#10 Remember the Best Album Brackets? Those were cool.
Hey folks!
My apologies for my radio silence these last couple weeks. I caught some kind of virus that I don’t think was Covid that just made me not want to do anything for nearly two weeks, then I had another project which had a hard due date that needed my full attention. That due date was yesterday, work was completed, it went well thanks for asking, and now my attention is back on the Brackets.
And where are we with that, anyway?
THE NOMINATIONS FOR THE BEST ALBUM OF 2000
The nominations for the upcoming Best Album of 2000 tournament closed on February 29, and 123 ballots were submitted. This isn’t as many as previous tournaments, but as this is an odd year for the project, what with the exodus from Twitter, and coupled with the fact that I wanted at least 100 ballots, I am pleased nonetheless.
What I am not pleased with is that I expected to be done with counting the ballots by this date, and I am not. I have about 100 more ballots to count. However, my schedule is free, and barring any unforeseen circumstances, my goal is to get 20 done a day, starting Monday, and be done EOD Friday. That weekend, I should know what albums are officially entered into the tournament, what the vote count cutoff is, and how many (if any) open slots are available. There will be another newsletter that weekend to keep you up to date on all of this. Please note: I will be announcing the official entries on Bluesky, the date of which I hope to have figured out a week from today. After I’ve announced them, I will soon follow with a long-form announcement through the newsletter. So, if you want to do our version of Academy Award Nominee Morning, go sign up at Bluesky now (no invites needed!) and follow The Best Album Brackets account at @bestalbumbrackets.bsky.social. (And feel free to follow my “regular” account, @kentmbeeson.bsky.social, if you’re so inclined.)
Also, if there are open slots in the tournament, first dibs go to the various contest winners from the previous Best Album of the Nineties tournament. If there are any left over, I will probably do another Guessing Game contest via Bluesky for the prize of naming an album into the tournament. (IYKYK; IYDK, the Guessing Game is where I ask you, via Bluesky, to name the top 3 nomination vote-getters, in order from 1st to 3rd. You only get one entry, and the person who gets the correct answer wins.) But again, all of this (when it happens and if it happens) is dependent on me finishing counting the ballots, so maybe I should wrap this up and get back to it.
One last thing, though:
LET’S TEST ANOTHER POLLING OPTION!
There certainly was a convenience element to voting through this Buttodown newsletter, but ultimately too many deal breakers (ladies) for us to use as an official voting mechanism. So, for our next test subject, we are going to try @poll.blue, a third-party polling service unique to Bluesky! And that’s really all I have to announce for that at this point, for, as of this writing, I genuinely have no idea how to set up a poll using it or much else about it. I will say, having voted in the various polls it re-skeets*, it seems a little… janky? To me? When you vote, a window pops up asking you to go to a different site to see the current results (which is good), but sometimes it seems like it didn’t count my vote? I dunno, doesn’t matter, we’re going to give it a try it anyway, why not. More details next newsletter.
THE TAKEAWAY
Aiming to be done counting ballots by Friday.
Next newsletter soon after.
The initial announcement of the first inducted albums will be done on Bluesky, so go sign up if you haven’t.
Next poll to test will the Bluesky-only poll.blue, so go sign up if you haven’t.
Until next time,
Kent
*I think the account automatically re-skeets all polls, which would be interesting/problematic if we officially adopted it. Also potentially interesting/problematic: I could be wrong, but I don’t think the polls made with it usually get the amount of voting that our polls can generate. Maybe we can make it crumple!