Musical Monday Edition | Listener supported internet radio SomaFM

Confession: I’m addicted to internet radio.

It started innocently enough a handful of years ago when cable internet became available in my area. I started streaming stations that were just out of my antenna’s reach — maybe something in Lansing or Saginaw.

Somewhere along the lines (I don’t even remember when), I stopped listening to local commercial radio all together. I don’t know if there was any “tipping point,” so to speak, but it’s safe to say that in the last five years (at least) I all but abandoned the traditional airwaves in favor of the fiber-optic cables and magical tubes called “the internets” where one’s ears can feast on a smorgasbord or musical flavors they’d have otherwise never heard before.

A while back I shared a few of my favorite music podcasts that I listened to while driving, so I thought I’d share with you my other audio addiction — SomaFM. I don’t remember how or when I found it, but for the past 4 years or so it’s been such a constant in my life I can’t honestly imagine life without it.

SomaFM is a completely listener-supported, commercial-free radio station that broadcasts from a warehouse in San Francisco. They don’t really play “mainstream” music, but instead have a multitude of channels and formats to fit your every mood. If I could afford to send them some money right now I would, but I can’t so instead I thought I’d give them this shout-out.

Need to chill out after a long day? Try tuning into Drone Zone (“Served best chilled, safe with most medications. Atmospheric textures with minimal beats.”) or Beat Blender (“A late night blend of deep-house and downtempo chill.”)

Feeling kinda goth? Tune into Doomed (“Dark music for tortured souls.”).

In the mood for some Indian world beats? How about some eclectic jazz? Feeling kinda spacey? You could listen to either Space Station or Mission Control (“Live and historic NASA mission audio mixed with electronic ambient” – totally awesome concept).

Seriously, there’s something for everybody. Personally my favorites are their alt-country station Boot Liquor (“Americana roots music with a bit of attitude. For Cowhands, Cowpokes and Cowtippers.”), Digitalis (“Digitally affected analog rock to calm the agitated heart.”), and Illinois Street Lounge (“Classic bachelor pad, playful exotica and vintage music of tomorrow.”), but my favorites change every day. This is the perfect kind of stuff to have on in the background while you’re trying to get some work done.

Heck, they’ve even got a station called Secret Agent (“The soundtrack for your stylish, mysterious, dangerous life.”) for those days when you want to feel like metro Detroit’s own Brandon Chesnutt.

So give SomaFM and all their different flavors of sound a try and let me know how you like it in the comments. Do you have any of your own favorite internet radio stations? Please share with the rest of the class!

You can also follow @SomaFM on Twitter and fan them on Facebook.

It’s not “camp” unless you’re building a fire.

Please help me understand this.

In my field, (un)conferences are the lifeblood of excuses to get out from behind one’s computer and actually (*gasp*) socialize, instead of just talk and write and present and tweet about all things “social” online.  (Crazy concept, isn’t it?) But a very large chunk of these conferences are called “camp” — there’s BarCamp, PodCamp, BrandCamp, WordCamp, GeekGirlCamp, myriad “boot camps,” and I’m sure plenty more.

I’ve been to a few of these “camps” I listed above (for the record: though many tell me I look like Alyson Hannigan, I never went to band camp) and they’re anything but camps. They’re a bunch of geeks in conference centers, usually laptops, netbooks, and iPhones in tow, listening to a speaker, jotting down notes and tweeting as they go. Occasionally they actually talk to each other. Most of the time they dress like this.

But none of this has anything to do with camping. Or campaigns.

When I was growing up, every year my family would drive Up North (that’s capitalized in Michigan) to Clear Lake State Park, get a campsite, pop a tent, erect our screened-in kitchen around a picnic table, and well, camp. We’d build a campfire in a fire pit, and sometimes roast hot dogs or marshmallows. We water skied on the lake, laid out on the beach, played volleyball, rode bikes, and explored trails.

When I went to fifth grade camp, we were put up in cabins but it was nonetheless camp. There was canoeing, swimming, horseback riding, archery, and we had to schlep quite a ways to an outhouse in the middle of the night if we had to use the bathroom. There was a mess hall, counselors, arts and crafts, hiking, and of course, a campfire every night. You know, “Kumbaya” and the whole bit.

So why the heck are all these conferences called “camp”?!

I don’t go popping a tent in the middle of the woods with a bunch of people, make a fire, roast marshmallows over it, and call it a conference, because it’s not. It’s camping. And neither should a bunch of folks gather in a facility that has tables, comfy chairs, big screen projectors, electricity, running water, and keynote speakers and call it “camp,” because it’s not. That’s a conference.

I don’t get it. Halp?

Photo: That’s my dad, camping a few years ago.

I’ve been cheating on my blog.

It’s true.

Not that I’ve ever been that prolific here, but lately I’ve been writing somewhere else. While I’m great at promoting and marketing others, I am always reluctant to do so for myself — call it “the cobbler’s kids having no shoes” or what you will, but I suck at self-promotion. Many in my field are the same way.

But at the encouragement of others, I thought I’d let you know where I’ve been. Recently I dusted off my journalist’s hat and have been writing part-time for Detroit Unspun, a new blog that is sponsored by the Detroit Regional News Hub. What is the Detroit Regional News Hub? From their site:

The Detroit Regional News Hub is the collaborative media relations department for the region and is a central communications clearing house for information reporters may need to cover their stories. Our job is to connect reporters with experts who can provide information about the region’s growth, quality of life, education, economic development and government. Our partners include the region’s major businesses as well as economic development, government, community and philanthropic organizations.

The Detroit Unspun blog is an expansion of the News Hub, but rather than connecting reporters to the experts so they can write the stories, they’re using people like me to provide original stories themselves, with the aim that other reporters will pick up on them.

Detroit Unspun is still in its infancy, and recently debuted for a soft-launch at Ignite Detroit, an event that the News Hub sponsored. There I live blogged recaps of the event during intermissions, took photos, and did some interviews of people involved with the event, as well as wrote an overall recap.

My most recent story is a feature on the region’s only hackerspace, i3Detroit, and how they’re expanding. As of right now, all the content on the Detroit Unspun blog is by me, but that will be changing next week.

I’ve also been doing some copywriting for a couple other places that isn’t online yet.

I forget sometimes that most people don’t know I’m a writer “for realz.” I’ve been slacking on compiling my actual portfolio (or updating it, as it’s very outdated), but no, I’m not just a snarky redhead that writes here sometimes when she needs to get something off her chest. While that’s true, I also wear many writing hats — I write (or have written) just about everything but fiction. For realz.