After checking my e-mail, one of the first sites I like to go to when I'm getting going in the morning is icanhascheezburger.com, one of the leading lolcat sites. It makes me happy.
Then, there's my webcomics: Order of the Stick and Erfworld are both found on the Giant in the Playground Games site. They are gaming comics and if you've never played Dungeons and Dragons or certain strategy wargames you might not get all the jokes (I don't get all the jokes myself), but I like them. Girl Genius is the current ongoing comic from one of my favorite comic artists, Phil Foglio. It's really an amazing epic, and chock full of trademark Foglio humor and zaniness.
There are a number of music forums I visit from time to time, more or less often as specific interests wax and wane:
Guitarists.net is a general guitar playing site, which is frequented by a lot of beginners; I will admit, I like to hang out there because I feel that my experience and knowledge about guitar stuff can be of some use---in regular life it's just obscure and arcane! I've met some cool people there, and one guy who lives in Chicago bought a bass from me.
I've mentioned TalkBass in other posts---it's really the home of the bass playing community on the internet. The guitar community on-line is fragmented (maybe because it's bigger), but the TalkBass community includes players of just about every description, musical style, and skill level. They are remarkably polite, given the wide variances in perspective and strongly-held opinions.
The Gear Page is a more guitar-oriented page, which focuses on higher-end and boutique gear, but there is a lot of knowledge in that community. On GNet I usually answer questions; if I have questions of my own, I take them to The Gear Page.
Then there are forums devoted to specific brands that I like. I've mentioned previously my enthusiasm for Rickenbacker guitars and Acoustic Control Corp. amplifiers---well, there are on-line communities of enthusiasts of each of those brands. The RickResource forum is a great font of information on Rickenbackers, while the Unofficial Acoustic Control Corp. homepage and forum have lots of great info on Acoustic gear. And, I met another Chicago-based Acoustic fan on that forum, and he introduced me to Bill Tucker, which led to my current band situation. Networking!
Sometimes I'll cruise over to the GearSlutz forum, which is a forum for recording engineers and deals with esoteric recording gear---but, they have great stories about the stupid things they've seen and heard in recording sessions. I study these stories to ensure that when I go into a studio I don't sound or act like a dummy. And sometimes I surf through the Harmony Central forums. There's interesting stuff there, but the signal-to-noise ratio is worse than on other, more specialized music forums.
I don't spend as much time on car forums as I used to, but with the Alfa convention fast approaching I've been visiting the Alfa Romeo Bulletin Board a bit more lately. It is the home of the Alfa enthusiast community on the web. I used to visit FerrariChat a lot, but my interest in owning a Ferrari has waned, so I don't go there much anymore. It's an interesting place sociologically, since "Ferrari" has so much secondary significance beyond just the merits of the cars themselves. Lots of people are attracted by the mystique of Ferrari and the lifestyle they perceive Ferrari ownership to symbolize, so you get some weird discussions over there.
Another one I visit every once in a while is the Jack Vance Message Board, where Vance fans discuss his work, and various other things. When these guys go off-topic, the discussions can end up in some pretty strange and interesting places. Part of the allure is seeing and communicating with fellow travelers from the Vance Integral Edition project (of which I posted early on in this blog).
To keep up with physics news, I periodically check Physics News. If I hadn't dropped Calculus II in college, as a result of having the worst professor ever, who knows what I might have accomplished in the world of science? I intended to take it later, but that didn't work out. That's a story for another time.
Finally, a few blogs I like to check periodically. I follow a few friends' personal blogs, which I'm not going to list here since they are of interest because I know the bloggers---if you know them too you probably already know about the blogs. But I also check these:
Acquired Taste: This is the blog of Tim Stretton, who is coincidentally a friend but the blog is his "professional" blog about writing. Tim was a VIE manager and his first book, The Zael Inheritance, was serialized in the Cosmopolis Literary Supplement, an appendix of the VIE newsletter. He's written a couple more books since and has been accepted into the Macmillan New Writers program, through which his last novel, The Dog of the North, is being published in a few weeks. Tim's blog will be of particular interest to writers, but he provides interesting insight on the writing process that I think many book fans will find interesting, and the discussion of books is a great source of recommendations if you're looking for cool stuff to read.
Chocolate and Zucchini: I'm no foodie, but I really enjoy this food blog. Blogger Clothilde Dusoulier is the daughter of Patrick Dusoulier, another friend from the VIE. She's an interesting phenomenon. She has published two books in the last few years, a cookbook and a guide to Parisian restaurants. Now, cookbooks seem to be top-down affairs nowadays: one becomes a mini-celebrity on the Food Network and then puts out cookbooks trading on that celebrity. But in Clothilde's case, she simply started a food blog, and it became sufficiently popular that she was able draw on that popularity to get a book deal---more of a bottom-up model, and very populist. It is hardly surprising, though, because her writing is absolutely delightful, and her recipes are pretty good too.
Stuff White People Like: Never have I seen such a scalpel-sharp satire of yuppie culture. This guy (who I don't know and has no connection to the VIE) has a book coming out in July which I am avidly awaiting. Although, reading the comments to his blog posts, and seeing how many people so completely miss what he is doing, may shake one's faith in humanity.
