcasts are especially popular. I like to think that as I learn to suck less at mixing music, the songs might get downloaded more; but we’ll see.

I have trouble extracting the number of unique visitors, but we’re growing every month, as you can see from the graphs at the top of this post, and I hope to see that growth continue.

I’d especially love to get some feedback from you guys out there. Writer’s workshop rules apply: No point in being cruel, but if you’re not blunt and direct, we can’t get better.

What are we doing that works for you, draws you back here? What are we doing that doesn’t work for you?

I know I rein in my political posting because it gets too dark and enraged too easily. Are y’all bored with my Sunday posts on musicians? Is Caroline vicious enough?

I don’t comment here as often as I think I should. Part of that is because I’m writing much of the time at work, and I’m fried by the evening. Part is that I sometimes don’t feel smart enough to make a good or thorough reply on certain subjects. Sometimes, I think that some posts are so complete and perfect that there’s not anything I have to add to them. I enjoy virtually everything written here, but my perceptions are colored by my relationships with the people writing.

Can we do anything to encourage more interaction here, more commenting? Should we do open threads? Are we staying fresh or getting stale? Too personal or not personal enough? Too net-centric?

What can we do to make EOB better, more interesting, more inviting?

Seven of us post here. To use my favorite metaphor, I want it to be a public orgy, not masturbation, and for that we need you.

Hugs and canola oil to everybody,

Rory

A couple of years ago, when I owned a car, I was motoring down University Blvd. when on came a song that blew me away. It had some of the finest finger-picking I’ve ever heard, with a wonderful rolling rhythm and intelligent, evocative lyrics. And it rocked. It was on KEOS, which is the community radio station in Bryan.

I missed the name of the song and performer. It took me about three months to track it down. Yes, I am that obsessive.

It was ‘Train Home’ by Chris Smither, and it’s now one of my favorite songs. You can hear the album version at his web site, or catch a live version if you click the pic. As a matter of fact, if you surf his site, you can hear an album’s worth of fine music. His newer albums are full-band, and he does this cool slapping thing on a footboard when he plays live, giving himself a percussion back-up that I haven’t heard anywhere else. It’s wonderfully effective.

Smither comes out of the Mississippi John Hurt blues tradition, and he has some outrageous skills. He was an up-and-comer in the Seventies, but had to take off more than a decade to get to the other side of his alcoholism.

NPR has an excellent webcast of a lengthy live performance on World Café. Smither is noted for witty, sometimes laugh-out-loud, monolog between songs in concert. The NPR segment reveals that he’s also quick and funny ad lib, so it’s not just rehearsed shtick.

If you’re a right-wing war-lovin’ fundamentalist creationist, you might not enjoy some of the content of his songs. He does ‘Diplomacy’, and ‘Origin of Species’ (which made Rolling Stone’s Top 100 of 2006). His songs cut to the marrow.

It’s heartening to encounter a deep, warm musician who assumes that his audience is smart, too. We’re so rare.

I’m glad he made it through. He’s a national treasure.

Those of you with Mac’s probably know the joy of Photo Booth, an application that let’s you take silly pictures of yourself using your webcam. Now there’s a web based ap that lets you do the same thing. Check out Cameroid.com .