2010/3/3 article
Restricting embedded videos is a bad idea. It doesn’t benefit the business, the artists, or the consumers. In a succinct response to the restrictions record companies like EMI have placed on embedded YouTube videos, Damian Kulash, from OK Go, writes:
“[EMI] needs to recognize the basic mechanics of the Internet. Curbing the viral spread of videos isn’t benefiting the company’s bottom line, or the music it’s there to support.”
So why do large companies keep trying to work against the system? Sharing is what makes the Internet go round — one of the “basic mechanics” — but some companies missed that memo. The figures in Kulash’s article leave no room for suggestion: by restricting video sharing, companies are burning their profit, damning their artist’s popularity, and throwing away the best advertising tool on the market. Would they be happy to watch the smoke rise if they knew what started the fire? (more…)
2010/2/12 article
Frank Chimero on recipes for success:
“Why do we look for recipes? Because we’re risk averse. If we fail, it’s because someone else gave us the wrong recipe. We get to skip on the blame, but can claim the success.”
I have always been vaguely disgusted by the multitude of how-to articles that roam around the blogging plains like empty-eyed, money-sniffing sheep. They are everywhere you look, yet they’re rarely worth the time it takes to read them. They revisit time and again the same tired topics. In a thousand words they will tell you nothing you don’t already know. One thing is sure, though: the sheep draw hungry stares.
“But, there’s money in recipes. If there’s a recipe, that means there’s a secret. And you can sell a silver bullet. The thing is, most people that are giving you a recipe are pandering to your fear. “What if things go wrong?” “
Fear sells, and reading more of those how-to articles won’t help you overcome it. Here’s a recipe that might be worth a penny: read Chimero’s no-nonsense truth, then put your head down and get your hands dirty.
2010/1/27 article
I need to get a job as a writer because my life is not interesting enough to write about myself all the time. I yearn for assignments with early morning deadlines for two reasons: one, pressure makes diamonds out of coal, and two, it will give me a topic to handle that is outside of my own life. Even if the assignment is terrible, it would permit me to bitch and moan about something other than myself, a welcome change. This blog has been self-centered since it’s inception, which is all well and good, but if it continues down this road without detour, I will bore myself to death before I reach that dark place by more natural or, perhaps, synthetic means.
The choice is clear. Either find a job where you can practice writing without playing it so close to your chest, for down that path is certain death, or man the fuck up and write some fiction, the genre where you can write about yourself without really writing about yourself.
Or, for God’s sake, find another hobby, man.
2010/1/26 article
Applying to this Master’s program is a grueling, tedious process. There are endless heaps of red tape and paperwork: not a mechanism for deterring those unworthy, only those unwilling.
The whole process seems backwards to me. I ought to be used to bureaucratic bullshit by now because I’ve had to deal with it my whole life. It’s so unnatural, however, that I don’t see myself ever acclimatizing to such foul weather. In this region, the gutters run with sewage through narrow, crooked streets.
Perhaps this means that I still possess, in some small degree, a sliver of my soul. I should count that as a blessing, but in this process it is more likely a curse. Dorothy made it to Oz, eventually, though the girl who left was not the same one who arrived in a whirlwind, and the path she took was anything but direct. I’ve made a few friends along the way, but friends can only point you in the right direction. You’ve gotta travel the roads on your own two feet.
So I trudge along, my shoes coated with muck, and choke down the impulse to click my heels and wish myself home. It just makes me look silly. Besides, it never works, and my wishes won’t change the system. The only recourse is to do what they say. Fill out this form, submit that application, sign here, file it in the office all the way across town. Wait a week. Hear good news and see it promptly reversed. My own personal battle with the flying monkeys of bureaucracy.
The deadline for the program was today, but it seems like I won’t make it after all, despite my best efforts. We might have made it if the roads weren’t closed on the Base for the snow, but that is out of my hands. More waiting and fruitless emails must entail.
Maybe I’ll play video games, instead. It would certainly make my afternoon more interesting. At least in that world, a soul isn’t an impediment. Plus, if I have to fight flying monkeys I understand their tactics, may even have a badass-lookin’ sword to fight them back.
(The wonderful illustration is by Skottie Young)
2010/1/10 article
My neighbor has a three-year-old son named Leon. He was playing with a train set while all the stuffy grown-ups talked and drank coffee the other night. I can’t speak much German, so I watched Leon build his train track instead.
He started with the three-way split piece in the middle of the kitchen floor. Then he added one piece to the left, and another to the right, jumping between the parts so that the track grew organically. If he ran into a wall, or things didn’t connect like he wanted them to, he would adjust the pieces or move the track so that it fit better.
I was surprised because he didn’t start at the beginning, as I would have. He left his options open. If he ran into trouble, he adjusted the track to fit to his idea, instead of adjusting his idea to fit to the track. His only limit, then, was the extent of his own imagination.
Just watching him build his track (I was certain not to interfere with the little genius) taught me that things don’t have to be perfect, or proper, or even done in the right order. There are a million different ways to build something, and you are better off following your gut than anyone else’s instructions.
As a person with a strong affinity to order, I’m certain that learning to apply some of Leon’s liberal building habits to my writing would help me to improve.
Of course, things rarely turn out right on the first try. When Leon decided he didn’t like what he had built, he broke it back to pieces. No remorse or frustration, just kaput! and he started over. And he seemed to enjoy breaking the train track to pieces as much as he liked building it again.