This will be brief, since it’s little more than a re-blog of a Seth Godin post. This Seth Godin post. It’s all about joining in.

I would agree that cynics tend to stall processes. In fact, as a younger man, I had to take extraordinary measure to prevent myself from becoming a cinder block in the path of any project I involved myself in. My method of ridding myself of the illness of obstinance was theatre and improv.

I think the romantic subplot's a little predictable.

In improv you can’t say no, and you can’t backtrack; you’re required to feed off of the ideas from other players and assimilate them into something coherent, hopefully something funny, and to show the audience something that conceivably might have been thought out and planned beforehand, rather than frantically expunged there on the stage. Although the progress I made there may have been hindered by my work in the pervasively cynical field of school newspaper columnist…

My concern is with this quote from Seth Godin’s blog post titled “We Can Do It.”

- “Successful people rarely confuse a can-do attitude with a smart plan. But they realize that one without the other is unlikely to get you very far.”

Come to think of it, he probably includes just enough qualifiers to make this true. Successful people don’t confuse those two. That could probably define their success, though. It’s a very difficult thing to do, because a can-do attitude can be hypnotizing, and fairly often might be covering for a person who has no idea what’s going on.

With the mythology of start-ups written on napkins and improvised all the way to success, I think it’s fair to remind everyone to get their plans down in writing, even if it seems like all that’s wrong with traditional business.

If your business plan is too complicated or obtuse for an audience of public school students to understand, you’re probably thrashing. I hope you happen to be the one person in your company who know’s what’s going on.

A lot of people have no idea why a computer’s doing what it’s doing. A lot of people who know an awful lot about computers and how they work may end up with no idea, because most of the time, there can be several different explanations for a particular action. Troubleshooting a computer, for the average person who doesn’t really know how to get inside and find out what’s up, is kind of a lot like trying to be Dr. House, but less educated. You try something, see if it works. You try something else. You do this until the problem is solved, or it nearly (or fully) kills your patient.

The problem with this approach is that when it’s successful, some people don’t have the education to explain why it was successful. This is how computing superstitions are formed. MSN messenger crashes if you run it at the same time as winamp? Streaming video buffers more consistently when the window is minimized? Many of the actual solutions are so arbitrary (did you know that you flip the hold switch back and forth three times and then hold menu and the center button to refresh a frozen iPod classic?) that it seems just as reasonable to believe that you solved the problem by crossing your fingers, or changing your socks. I hope to provide some simple, relatable analogies for some popular computing superstitions, and hopefully explain why they don’t work.

Closing Applications Helps Eliminate Video Lag

So lets say you’re trying to watch an episode of the Daily Show online. It just went up, and you’re settling down for your lunch break to watch last night’s episode, because you went to bed at 11 so you could be alert and effective at work. You sit down with your chicken caesar wrap and your… I’m gonna say S Pellegrino, only to discover that it has to stop and buffer halfway through the theme music. It does it again, and again, about every 8 seconds, all the way through the episode. You closed Microsoft Word, though, and you closed Skype. What could possibly be slowing it down?

For this one, I’d like you to imagine you’re ordering a pizza. You call in, ask for a large pepperoni, well done, nothing they shouldn’t be able to handle. They say it’ll be about 45 minutes before it’s ready to pick up. You’ve ordered here before, though, and it normally only takes them about 25 minutes! Which do you think is more likely:

That the pizza is going to take longer because there are a lot of people ordering pizzas from that restaurant at this particular time.

or

That the pizza’s going to take longer because you were making a sandwich while you were on the phone with them.

Modern processors don’t exactly strain themselves rendering lofi streamed video, these days. The more likely culprit are the hundreds of thousands of college students who just woke up to watch that particular video along with you. Comedy Central’s servers can’t keep up with the demand, so it’s going to take a little longer to deliver. Now, lets say you are downloading a particularly large powerpoint presentation at the same time. This is slightly different. This is more like you ordered several pizzas from several different pizza parlours around the city at the same time. However, the amount that this will affect your buffering rate is about the same as the effect of all those pizza delivery guys will have on the speed of traffic on the way to your house.

The reason the belief that closing programs affects video lag is so common is that people don’t like to feel helpless. They like to believe that, somehow, changing something on their particular computer will affect the performance. Sometimes this just isn’t true. Occasionally, you have to set it aside, let it buffer, and maybe come back to watch it when things are a little bit less busy.

I hope coming to terms with that will make you more patient, less anxious, and a better grounded user.

Tomorrow is January 27th. At 10:00 PST, ol’ Steve Jobs will be walking up to the stage, in front of his great big powerpoint presentation, with his off-stage prop table full of toys for all the patient boys and girls.

Merry iMas

It’s been a long time waiting, and tonight, we may have trouble sleeping while visions of gently rounded corners and cleverly bubbly GUIs dance before our eyes. Will Steven get facial recognition software? Will Morgan get a satisfactory data plan? Will Trey like the QWERTY touch keyboard? Oh, how could they get any rest, so tantalizingly close to knowing the secrets they’ve been waiting for since last year.

So leave a note out on your iPod, and a glass of wheatgrass juice, at your drafting table, and we’ll sneak down, maybe, to take a peak at the crack of 10:00, before anyone else is around, to see what Mr. Jobs left for us under our RSS feeds and in our inboxes.

Sleep soundly, and merry iMas, everyone.

How do you keep it that way?

Can you keep it that way?

What are the alternatives, and how do we keep from hemorrhaging money?

If you’re going to put out a product that’s available digitally, and that people are going to want to obtain, you can bet on finding it available for free somewhere in short order. Bigger, better providers than you have put an awful lot of money and effort into stemming the tide of digital piracy, only to be bested with every new generation of technology.

The people who are convinced that your products are worth paying for, though, will always be there, and aren’t likely to be turned on to piracy just for the thrill of it. The best thing you can do for them is ensure that their licensed download stays their own, and can’t be intercepted beforehand, or afterward, using download links that are sent to their email address, with a personal ID code, with a service like Software Defender or easyClickGuard.

More importantly, though, you need to have some means of making your product refer back to yourself, even if it is obtained via illegitimate channels. A recognizable style, logo, interface, maybe a watermark built into a .pdf guide book, the point is, even pirated data should lead people back to your website, your products, your brand.

If they’re already getting a free sample, why shouldn’t that lead to a customer relationship?

In an accounting sense, advertising is just an expense. Some very clever people have decided that there is no reliable way to take a look at, let’s say, your flash video advertising on the front page of a major league baseball team’s website, and tell how much money you could expect to earn based on the attention gathered from there. In order to be considered an asset, you need to know the cost, as well as reasonably estimate the future benefits. Do you know what can be counted as an asset?

A database of repeat customers.

A mailing list.

An informal contract with buyers who have become personal acquaintances.

As certain as you may be about a new campaign, or investment in an attention grabbing stunt, you should take stock in the wisdom of the people who handle money professionally. If an ad leads to a hundred sales, it is still an expense. If it helps you meet new and interested people, it becomes a very valuable asset.

There is an argument being waged on Reddit. Ernest Hemingway is recognized for his ability to stave off writers’ block, to come back to his writing each day with work to do, and to do the work. He managed to ensure this by ending his writing before he finished, knowing where he wanted his story to go, eager to return to his work and complete it the next day. He ended each day with something that he still needed to do, and that propelled him forward.

Military Training Might Have Helped

What makes it a hack, though? In fact, what makes anything a hack? This bears resemblance to another life hack I’ve heard many times, for an even more common complaint than writers’ block. People who struggle with weight are often told to simply “stop eating before they become full.” Hopefully the trouble with this technique is clearer now.

The truth is, reading any one of Hemingway’s novels reveals a highly disciplined, organized mind. The sort of mind that took a great deal of care in deciding things such as how much warmth and comfort he could afford when money was short, and how much food he needed to sustain himself, and how much could be set aside for later. Waiting to write another day isn’t the hack that will break the firewall in your brain of laziness or disinterest or inexperience. It won’t put a hole in your overeating habits if you simply don’t have the faculties to determine when you’re full. The ability to tell when you’ve had enough for today.

This advice is good advice. The writing habits of the greats are inspiring. It may in fact have a great deal to do with hacking a computer system, but not in the way that I believe it was meant, in the article.

Pictured: Hemingway's Brain Trust.

Hackers do bypass regulatory and security systems, gaining access to information they are not meant to access, it’s true. They do this through intimate knowledge of these systems, and mammoth dedication to their craft. It’s a great hack, but I think I need a patch to get it to work on my OS…

How much work do you put into learning the art of being grateful? It is a tricky difference between being a gracious, humble contributor and seeming desperate and insincere. This is difficult when you’re just starting to work, offering your services and talents to the world, and making them feel like you appreciate it when they contribute to your success. This is even more difficult further on down the road, if and when you start feeling as though you deserve this success.

Billy Corgan, the front man for the Smashing Pumpkins and several other much less awesome bands, got to the point where he began expecting additional compensation for his songs to be played on the radio. The assumption here, I guess, is that playing Pumpkins songs are disproportionately bringing listeners, and therefore advertisers, to the radio stations, more than the other bands who were being played for the same standard rate.

Back when they were cool.

Today, Rupert Murdoch is playing the same card, feeling like Fox news is bringing home the bacon for Google, and not the other way around. Whether or not there is a grain of truth to either of these situations is not the point. The point is, making one to one connections with all of your consumers requires a fantastic amount of power. Collaborating and playing by the same standard rules as everybody helps people see exactly how your news affects them, how your music fits into their playlist, who else likes them, who you’ll get to know if you make their values your own. If Fox is really going to commit to towing their own line, then they really need to start playing a little more Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness and a little less Zwan, if you know what I mean. He’ll need “Tonight Tonight”’s soaring strings and textured guitars of customer appreciation, is what I’m saying.

Ballpark mustard is made of Turmeric, vinagre, and of course, powdered white mustard seeds. Turmeric is bright yellow, and it gives mustard its typical colour. I have absolutely no reason to know any of this. I bought turmeric one time when I had to cook dinner for a bunch of friends and I felt like saying I used an exotic sounding spice, while I had no idea how it tasted. I misread it as “tumeric,”

Which is ironic, because it's now thought to have cancer-fighting properties.

Why do I know what goes into mustard? Malcolm Gladwell wrote about it.

In particular, he wrote about Grey Poupon and their peculiar success in the mustard world. He explains the circumstances of the rise to notoriety already in I think two of his four books, and he mentions it in his TED talk, as well. The subject has been thoroughly, expertly covered, is what I’m saying.

Every time the subject comes up, however, I get the crazy idea that I want to make my own mustard. It comes from these completely ordinary ingredients! Some that I have around the house anyway, some that I find myself buying by accident, and if French’s and Grey Poupon can have entirely different ingredients (they even use different kinds of mustard seeds) and still both be considered mustard, who’s to say what I could throw together and still end up, inevitably, with mustard?

This is a wildly simplistic statement about writing, particularly the kind of tactical fascination that Malcolm Gladwell writes with. Writing that is candid and persuasive and full of compelling facts. In fact, write well enough, and people might entirely forget about your lovingly deployed prose.

They might find themselves inspired by mustard.

Even with project deadlines approaching like a sleepless, relentless illness that gives you fair warning, I still spent the greater portion of tonight watching C-Span’s live feed on The Huffington Post. I think it was time well spent, considering the gravity of what I got to watch.

The UI of Progress

It is such a relief, after such a long plateau, to actually experience some upward movement. I want to sincerely congratulate the United States Congress, not just because I think the did the right thing today, but because it was a very long process and it was handled with patience and understanding and professionalism, for the most part.

The winners today have been well outlined- the 50 million Americans without health care, the American’s struggling with arbitrary insurance policies – but while the bill does help them, it seems the main losers in the Novermber 7th Health Care Debate were women in general.

This is not solely speaking on the subject of the Stupak Amendment, which boasts more than one avenue for preventing abortions. This issue has more than one side, and we can only hope their efforts to prevent an incline in the number of back-alley abortions go better than their wars against other illicit activities.

It’s startling, though, to see the Democratic Women’s Caucus struggle to have their opinion recognized in the first place.

That’s Rep. Tom Price (R. Georgia) keeping things classy. There are few actions more telling of a cohort’s unwillingness to cooperate or understand than shouting down your opponent before their opinion has, in fact, been tabled at all.

It’s difficult to make real change when there’s that kind of cover-your-ears-and-hum enmity within an organization. I am sincerely impressed at what you’ve managed to accomplish today, and again, would like to extend my congratulations. Today was a difficult day, and we’re all still here.

Don’t ever tell me something was “indescribable.”
I have very high esteem in the powers of the English language to convey
personal experience. I have this faith in every language. I believe if
humanity were stripped of our vocal expression, we would become so
extremely competent with our gestures and expressions that not a
concept would be dropped or excluded.
Also, technically saying “it was indescribable” is a description. An wholly unoriginal and bloodless one, at that. Man up.

This shows up when you type “indescribable” into google images. It is a
white, incandescant oval on a navy blue background with a navy blue “t”
of negative space inside. Maybe you’re not trying hard enough.

My purpose for crying out for thoughtful prose is that it’s becoming
the normative pressure, here on these internets. I’ve seen more pdf
files than I could post an animated stick-shaking gif to demonstrating
exactly this spineless writing. Blog posts with no soul – or even
worse, blog posts with the glimmer of a soul shining through the
disingenuous musings all but smothering it, snuffing it out, dousing
it. All those writers sending out an open call for collaboration on
some “Je ne sais [pas] quoi?”

Par exemple; the lion’s share of publications having to do with social
networking, search engine optimization, outsourcing, really any sort of
high-concept e-business, seems to have a similar tone, at least
recognizable through the praying and weeping. “Please, can I be allowed
into the embrace of the indoctrinated few. Tell me the secrets that
will make all of these wikipedia explanations make sense. Enlighten me
in how to take the concepts from those banner ads and actually use them
to make money.”

It’s a massive temptation to post every-which-where something along the
lines of “As everyone knows, social networking is CRITICAL to the
success of a modern business. Maybe we could all share what techniques
have proven particularly successful…” *wink*

This post comes at a time where I’m losing hair and sleep and patience
with my own ballooned responsibilities in my own online venture. Where
I am utterly lost in a world of content management systems and
networking strategies, when all I signed on for was the writing. I am
convinced I’m going to have to drag my own weight, however. When these
pleas are presented carelessly, I’m concerned that it vaccinates a
society against altruism. Seth Godin has created a substantial network
here of people absolutely itching to inform people of what contributed
to their successes. For free, out of sheer kindness. I think creating a
discussion board with such non-existent parameters just to make a
personal mix-tape of other people’s greatest hits when the answers can
be researched by a person with moderate computer skills can make a
person seem… selfish.

It’s pronounced “shibboleth.” I don’t think it’s good enough. I’ll get
ignored if I can pronounce your words and your ideas (I’ll probably get
blocked, if I try to fake your accent.) This pattern, I believe, is a
seeker’s attempt to demonstrate they’ve read the material, they’ve
taken the initiative and they are looking for someone to help them
understand the footwork. This is ineffable. It’s transient, and you may
be tempted to call it indescribable.

Give it a try, and we’ll talk.