Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with metafilter

Z????

leotrotsky — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:55:41 -0800

Can't believe I'm blowing a question on this: what lovecraftian two syllable unicode font mangling word, starting with a Z, was posted on this site a little while back? reinterpreted comics were involved

help me find a particular website that previously appeared on metafilter...

thermonuclear.jive.turkey — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:49:51 -0800

help me find a particular website that previously appeared on metafilter... Hi, I feel like a total n00b asking this...

recently (within maybe the last 12 months I guess) there was a post on metafilter. The post was about a website that had a collection of fictional writeups on nonexistent games (i.e. reviews of games that don't exist). I think *most* of these fictional reviews were about computer/video/electronic games, but some might not have been.

One review in question sticks out: it discussed a fictional disk-based computer game that you could only play once, there were no published rules or instructions for the game, and at the end of the game it would erase the disk, and (according to the fictional article) remaining copies of this game were now extremely rare.

Can you direct me to the metafilter post and/or the website in question?

My feeble google-fu, and metafilter-search-fu, come up short.

Yes I'm a n00b. I'm sorry.

It's true. Everyone DOES need a hug.

ocherdraco — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:21:56 -0800

I have an "Everyone Needs A Hug" Metafilter t-shirt. It is too small for me to wear. What should I do with it? N.B.: I would like to keep the t-shirt in my possession, so "Give it to me!" is not a valid answer.

Best ways to navigate social media?

vizsla — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:38:08 -0800

Metafilter and other social media sites are excellent places to learn new things. Yet it's probably true for everyone that most of the world isn't like me and doesn't like the things I like, and I don't have the time to check every topic for interest value. How do you use Metafilter and similar sites to most efficiently find topics/people that interest you? Being a bit older now , visiting sites like Reddit and Digg can get a little depressing. While there is still gold there to be found, it's somewhat crowded out by "younger' topics of interest. Even a place like Metafilter which seems to have an older and generally more intelligent crowd produces a lot of topics that will never interest me. Of course, I don't just come here to find stuff I was always interested in and opening my mind to new things is all part of the fun. Yet I can't see how anyone has time to sift through every new topic for interest value. So I am wondering - do the clever insiders have ways to sift through the content to increase the overall interest value? I understand the simple use of tags and the popular favorites on Metafilter, both of which I use often, but maybe for example there is some way of identifying like-minded users and following what grabs their interest? Maybe there is some other way I haven't even thought of? Care to share how you make the most efficient use of these sites?

Ideas for a MetaFilter onesie?

onlyconnect — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:26:47 -0800

What should our five month old baby wear to our local 10th Anniversary Metafilter Meetup in 3 weeks? So time is running out and what with all the feeding and the playing and the pooping I have not managed to embroider our little girl her own Metafilter onesie yet. Three questions:

1. If I have time to embroider it myself, should I just embroider a big old "Metafilter" on there or am I missing a great opportunity for fun and silliness with some other slogan? Like, "© 1999-2009 MetaFilter Network LLC. All babies are © their original authors." (That's a little wordy and I'm not a great embroiderer, but you get the idea. Husband and I met through Metafilter, so onesie can reflect kiddo's special relationship to the site.)

2. If I can't get my act together and do it myself (probability > 60%), can anyone recommend someone on Etsy or elsewhere who would embroider or otherwise decorate a onesie affordably?

3. Is there a quicker way besides embroidery to make this onesie that won't look like ass? I've embroidered onesies before but they take me more time than I probably have these days. I'm not a great artist but have a little bit of craftiness in me.

Basically I'm looking for a really fun onesie idea and suggestions on how to turn it into a reality. More like "my great slogan idea is ____ and here's a YouTube video showing a cool technique for approximating silkscreening with a Sharpie" than "how about going through a wild goose chase to find exactly the right color onesie in Metafilter blue" etc. Thanks, MetaFilter!

Spanish Metafilter, existe?

Laotic — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:23:03 -0800

Are there any Spanish-language metafilters out there? Could not find anything for all I tried.

Why do some social web platforms catch-on (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia) while countless others don't?

GIMG — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:08:48 -0800

Why do some social web platforms catch-on (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia) while countless others don't? From a diffusion of innovations perspective, I'm trying to look at how certain social web platforms (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, MetaFilter, even) catch-on, while loads of others fail to. Is there any good research on the failure for certain websites to diffuse? Or on why the ones that did diffuse did?

Bloglines Feed.

gman — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:27:37 -0800

Is anyone else who uses Bloglines not able to get their Metafilter feed? Mine hasn't come in for about 5 days now. I've tried deleting the feed and resubscribing... to no avail.

Looking for an animated French music video and song from a few years back

zaebiz — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:11:20 -0800

What is the name of that French song from maybe five years back which had an animated music video of a little girl running through the pastures and playing? After a certain time, she stops playing, and she exits what turns out to be a big stage. A line of children are waiting their turn to enter the stage and play. I am pretty sure there was a link to it on Metafilter too back then. It seemed to paint a gloomy picture of the future.

Educational cartoon short about oil/petroleum?

BlackLeotardFront — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:54:40 -0800

I'm looking for a great short educational cartoon about oil and petroleum that may or may not have been posted in the blue a long time ago, definitely elsewhere on the net. My extensive searching has uncovered nothing and someone else may simply remember the title. It was 50's cartoony, obviously biased in favor of the industry, but seemed scientifically accurate. Any clue?

Is there an open course codebase similar to ... Ask Metafilter?

clango — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:53:46 -0800

Is there an open course codebase similar to ... Ask Metafilter? I have a fun idea for a specialized group Q and A blog, but I'm not much of a coder.

How can I make my own MeFi Music clone?

40 Watt — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 20:37:19 -0800

Help me make a private community-based mp3 blog, very much like, say... MeFi Music. I have a very small, invite-only group of friends who regularly get together via mailing list to discuss our latest favorite music, shared via remotely hosted SFTP site. It's worked OK for a number of years now, but I'd like to maybe make it into something a little easier to use and more flexible. SFTP can be a pain for a number of reasons, and I like the MeFi Music interface of just being able to upload a song and have it just show up on the page, with a simple little Flash player and a space for people to add info or comments.

I've poked around with various high and low-powered CMS systems, such as Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, MovableType and others but I'm not sure how much I really need to use in order to make this happen.(I know MeFi is based on ColdFusion which I know very little about, and Matt isn't about to hand out the source anyway.) Ideally, we're talking about restricting access to a select group of logins, allowing all users to upload (and add info to) songs, and have a way for other users to comment on uploaded music. I'm looking for: 1.) which CMS to use, 2.) plugins or extensions to add to get the functionality I'm looking for and 3.) fairly easy for me to install and operate. I know my way around (X)HTML and a little PHP, but I'm not a huge code monkey and I don't have a lot of time to invest in writing stuff by hand.

Any ideas?

Why does Metafilter hate my Macs?

danny the boy — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 19:17:33 -0800

Why can I reach Metafilter from my PCs, but not my Macs? I've had this problem since April 1st, but haven't had the time to put any effort into troubleshooting it. Prior to around April 1st, everything worked without issue. This is a pretty consistent problem, and the only website affected, to my knowledge, is Metafilter.

I'm using an Airport Express behind a Netgear router, connected to a DSL modem, on the AT&T network. I can reach it from any of the PCs I've tried, including from within Parallels (which is where I'm posting this from), but none of the Macs I've tried can get through. To be more specific, Firefox and Safari both attempt connection for several minutes (right now I'm at 15 min. and counting), but never resolve an actual page. I can get through on the Mac if I use a proxy server (such as anonymouse.org).

Affected computers include my old G4 titanium powerbook that was 5 years old, an aluminum G4 powerbook, and a brand new, latest MacBook Pro, straight out of the box!

WTF?

Why does my router hate you so much?

bicyclefish — Fri, 11 May 2007 06:38:07 -0800

Networking mystery! My router hates one site on the Internet: MetaFilter. Why? Here's a stumper: my wireless router will let me access every site on the Internet, except one: MeFi.

After MeFi changed servers (and, I'm presuming, IPs) a few months back, I suddenly found myself unable to access it. My browser would appear to do the DNS lookup and "find" MeFi, but then the loading process would just hang. The page would never appear.

It wasn't my computer's fault; I could reach it from other people's networks. It wasn't my ISP's fault; I get my DSL from a small outfit that, believe it or not, has a human answer the phone on the second ring - and that human was willing to tool around because one subscriber can't see one website. It wasn't my IP address getting blocked, since I've been assigned several new ones.

In the end, the culprit seems to be my wireless router: when I connect my computer straight to my modem, I can connect. I figured that resetting the router would solve the problem, but no: it's adamant that MeFi is out.

Now, this isn't a pressing support question, since it's an old clunker (a US Robotics USR8054 802.11g) I picked up for $25 a year ago, and I'm going to replace it anyway. But I'd be really interested if anyone has any ideas as to why a router would hold such a peculiar grudge?

Meta-meta Mac trouble

Eddie Mars — Fri, 04 May 2007 07:58:20 -0800

Why can't I get to Metafilter any more? I've got a network problem that has me stumped. At home, I have 4 computers, 2 are PCs, 2 are Macs. (Yes, the computers outnumber the people 2 to 1 in my house. I'm a huge nerd). All of the computers connect to the Internet via the same wireless router. 1 Mac and 1 PC are connected directly to the router via ethernet, the other Mac and PC connect wirelessly. The network is Verizon's FiOS.

Neither of the Macs are able to load any of the metafilter.com sites anymore: www, ask, metatalk. They were able to load as of a few weeks ago, then just stopped. I didn't install any patches in that timeframe.
It doesn't matter what web browser I use, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Camino, even Lynx, all are unable to load anything coming from metafilter.com. The PCs load everything normally.

When I try to access metafilter, the browser seems to make its connection, then the status bar just keeps displaying "Waiting for metafilter.com". The connection will eventually time out after 10 minutes or so. I am able to load the site if I go through a third party site, such as proxify.com.

I've checked every TCPIP setting I can think of, no dice. I even added metafilter to my hosts file thinking it was a simple DNS problem, with no luck.

I'm pretty much out of ideas at this point. What am I missing?

Metafilter, "magazine" of the future!

MarshallPoe — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 08:52:20 -0800

If The Atlantic Monthly (or Harper's, or The New Yorker) were founded today, would it be Metafilter? I'm actually with The Atlantic , and I'm writing an article about the future of serious, high brow general interest magazines. IMO, Metafilter provides a good model for what's coming. But I want to hear what you think. I'm especially interested in hearing from people who work in journalism, and magazine journalism in particular. Editors, writers, people on the business side. If you'd like to respond (or talk to me) off the air, write me at "mpoe at theatlantic dot com." Thanks in advance.

Viva la web revolucion!

Smarson — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 07:23:44 -0800

What is this web revolution I see before me? Over the course of the past year I have had a lot of time to surf the web and have come to the conclusion that a new era of web based communication is unfolding before my very eyes. It started when I stumbled across Lifehacker.com, which showed me a whole new side of the internet that I had never conceived of. From that point I began to discover websites that re-oriented the way I've come view information creation, distribution, and storage (Ask Metafilter being one of those discoveries). Some examples of websites I lump into this category are:

*Del.icio.us
*Metafilter
*Ask Metafilter
*Lifehacker
*Wikipedia
*Firefox
*Google (and it's all it's applications including Gmail and Gcal)
*Flickr
*Blogger/Wordpress/etc.
*Bloglines

The list goes on and on and is constantly growing (thanks largely to Lifehacker discoveries). Obviously Google and Wikipedia were known to me prior to my new found web exploration, but only as straight forward tools. It's only in the last 8 months that I've come to understand the potential of their design (e.g. Google Map Mash-ups and wiki-technology as a whole).

Among the above listed websites and others I identify in my "web revolution," I see common themes. The use of tagging is widely present as well as the concept of the blog (In reality Lifehacker and Metafilter/Ask Metafilter are just widely popular blogs with no single author and Flickr is essentially a collection of thousands of photo blogs). I guess even deeper than that is the theme of individual empowerment through the web. Most of these sites were not generated by large corporations (although they may later have been aquired by them), but rather created by a single individual or small group of individuals in order to address an existing need they percieved.

So my questions. Does anyone else see the watershed that I speak of, or is this normal web progression and my "revolution" is simply a personal one? If this is an actual distinct movement within the internet, does it have a name or other identifying characteristics similar or different to the ones I listed above?

Help Me Kill MeFites

Bugbread — Tue, 02 May 2006 05:24:17 -0800

Please help me to get a/any MetaFilter killfile greasemonkey script working. I've tried several MetaFilter killscripts, and none of them work for me.
I use Windows2000, behind a corporate firewall. I'm running Firefox 1.5.0.2. I have installed greasemonkey, and am running the most current version. I've tried at least three MeFi killscripts (one, by mystyk, that adds an [X] next to each comment to allow killfile addition, one that has an online killfile list, and one where you edit the base script). None of them have worked.

If it were only one, I'd just contact the writer of the script. However, none of them work, so I don't even know who to turn to. Is there anyone who has successfully installed a (any) MeFi killscript and who has technical knowledge about how it works (i.e. can tell me what is wrong if I tell you what errors are popping up in the javascript console) that can help me get this darn thing working?

Like Metafilter...only different.

oxala — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 17:36:42 -0800

I want to find other sites like Metafilter that focus solely on creativity rather than political issues or current affairs. I really enjoyed reading Metafilter up until I joined and perhaps felt the need to join in. Trying to join in really highlighted how little I was interested in. AskMe is great but I would like to hear some recommendations for other communities where the focus is creativity: cool site designs, art projects, sculpture, music, painting, writing, drawing, architecture - without news and current affairs. This is not a troll, I still love the parts of Metafilter I loved before, and still love AskMe. I just realised that Metafilter wasn't all it cracked up to be once I turned the spotlight on it.

Looking for a site where animals looked like people

fire&wings — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 17:33:18 -0800

A website featuring animal portraits in a human style... I saw a website showing portraits of animals. They were posed in portrait format in the centre of the frame, like human photographic portraits normally are. The photographs were high resolution and lit in a subdued light which gave a pastel wash to the images. The animals (I possibly remember cats, a pug and a monkey) looked human. It may have been linked from this very site. Any ideas?

Homeless server space... WTF?

thedevildancedlightly — Sat, 07 May 2005 02:03:27 -0800

Does anybody know the backstory behind this image of a guy with many computers plugged into a streetlamp? It keeps showing up in MeTa threads.

Making It Big Via Metafilter

ParisParamus — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 13:38:38 -0800

I'm curious which bloggers and media people have gotten their 15 Minutes (or longer) after affiliation with Metafilter. [+]

Why can't I get to the internet (except Metafilter)?

luser — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 21:19:42 -0800

Very weird. The only website I can get to right now is the Metafilter family. Everything else times out with the error "www.cnn.com could not be found. Please check the name and try again." Dozens of other sites return the same error.

I'm on a cable modem. Win XP. My vonage phone works fine, as does email. I restarted the computer and the router. What the heck is going on?

Help me find this video

O9scar — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 14:36:53 -0800

My memory fails me - there's a funny video that made the rounds online (including mefi) that was a fake industrial film for a device with a name like "interociter". It was loaded with all kinds of nonsensical technical terms. I'd appreciate it if someone could point me to it.

Trouble Logging on to Metafilter

doctordendrite — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 20:30:26 -0800

Problems with metafilter.

For some reason, I can log into the ask metafilter section but cannot log into the standard metafilter site.

Even after clearing cookies, history, cache... when I login I just get the metafilter site presented to me as if I was not logged in... If I intentionally enter the wrong password I am told that I have errored, but cannot log into metafilter.

This happens using Firefox and IE6. I've even tried computers at friends houses and the same thing happens.

Is this because I close the browser without logging out?

I've never had this happen on another site.