Patrick Rohne on Twitter

Henry David Thoreau wished to separate himself from community and society and live, for a time, alone. Not because he did not enjoy, appreciate, or benefit from his participation in it. He did so because he knew the only way to best evaluate his place within it was to live and observe it from the outside. So he built a small cabin in the woods, a brief walking distance from town, on a small pond called Walden. The land on which it was built was actually owned by his friend and contemporary Ralph Waldo Emerson. I consider both literary and intellectual heroes of mine.

It is through this lens that I have been putting a lot of (read: way too much) thought into Twitter, and my place within it, lately.

Patrick Rohne, Twalden

I haven’t been on Twitter long enough to feel the same kind of disappointment as Patrick does with its regression. It has always been a place for promotion rather than conversation, even though the conversations do take place. It’s a busy marketplace on a weekend where people are competing for attention, and in between the noise is a real conversation.

Going without Twitter is not as big of a leap for me as it would be for some.

Related, for those on iOS devices, I strongly suggest Tweetbot as a main client. They just announced a Mac alpha version, as well, which works wonderfully.

Mike Rooney’s Six Months of Freelancing

In review, here are the numbers between then and now:

  • hours worked/week: 40-50 => 16-20
  • estimated vacation per year: 4 weeks => 12 weeks
  • meals cooked/day: ~0.7 => 2+
  • daily Zen practice (zazen): 15 minutes => 70 minutes, plus ~1 day a week at the Fire Lotus Temple
  • weekly climbing / yoga: 0 => 2
  • monthly income: unchanged!

My circumstances were a bit different in what caused me to start freelancing, but I can relate to a lot of what Mike Rooney writes.

The number of meals at home, even when I don’t have my daughter here, have exploded. I’ve learned how to love cooking once again. Exercise was non-existent when I worked as a manager at two hotels. I managed to take a long walk at least once a week, but that was about it. My mental and physical health is a thousand times better than what it was when working 50+ hours a week, and I’m able to focus on tasks much more easily, as well.

If it’s possible, I would encourage people to try and transition their work flows to a home office, as well.

Stickball in New York City

It is Sunday morning in East Harlem, the time when East 109th Street between Second and Third Avenues becomes a stickball field with chalk-drawn bases, bounded by school buildings and parked cars. These days, much of the old neighborhood has disappeared, transformed by higher rents and unfamiliar faces. But for a few hours on Sunday mornings, the pride in this poor man’s game is on full display.

I love this story from the NY Times.

A perfect read before tonight’s Home Run Derby.

 

Cosmetic Changes – Daring Fireball-like Links

I’ve been a big fan of how sites like Daring Fireball or 512 Pixels, amongst others, include a little glyph in their titles to tell me that they’re linking away from their site. Daring Fireball places a ★ in front of the title to mark posts that link to his site first. I wasn’t sure how to do this on a WordPress site, but now I can.

Daring Fireball-style Linked List Plugin for WordPress allows you to easily set this up on your site.

♦ is a post on Four Sides.

→ is a link away from Four Sides.

Why am I doing this?

I’m not too concerned about building a readership here anymore. I can’t find the time to develop longer posts that will be of interest to most people, but I do enjoy sharing my findings across the web. This will make it easier for the reader to distinguish between my personal posts and the links to the good stuff.

Hopefully, it will encourage people to subscribe to the blog here or the Twitter feed as a source to some good reads.

via 512 Pixels

Bulk Bag – by Merlin Mann

Five Things Kim Jong-Il Misses About Being Alive

  1. Playing Draw Something with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
  2. Looking at things.
  3. Angering Jack Donaghy by sending videos of his wife Avery feeding the Dear Leader Klondike bars with her feet.
  4. The NBA Playoffs on TNT.
  5. Never having to poop.

This is from the latest issue (#5) of the Bulk Bag Newsletter by Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin. Published each Sunday, it’s a hoot. This issue is nothing but Top 5 lists submitted by the listeners to Back to Work

Other lists:

  •  Five British Meat-Inspired Alt-Rock Bands From the 80s You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
  •  Five Words That Would Sound Great Only When Said by Morgan Freeman
  •  Five Most Awkward Things to Have in Your Safeway Basket While Standing in Line to Use the Self-Checkout Robot at 11:30 pm on a Tuesday
  •  Five Things I’ll Bet Can Be Hard for Pirates

Sign up: Bulk Bag Newsletter

Project Marklar

No one has ever reported that, for 18 months, Project Marklar existed only because a self-demoted engineer wanted his son Max to be able to live closer to Max’s grandparents.

Part of the fascinating story of how one engineer started the process of getting the Mac to work with Intel told by Kim Scheinberg, wife of the engineer. How Does Apple Keep Secrets So Well? | Quora

Kim later responds to answer how the name Project Marklar was chosen.

Sunday Reading, June 10th, 2012

This past week saw the passing away of Ray Bradbury, the author best known for Fahrenheit 451. There were plenty of articles written about Bradbury, but the NY Times has a few to get started with: Ray Bradbury, Popularizer of Science Fiction Dies at 91 and Ray Bradbury Who Made Science Fiction Respectable

Why do we seem to value privacy so little? In part, it’s because we are told to. Facebook has more than once overridden its users’ privacy preferences, replacing them with new default settings. Facebook then responds to the inevitable public outcry by restoring something that’s like the old system, except slightly less private. And it adds a few more lines to an inexplicably complex privacy dashboard.

– Cory Doctorow, The Curious Case of Internet Privacy | Technology Review

Cory Doctorow is a co-editor at BoingBoing and one of the best writers on the Internet about privacy issues.

No one can really tell how history will remember Steve Jobs, not even Mr. Seriously With That Hair? It’s like trying to predict fashion trends or smartphone market share or Katy Perry. You can’t! They’re flighty and may change on a whim!

– Macalope, Executive Suite | MacWorld

The “Mr. Seriously With That Hair” is none other than Malcolm Gladwell, who talked about how history will remember Bill Gates, but not Steve Jobs. You can read more and watch the video over at The Verge

Also at The Verge is more information about the new Apple Campus, otherwise known as the Spaceship campus. It looks gorgeous on the outside, but learn more about the interior. Apple Campus Floorplans Take You Inside the Spaceship

Twitter released a new logo this past week, which removed the word “Twitter” from it, becoming more like the Nike swoosh. At the Atlantic, Rebecca Rosen asks an interesting question: Is the Twitter Bird Extinct? I was a bit surprised with the answer.

It was a big week for Marco Arment and Instapaper. If you visit Starbucks, you may still be able to snag an iTunes App Store coupon to get his app for free on your iPhone and iPad. He was also featured on the Howard Stern show. You can listen to the ad, and hear more about his decision to do the Starbucks giveaway in the latest Build and Analyze podcast.

Finally, watch this great video from Neal Stephenson’s Kickstarter project Clang:

The Reason Your Blog Is A Failure by @thejackb

Someone ought to tell the people that send me hate mail that I appreciate their time and that I enjoy occupying a place inside their heads. Let them know that because  I am quite mature I probably won’t use their email addresses or names in the posts that I write about them,

Ok, don’t tell them that because I can’t and won’t promise that I won’t say that [email protected] doesn’t have the most clever email address ever or that his email wasn’t the wittiest I have ever read.

I am glad that he took the time to send me a 8,983 word email about why my blog is a failure. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons:

  1. It rambles.
  2. The headlines aren’t always good.
  3. The headlines don’t always relate.
  4. Sometimes there are spelling mistakes.
  5. There is too much innuendo.
  6. I don’t care how long you have been blogging for.

Well Mr. Ed. try not to bite my hand as you take the sugar cubes from me and I will respond point by point.

  1. Before I begin I want to ask if read the story about the guy who had sex with a nun, kicked a priest and pulled a rabbi’s beard. Wait, let’s not talk about that yet. Did I tell you that I dislike LeBron so much I want the celtics to beat the Heat. Now what was I saying.
  2. I promise to write a post that uses the following headline: A Good Headline.
  3. I am sorry that I didn’t provide 69 reasons why fathers are better lovers. Oops.
  4. You must be a Canuck or a Brit if you think that I color and favorite aren’t spelled correctly.
  5. If only she fit under the desk while I was writing this might be funnier. Or maybe I would smile more. Dammit, does that fit your critique…
  6. There are 8 years worth of complaints about my blogging…

A Musical Interlude and More about Why Blogs Fail

After the Fire- Roger Daltrey
Jack And Diane-John Mellencamp
I Think I Love You- The Partridge Family
Goodbye-Emmy Lou Harris
Tangled Up In Blue- Bob Dylan
No Leaf Clover- Metallica

It is time for me to put on my Social Media Guru hat and use my amazing social media ninja skills to educate my new friend Mr. Ed. Stand back and watch my 8 years of blogging provide him with the sort of education he couldn’t find any where else.

The reason your blog is a failure is because you have unrealistic expectations. There is a domino effect that is tied into this. You are frustrated because your traffic hasn’t set the blogosphere on fire and you aren’t receiving 1,000 comments per post praising you for your insight and wit.

Your focus isn’t on organic growth or understanding that it takes time, hard work and significant effort to build something of value. Consequently you have adopted poor metrics to pay attention to and think that you are failing when it is entirely possible to say that you are succeeding.

That is my long winded and rambling way of saying you are failing because you aren’t having fun.

You Can Turn It Around

What is with the long face my friend. You can turn this around. You can change it up and turn that frown upside down. The way to start having fun is to begin by writing first for you and then for everyone else. Write with passion and purpose but do it about something that interests you.

Stop trying to write for traffic. Stop trying to go viral. No one knows the formula. If they did they would do it every time and it wouldn’t be long before that formula was sold for big bucks and everything would go viral and we wouldn’t get anything done because we’d spend all day watching viral videos on YouTube.

Don’t take yourself so seriously. Just write. Tell everyone you are the greatest daddy blogger ever and you have had sex with nuns and priests. Ok, maybe leave out the priests part but definitely include the nuns.

Scratch that, don’t categorize or label the women. Just say that because of blogging you are rich, famous and have lots of sex.  Anyone who knows anything about blogging will automatically assume that you are either lying or that you had money before you became a blogger because no one gets rich from this business.

The same people will tell you that being a big deal on the Internet isn’t such a big deal in real life. Try talking to most people about those big names from the Internet/blogosphere and they won’t have a clue what you are talking about.

So  just tell everyone that because you are a blogger you have lots of sex. They may not believe you but they will read you because sex always sells, especially if you write ebooks that are labelled as Mommy Porn, whatever the hell that means.

Review

Well Mr. Ed I hope you feel better now. I have addressed all of your concerns and have provided you with practical instructions for how to keep your blog from becoming a failure. I have also come up with a plan for a good headline, stopped rambling and removed all of the innuendo from my blog.

That ought to make you smile and feel special.

 



Jack

 

Jack

The Jack B. is a writer and author of 39 unpublished books and three screenplays. A former athlete and would be superhero he still fights for truth, justice and the American Way. Though he may look like a grown man, don’t fool yourself he is still a boy at heart. When he is not engaged in Walter Mitty like fantasies he is a husband, father and friend.

Website: http://www.thejackb.com/

Twitter: TheJackB

New Font: Bariol

In my ever-ending quest to perfect how this site reads, which is becoming more important than just the visual layout, I decided to change the font. I increased the size of it, as well, and I think it is much easier to read than before.

Screenshot for people reading in RSS:

 

The font is Bariol, which is free (pay with a Tweet), and pay what you can for the other stylings.

Let me know what you think.

via Shawn Blanc

Sunday Reading – June 3rd, 2012

There is nothing like Playboy and there never will be again. When Hef founded it in 1953, men’s magazines contained grainy black and white pictures of semi-naked strippers and articles in which men conquered wild animals and bad guys. Sex was shameful. The word smut comes to mind. But Hef, who had grown up on the west side of Chicago in the 1920s and 30s, pursued a different vision. Having graduated from the University of Illinois and worked at magazines, including Esquire (then still in Chicago), he imagined a lifestyle monthly which would attract urban men with a mix of nice clothes, nice cars, culture, and colour photographs of the girl next door, naked.

– Rachel Shteir, Playboy Goes West

Mark Lukach wrote an extensive list of standup desks, which includes this impressive list of people who wrote standing up. Well worth reading:

If you need more reason to stand while you work instead of sit, know that Ernest Hemingway stood while he worked. So did Thomas Jefferson, Leonardo DaVinci, Benjamin Franklin and Valdimir Nabokov. On the contrary, Winston Churchill once said, “Why stand when you can sit, and why sit when you can lay down?” However, it turns out that Churchill was not being completely honest when he said this–Churchill stood when he worked, too. And he lived until 90.

– Mark Lukach, Best Standing Desks

I quite enjoyed this quote from Paul Krugman, the economist and writer at the NY Times:

Yeah, I think that’s probably right, and also, in general, you have to think that the basic trend in military technology — as with everything else — has been towards small and deadly. I think more likely we’re going to have microscopic drones that can kill everybody. So the Death Star is a very antiquated vision of what evil will look like. Evil will come in stylish, Steve Jobs-inspired designs.

– From a lengthy interview in Wired Magazine

I’m a huge baseball fan, so this write-up about “cup of coffee” baseball players was quite interesting. Cup of coffee players are guys who only appeared in one major league game. Here’s one of the stories:

Manager Hughie Jennings was in a bind. The night before, his star Ty Cobb had responded to a fan’s heckle of “half-nigger” by entering the stands and beating him senseless. When onlookers pointed out that the guy being pummeled was missing one hand and three fingers from the other, the player reportedly said, “I don’t care if he got no feet.” AL president Ban Johnson responded to the incident by suspending Cobb, indefinitely. The rest of his Tigers team, knowing they had no shot without him, refused to play until Cobb was reinstated. So here was Jennings, walking the streets of Detroit, trying to patch together a rag-tag team of scrubs to avoid a $5,000-a-game no-show fine from the league. And there, standing on a random street corner, stood 20-year-old Allan Travers. He’d never pitched a game in his life, but he was up for the challenge. That night he’d throw eight innings in front of 20,000 fans and give up 24 runs on 26 hits, closing out his career with a 15.75 ERA. But it most likely wasn’t the bombardment he remembered years later. It was the one batter he managed to strike out.

– The Cup of Coffee Club | The Awl

Finally, two email newsletters that may interest you:

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