Old Home Week

Posted on July 30, 2010
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I am currently on a quick tour through Colorado and northwestern Kansas. This weekend I’l be attending my 25th high school reunion. This really seems like the one to go to. We ain’t getting any older, we’re all at the point in our lives where we’re starting to get sentimental about the past. I haven’t been to any previous ones but I was really motivated for this reunion. Realistically, this is probably the last chance I have in this life to see a number of these folks. I need to take it.

I’m not even sure if the Kansas hotel we’re going to has internet, so my appearance on the intarwebs might be spotty. The way I’ve been blogging/podcasting lately, that’s getting harder to notice.

Keeping the Plates Spinning

Posted on July 23, 2010
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I don’t want this blog to fall into cobwebby disarray, but for a variety of reasons I haven’t been around here much. Part of that is normal summer stuff with some fun travel and work travel, part of that is other projects, and part is the ever diminishing urge to blog. I do like the thought some days of just shutting down Twitter for good and going back to this blog as my primary interface with the internet. I don’t trust Twitter as either a business entity or as a competent deliverer of service so it never feels sensible to allow them to be my stewards between me and the rest of the world. The same goes 10X for Facebook as an untrustworthy steward, even if they are better on a technical level.

I’ll post here when I have something to show for it, but  just for pure giggles I’m pursing an old school paper zine. So much of what I have done for creativity in the last decade is electronic, intangible and ephemeral. I like the idea of putting out something that is an artifact, that you can hold and keep and get in the mail. That’s my new slogan: Putting the ‘somatic’ back in ‘psychosomatic’!

RIP, Harvey Pekar

Posted on July 13, 2010
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Yesterday I heard the sad news that Harvey Pekar has died at the age of 70. I’ve been a fan of Harvey since I was 18 years old and I happened across an issue of American Splendor in a comic book shop. At the time I was getting in to Love and Rockets so I wondered what this similarly magazine sized black and white comic was all about. I was blown away and bought all of the rest of the series as it came out. In fact, earlier this year I had just completed my run of the original series by getting issues 1, 2 and 3 on eBay for the freaky low price of $25. I followed Harvey when he was on David Letterman but unlike most folks I was actually versed in his work when we was on.

There is one story of his that I particularly love and think about often. As I was bagging the collection recently I ran back across it in issue #13. The title escapes me and I’m away from my collection but it is the story where Harvey goes in to work on a snowy day and because of the blizzard work is very slow so he reads I. J. Singer’s The Brothers Ashkenazi and muses on differences between the Singer brothers. I used to work rotating shifts as quality control in a chemical factory and during the holidays my work was very much like that. Just enough work we had to come in but lots of time to read and relax while still getting paid. In some ways, that’s the most magical moments a bookish working stiff can ever achieve. In this one story, I felt as close to Harvey as I ever have.

Recently at Heroes Con in Charlotte I chatted with Ed Piskor and Chris Samnee. With both of them, all I talked about was their work with Pekar. I bought a copy of The Beats: A Graphic History from Ed’s table. My deepest Pekar regret is that years ago he was at Dragon*Con as a guest. There was a point where I walked near his table. He had no one around him and I wanted to go tell him how much I appreciated his work but something about the look on his face scared me off and I just never did it. I know the lessons of the Butthole Surfers: “It’s better to regret something you have done than something you haven’t done” but I failed anyway. I always wish I had, even just to tell him that his work meant something to me. Take these chances when they arrive kids, because they often won’t arrive again.

A lot of things I see about Harvey refer to him as a curmudgeon or a misanthrope. The one thing that I take away from his work – and I’m talking about lots of it over the last 35 years – is that Harvey loved people. Note how many American Splendor stories are in fact someone else relating their story. Harvey talked to that person, asked them about themselves, cared enough to remember and then write it up. That’s not a thing you do from a hatred of humanity, that’s an act of love. If anything, although many stories are about Harvey being cranky at circumstance or failing at the little things it always seemed like most of the anger was at himself. People he loved.

I will miss this guy very much. I’m glad he achieved a level of success over his career. He still remains one of my creative idols, for a guy in 1976 who wanted to put out a comic and couldn’t see any reason not to so he did it. These are the people who informed my feelings about podcasting and new media – people like Harvey who did what they wanted to on their plan when it was very difficult. I’m glad that he got a little time of retirement from his day job and was able to just write for a few years. I loved and love his work, and eventually will own and read every bit of it. He was one of the true heroes of American letters and thankfully some of that adulation came while Harvey was still around to appreciate it.

I’m trying not to be sad about Harvey dying in 2010 but happy that he didn’t die of cancer in 1990. He had a gift of 20 years given to him, and he used those 20 years well. May we all do as well with the gifts we are given. Goodbye Harvey. Rest in peace.

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Why I Haven’t Been Blogging Much Lately

Posted on July 5, 2010
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Sometimes a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. That goes double for dogs.

Write A Song in One Hour: Balticon 44

Posted on June 20, 2010
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At Balitcon 44, I participated in a panel that was one of the most fun things I’ve ever been a part of at any SF or comic convention in my 25+ years of attending them. The panel was called “How to Write a Kick-Ass Song About Anything.” I went thinking it was going to be songwriters at the front of the room talking about writing songs but in fact, the brilliantly cracked minds of the organizers had something bigger in mind. Instead, people were gathered at the front of the room with instruments and they laid out the plan: We’d take 5 minutes to brainstorm a theme, 5 minutes for a chord structure, 10 minutes to write a chorus and then split up into smaller groups to write the verses.

The panel was officiated by James Durham, with Norm Sherman, Kim Fortuner and Mattie Brahen serving as the more experienced guides. I am proud to say that one of the early bits of input that steered the whole experience was mine. In response to “What will this song be about?” I threw in “Everyone seems to love the steampunk nowadays. How about something steampunkish?” As more suggestions piled up, we added ornithopters and dragons to the mix.The (metaphorical) gears engaged after that, and the panel decided it would be bluesy so we needed a reason why a dragon and an ornithopter would be down in the mouth. The group decided that the dragon had lost its flame and somewhere in there that the dragon powers the ornithopters and the loss of flame meant that the protagonist was now losing the war. This lead to the chorus “Like a toothless gear, like an empty flagon, there is nothing more pathetic than a smokeless dragon.” Rock on!

From there, we split up into two groups. I’m not sure how the other group worked, but ours had a lot of fun writing the first verse. There were definitely people in the room who were kind of watching in bemusement, but for the people who were engaged and throwing out suggestions, every single person had an idea or word or phrase that ended up in the final song. By and large, people worked together quite good. I can tell you that every point at which someone revised something I had suggested, the revision was better than the original. For example, I suggested “broken gear” in the chorus, and later on, someone else pointed out that “toothless gear” worked better with the dragon theme, which is absolutely true. I told James later on that the only thing I would have changed is to change the ground rules such that no one can ever tell anyone else “No” to any suggestion. The only possibility is to come up with alternatives that people feel are superior. It’s kind of a dick move to say “Your input isn’t good enough”, and I think it is much better with less stress to just put in something else. The mode of operation should always be to take the best suggestion on the table, and if you don’t like it then improve it .

With that said, it was all good. The two groups exchanged just enough information so that we could keep the narratives making sense. With no real coordination our group set the stage with a first verse and the other one resolved a lot of stuff. It was kind of freaky how well the two independent verses worked when we put them together. The musicians played and the room sang the song through a few times, then we performed it to record a few times and we were done. Holy moley was the whole thing fun, beginning to end. It was funny how Mattie Brahen, an old school filker and the only panelist not in our new media subscene, started out really skeptical and eventually really got into it. I talked to her in the hall afterwards and she admitted that at the beginning she was pretty sure we were all crazy. She may have been right.

I stand by my belief that this is in the top five SF con moments I’ve ever had. It demystified a lot of the creative process and showed how the songs weren’t these perfect gems that popped into being but something you work and work and work until it becomes what you want from it. The talent of the musicians and the very tight constraints helped a lot. We had 50 minutes total before we had to leave the room, so the song had to be written and recorded with no room for spinning wheels. If they ever do this again at a Balticon, I highly recommend you try to be in that room.

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Ebooks From TV – My New Side Project

Posted on June 12, 2010
Filed Under handhelds, tv | 1 Comment

It’s true, I do not need Yet One More Side Project. Regardless, I have one. Talking to Paul Fischer at Balticon a few weeks ago, I was mentioning to him my ebook buying dynamic. I said that “If I see a book on Colbert or the Daily Show that interests me, I look to see if it is available for Kindle. If it is and at a decent price, I just buy it then. If not, I never think about it again.” Paul’s response was “What if you had a blog that collected all that information in one place?” Brilliant, said I. I offered Paul the right of first refusal on pursuing it since it was his idea. He passed, so I came home and set it up.

That site is Ebooks From TV. I’m trying hard to cover all the evening and late night talk shows, CSPAN Book TV weekends, and the daytime talk shows as I can. Ideally, if a book was mentioned on any of the national TV shows, you can find it in a post on Ebooks From TV. My goal is to get the post up the same day but occasionally it might be a day or two later.

If you run across a TV show where a book is mentioned and you don’t see it on the site, let me know via email at dave@ebooksfromtv.com . It could be that I’m not following that show, that the book doesn’t actually have a Kindle version available, or that it was published more than a year ago. I’ll make sure that at the very least I’m paying attention to that show, if nothing else.

Before the end of the weekend, I’ll set this up as a Kindle subscribable blog. My current understanding is that those blogs available on the Kindle must be at least $0.99 per month. I’ll put it at the very lowest price available whatever that is. If you frequently find yourself looking for books that you saw on a talk show, this might be a handy resource for you.

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Special Correspondent for Technorama

Posted on June 11, 2010
Filed Under conventions, podcasting | 1 Comment

I’m still barely dribbling out the con reports from my trip to Balticon and in that time since I’ve been writing them, I’ve been to a whole other con, Heroescon in Charlotte last weekend. I had a lot of fun there, did comic shopping and autograph hunting and all the things a fanboy does at a good sized comic con. This year I also did a few interviews as “special correspondent” for the Technorama podcast. Thanks to Kreg Steppe for lending me his H2 for an hour to walk around and interview a few folks and then toss it back to him for him to do the actual work of making a show from them.

Check out the episode here and let me know what you think. It was a blast to be able to do this work outside of my own shows and just cut loose. I highly recommend it to all podcasters. It really is invigorating.

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My Balticon 44 (2010) Wrapup, Part 2

Posted on June 7, 2010
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Part two of Balticon by strobe light.

Saturday evening: I was on a panel at 5 PM with Phil Rossi, Norm Sherman, Dan Tabor and Thomas Gideon. It was called “Art, Music and Literature in an Age of Technological Reproducibility.” We talked about creative commons licensing and the ethics of piracy and how not to freak out when people lift your creative work. It was a fine panel and I think we all acquitted ourselves just fine. Afterwards I had dinner with Gideon, Mistress Jett, Dan Tabor and MA in the PA (who knitted my bad ass Jayne hats), and Kevin Crosby. Kevin gave me an enormous amount of legal advice that I can use for my movie, not really specific answers but ways that I should be asking the questions. It was all great.

After coming back from dinner, we ran into Phil Rossi in front of the hotel. I asked if he needed any help loading in, and he said no, “… But. I could use a guitar tech to help keep these guitars in tune.” This is where it got a little weird. I found out later that Phil was under the impression I was a guitar player, which I am not. I played bass when I was younger but stopped 22 years ago. I asked if he had a tuner, and offered to do it if he couldn’t find anyone else more qualified.

I went and did some other stuff and then went back to the room a little before the show and we committed that I would do the job. It sort of became like a waking version of one of those anxiety dreams, where I’m on “stage” (really the front of a hotel ballroom) with only minimal ideas of what I’m doing. As Phil traded guitars between his acoustic and electric, I’d take them off to the side, plug them into the electronic tuner and go. I said before that I’m not a guitar player but I’m not color blind and I can read the difference between red and green LEDs. The first time I tuned Phil’s acoustic I had a true bit of stress because I could not get the B string right. I wasn’t sure how much song remained, whether this guitar was going to be used the next song or later, and how much longer it would take or even if I could ever get the damn thing right. Finally, I turned loose of it about 45 seconds before Phil was looking for it. Bullet ducked.

Overall, the whole thing was kind of like those anxiety dreams I still have to this day. Usually in them, I’m in a test that I am not prepared for or realize it is the end of a semester and I forgot to drop a class I long since stopped attending. Standing just offstage tuning guitars that I’m not exactly sure how to work is pretty similar to that. It was a good experience though. I really dig Phil’s music and was glad to be a minor part of it. Check out Phil’s stuff, for Dobbs’ sake!

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My Balticon 44 (2010) Wrapup, Part 1

Posted on June 2, 2010
Filed Under conventions | 1 Comment

I have a bad habit of starting chronological convention wrapups, being too detailed and burning out before I finish. Instead, I’m going to recap this year’s Balticon anecdote by anecdote. I will feel no compunction to do it in any particular order or in any number of posts. I’ll write until I feel done and hit publish, then lather rinse and repeat.

Overview: This year definitelly felt smaller and less crowded overall. There seemed to be fewer big literary guests and a lot of groups that had hallway tables in previous years weren’t there this year. I saw a few tweets from people that seemed bummed by this year. However, from my experience of mostly participating on the new media track with some forays into broader fandom at times, I thought it was even more fun than last year. I did a few things differently. I ended up not even deploying my promotional stuff. I didn’t stress about keeping stickers and flyers stocked around the con. Instead I focused on really rocking the three panels I was on, seeing friends and having fun.

One of the rules I set for myself was to not repeat meal partners anytime during the weekend. If I were invited to dinner and I had already dined with anyone in that group, I had to pass. It worked quite well and I avoided the comfort zone of locking in with a few people and socializing only with that small group. I like it so much I think that will become my standard con MO from here on out. I also made a point of trying to talk to as many people as possible and being open to as broad a set of shenanigans as possible. That worked out pretty well for me and I’ll get to some of those anecdotes later.

Saturday night: Viv Schubert organized a “nerd prom” that was held in one of the programming rooms. I helped set up some of it after being a spontaneous guitar tech (that will be its own anecdote later.) Kevin Crosby and I ran cables and secured bits of Tee Morris‘ DJ setup at the head of the room. When things were in hand there, I went up to my room and changed in to my costume. Anyone familiar with me or this blog knows I have one and only costume to wear at SF conventions. It was my “Señor Muerte” costume consisting of the luchadore mask I bought in Portland OR and the tights and wrestling boots bought for me by my wife, ring ready gear mind you. When the voting came time, all the participants in the nerd prom costume contest lined up into a gauntlet or catwalk where we all walked down and back to show off our costumes. Mine was the very last name called (only the character, I didn’t know we were supposed to put real names on there.) As I walked to the head of the room, about one second before I got there I hatched a plan to do my catwalk in a combination of a stomp and a monkey walk. I did a jump at each end and returned to my place.

In one of the odder moments of an odd night, a guy who was already wearing a wrestler costume that included a kid’s prop WWE belt. This guy, who I didn’t know and never got his name, gave me that belt to become part of my costume. “I’ve got 9 more at home, you should have this.” Thank you, dude who I don’t know. I heard later he was trying to hand it to me during my walk but I hope I’m giving away no secrets if I tell you “Mexican wrestler masks are the mortal enemy of peripheral vision.” This prop belt had no fastening hardware but I remembered from setting up the room where the duct tape was, and Phillipa Ballantine was kind enough to tape it to me. I am pretty sure that I’m the only person in that room whose costume became more ornate and more complete as I attended the party.

After about 10 minutes, they announced the winners in a few categories. I had a joke about the voting being rigged ready to go when they announced “Prom King” and it was me. At that point, I knew for a fact it had to be corrupt but it was in my favor so I kept my mouth shut. I joined the Prom Queen, Helen “Cynical Woman” Madden at the front of the room. We put on our sashes, tried to put on the crown and tiara but both were already wearing headgear that precluded it so we had to do the best we could. It was a completely insane amount of fun. I wore my “Prom King” sash all the rest of that night, and all day the next day. In order to make it the maximally Andy Kaufman-esque street theater I refused to explain the origin of the sash to anyone that needed to ask. The rest of that night involved having many conversations with many people, which was a complete blast. I also got kicked out of the hotel bar, in a full luchadore outfit, for carrying in a cup to talk to people. In retrospect, I should have taken the bar manager and put him into the atomic piledriver.

That’s all I can take for tonight. Many more tales of shenanigans later.

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Flickrphallophobia

Posted on June 1, 2010
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An incident from my past was brought up at Balticon, in a story that Evo Terra regaled a group with one evening. I’ll give the Reader’s Digest condensed version.

Podcast Expo 2006, it was year two of the Ontario California conference. We were reprising our “spontaneous poolside barbecue feast” of the first year with a less spontaneous version of the same thing paid for by Dave Hamilton of Backbeat Media. Tee Morris gets some sort of spirit of Elvis in him and decides to shed his clothes and jump into the hotel pool naked as a grape. He invites me to jump in, in the most platonic and masculine way one straight guy can ask another straight guy to join him in public nudity. I decline, and my excuse is that I have a condition called flickrphallophobia, which I defined as “fear of seeing pictures of your dick posted to Flickr.” Evo Terra refused to believe that I made up that term on the spot, and I believe we placed a bet on whether Google would find it and he lost it (the second bet he lost in 30 seconds.)

I have told Tee this many many times, but my biggest regret in my 5.5 year history with the podcast medium is that I didn’t just take off my clothes and jump in. It wouldn’t have been that big a deal and I really don’t know what my problem was. Given the opportunity again, I’m opting for shenanigans. However, as the story came up again this weekend we realized that this term still isn’t in the googlosphere and Paul Fischer really wants it so. It was also suggested that the better term is “autoflickrphallophobia”, which would be the difference between fearing any wee wee photos on Flickr vs. pictures of ones own. I coined a term for that person: “redonkulopedantic.”

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My Balticon Drive Playlist

Posted on June 1, 2010
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Here without much comment is my Balticon road trip playlist. I”m noting specific shows if I think that episode is notably worth checking out specifically from that series.

Ride up:

Ride Back:

This is far from comprehensive on my podcast subscription list, but it’s a good representation of what a few days of listening might be. Note the mix of big media and small, old and new.

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Evil Genius Chronicles Podcast for May 30, 2010 – “Prose and Cons, 2010″

Posted on May 30, 2010
Filed Under audio | 4 Comments

Here is the direct MP3 download for the EGC clambake for May 30, 2010. I play (most of) a song by Phil Rossi; I do a recap of my time as an impromptu guitar tech; I recap CREATE South 2010; I play a song by Mudhoney; I talk about my experiences so far with Baltion 2010; I play a song by Jonathan Coulton as a belated birthday gift to spring. This episode was actually recorded onsite at Balticon 2010.

You can subscribe to this podcast feed via RSS. To sponsor the show, contact BackBeat Media. Don’t forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package. This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5. Bandwidth for this episode is provided by Cachefly.

Links mentioned in this episode:

 
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Around the Podosphere 5/26/2010

Posted on May 26, 2010
Filed Under podcasting | 1 Comment

Here are some podcasts and particular episodes that I’ve particularly liked lately. Torn straight from my playlist!

I’ve been iffy on the Long Now Podcast and on the edge of dropping it. It’s got the same problem I have with TED talks – basically good-willed wealthy technocrats throwing the rabble a bone by letting them experience the sessions. Long Now is the far better of the two, TED always makes me feel like I’m being condescended to. The most recent episode really interested me though. It was Nils Gilman talking about “deviant globalization”, basically pointing out that while all business globalizes the business of criminals does so most of all. The whole thing worth it was for the part where he talked about “moral arbitrage.” I also liked the part when he said that Russian organized crime rose so quickly in the 1990s because only criminals had entrepenurial organizational skills during the Soviet era. Interesting stuff.

I’ve started listening to the Tell Em Steve Dave podcast. This is a Kevin Smith spinoff podcast, as players in the View Askew-niverse are forming some sort of a network of shows. To be honest, I’m not sure that I don’t like this show better than SModcast. I’m not a Smith fundamentalist. I like some of his movies but not all, and sometimes I even skip SModcast episodes. In particular, most of the live show recordings I find completely unlistenable. Playing to the crowd changes the dynamic and I find much to the worse. However, the first episode recorded from their tour I kind of liked.

My friends Michael Butler and Jasper Borgman keep it rolling with Good Clean Fun. I listen to all of them, but like any chemistry driven show some episodes hit better and some hit worse. I’m about 3 weeks behind so I just got to the May 4th show but I thought it was hilarious and I really dug it.

This morning I was listening to Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac (the only thing I bump to the top of my queue so that I hear it when it is timely.) Today’s episode including a birthday shoutout to Caitlin R. Kiernan. This isn’t the very first time I’ve heard someone I know personally on that show but it’s always a nice surprise. Happy birthday, Caitlin!

A few months back I subscribed to Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast. I think there were 30 or so episodes when I subscribed and it took me months to listen through the whole backlog. Now I’m relatively current (as current as anything – 3 weeks behind) and I heard his amazing episode with Robin Williams. I’ll admit that as much as I loved Williams 30 years ago, his relentless shtickifying has burned me out. Nowadays ff I see he’s in a movie I’m otherwise interested in, I rethink that interest. Imagine my surprise at the quality of this conversation between Maron and Williams about comedy, life, fucking up and recovering from it. It’s the kind of episode that by itself validates all the work that goes into the series. I’ve had those, and I think Maron has had multiple ones. Very highly recommended listening.

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Westboro Baptist: God Hates Spellcheckers

Posted on May 20, 2010
Filed Under misc | 2 Comments

Tomorrow morning Westboro Baptist will bring their silly hate carnival show to my little town. It’s been disappointing to me how effectively they can play the local media, which has been running news stories about them pretty regularly. They also are playing the people who counter-protest. Their goal is to get people to take them seriously, and the minute you try to refute them, you lose. To argue with them as if their position was one worthy of argument is to play into their hands. To paraphrase Dr. Pauli, “They aren’t right. They aren’t even wrong.” They just are plain acting out for attention, like the troubled kindergartener that pisses his pants to get attention.

It occurs to me that their primary influence is not any other protest groups but Andy Kaufman. I ain’t linking to it, but it’s not hard to find their page with the picket schedule. The entries all contain screeds full of weird typos and the assertion that “God hates you” if you are in one of the groups they hate. As you know, Hate Jesus told his followers “Hate your neighbor as you hate yourself.” Well played Westboro Baptist.

I have years of experience with an attention craving joke religion, namely The Church of the Subgenius. This suggests to me how you might try to counter them. Debating them is the wrong move, you have to fight them on the street theater level. I’d suggest making your own signs and joining their picket line. Some ideas:

Over at Laughing Squid, here is an example of a dada absurdist counter-protest. In this case, by making the signs funny the newspeople passed by WBC and took photos of the counter-protest. Attention is their oxygen supply, so cut that off and they lose their breath. I like the idea of trying to infiltrate but that might not be physically possible. There are only a few of them in the road troupe so surely they all know each other. I think swamping them is a fine tactic.

I’m planning on swinging by their protest tomorrow. It’s close to my house, and I’m going to try to get some footage of them. I will possibly use it in the documentary or maybe just to try to make fun of them.

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Nicola Griffith on Starship Sofa

Posted on May 20, 2010
Filed Under books, podcasting, sciencefiction | Leave a Comment

On the newest episode of Starship Sofa, my good friend Nicola Griffith has the featured fiction piece. Her story “It Takes Two” from the anthology Eclipse 3 is the bulk of the episode. This novelette was also selected for The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection and The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 4 so it’s not just your ordinary SF story. Check it out!

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Social Media Vacation Wrapping Up

Posted on May 20, 2010
Filed Under digital-lifestlye | 1 Comment

Theoretically, if I hold to my original setup today would be the last day of my social media vacation. This is the 28th day since I queued up a bunch of “send later” tweets and Facebook status and then shut all that crap down. I did violate the embargo last week to announce the news about CREATE South becoming sponsored by the Horry County Arts and Cultural Council, and then shut it all down again.

Here’s the deal. While I acknowledge that Twitter has upsides, I believe they come at too high a price for it to be a tool to draw my attention all day every day. I don’t anticipate ever returning to my previous levels of usage. A lot of the Twitter critics from big media, the same people that criticized bloggers 5 years ago, focus on the unseemliness of the hoi polloi enjoying the same ability to communicate as them. Screw those people, they can bite my ass. My criticism is the opposite. I see value in ordinary people having the channel to communicate, however I find the act of following it closely all day every day to be detrimental to peace of mind. Operative word: peace.

To use Twitter anywhere like the intended pattern involves a twitchiness and jangliness, like the shakes you get after your 7th cup of coffee. Either you are scanning it over and over manually, or you have something that notifies and interrupts you when messages occur. Either way involves Twitter taking your attention at frequent intervals, and usually for ephemera.

I stand by my original statement that there are only really three use cases for when I need information from Twitter right now: 1) when traffic is backed up between where I am and where I am going; 2) when I’m looking for someone with whom to have lunch; and 3) when I’m at a science fiction convention and I’m trying to find the room party that my friends are at. Everything else can wait, and it is detrimental to my life to be notified frequently. The act of getting notified reduces my life enjoyment more than the information increases it.

So, even though I’m coming off of Twitter/Facebook prohibition, I’m retreating from ongoing usage. I’m not sure if that means I only look at them at certain relatively infrequent times, only on specific days, or if I just say screw it and shut it down most of the time until I just feel like participating in them. For years I’ve been arguing with Steve Gillmor (I’d link to him, but links are dead) about the value of real time data streams. He finds them amongst the most important and salient bits of digital life. I’m finding them amongst the worst aspects of my modern life. Most people, myself at the head of the list, flatter themselves by feeling the need to be this connected. Most things in the world don’t need you, you don’t need most things in the world. I now choose to sacrifice connection for peace of mind and the satisfaction of being present in my daily life.

I’m choosing to live at a slower pace. I haven’t looked at a 24 hour news channel in 6 years. I’m clamping down my social media usage. Somewhere between Cory Doctorow and Ted Kaczynski is a happy medium, and for better or worse I’m falling on the latter end of that compromise.

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Flattr-y Will Get You … Where?

Posted on May 17, 2010
Filed Under digital-lifestlye | 1 Comment

I’m trying an experiment on this blog. I’ve Flattr enabled it via plugins, so now you’ll see those on both the posts and the RSS entries if you read them via Google reader or the like. I’m mostly doing this as to see where the value lies in this project. I don’t expect this blog/podcast will ever pull in significant revenue. I’d consider it a wild success if I broke even on my incoming and outgoing Flattr balance.

Here’s how Flattr works (as I understand it, with my vast 18 hours of experience with it): you put a certain amount of money in your Flattr account, and specify how much you’ll pay out each month. Then as you “Flattr” things through the month, those each get an equal share of whatever your monthly payout is set at. Think of it as Digg but with financial consequences, like Digging a thing means you are paying money to it.

What I do like about this is that you aren’t thinking about an amount as you pull the trigger to micro-pay something. The amount you are paying that recipient can range from the full amount of your monthly (if it’s the one item you Flattr that month) to such a small slice that it is a fraction of a cent. This solves one of the big problems of micropayment systems – the mental cost of valuing the payment vs the item to be paid for. In the Bitpass days, you have to think “Is this webcomic view really worth $0.15 to me” over and over again. If there is one aspect of modern life that is wearing me out, it’s being asked to make decisions over and over, all day every day, that I really don’t give much of a shit about. Instead, youmake two big decisions: 1) how much money to put into Flatter and 2) how much to pay each month Once those are locked in, you don’t think about money again. That’s smart.

The downside at this point is that the project clearly lacks critical mass and density. There are a lot of things I’d be willing to Flattr but thus far I had to really go looking for something to click. If this were more widely distributed, that would be easier. The other downside from an adoption perspective (but probably an upside from a business side) is that nothing happens at all until you’ve put some money in the system. You can’t receive a Flattr until you’ve made one, and you can’t make one until you put money in. Fiendish!

Here’s possible ways I see this playing out, not in any particular order:

  1. The whole thing is a Ponzi scheme and for most people it does nothing but the earliest people in do alright. This is also kind of the way the professional poker world works, as people shift the same money around to each other.
  2. It democratizes content payment, and people who create content for the love of it (like myself and the other podcasters/video bloggers/ et al) can pick up enough pin money to at least get costs covered pretty regularly. Sometimes you feel like you are winning the game when you just stop losing money.
  3. It is a total power law distribution, with the vast majority of items in the system getting 0 Flattrs (and thus no money), and a few getting a huge amount of them and little in between. This already might be happening, particularly with the “Top Flattrs” list in the site’s sidebar that means the rich get richer. This is how bestseller lists and iTunes directories work as well.
  4. It ends up like Digg but better because of the skin one has in the game. When you do capture lightning in the bottle with a post, viral video or something of the sort you end up scoring directly. Some sites already do this, some like You Tube notably do not in any reasonable way. I’m curious if there ever is a “Flattr millionaire” and if so, what the content is that generates it. I fear for the lowness of the common denominator, but I’m in the market to be pleasantly surprised.
  5. Much like all the best performing blogs in the Kindle marketplace are about (any guesses … ) the Kindle, at least now it appears many of the best performing Flattrs are about Flattr. Note that this blog post will be my first in that world too, and I’m curious to see what happens with that. The huge downside of this dynamic is that interesting new projects have incentives from day one to be circle jerks, creating little novel value but playing to the crowd. It’s the Web 2.0 equivalent of “Hello Cleveland! Are you ready to rock?” Pandering gets you everywhere.

I put in 12 Euros, which is 6 months at the lowest monthly payment setting. We’ll see how this goes and evaluate from there. If it seems too whorelike I might dial down the Flattr badge in every post setting, and only add it manually to a subset of them. Also, as of this writing (lunchtime EDT, Monday May 17) I think I have one extra beta invite code. I had signed up on the list for one weeks ago but when they sent me one, they sent two. I think the second code might work for someone else. Email me if you want it ,with the proviso that it’s possible it doesn’t work at all.

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The Movie Has Rolled Footage

Posted on May 16, 2010
Filed Under movies | 2 Comments

Today I went and did the first shoot of the documentary. My subject was Chavdar, himself a photographer who just graduated from Horry-Georgetown Technical College. By and large the setup and shoot went well. I have yet to review the footage so there is the possibility of a nasty surprise lurking. I screwed up one technical thing so simple and basic that I’m not going to say what it is. However, it was in the audio which is what I would have thought would be my strong suit here.

We’ll see where things go from here, but I’m happy. Just even getting out and shooting is a different level of reality from talking about it for years, even if every bit of this footage is unusable (which dear “Bob” I hope is not the case.) A few lines of questioning just don’t work, and I probably didn’t really arrange things properly to get at what I wanted to explore in the most efficient way. Still, it’s a learning process and now I’m learning. We have begun!

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The Movie Is Happening

Posted on May 15, 2010
Filed Under movies | 1 Comment

Tomorrow is a big day for me. The indie documentary idea I’ve been talking about for years is going to have it’s first shoot. I’m excited, slightly nervous but mostly ready to get some actual footage captured. I’m not an experienced filmmaker so I’ve been cramming like a college kid the night before a final exam, much of that from Anthony Artis’ The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide: A Down & Dirty DV Production. This afternoon I set up my equipment and tested it out, and I was surprised what a good, professional image I was able to capture with my prosumer camcorder and some cheap lights from World Market and Lowes.

I can’t remember when I first spoke aloud to another person that I wanted to do this film. It might have been as long ago as 4 years. Last year at Balticon I talked with Earl Newton about it quite a bit and got some seriously good advice from him. I had a conversation with the Ukrainian girl that was the lifeguard at the hotel pool about it too. I have a shoot lined up for next week and beyond that, I don’t know. My plan is to take the footage from tomorrows shoot, edit out a 2-3 minute piece and put it up on the movie’s website. This is partly for myself as a test that the workflow will produce something watchable out the other end, but also to give prospective interviewees something to look at so that they can understand what it is I’m talking about when I give them my crazy pitch for this film. Beyond that, it’s a loose ball that I need to grab.

This is way outside my comfort zone but that’s a very large part of what I like about it. I have an inflated enough ego and sense of self-confidence that I don’t doubt I can pull it off despite my inexperience. After all, pre-2008 Andre and I had no experience in running a conference and yet CREATE South is continuing to provide value to our town every year. Something will happen from this. My goal is to produce a feature length documentary film, one that is of a quality that could be shown theatrically. Whether it ever is will be a business decision for a later day, but artistically I want to make something in that ballpark. If I can’t pull that off, I want to get an hour long cut that would potentially be shown on the South Carolina PBS network ETV or other PBS systems. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll make the highest quality short film I can get out of it. I’m a pragmatist so I’m OK with having tiers of success and doing whatever I can on the highest tier I can pull off.

I’d say wish me luck, that that isn’t much of a factor. Wish me preparation and determination. Those I can use.

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Social Media Vacation, Week 3

Posted on May 12, 2010
Filed Under digital-lifestlye | 2 Comments

I’m well into my social media vacation. I’m so far in I’m starting to approach the far end of it. My original “30 days away” plan would put me at 9 more days. I’ll be honest with you, people. I’m not sure I’m ever coming back. At least, I am never returning to the level of use of Twitter I previously engaged in. There is a calmness and peace to my days that was sorely lacking in the previous few months.

I’m about to briefly break my vacation to post the news that the CREATE South conference is now under the umbrella of the Horry County Arts and Cultural Council. This means that future contributions are tax deductible! It should be good news for us and I’d like to get that in the Twitterverse today as opposed to two weeks from today. However, I’ve been dreading even opening up HootSuite again. I did look at it for about 45 seconds the other day just to see what was happening on the #createsouth hash tag. I was (pleasantly) surprised to see that Mr. Tee Morris is still whaling away on the official CREATE South Twitter account. It’s a pretty open secret that he’s our ghost writer (tweeter?) and has done 1000X better job than I did when I controlled that account. So there is value being created by all this, but my point remains: what is the personal cost of creating this value and am I willing to pay it?

I’m gearing up big time on the production of my documentary. Later this week I should have the first shoot of the film. This is an exciting point to be at, since I’ve been thinking about this for at least two years and probably longer. There might well be some value in creating and maintaining a Twitter account for the movie but I just don’t really feel like doing it. My hiatus has reinforced my feeling that Twitter interaction is junk interaction, and I’d do better making phone calls or visiting the subset of people I care about personally and letting the larger Twitterverse go. In reality, I’ll probably arrive at some sort of equilibrium where I hold my nose and use Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed and whatever horrific future monstrosities become the next geek toy fad.

However, from here on forward I for sure will be adjusting the dial so that the time and energy I put into social media matches the value I get out of it. No more imbalance for me. The days of twitchily checking for new tweets all day long is over. Just like I try to never turn on the TV when there is nothing in particular I want to watch, I’m done with social media when there is nothing in particular I want to say or hear.

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