Three quick things
1. I’m closing the scholarship drive tomorrow, which will involve cutting Dave a giant novelty check and probably writing a really sappy post about how awesome the USSM readership and Dave are. Get in while you still can, so you’ll feel warm and fuzzy when you read my temporary break with antipathy.
2. Conor asked me if I was going to do a USSM off-season music post, and I said “Not until John Richards tells me what the best albums were.” But seriously — we usually throw out USSM Endorsements during the off-season lull of depression, and our new front office hasn’t given us any off days. But we’ll get around to our standard random features (whether you enjoy them or not).
3. I’ll be spending some site-tinkering time this weekend, so if there’s something that’s been bugging you about the USSM design/layout, that’s always a good time for me to fix things as long as I have the code open.
Yeah, after I asked you about that I realized most of my favorite albums from this year were actually released in 2007. Such is life for an unpaid intern I suppose. Hopefully I can come up with a top 5…
Woohoo! The music post!
Check out Russian Circles’ Stations if you’re into Explosions in the Sky kinda stuff. They’re a little heavier and totally rad.
Best record of the year: Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop)
That Fleet Foxes album is great, but the new TV on the Radio is genius.
I’ve started listening to only dead artists. I’m not a fan of fads.
Kathleen Edwards spring offering of Asking For Flowers has gotten the most consistent listens from me this year.
I have never heard of any of these artists. If Derek does a music post, there’s a very good chance I won’t have heard of any of the artists he mentions there, either.
And I’m not even old!
Derek – when you’re tinkering, please consider reinstituting numbered posts if possible. A numbering system makes cross-referencing responses to prior posts easier, makes the conversation more intelligible and it also makes it easier to flip up and down a lengthy list of posts to find where you left off reading. This last reason might even save some minor wear and tear on the server when Gutierrez makes his 3rd miracle catch off the wall in the last game of the Mariners’ series against LA next April, saving the game, the sweep and Silva’s 5 hitter (okay, they’ll all be home-runs but still….)
FWIW, I disagree. If people would bquote what they’re referencing, that makes it easier to follow responses. Numbers just get all messed up whenever comments are deleted.
It’s a tradeoff. If there was some way to easily pick up where you left off last time in the comments thread, that would be great, but because of moderation (not just comments that get deleted, but those that get inserted from the queue), replying to comments by number is positively obnoxious.
Though never much of a fan of Rilo Kiley, Jenny Lewis’ Acid Tongue is quite good.
I will second the previous mention of TV on the Radio’s Dear Science.
will just list from here on out
British Sea Power – Do You Like Rock Music?
Grouper – Dragging a Dead Deer up a Hill
The Dandy Warhols – Earth to Dandy Warhols
My Morning Jacket – Evil Urges
Eagles of Death Metal – Heart On
Black Mountain – In the Future
Ratatat – LP3
Nada Surf – Lucky
Sigur Ros – Með suð à eyrum við spilum endalaust
m83 – Saturdays = Youth
Nine Inch Nails – The Slip
Brendan Canning – Something For All of Us…
Vivian Girls – Vivian Girls
She & Him – Volume One
The Week That Was – The Week That Was
Women – Women
Yeah I really like music. But not as much as I like the direction of the M’s new front office.
I wasn’t aware that deleted comments totally disappeared from the list of posts — is that the case now? My recollection was that the poster name and other descriptive info (including a number if there was one) remained along with the moderator’s equivalent of a bloody horse head in your bed: “[OT-deleted]“.
I agree that block quotes are a superior way to go and I try to use those almost all the time. But not everyone will and if you have no numbers, you’ll end up with equivalents: “Well, I have to disagree with Mike’s assessment of Batista’s arm as erectile dysfunction in a Mariner uniform.”
Plus, there’s just no replacement for a number list as a place holder.
What gets done with a bad comment depends on the circumstances. Some may be left with a bracketed [off-topic] or similar, in case people are wondering where it went, some just get nuked quick. But in any case, comments that appear late after waiting in the moderation queue still show up in chronological order and thus change any numbering sequence.
I miss the days of being an unpaid intern… Life was so much easier when I had no money (or college loan payments).
My top 5 in no particular order, Weezer – Red Album, Ti – Paper Trail, Lil Wayne – Carter 3, The Killers – Day and Age, The Color Fred – Bend to Break.
I always thought this site would be a great community for a forum, but I think I’ve read in the past that you guys aren’t interested in that type of open forum, and I understand that if its the case.
Wow that’s neat!
Since the comment numbers were removed I’ve used the time stamp without any issues. Suggest leaving as is.
Just look at the time posted for the last comment. Sure you might get multiple comments at the same minute, however it gets you pretty close.
Edit: Or basically what Pig says above me.
JWay – I would love to hear why you enjoyed the new Weezer (and although this may come off as sarcastic, I’m being sincere).
I wasn’t aware that already appearing posts would get renumbered based on pending events in the queue. That’s certainly an issue if it couldn’t reasonably be modified.
If there is some way that the post can be at the top of a page from a mobile device (blackberry), that would be great so I don’t have to page through all the headers when I read the site on the bus.
Sorry, JMB, but this:
I have never heard of any of these artists.
…suggests you have to seriously re-evaluate this:
And I’m not even old!
I wasn’t aware that already appearing posts would get renumbered based on pending events in the queue.
They appear in order according to their submitted timestamp, so queued comments force a renumbering when they’re approved. I have no idea if there’s any easy way to work around that. (One hack would be to have them be ordered according to their “approved timestamp” and then force all non-queued comments to go through an automatic approval timestamp process…)
I’ve started listening to only dead artists. I’m not a fan of fads.
The Bhagwan Shree Rashneesh (remember him?) once said “Any religion whose founder is dead is a cult.” Then he died. So I guess we shouldn’t care what the hell he said.
I’m very excited about the scholarship fund and am looking forward to your sappy post! After the first couple of days, I figured we had pretty much hit the limit of contributions, but there has been a slow and steady decline of the amount left, which is great to see!
DMZ, I hear that giant novelty checks cost about $200 (or at least they did in ‘The Office’).
I’d like to nominate
Anberlin – The New Surrender
The Whispertown 2000 – Swim
And to second
She & Him – Volume One
DMZ and all, is there still a way to donate using credit cards rather than PayPal?
We’ve had the comment numbering discussion before.
Relying on comment numbers is just a bad idea all around.
oh, I know I’m old. In spirit, at the very least.
for me, I usually find the music threads to be much like the really stat heavy ones, i.e. blah blah blah Ginger-ish.
This is the first year in quite a while where I can honestly say that I really like a new album.
The new Uriah Heep album – Wake the Sleeper – is brilliant. It’s the best thing the’ve done since the John Lawton albums, and I highly recommend it. I can’t get over how unbelievably awesome it is.
I’m a huge Uriah Heep fan. I have every one of their albums (except 1977’s Innocent Victim – I can’t find that one anywhere), and this new stuff is amazing. It’s their first new studio material in 10 years, and it was worth the wait.
My top 5 for this year:
1. Fleet Foxes – eponymous
2. TV on the Radio – Dear Science
3. Beach House – Devotion
4. Brian Wilson – That Lucky Old Sun
5. The Walkmen – You & Me
with apologies to a slew of other good albums like Blitzen Trapper’s Furr, Bon Iver’s For Emma, Long ago, Hot Chip’s Made in the Dark and The Hold Steady’s Stay Positive.
I also want to put M. Ward’s Hold Time on the top 5 for next year even though I haven’t heard it yet. He’s awesome.
What, no Chinese Democracy?
Despite PayPal’s best efforts to hide it, you can pay with a credit card through their system without creating/having an account. Over on the left side of the PayPal page where it says “Don’t have a PayPal account?” just click on the tiny little “Continue” link and you can make the contribution without an account.
Although if you just have a moral objection to using PayPal or something, I’m sure you can e-mail Derek about sending in a check. I doubt he takes credit cards over the phone though, unless you just want to contribute in the form of an unauthorized charge on your card to Worldwide Beer Distributors, Inc.
As far as site updates, would you consider moving to a main/bar/bar layout as opposed to left bar/main/right bar? I primarily read on my Blackberry Pearl with Opera Mini, and scrolling past the “Buy the Book” ad for the umpteenth time is delaying my enjoyment of the delicious new content I so dearly crave.
May not work for everybody, but please take it as a suggestion.
Here’s a few selections I like from 2008:
The Clash – Live at Shea Stadium
Replacements reissues with bonus tracks
MGMT – Oracular Spectacular
Blizen Trapper – Furr
Deerhoof – Offend Maggie
Jennifer O’Conner – Here With Me
Neil Young – Live @ Canterbury House
Bon Iver – For Emma…
David Byrne & Brian Eno – Everything that Happens
TV on the Radio – Dear Science
Cat Power – Jukebox
Fleet Foxes
Ryan Adams – Cardinology
Ron Sexsmith – Exit Strategy for the Soul
Mogwai – The Hawk is Howling
Cold War Kids – Loyalty to Loyalty
Wow, one of my best friends played drums in the Fleet Foxes on the record so many of you like. He kept telling me, ‘This gonna blow up’ but I didn’t believe him. Oops.
Is there any way to make a more mobile friendly version of the site? Like one with just the posts without all of the headers and links and sidebars etc? It’s a great on my blackberry while waiting in the airport etc.
RE: Mobile versions, on my iPhone I just use an RSS reader and read that version of the site. I’m not sure if Blackberry, etc. have RSS reader apps but if so, that’s something to consider.
Get in while you still can, so you’ll feel warm and fuzzy when you read my temporary break with antipathy.
I’m sure it’s just me, but I found myself thinking “When I read your temporary break why would I read it with antipathy — or more than my usual antipathy?”
AC/DC “Rock ‘n” Roll Train”
#1 album in the country … not bad for a bunch of 55-62 year old rockers.
Saw them at the Tacoma Dome a couple of weeks ago
and my hearing has still not fully recovered!
I will second the Fleet Foxes album. Gorgeous.
I have two questions:
1). For the upteenth time, how friggin’ much did we raise for our boy Dave?
2). Did Dave ever get anything for coming in second place in the contest?
I know that part of the motivation for this was the situation that arose due to the voting process for the scholarship, but another thing I’d like to experiment on is how much could we do for USS Mariner alone when we’re not morally outraged.
1) TV on the Radio – Dear Science,
(And it’s not particularly close. By far the best album.)
2) The Hold Steady – Stay Positive
3) MGMT – Oracular Spectacular
4) Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
5) Sigur Rós – Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust
(Not their best work, but still very good.)
TIF–
1) A lot
2) No
3) (unnumbered question) If previous donations are any indication, close to $0/day
I unwrapped the cd, put it in, and thought it was just garbage. I listened to it a few more times and now I just love it. Troublemaker and Everybody Gets Dangerous are my two favorites. Pork and Beans was played out, but I still like the song here and there. The Greatest Man That Ever Lived and Heart Songs also reach my overall play list outside of the album. The rest of the songs go well I’d say, its by no means the best Weezer album ever, but compared to what I listened to this year, I’d have a hard time putting them behind others.
All in all I know my music tastes are slightly all over the board, and lean towards the mainstream, I’m patiently waiting the return of Blink 182
fwiw, Saw Weezer in the twin cities a few months ago, they were absolutely amazing. I enjoyed the show a lot, which probably helped me make that decision.
Aw man, you guys are making me feel old….
Oops indeed. Never underestimate the power of a Pitchfork review
. You should go around saying, “I liked Fleet Foxes before they were famous and when it was just my friend helping out some friends with their record.” That way you can maximize pretentiousness and highlight the fact that you know important people.
I’d love to see a fallback layout for those of us who sometimes use cell phone based WAP browsers. As it is now, the content is displayed way below the left and right column items.
I still disagree. We’ve gone without the comment numbers for what, six months now? Plenty of time to experience both, and I still prefer comment numbers. For citing, block quotes work okay, but for reading and placeholding, numbers are eaiser to remember than time stamps. And not everyone uses block quotes anyway, although people have gotten better.
I still prefer no numbers. It builds civility and increases the quality of discussion.
You mean to say there are more important things than commenter convenience?
Yeah, if only time stamps had numbers in them…
Whatever small conveniences comment numbers may provide are far outweighed by the number of “oops I meant #22!” posts we had to delete when they were still around.
And keeping the mods happy is the most important thing, dammit!
Oh, thanks for reminding me. I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaated that.
People might be more tempted to reference previous comments in a higher-quality / more-civil fashion if there was a better UI for quoting: select the text in a previous comment, hit the bquote button, and get a full blockquote complete with start and end tags around a copy of that selected text.
Here’s the reasons why the numbers in time stamps are less useful than the comment numbers. With comment numbers the reader can more quickly and easily scroll to the desired post. If I’m currently reading post #73 and want to go read post #25, I know it’s about 48 posts away and can quickly scroll approximately the correct distance. Yes some posts are longer and some are shorter, but they do have an average size and moreover while scrolling I can also guesstimate how many posts have gone whizzing by.
With time stamps, if I’m currently reading a 5:01pm post, and want to scroll back to a 10:43am post, I have no way of knowing if that post is 55 posts back or 5 posts back. And if it’s a 10:43am post from the day before, it’s even harder, it might be only 5 posts back if people have stopped posting, or it might be 555 if it’s a hot topic.
Analogy: in the 1980s I visited Virginia and thought that it was strange that the freeway exits had numbers instead of names such as the “Mercer Street” exit from I-5, or the “45th Street” exit. But when I realized that those number didn’t merely indicate which exit was first, second, third, etc but also indicated the DISTANCE from the end of the freeway (or the state border) I realized that they were an invaluable navigational aid. If I’m wondering how far it is to the exit I want, all I need to know is that I’m looking for exit 25 and just drove by exit 73 and voila I know I’m about 48 miles away.
California only began to number its freeway exits about two years ago; acquaintances who’ve recently moved here complain about how hard it is to navigate (there’s other reasons beyond the lack of numbered exits such as Southern California’s habit of calling freeways by name instead of by number, and then giving multiple names to them, e.g. what if we had the “Renton freeway” and the “Evergreen State freeway”, instead of simply calling it “I-5″? Los Angeles literally has two names for I-5, the “Santa Ana Freeway” and the “Golden State Freeway”.)
And Massachusetts does have numbered exits but idiotically numbers them consecutively, i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. instead of numbering them by distance. So If I’m looking for exit 30, the fact that I just drove by exit 42 doesn’t give me much help.
Time stamps are like those lame Massachusetts exit numbers. Yes you can tell if you’re above or below the desired post, and you know how many hours have elapsed since the post that you’re looking for, but you don’t really know how far to scroll — so you have to pause while scrolling to peer at the time stamps.
Whereas comment numbers are like the smart exit numbers that most states have and California is finally getting: if I’m looking for post #25 then bam I scroll up about the right amount, peek at the comment number, and either scroll some more or, more often because I’m already close to the target, just hone in on the desired post.
That’s why comment numbers make for faster, easier navigation. With time stamps, you have to constantly actually read the friggin’ time stamp to figure out which post you’re at and then try to guesstimate if you’re in the right vicinity or not.
Yes, comment numbers can change due to deleted posts, but I’ve spent months reading comments with time stamps at this site, and years reading comment numbers, and the comment numbers worked better. Faster, easier navigation.
I hear you on the moderators’ workload issue, but why bother deleting the “Oops I meant #22″ posts in the first place? Why not just leave them?
Even now, an off-topic post will provoke reactions, and the off-topic post will later be deleted but the reactive posts are still there, referencing a now non-existent ghost. No problem, that’s just life. And likewise with the Oops I meant #22 posts, it’s just life.
We generally try to trim OT threads entirely.
Anyway. While I understand the reference issue (and I once wrote Raygun a really nasty letter about not having page numbers), there was also a constant issue of crappy comments that *required* you to go back and read them.
#144 by Joe whatever
73 LOL
74 NFW
101 That’s only true on Tuesdays
That entire category of cruddy, useless comments has been eliminated. Comment threads are now a lot more pleasant and readable because any reference back now either has to have context or stand on its own.
Okay thanks. Those are two good reasons for time stamps: less moderator workload, and fewer lousy comments (I don’t remember many of those dumb comments but I guess that’s because you guys were deleting them.)
Those are much better reasons that what people have been trying to claim, namely “time stamps are just as good as comment numbers for finding the post that you want”. Because they aren’t as good. (I don’t think Derek or Dave ever tried to make this claim, it was other posters, but it was a bogus argument, trying to claim that time stamps are as good as comment numbers is like trying to claim that Ibanez’s defense in LF is as good as oh Carl Crawford’s).
But I understand the tradeoffs better now, so you won’t hear me complain any more about the lack of comment numbers.
There’s actually a couple of worthwhile picks in NPR’s all songs considered year-end wrap-up.
No love for the Black Keys album?