So you might have seen me talking on twitter about the @blameathon or #blamedrewscancer

Here is a great post by my friend Peter (@krisis) explaining it all:

So, you’re a cancer blamer but you’re not sure what this whole Blame a-Thon thing is about? Never fear – we’re here with answers to all of your questions (and, by “we” I mean me talking about myself in the third person).

What’s Blame Drew’s Cancer

Actually, that’s “#blamedrewscancer” – a twitter hashtag that turned into a viral charity movement through the enthusiastic support of over 11,000 twitter users beating up on cancer.

It jumped into the real world with a series of fundraisers in Philly and San Fransisco, plus a literal leap out of a plane at 14,000 feet for the #blamedrewscancer team.

Who is Drew?

Drew Olanoff is a Philadelphia native who was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma on May 20. Since then he has kicked cancer’s ass every day in words, actions, and about $10,000 of fundraising in under 100 days.

How was your summer?

And all this money goes where, exactly?

Drew’s efforts have benefited a few different cancer-related charities over the summer, but both Drew and #blamedrewscancer are official partners of LiveStrong AKA the Lance Armstrong Foundation. All of our current fundraising goes to LiveStrong, and Drew emceed the LiveStrong Challenge in Philly.

Lance even blamed something on Drew’s cancer. We like him.

Have I heard about this somewhere else?

Maybe. Do you read or watch the Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, AOL Health, CNN, Fox29, Mashable, Tech Crunch, Philadelphia City Paper,Download Squad, or The Mendte Report? That’s just a portion of the press and blogs that have covered #blamedrewscancer in the past 100 days.

Oh, and we have a really catchy theme song.

What’s Blame-a-Thon?

Blame-a-Thon is a 24-hour party and benefit concert held on 9/9/09 in Philadelphia where you can blame cancer all day while enjoying live podcast tapings, film screenings, and amazing bands.

If you aren’t there in person, you can watch on the web and enter our web raffle for big prizes – like gene research kits from our sponsor 23andMe or a signed hockey stick from the Philly Flyers. All proceeds go towards a giant contribution to LiveStrong.

Where is Blame-a-Thon?

Blame-a-Thon will be three places on 9/9/09: Indy Hall, North Star Bar, and the internets.

Blame-a-thon starts when Tuesday ends, kicking off at Philly co-working space Indy Hall. It’s free, and it lasts from midnight to noon. Just drop by. More info below.

At noon, the party shifts to venerable venue North Star Bar, where we’ll host live music past midnight, followed by a DJ’d farewell. Tickets are an absurdly low $15 presale, or $20 at the door. More info below, too.

I’m not in Philly, but I still want to give to LiveStrong. What should I do?

You can still buy a ticket – 100% of proceeds go to LiveStrong whether you show up or not. Or, you can buy into our major twitter-based raffle. Or, just give straight to LiveStrong on our behalf.

Or do all three.

Indy Hall: A party from midnight to noon? What are you going to do all night … and morning?

We’ll kick off with a live, super-sized, back-from-hiatus version of Drew’s Best Damn Tech Show podcast, followed by staying up all night for film screenings, video games, acoustic music, and a wake-up call from La Colombe coffee. Heck, bring pajamas if you want.

We’ll cap off this half of the event with a live taping of Two Guys on Beer, which just celebrated its 100th episode! In addition, a DKMS Americas sponsored bone marrow registry will take place from 7am – 12pm.

North Star Bar: 12 hours is a long concert – who’s playing?

Bamboo Houses, Dark Horse & The Carousels, Filmstar, Goodnight Lights featuring Jonah Delso, High Kick, Reed Kendall of Up the Chain, Kill You In the Face, Christie Lenee, Thom McCarthy, The Press, Elizabeth Seward, Swift Technique, The Traded Series, and Billy Woodward & The Senders, plus award-winning spinner DJ KASH.

Not in that order, though. Check back for a schedule. Or, just buy a ticket and see them all.

That’s a lot of bands. What if I get bored? Or hungry?

North Star Bar will be selling food and drinks the entire time. We’ll also have the Taco Bell Truck and the Philly Buttercream Cupcake truck, plus complementary drinks from Victory beer (while supplies last). Plus awesome raffles and a DKMS Americas sponsored bone marrow registry.

Oh, and Drew.

So, buy your darn ticket already.

You keep mentioning this bone marrow registry? Sounds painful.

Totally not. It’s a simple swab of your cheek to be registered, and we’ll have plenty of info from DKMS Americas about what happens if you’re matched.

Wow, that’s a lot of stuff. How did you put it all together?

Drew has an awesome team of friends helping with #blamedrewscancer, all of whom are dedicated to kicking cancer’s ass in every way possible.

In the long-term, we plan to work with LiveStrong bring the amazing support Drew has found on social networks to EVERYONE fighting and surviving cancer.

Who’s paying for all of this?

We could have never done this without the amazing support of our presenting sponsor, 23andMe, and our generous supporting sponsors blip.tv and Level 3 Media. You can multiply their support just by showing up!

Also, Indy Hall and North Star Bar have been incredibly gracious in providing their services for little or no cost.

Just thought I would share this video with you all. It was put together by a group of people calling themselves THE SOCIETY FOR GEEK ADVANCEMENT

THE SOCIETY FOR GEEK ADVANCEMENT was founded upon the principles that we should all embrace our inner and outer geek and have fun while doing it. As individuals who love learning, innovating and believe in possibility as well as change, the second step of responsibility is to “be the geek that keeps on giving”. As a member of SGA, we work together as a global community to provide the tools and help others realize their true potential too!

“I AM A GEEK!” is a collaborative video project bringing together some of the biggest creators, personalities and web celebs taking on the online world.

“I AM A GEEK”, like all geeky side projects, started out as a tongue and cheek video we spent way too much time on and were going to simply throw out to the wild wild interwebs. But as more people came on board, the question of using “social media for social good” seemed to become more relevant. With Twitter and other social networking sites like Facebook blowing up by the second, it’s not only possible to get noticed and create “social capital”, but to use that for a greater good. Individuals now have the opportunity to be heard and bring awareness and attention to causes like they never had before.

After watching, “I AM A GEEK!”, we hope you are entertained, laugh a little or a lot.

We also encourage everyone to “be the geek that keeps on giving”. We’ve connected with a Room to Read, a great charity started by former Microsoft exec, John Wood, which builds libraries and schools for children in developing countries. You can give in many ways- by RT, blogging and passing on this Geek Advancement message to others, buying an “I AM A GEEK” t-shirt with proceeds going to Room to Read and/or by donating what you can now.

And if you would like to be a part of a user generated edition of this video there are instructions here

Today I saw a post from Mike Arauz, he is putting up his favorite links, photos, and videos from his Tumblr blog. Many of you know that tumblr is an obsession of mine, and it has taken away a lot of the random content that used to be on random sarah. So I decided to adopt his idea so that those of you who read random sarah, but may not keep up with my tumblog can still get a taste of the content that I put up there.

So here are my favorite links, photos, and videos from my Tumblr blog this week:

The Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

Preparing for Chaos – the Life of a Startup

“Startups are inherently chaos. As a founder you need to prepare yourself to think creatively and independently, because more often than not, conditions on the ground will change so rapidly that the original well-thought-out business plan becomes irrelevant. If you can’t manage chaos and uncertainty, if you can’t bias yourself for action and if you wait around for someone else to tell you what to do, then your investors and competitors will make your decisions for you and you will run out of money and your company will die. Therefore the best way to keep your company alive is to instill in every employee a decisive mindset that can quickly separate the crucial from the irrelevant, synthesize the output, and use this intelligence to create islands of order in the all-out chaos of a startup.”

Real Life Twitter

Screen-shot from the NFL Draft (this was done by me)

In today’s video I show you the new iPhone app from PrimoSpot, that helps you find parking in NYC.

Also, I have lost 5 pounds in 10 days eating raw food!

So for some reason I had it in my head that tomorrow, April 3rd, was the 1 year anniversary of this blog, but I was WRONG! It was actually today and I missed it

That is because April 3rd was my first video post. So I will do the full, one year of the blog, recap, tomorrow as planned. But I still feel bad for missing this anniversary.

But to hold you over, here is one of my first posts from the first day of randomsarah.com a whole YEAR ago.

So the first year of Random Sarah has come to an end. But I can only look forward to the future with great joy and high expectations for myself. So I thought I would post some of my goals for the upcoming year in hopes that all of you might be able to keep me on track with my goals.
But first a look back at Random Sarah in 2008

here is one of my favorite early videos posted on April 14th

then on August 1st, this happened!

and everything changed!

here are some of my favorite posts from this year:

Generation Wh-Y does it matter?

A Vegetarian’s Favorite Burgers

Hacked my iPhone 3G

The State of the Web: Summer 2008

More Random Videos

if you are missing a lot of the old Random Sarah randomness….check out my tumblr

2008 has been a great year for me and I hope that 2009 will only get better.

So here are some of my goals for 2009:

Make more videos! It has been a while since I posted a video blog on here, and my other show has also taken a little break…but I am hoping that 2009 will be a great year full of great videos!
Go to SXSW! SXSW last year was one of the main things that inspired me to start a video blog. I hope to attend the conference this year and get even more great ideas!
Reach 1,000 followers on twitter! This would be awesome, and I am already so thankful for all the followers I have that put up with my random updates!
To grow my community and network of awesome people because everyone I have met in this space so far is AWESOME! And I can’t wait to meet the rest of you!
And to be anywhere near as awesome as this guy!

2008 has been great, and just wait….

2009 is going to be even better!

via: Rohit Bhargava

Today, Dec 15 is the final day that Pownce lives! Many started using Pownce after Kevin Rose talked about it on diggnation. We formed a bond, we crashed Y! Live servers, we created a yearbook!

It was one of the best communities I have ever been a part of. Everyone was so nice and Pownce was the first community to add me as a featured user! To have Leah Culver email you because she likes the content you are putting up on Pownce and ask you if she can make you a featured user, well it just made me feel like I was doing something right.

So we will all miss you Pownce, nothing will take your place.

So WordPress 2.7 was just released and I have updated my WordPress very quickly and easily.

I am posting this via Quickpress, which lives right on your WordPress dashboard and makes it super easy and fast to write a post.

I think I could get used to this.

I have always wanted to design my own theme, while I love the random sarah theme now, I find from time to time I just get the itch for a redesign! Looking through the thousands of wordpress themes out there can be daunting, and if you have been reading random sarah for long enough you know what I went through when choosing a theme last time.

You will like a part of one, and a part of another one, and so on. You get to the point where you want to build it yourself (or in my case at least design what it will look like)

I cannot code for my life! This is a fact. But I consider myself to be a pretty good designer. So I wanted to know if it was possible for me to design what it looked like and how all the buttons would work, and someone else just code it for me. I have a few friends who are willing to help me out with this once the design is finished, so I started to build! You can watch the full evolution of the theme on flickr (I posted a link to the set below) I have been posting screen shots as I go along and getting feedback from my twitter peeps on how it looks.

The whole idea for the theme started with a set of free icons I found on Spoon Graphics of hand drawn icons for bloggers. I have seen a lot of hand drawn web design and it’s an aesthetic I like. So I decided to look around the web for some great blogs and find inspiration. Another important step was using iStockPhoto to get great art I could tear apart and use for the design. I got the background image and most of the other artwork from there. TIP: YOUR DESIGN WILL LOOK BETTER IF YOU SPEND A LITTLE MONEY!

So here is where I am so far, I would be happy to answer any questions about how I did this, it really wasn’t that hard. (and it’s not done yet!)