The iFAQ
Meet The Ishbadiddlers
Colophon

Infrequently Asked Questions

What the heck is this?

Ishbadiddle is a group blog, "an occasional report on ephemeral things."

What's a blog?

Short for "web-log," it's a mechanism to post stuff on the 'net without mucking around with HTML. Go to to blogger and you too can join the revolution.

OK, so what's your story?

Ishbadiddle originally started in January 2001 as an email list, a way for me and my friends to talk about movies and books and music and stuff. I have never found a "collaborative filter" that really works (whatever happened to Firefly anyway?). The recommendations on Amazon or other e-commerce sites are 1) written by strangers whose tastes are unknown to me, and 2) edited by people who want to sell me stuff. Wouldn't it be better to get recommendations from your friends? Thus, Ishbadiddle. See, my friends know a lot more about pop culture than I do, so instead of pestering them personally for recommendations, I decided to create a Blurb Ponzi. That was the original idea, at least.

In May 2001, at the urging (and with the help) of Trip, I moved Ishbadiddle to the web. Boom! It became a blog. We were at geocities until April 2002, when Trip generously offered us new digs over at Triptronix.net. Over time, Ish expanded its scope. More people started sending stuff in to get posted. We started posting memes, those self-propogating ideas that show up in your inbox and won't go away, and various funny links. And we started writing about politics.

And then the unthinkable happened on one beautiful September day.

Ishbadiddle completely changed then. First it became a way to assure each other of our continued existence; then a way to tell our stories; then a way for us to try and make sense of it all. There've been a lot of arguments -- mostly conducted with civility. I hope that we've shed more light than heat.

So now this is sort of a like a very long cocktail party with my friends, and various others who've found their way here from Google searches or blog directories or what have you. Minus the drinks and the little paper umbrellas. Hope you find the conversation interesting.

I'm having trouble getting my ketchup out of the bottle in a timely manner. Do you have any suggestions?

First, make sure the cap is on tight. Then, holding the bottle upside-down, vigorously shake it from side-to-side, so that the top of the bottle describes an arc. This will force the ketchup toward the top of the bottle through centrifugal force. Next, remove the cap. Tilting the bottle at a 45-degree angle hit the top side of the bottle several times. Hitting the bottom of the bottle is more frequently done; however it is less efficient. Hitting the top forces the ketchup down, enabling air to break the ketchup seal at the top of the bottom. Then gravity will do the trick. Never put ketchup on a hot dog if you are older than 12; they were meant to be eaten with mustard, relish, onions and/or kraut if you are so inclined.

Is someone making money off of this?

Of course not! Don't you know you can't make money on the Internet any more? If you really want to, you could buy a t-shirt or something.

What's an Ishbadiddle anyway?

It's a nonsense phrase that my grandparents taught me: Ish-ba-did-a-lee-oaten-doat-bo-bo-ske-dee-ten-dot. I think it's from the 30s. Say it a bunch of times. Kind of sticks in your head, don't it?

What's a "Vork"?

Jimpy invented this word to fill the need for "an alternative label that would encompass everyone who prepares for or engages in political violence, unless under the auspices of a state recognized by the UN." Since one man's freedom fighter is another's rebel is another's revolutionary is another's terrorist, Vork is a handy catch-all neologism that elminates the need for political argument when used to describe the politically violent.

I see you have "Subjects" and "Categories" listed with each post. Huh?

Categories are a top-down way to sort the writing on Ishbadiddle. You can see the list of Categories and Subcategories here. Subjects, on the other hand, link to an index of posts that relate to that subject, in chronological order. You can read more about Ishbaddidle's classification scheme here.

Why didn't you post about {insert topic}? Isn't that just evidence of your {insert bias}?

This is a blog. A collection of writing and links in chronological order. It's not:

1) A news organization, with responsibility to cover every issue.
2) A comprehensive statement of anyone's political (and other) beliefs.
3) Something we spend 24 hours a day on, to the exclusion of my work, family, sanity, etc.

So, omitting to write something on any given topic cannot be taken as evidence of anything -- except as evidence, perhaps, that Ishbadiddle is at best an unreliable place to get all of your news.

I really liked that thing you wrote. Can I use it?

The contents of this blog are released under a Creative Commons License. Which means you are free to copy and distribute the writing here, as long as you give the author and/or blog the credit, and are not using our content to make money. Also, it would be nice if you let us know.

Who are you people, anyway?

For a quick overview of our political beliefs, you can look at handy chart (biased as it is). Or, read on.

Meet the folks who put the "I" in "Ishbadiddle".

David Ball (SF Liberal) lives with his wife and son in San Francisco, where they are taking a "life sabbatical" for a year. He contributes to Ishbadiddle to remind himself that yes, this stuff actually happened. His own blog is San Francisco Liberal, currently on hiatus.

Mike Everett-Lane (M E-L) works for DonorsChoose, so you should give them a lot of money. He's also one of the founders of NYC Bloggers, the map of blogs in New York City. In his spare time, he does training with ImprovEdge, which teaches improvisational skills to business people. He lives with his lovely wife and lovely children in lovely Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Trip Kirkpatrick (Tk) is a web developer living in Connecticut, USA, and at Triptronix.net. His knowledge is a mile wide and an inch deep, maybe two.

Colin Lingle writes and curmudges in Oregon. He wouldn't mind having written John Dos Passos' "Manhattan Transfer." But, all things being equal, he'll just have the pumpkin pie. His own blog, Pinchbeck Anthemion, is on hiatus.

By day, a communications consultant writing gibberish for multinational bureaucracies; by night, a rock critic and self-styled pop culture pundit. And he does his own laundry. Chris Molanphy's (CMM) work has appeared in Billboard and CMJ New Music Monthly. His blog, CMM Daily Pop, is updated with music news, pop culture ephemera and assorted rantings.

Jim Ponichtera is an avid fan of reality television, including Survivor and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Posters Without Bios include Aaron, Alex B, andrea, Cebra Graves, Dot, Elizabeth Lynn, emily, Ennis, Matt Fleischer-Black, and MS. Some of them prefer to remain anonymous for reasons of national security.

Colophon

Ishbadiddle is published using Movable Type Version 2.64. It's coded on the EditPad Lite text editor. It's designed using CSS, table-free. The CSS is adapted from a design by MaxDesign. Anything that works can be attributed to Trip; mistakes are most likely Mike's fault.

Ishbadiddle uses a number of Movable Type plugins to make the code do fancy tricks:

• Blacklist is used to fight comment spam. You can get our blacklist here.
• CatEntries, CatX, and Sub_Cats are used to control categories; the latter is used to create sub-categories, which are native to MT 3.x but not 2.x.
• MTList, Compare, Loop, and Collate are used to make the Subject Indexes work. More information on this can be found here.
• Authors is used to get the post count on the Author Index page.
• IfEmpty, Macros, and Regex are general-purpose programming plugins that are used for all kinds of neat things here.
• Excerpt Words is used to grab the first 10 words of the most recent comments for display in the "HERE" column.

There are also a couple of scripts being run: one from randomWalks that runs that little checkbox that lets you decide whether clicking a link opens a new window or not, in the THERE column. The other is from a now-defunct blog called crayonbox.org, which is used to randomly rotate the title font.

Our permalinks are rendered "cruft-free" using this method. Which means if we change the coding or the back-end or what have you, the links won't change.