Buster McLeod Benson

Help us raise money for highschool kids...

: busterbenson; June 4th, 10:08

We're trying to raise some money to give to

tarvie's high school class for field trips to colleges, pay college application fees (even the reduced fees are too much for them), and pay SAT tutors, among other college-preppy things.

About 8 of us are running together and will be doing a bunch of ridiculous things during the 13.1 mile half-marathon in 24 days. It's gonna be lots of fun and if you could support us by donating $5/$10/$100/your kidney to rally us, that would be awesome!

Rendezvous is one of our official sponsors so far, and someone will be wearing an animal costume.

Learn more and donate here!
http://krunkingnumbkits.com

At least watch the video, that's pretty funny.

Taking navel-gazing to the next level

: busterbenson; April 23rd, 10:25

I've written 513 entries mentioning love over the last 10 years:

Only 78 entries about hate:

Talking about foxes spiked at about 10 mentions a month in late 2005:

343 posts about McLeod Residence had a good run, but are now trailing off:

Looks like I've been talking more and more about being drunk over the last couple years:

Could be because of my growing appreciation of champagne:

Here's when I met Kellianne:

I'm an early adopter of Flickr:

And Twitter:

And the iPhone:

But my paranoia of asteroids and super volcanoes seems to have passed for the most part:

Adding a Lucene search engine to all 12,388 entries from the last 10 years is pretty interesting. Mixing the data with Google's chart API makes it even more interesting (to me at least). Now I just have to create more content for it to eat up.

Suggest other ways to mess with all of this.

just cause it's saved doesn't mean it has value

: busterbenson; April 21st, 23:36

I've been archiving my Internet activity on my own server for a while now. I think I was one of the first blogs that aggregated data from all over the internet into one spot, but now it's all over the place. Today, the server that was collecting and storing all this information seemed to have disappeared due to a forgotten username, password, and a long expired credit card. Through some magic, I got it back, but I think I'm gonna take the sign as a reason to move it all to a bigger better happier server that will be up more often than not.

In the process, I've moved the database and cron script with all of my entries from the last almost 10 years (1st entry is from December 3rd, 1999). I lost my first year of activity from Diaryland because I got kicked off and it was all deleted. But, in hindsight, I think that's okay. Cause my early activity on the Internet was pretty angry and mean.

In any case, here's a breakdown of everything I've got saved so far:

+-----------------------------+-------+
| title                       | count |
+-----------------------------+-------+
| Flickr                      |  3809 | 
| Twitter                     |  1312 | 
| People Who've Found Me      |  1304 | 
| Typepad                     |  1288 | 
| Flickr Faves                |   576 | 
| 43 Things                   |   575 | 
| Live Journal                |   494 | 
| 43 Places                   |   426 | 
| All Consuming               |   372 | 
| Dodgeball                   |   314 | 
| The Robot Co-op             |   234 | 
| Del.icio.us                 |   195 | 
| Netflix                     |   183 | 
| Morale-O-Meter              |   167 | 
| Brightkite                  |   148 | 
| 43 People                   |   116 | 
| McLeod Residence Blog       |   115 | 
| Mutual Improvement          |    91 | 
| Upcoming                    |    67 | 
| Enjoymentland               |    65 | 
| Vox                         |    55 | 
| Should Do This              |    53 | 
| Vimeo Likes                 |    52 | 
| Tada List                   |    40 | 
| Facebook                    |    38 | 
| Space Tag                   |    34 | 
| Lists of Bests (incomplete) |    33 | 
| Vimeo                       |    21 | 
| Tumblr                      |    21 | 
| Good Ideas                  |    20 | 
| Odeo                        |    20 | 
| Tumblr                      |    15 | 
| Lists of Bests (complete)   |    15 | 
| One Offs                    |    15 | 
| Seattle Public Library      |    11 | 
| 30 Boxes                    |     8 | 
| Yahoo Answers               |     7 | 
| Yelp                        |     6 | 
| iLike                       |     5 | 
| Myspace                     |     1 | 
+-----------------------------+-------+

Now I gotta think about what I want to do with all this information. People don't even really read this stuff anymore. A lot of it is so old that there's no reason to really keep it around. What should I do? What's the future of all of our digitally stored ramblings?

Whatever the fate of my own crap, it's gonna go here:
http://busterbenson.com

Kellianne sneaks up on parsley dude

: busterbenson; April 13th, 23:00

Katie's Visit, Part 1 - 62
Originally uploaded by Buster McLeod

I think this is my favorite picture of the night. Possibly ever.

Rest of the pictures here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/erikbenson/sets/72157616650328157/detail/

Featured on the iTunes App Store homepage!

: busterbenson; April 7th, 13:29

Featured on the iTunes App Store homepage!
Originally uploaded by Buster McLeod

I just happened to see this when I went to the app store today... I knew they were considering something like this but they never confirmed that it was actually happening. I'm totally stoked!

My goals right now...

: busterbenson; April 7th, 11:02

Listening To:: Yeasayer - Tightrope | Powered by Last.fm

My nebulous confused what do I do now phase is slowly spinning into something of a plan. Mostly in the form that all of this began a few years ago... a maintained list of goals that I try to make progress on while continuing to revisit to make sure that each of the goals is something I still want to do. This process is pretty much the only process that really seems to work for me.

My current list of goals is:

Have a baby
Start a fruit and vegetable garden
Run a half-marathon for charity
Make a top 100 iPhone app
Write a Facebook app
Build a better photobooth
Go camping this summer
Do the "Eat Local Challenge" for 30 days
Get out of credit card debt
Do 100 pushups
Write a manifesto
Organize an exciting activity this summer for my friends

I guess that's all I've got right now. I don't like being sick. One down one down. And so I wait until the morale market recovers a bit so I can get to work on these things.

What are your goals right now?

First run of the year...

: busterbenson; March 29th, 16:15

I guess I'm running again. Even though I'm sick and coughing up a storm now, it felt great to get real air in my lungs. Myrtle Edwards Park is so beautiful today.

Our running team for the June 27th half-marathon is building. If you want to be a part of it, and don't mind being part of a crazy team that is both going to take it seriously AND be completely ridiculous with costumes, challenges, and cheers, then you know where to look.

Calling bullshit on the 4 noble truths

: busterbenson; March 15th, 14:47

I've been wanting to get this off my chest for a long time.

The 4 Noble Truths of Buddhism are bullshit:
http://enjoymentland.com/2009/03/15/my-honest-take-on-the-4-noble-truths/

Life is not suffering. Life is not joy. Life is just life, and the 4 noble truths are just melodramatic whining.

I guess I'm in a weird mood today when I feel like picking on Buddhism.

Update: And why not, a quick response to the Ten Commandments for good measure:
http://enjoymentland.com/2009/03/15/my-quick-take-on-the-ten-commandments/

calm

: busterbenson; March 14th, 14:03

Now that the storm is over, there's an interesting calm. I can feel it, even though I still feel crazy in the head. But it's slowly spreading its feathery wings over me.

( not sure what I'm trying to say here... )

it's true

: busterbenson; March 10th, 18:35

Haiku² for bustermcleod
projects a little host healthy potluck since we had a sweet moment
@

Created by Grahame

rock and roll half-marathon

: busterbenson; March 4th, 14:09

Chris Jones, Sean Lowry, Brandon Madsen, Megan Welling, Paco, and possibly Tara the bartender at Rob Roy have all committed to running this Rock & Roll half-marathon on June 27th.

Rock & Roll Seattle: A Running Nirvana (yes, that's really the name)

The thought is to get sponsors from local bars, and we can raise money for kids who can't drink or something, and we'd do shots at miles 4, 8, and 13.1 (though some plan on doing the old shot to the side that looks real for the camera), and generally have some fun doing something that our heavy-drinking demographic generally doesn't do (i.e. run half marathons).

I think we could raise a lot of money for some cause, but what should the cause be? And who else wants to run with us, help supply shots at mile markers, build the website, celebrate at the finish line, etc?

Weekly Review VIII Feb 23rd - Mar 1st

: busterbenson; March 2nd, 10:41

Weight: 160.2 (up a couple pounds)
Morale: 8 (down one)
Stress: 8 (same as last week)
Go to yoga at least twice: Yup, went Tuesday and Thursday
Do 100 Pushup Challenge: Nope... maybe I should remove this... my wrist is not liking pushups these days
Add to Friendsheet: Nope
Work on Friendlington: Nope
Stick to financial budget: Yeah, more or less.
Participate in a healthy potluck: I'm counting my cooking class as a healthy potluck, since we had 6 groups of 2 making different dishes which we all shared at the end.
Read: Reading a lot about pregnancy
Change name: We were going to do this on Friday, but then got too busy... we'll try again after Florida
Stay off Internet: Nope... way too much Internet, don't know what to do about that
Work on McLeod: Yeah, negotiations continued
Write daily on Enjoymentland: I actually lost some momentum this week. Tried to work on Locavore detail page but had trouble finding the right words
Work on Locavore: Yup, got more integration with Get Satisfaction, removed a couple unstable features, resubmitted to app store
Zero hangovers: Had one yesterday after Kindra's wedding
Cook a new meal: Cooked a broccoli orecchiette for Kellianne, and a clam chowder at the cooking class
Do meaningful work: Yeah, Locavore is my new life calling.
Work on wedding album: I started, but stalled when the software slowed to a crawl

Tags: weekly review

Weekly Review VII Feb 16th-22nd

: busterbenson; February 23rd, 11:13

Weight: 157.8 (down about 2 lbs from last week)
Morale: 9 (same as last week)
Stress: 8 (same as last week)
Go to yoga at least twice: Nope, just once
Do 100 Pushup Challenge: Nope
Add to Friendsheet: Nope
Work on Friendlington: Nope
Stick to financial budget: Yeah
Participate in a healthy potluck: Nope
Read: Yeah, started a couple new books of interest
Change name: Nope... gotta do this!
Stay off Internet: Nope
Work on McLeod: Yep
Write on Enjoymentland: Yep
Work on Currently In Season: Yep, once again, this work nearly consumed me this week. I ended up submitting it to the App Store last Friday, and then updating it again last night.
Zero hangovers: Actually, I think I did survive the week without any hangovers.
Cook a new meal: Yep, made a Chicken Farfalle recipe I found on Epicurious
Do meaningful work: Yeah, I am feeling very productive, and learning a lot about a couple different topics
Make wedding album: Nope... just added this this week, cause I gotta get on it

Tags: weekly review

Weekly Review part 6

: busterbenson; February 16th, 10:16

7 pts. Didn't do so great last week on my scores. But I got a lot of work done on my Locavore app (that's the new name for it), and hope to be submitting it this week to the store.

Weight: 160.2 (up .2 from last week)
Morale: 9 (up 1 last week)
Stress: 8 (same last last couple weeks)
Go to yoga at least twice: Only once
Do 100 Pushup Challenge: Yup
Add to Friendsheet: Nope
Work on Friendlington: Nope (though Kindra and I talked about working on it... does that count?)
Stick to financial budget: Not really (Valentines and all)
Participate in a healthy potluck: Not this week
Read: Didn't read a lick
Frame and hang art: Nope
Change name: Nope
Stay off Internet: Nope
Work on McLeod: Yeah, sorta... simply waiting is working right?
Write on Enjoymentland: Yup, and got my first bit of traffic from some friendly people
Work on Currently In Season: YES. This is the reason I got nothing else done this week
Zero hangovers: That one after Valentines was totally worth it
Cook a new meal: Cooked some Rainbow trout with herbs

Tags: weekly review

potential meme: try to explain something difficult that you're familiar with in simple terms

: busterbenson; February 9th, 13:51

In my campaign to get everyone to start more official websites about their passions, professions, and interests, I've had a couple conversations in the last week about how websites work. I remember when I bought my first domain in 2000 (ianomalous.com) it took me a long time to wrap my head around how websites worked, and since I'm not really that technically talented in my core, I feel like I eventually ended up understanding this only after a lot of effort.

It's a topic that is never explained in simple terms. Here's my best attempt at explaining it.

The big picture

All of this works together something like this:

A browser requests a domain (like, say, bustermcleod.com)
The browser checks to see where that domain is hosted (by asking one of repositories of domain information that are saved around the internet). Those repositories then tell it to check a certain particular computer that's sitting somewhere in the world, always on, always waiting.
That computer sitting somewhere in the world then notices that someone wants a certain page (specified by the URL) and checks its own internal settings to see where on the computer that page lives. Depending on the settings, that page may have to be interpreted before being served. For example, if the file is written in Perl, or Java, or Ruby, it will first interpret the code and then return the result in text or HTML format.
Your browser then takes that HTML, CSS, javascript, etc and translates it into the visual elements that you are used to seeing as a web page

That's basically how it works.

( Here are the steps you would need to take in order to buy and host your own website )

Now, if everyone explained one topic that they were familiar with (but that people outside of their area of expertise didn't really ever bother trying to fully understand) we'd all reach our quota to learn something new every day pretty easily!

Tags: learn something new

Enjoymentland's first fumbling week

: busterbenson; February 9th, 11:27

Listening To:: Cloud Cult - No One Said It Would Be Easy | Powered by Last.fm

I'm moving most posts that aren't explicitly about my life, friends, etc to enjoymentland.com. It's interesting how the mere act of creating a space for learning and studying things I'm interested in has increased my actual commitment to the topics of interest. See the links in the sidebar to see where I'm getting inspiration from.

I changed the design because the lovely yellow and black Neutica theme that I was using was just a little too impractical. I always go back to the simple designs in the end.

It's interesting to me to try to earn new readers and subscribers to something again. The internet world changes so much, and so quickly, and ways of gaining readers a year ago may not work this time around. But, in the end, I'm doing this for myself so I don't really mind writing into a void as much as I probably did a few years ago. As long as the void is my void.

In case you're at all interested, here are a few of the posts I wrote last week:

Progress on the currently in season app: The design is getting a lot better this week, thanks to the help from a friend.
My new morning routine: This is a lot more difficult than I thought. Need to keep trying this week though.
9 kinds of enjoyment: I think I'm going to remove mood-altering from the list though, due to ingopixel 's comment.
Description of my 8:36pm project: I want to write a stub like this for each of my little projects.
History of my self-tracking: Mostly trying to get the attention of other self-tracking blogs out there.
Distribution of characteristics amongst my friends: First attempt at visualizing some of the data from my Friendsheet.

Tags: enjoymentland

Weekly Review part 5

: busterbenson; February 9th, 11:09

I'm shifting from Health Month-related reviews to personal goal reviews. The scoring is a little different, it takes into account whether or not I'm in my goal weight range, whether or not I keep stress below a certain level and morale above a certain level. It also tracks large bad experiences and large good experiences, which are also tracked in the spreadsheet. I talk about it a bit more at the end of this post.

This week's score: 9 (no change from last week)

Here's the graph so far:
weekly_scores1

Weight: I gained 3.5 lbs this week, as it marked the end of my 4-week no-alcohol, no-processed foods, no-dairy Health Month experiment.
Morale: 8 (up from 7) Felt productive, made progress on stressful business things, got our damn dryer finally, enjoyed friends.
Stress: 8 (same) Still a lot of things unresolved.
Yoga 2 times: 0. I'm horrible. My two days to go were trumped by a trip to Ballard for Kellianne's first day at Vain over there, and a movie (Frost/Nixon).
Do 100 Pushup Challenge: Yup. Got my record so far, tracked over on daytum.
Add to Friendsheet: Made a lot of progress on this. Added a couple columns (seen in last year, have phone number), created some new stats about how much overlap there is between different sets of people, and thinking about better ways to chart this data.
Work on Friendlington: No progress. :(
Stick to financial budget: Yup. Still within our weekly budget for, though I suspect that our date night will put us over the limit once it is processed by the bank.
Participate in a healthy potluck: We didn't do this, though we did have the Pixels over for unhealthy dinner last night.
Read: I'm reading "The Creative Habit" now. It's good.
Frame and hang art: No progress.
Change name: No progress. Next Friday is the day though.
Stay off Internet: Nope. Spent too much time on the Internet, trying to get Enjoymentland off the ground.
Work on McLeod: Yes, made some progress here. More this week.
Write daily on Enjoymentland: Yup. Technically only 6 posts, but some of them were long so count as 2. :)
Work on Currently In Season: Yup, working on designs and on maps.
Zero hangovers: Unfortunately, I had a hangover after Thursday's movie and rock show (Ghost of Kyle Bradford, Hallways, Kate Tucker, Ships... all awesome!). Hangovers also tracked here.
Cook a new meal: Didn't cook anything new this week. Too much socializing I think.

Tags: weekly review

things I like part 10

: busterbenson; February 5th, 10:18

enjoysthin.gs: It's a beautiful site, with a simple and fun focus on enjoying things. I'm here. It would be more fun if I had friends over there.
Sweet delicious black coffee.
Sweet delicious red wine.
Helping people set up blogs (not sure why I enjoy this)
Enjoymentland (my new barely started blog for talking about my various projects and things I'm learning about)

Emoticon Personality Quiz

: busterbenson; February 3rd, 14:27

What does this emoticon mean to you?

;(

Weekly Review part 4

: busterbenson; February 2nd, 12:11

Got 9/13 on my personal goals.

Got 14/16 on my Health Month goals.

Weight: 156.2 (down 1.4 lbs since last week, down 9 lbs from 1 month ago, but more like 6 lbs from avg pre-Health Month weight)
Morale: 7 (up 1)
Stress: 8 (same)
Yoga: 2 times
100-pushup challenge: nope
Add to Friendsheet: I added a column for "vacationed with"
Friendlington: nope
Financial budget: We did stay on budget this week, and for the whole of Health Month. We came in more than 10% under our total "Restaurants, Shopping, and Cash" budget.
Read: Read a little. Didn't finish the book this month though. I'm gonna say fail.
Frame and hang art: Kellianne hung some new stuff in the stairwell, our bedroom, and the bathroom. Now we gotta frame the rest.
Change name: nope
Stay off Internet: nope
Work on McLeod: Paid more taxes and bills. But I have a meeting with a lawyer today.
Professional blog: Yeah, made some good progress. Launching it this week. More people should do this!
Currently In Season: Lots of good progress. Found a designer.
Cook a new meal: Cool chana dal with lamb and brown rice last night. Was delicious!

As for Health Month, I had another drinking night, and also cheated with some delicious coffee yesterday. I think I got 14/16. But, going forward into non-health month, I'm mostly taking away a newfound enjoyment cooking delicious healthy meals, a budding yoga practice, and the hope that 2 drinks on school nights and 3 drinks on weekends can be a new interesting game to play. The last will be the most difficult, as desire to have restraint often fades after a couple drinks.

My weight over the last 4 weeks (though the trending line seems to be way behind), since I have a fun app to keep track of it for me:

Tags: weekly review

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busterbenson

Buster McLeod Benson

No advice column.

Hello.