January 7, 2009  

Favorite posts of 2008

For the 2008 recap I thought I’d pair my own narrative of narcissism with some cold hard server metrics to see if people liked reading what I enjoyed writing most last year.

First, here are the posts that I’m most fond of.

Zombiefest – What happens when you have a free weekend, a lot of alcohol, 17 movies spawned from the Night of the Living Dead, and a brother to consume it all with (oh, and a bar that wants you to DJ). Here’s the first part of the results.

Iraqi on the corner – A local tale of hatred with a global context.

Evolving my music genome – What the iTunes Genius music recommendation algorithm to really says about me. (Hint: it says I don’t know what the hell I am talking about.)

The biophony of Trout Lake – Nature’s interweb.

Are you smarter than a student in 1924? – Also, did you know that the South lost the war?

Recursion – Art’s long tradition of picture-in-picture.

Love of Country – An explanation of a big reason I went to Ghana. Still makes me well up a bit.

The Gigglesnort Hotel – The next in a series of posts trying to explain to myself why I am so messed up.

10 Days in Ghana – How I came across a man butchered to death with a machete and other initial thoughts.

An economy of enslavement – Visiting the last places Africans saw before entering New World bondage.

Ghanaian handicraft series – A six-part series on traditional crafts in West Africa and the amazing people who practice them.

Sally Struthers go home – My take on the West’s wrong-headed approach to aid in Africa.

Call of the wild – Why trembling in your tent while a lion roars in the night is not so much different than that one musical passage that gives you the chills.

Rocks and hard places – Of cashew schnapps, faraway families, tribal chiefs and spirits in the material world.

Africa is a way of thinking – Probably my favorite post of the year, if not the most important. To paraphrase a related post, the things I saw in Africa will be with me forever, ineradicable viruses of the imagination.

Tom bo li de say de moi ya, yeah Jambo Jumbo! – How I almost died on safari in Kenya.

Slave to the cliché – If you love Powerpoint, don’t read this. No wait, definitely read this!

But most of all, I missed YOU – It’s a list! On a blog! Has to be good.

Can I blow things up? – A post almost four years in the queue: the announcement of the Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time project.

The mashability index – Visualizing why certain artists get mixed together more frequently than others. This was fun.

At the end of the world. – Looked forward to this all year and it did not disappoint.

And here’s the top ten most read posts (that were written in 2008) according to the server logs. Clearly I have no sense of my audience. I guess I only like 30% of you.

  1. How big is the Forbidden City?
  2. Forbidden City: Revealed on the History Channel
  3. A happening in China
  4. Favorite links of 2007 (see, people love lists!)
  5. Recursion
  6. Soar with turkeys
  7. Zombiefest
  8. Danger! Animated GIF from the early web! (What the hell?)
  9. At the end of the world.
  10. Testing 1-2-3

Thanks for reading, folks.

Here’s last year and my favorites from 2006.