Category: Life

NERDY METAL TRIVIA SHOUT OUT FROM NPR

NPR ASK ME ANOTHER SKULL TOASTER

It was 13 years ago today that NPR’s Ask Me Another Twitter account gave my Skull Toaster project a little shout.

I posted well over 2,000 nerdy metal trivia questions on Twitter, and also over 1,000 email newsletters with the answers (and backstory). From 2011-2018 I did this as a living resume; showing potential companies that I could build audience, build community, and handle daily content for both social media and email newsletters, which is now the basis of my work over a decade later.

This stuff takes time. Don’t let the online guru’s fool you – it’s not as easy as just “pick your niche” and then “post content.” Anyone can buy a domain name and post for a month, but it takes belief and vision to do it for the long haul, even with no guarantee of making $10,000/MRR or an email list with 5,000 subscribers.

THE MAGIC IN THE ROOMS

There is a magic to the rooms. The spaces, the theaters, the clubs, the bars, the back porches.

I came across Roddy Bottum’s “These Rooms,” which was an eloquent journey into all sorts of rooms, weaving the magic with the turmoil, and everything in between.

“The rooms of punk rock, don’t get me started. Where we are as a youth, as a celebration, as a rebel in our lives at the pinnacle of what matters, politically, protesting, being together and the sheer volume of the music as it comes off the stage, the pits, the shine of those shows, the drunk dumbness of becoming who we. become and the strength of that.”

I’m turning 50 this year and still remember the community centers and basements and feeling the floor shake in a second floor apartment in Brookyn that was for some reason accessible only via the fire escape.

Then a good friend sent me this video of the great Ian McKellen on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, talking about live theater, and doing anything to be in those places, and the magic that happens if only we get off our fucking phones.

It’s the rooms, the spaces, the theater of humanity that endures, that allows the magic to happen, the let me find these two different pieces on this morning and to put them into a blog post that is accessible around the world via the web browser that ships on every smart phone.

WE CAN JUST DO THINGS

I love this so much:

Recently there was a cold snap and a road nearby iced over – it was in the shade and cyclists kept on wiping out on it. For some reason the council didn’t come and salt it.

Somebody went out and created a sign on a weighted chair so it didn’t blow away. And this is a small thing but I LOVE that I live somewhere there is a shared belief that (a) our neighbourhood is worth spending effort on, and (b) you can just do things.

From Matt Webb of Interconnected.

BRING THIS BACK

I see this quite a bit. People posting photos of old tech, old gear, things from the 90s, colorful iMacs – “bring this back.”

Yes, do it. You don’t need permission. You don’t need the OK. Just fucking do it.

Write in cursive, buy a Polaroid camera, make a mix tape, burn a CD, buy a VCR from the thrift store, get a skateboard, collect old magazines.

No app, no platform, no techbro is gonna deliver this to you on a plate, so make the retro tech 90 worship life that you’re craving.

DOWNLOAD, BACK UP

On the first of the month I’m reminded to download my photos from my iPhone. I do this so I don’t have to keep paying Apple a monthly fee that just keeps going up, and I just like having my photos right where I can see them, in folders.

For December I have 215 photos, 54 screen shots, and 18 videos. I’ll keep that saved locally on my MacBook Pro (just 3.5GB), and start a new folder for January where I’ll dump the photos from my Nikon throughout the month.

Then, in February, I’ll move this January folder to my external hard drive.

My folders goes all the way back to 2002, but it’s not nearly as organized. The total is about 57,000 photos, which takes up 207GB on my 2TB drive, backed up regularly to BackBlaze.

Yeah, I miss the search functionality (finding all the photos of bikes, or cats would be great), but I love only paying .99 cents per month for iCloud instead of $120 a year.

THE PEOPLE IN THE ROOM

We’ve all seen it – people waiting for their drinks at Starbucks. Arms crossed, sighing loudly while scrolling on their phones. Waiting, waiting, waiting for their drinks.

Then someone walks in, no wait, and walks out with their drink.

I get it; get people to order on the app. Less interaction, no friction, no need for someone to take the order.

In and out, money in the bank.

But I just looked and there’s like a dozen people here in this space, none of them having a pleasant experience.

How does that bode well for a business? A brand?

People in and out, and on their way.

And a business place filled with people rolling their eyes and getting the wrong order (like me) and just walking away.