I’m adding one more digital resolution. I need to learn Wordpress next year, and not just the nuts and bolts. I’m talking bells and whistles too. I suggested this a bit with the whole ‘make this blog a sandbox’ item, but I think it needs to go further. I need to start simple and work my way up, learning more as I go. To that end, I’m going to not only repurpose Blackmail Is My Life as I see fit, I’m going to start work on postschadenfreude, a new blog offering thoughts and commentary on music and the industry that’s bringing it down.

How does that sound? You can follow the postschadenfreude tumblr here.

Our Christmas tree, originally uploaded by Blackmail Is My Life.

Helen and I are busy getting ready for our second annual Christmas party here in Fishtown. Tonight we made our pilgrimage to Oregon Avenue to buy our Christmas tree. Last year we bought a Fraser fir. This year we wanted something taller and a little less bulky so we chose a Grand Fir. It’s resting in water for the next few days. We’ll start decorating it on Friday night as we prep for the party Saturday. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I can’t wait!

I really need to sort out how I use the Internet in 2009. It sounds crazy, but 2008 was a trial by ordeal for me as I tried more new web products than I ever have before in an effort to better understand the work that’s being done out there, and to have opinions about it. It’s no mean feat, and it’s rarely rewarding. I want to change that next year. How will I do it? I’m going to make a list!

1. Find a lifestreaming service that works for me. Lifestreaming services ought to condense my web experience and make it simpler. So far, it hasn’t. Contrary to what Robert Scoble might say, FriendFeed isn’t the answer. It’s a start in the right direction, but it doesn’t address the noise issue most people have and, without a built-in Twitter client, my responses often go unnoticed by my followers. It’s the sort of thing many of my online friends have signed up for, but few use. That’s bad.
2. Speak my mind on “music 2.0.” on both the web and publicly. I unsubscribed from Wired’s Listening Post blog this week. Why? Because not only is a terrible music blog, it’s also a bad tech blog. (OMG! As I wrote this I found that they shut down the blog on Friday. It’s a Christmas miracle!) Elliott Van Buskirk and Scott Thill seemed to copy and paste all the PR email I delete. It’s not just them. It’s endemic to music and tech blogs these days. Is it asking to much for anyone to be genuinely critical of free, on-demand music? Could it be that there are better ways to get people to engage music content on the web that don’t involve selling music? I think the answer is yes.
3. Write more about music and not just the music/internet nexus. Part of the problem of writing about this stuff critically is that people mistake you for being a ‘hater,’ which applied broadly, means it’s not fair to criticize anything. If you criticize music 2.0, then you must hate music. I think the perfect way for me to counteract claims like this is to actually start writing about music again. I probably wrote my last real review in 2007. I need to be more diligent about spending time thinking about music for its intrinsic worth and not just strategizing around music content.
4. Play more. As I wrote above, I need to find what works for me. When I do, I need to use them for fun and for storytelling, and not just as raw material for better ideas and implementations. I’ve done some of that in the past year, but want to do more of it.
5. Participate more. Something I’ve found since I started using Twitter regularly is that social networks have gotten much more useful since they — and their users — have matured. The quality of information and the people contributing it have increased dramatically. When you factor in improved search functions across various social media platforms, you’re apt to connect to someone who really knows what they’re talking about. Same goes for real life. I want to be more involved in conversations about where the music industry is headed as someone who’s deeply invested in
6. Find new sources. This goes hand-in-hand with #5. I know there are plenty of people out there who gave up on music blogs when their favorite bloggers got hired into mainstream and digital jobs. I’ve followed some folks from the Stylus Magazine diaspora, like Jeff Weiss, but I trolling blogrolls hasn’t borne much fruit. I’ve read many accounts this year that blogging has gone flat, niche, and worse, but it doesn’t mean people aren’t doing great work out there. Food blogs are raging right now. Is music so moribund that people can’t even say intelligent, interesting things about it anymore?
7. Treat this blog as a sandbox. When I hemmed and hawed about redesigning Blackmail Is My Life, I was fortunate to connect with Chris at ClickPopMedia. When I was unemployed in 2006, I started a project I didn’t finish. I really need to educate myself on Wordpress and learn how to build a blog that incorporates new features like Google Friend Connect, Yahoo Media Player, and other powerful social elements without needlessly cluttering the site.
8. Stop bothering with PR people, whenever possible. I know it’s a 2008 Techcrunch meme to bitch about PR, but there’s more than a kernel of truth to it. For every great and helpful PR, there are five spam artists. Most haven’t caught up to the speed of the Internet, despite the fact that Pitchfork has become the gold standard for PR. Let’s face it: the albums leak faster than they can mail them, if they ever mailed anything at all. What else is there really? Poorly written ad copy and some biographical details? Everything’s available online. Let’s move on.
9. Get one of these. Take more photos. More importantly, take a photography class! One of my regrets from 2008 is that I didn’t take enough pictures. Helen and I went to seven weddings and I have just a handful of photos to remind me just how much fun we had all year. Granted, it’s hard to take pictures when you’re sweating (or falling) on the dance floor, but you get the gist.
10. Share more. Or perhaps, share more effectively. This correlates to a number of my resolutions. Heck, it probably condenses five of them into one. I need to narrow content into categories, whether it’s a wedding or just a quiet dinner with friends. Both can be fun things to share, but it needs to be done right. If I abide by my new rules, Blackmail Is My Life will be a place not only for polemics, but will provide an overall picture of what I’m up to and with whom. Blogging shouldn’t feel like work, right? I feel like the only story I really told effectively online in 2008 was my marathon training. Between June and November I wrote about or recorded my mileage and marathon milestones all over the web, providing regular updates here on BMIML. I want to do that with more stories in 2009. I hope you’ll join me for them!

Here are ten digital resolutions I’m going to try to live up to in the New Year. Are you making any for yourself? Let’s do 2009 right!

If you’re a Philadelphian and you’re not already reading Geekadelphia, this would be a good reason to start. Why? They’ve just celebrated their one year anniversary as a blog, which is like a century in blog years, at least according Hipster Runoff. These guys have been filling the Fun Vampires void lately with lots of fun stuff, particularly all the delicious, nerdy baked goods that they highlight from time to time. Happy birthday, guys!

‘Mirror’ is a beautiful, impenetrable film. Director Andrei Tarkovsky crafts a narrative that takes you between past, present, and future, dreamlike, as memory often feels. The story is a messy scrapbook of memories, some nearly pasted atop one another, producing a collage of fragmented emotions. But to speak only of the story would overlook Tarkovsky’s accomplishment as a director.

Ryland Walker Knight writes for Reverse Shot,

Mirror’s editing performs an odd alchemy of memory that proliferates identities as much as converges them. Like in a prism, or kaleidoscope, mirrors are everywhere in the film (adorning walls or registering in windows) forever multiplying realities and planes, forever furthering the refractive inward reflection, or meditation.

Tarkovsky focuses not only on repeated mistakes in personal life, but also in political life, highlighting conflicts in Spain, Russia, and China as the film progresses. There’s something bittersweet about them, as though we’re trapped in a cycle of mistakes that we’re doomed to repeat even when those memories are still fresh in our minds.

If there’s one shortcoming about ‘Mirror,’ it’s that Kino released it. Kino is often praised for exhuming and restoring obscure titles, which isn’t an inexpensive thing to do. But they operate as though no other company is doing that work. For a complex film like ‘Mirror,’ it might help to have something more than just the film itself. I’d be willing to overlook that if they paid more attention to their translations. There are moments in ‘Mirror’ where the viewer has to treat it like silent film while an entire exchange is omitted from the transcript. Tarkovsky’s visual style makes up for some of those shortcomings, but you can’t help but feel that some meaning has been lost.