You are visiting the personal website of Mark F., aka spuddybuddy. The Girlfriend, aka J, makes guest contributions from time to time.

The Past

Posts prior to this one comprise ubertuber Version 1. They are anecdotes from our year of living in New York City (August 2003 to October 2004). Prior to August 2003 we lived in Boston. In October 2004 the Red Sox defeated the Yankees in Game Seven of the ALCS, and three days later I relocated to San Francisco, where we now reside.

The Future

Posts after this one comprise ubertuber Version 2. The site has been completely redesigned from scratch. Old posts have been edited to correct spelling, grammar, capitalization, and markup. Some old posts of dubious value have been removed. A slight mistake during the upgrade deleted all the old photos from the site; they will be reorganized and restored little by little.

I haven't decided what to put into ubertuber 2, but it will likely include anecdotes, essays, analysis, reviews, and photo galleries. Do not expect to find many posts about: my work, my personal life, gadgets or tech, links, or blogging. There are plenty of other sites and blogs that provide that sort of material. The one-page-per-post format is intended to encourage me to post longer and more substantial stuff. I take kottke.org as an inspiration and a model to work from.

I hope to add a comment system in the near future. (Unfortunately, Blogger's comment system does not meet my needs in several respects. If somebody knows how to hack the internals of Blogger comments, I'd like to hear from you.)

Nerd Stuff

The site uses Blogger with a custom template and custom CSS. Blogger templates unfortunately lack some useful features (like next/previous post links), so I am planning on using a Python script to post-process the entries and generate a Javascript index. The index will be used to generate additional navigation links on the site.

The site strives to be XHTML and CSS compliant (please report any discrepancies you find).

Why ubertuber?

The name "ubertuber" was a flash of inspiration during a certain period in 2001 when I was heavily involved with potatoes. At my graduate lab, groups of students would volunteer to cook lunch for the entire lab every Friday. When it was my turn, my team offered the lab an "ubertuber" lunch of baked potatoes, toppings, veggie chili, and extras. We baked too many potatoes - about two hundred - and I ended up eating nothing but leftover baked potatoes for a week afterwards. ubertuber.org was one of the many lingering effects of that episode.

This site is not related to spuddybuddy.com in any way, except for our shared love of les pommes de terre.