emptyage

2009 Resolved

A few years ago, I started putting my New Year's resolutions online. I've found that it's been an excellent way to accomplish things as it both makes me really stop to consider what I intend to do, and by making a public declaration (even if nobody is paying attention) it shames me into keeping up with them. I'm not always 100% successful. I didn't actually manage to identify 100 birds, for example, but I came close, and more importantly I largely learned how to identify birds, which was the true goal. The number was arbitrary. And so while I didn't meet the resolution itself, the effort that I undertook was its own reward. So here goes. 2009. Me, new and improved.

Fitness:
1. Complete a marathon
I'd like to do this in less than 3.5 hours. But that's an aspiration more than a goal. What I'm going to accomplish is to run 26.2 miles.

2. Complete a Half-Ironman in less than 5.5 hours
This year, I finished my first half in 5:34. I think I can get it under five and a half hours simply by doing better in the transitions. I took a lot of time transitioning at Vineman, because it was my first time out and I more or less used them as breaks. But one area where I can certainly shave some time this year at Wildflower is my swim. I'm a crummy swimmer. Which leads me to:

3. Swim lessons
I suck at swimming. While I was a strong and frequent swimmer growing up (I even worked as a lifeguard at Boy Scout camp and the YMCA) I was never on a team. And because I was never on a team, I never learned good form. And because I never learned good form, I'm slow. You know the difference between me and Michael Phelps? Too many to count. But the difference between me and the guy who finishes five to ten minutes ahead of me on a 1.5 mile swim? It's not fitness; it's form. I'm going to suck it up and take some swim lessons this Winter, even if they bore the shit out of me.

4. First Elvis
I'm going to be the first person dressed as Elvis to cross the finish line at this year's Bay to Breakers. Hunka, hunka.

Professional:
1. Three Blog Posts Per Month
What's this doing under professional? One thing I've always said I love about blogging is that as a professional writer, my blog is my freedom. It's the place where I get to say whatever I want, however I want, unfiltered by editors, factcheckers, spellcheckers, or common sense. But it's also a place where I refine story ideas, where I try out new concepts, and organize my thoughts. It's a valuable professional tool. In 2008, I almost quit blogging. It was an accident, I tumbled too much instead. I don't know about you, but I've grown tired of Tumblr. Yeah, it's a meme crucible. But it's also a circle jerk, and it's too focused on hipsterism. I rarely find anything interesting there anymore that isn't actual old school, long form, blogging. I've enjoyed it, but I think I'm just about all done with Tumblr. I'm going to try to put up one post on this site per week, and I may even re-point emptyage.com at this blog again.

2. One Pitch Per Week
Lately I've begun leaning on assignments too much. I used to have a goal to send a pitch out every single day. That was eight years ago, when I was just starting out as a freelancer. It was often the same pitch, rejected in one spot, and sent somewhere else, but I was pitching. Pitching not only helps keep the work rolling in, but it also forces you to stay current and focused on the things you are interested in. I can't send out a pitch a day anymore, but I can and should do at least one a week.

3. Book Proposal
One of the very many good things to come out of my book deal this year was that I scored an amazing agent at an amazing agency. I need to take advantage of that and get a book proposal into her this year.

Personal:
1. Alcohol
I drink too much. I'm going to cut back on it this year because I love beer and I love wine and I don't want to have to stop drinking either one. This is kind of a touchy-feely goal, in that I don't have a concrete number or achievement to check off a list. But I'll know it when I see it. 

2. Harper
Another touchy-feely one. I have the best relationship of anyone I know. There's a simple reason for that, both Harper and I put the other person's interests ahead of our own. She's the most important thing in my life, and I'm the most important thing in hers. I want to make sure I don't take her for granted, and be a better husband and friend in 2009 than I was in 2008.

3. Go Crazy
Life should be an adventure. You only get one shot at it, so you have to make the most of it. To me, there's nothing better in life than having a wide variety of experiences. It was why I did acid in high school and why I swim from Alcatraz as an adult. I just want to live, live, live. Harper has much the same life philosophy. We had hoped to go to Tanzania in 2009, to climb Kilimanjaro. Yet barring another book deal, that's likely going to be too expensive for us to save up for it in time for this year. But somewhere out there is a stunning adventure with our names on it. I don't know if that's in South America, or Africa, or on the John Muir Trail. But wherever it is, I need to find it.

Single Serving Sites: A Semi-Personal History

Rex Sorgatz released his annual year end round up of blogs today, and I was exceptionally honored to earn a mention. It wasn't for my blog, however, it was for a website I launched almost a year ago now that typified a trend: the single serving site. In addition to Rex' post, just before the holidays Ryan Greenberg released an academic paper on single serving sites (aptly titled "Is This Your Paper on Single Serving Sites"). As my website makes an appearance in each I thought I should discuss my role in all this, and my thoughts on the subject. In the interest of radical transparency, I should also mention I've got a pitch in on the subject to Wired. We'll see how that goes.

One thing I tried to do with Barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com was to make a point by using the URL itself. In fact, the idea for the URL address predated the idea for the site by several days. As I've oft repeated now, the phrase was something I had been saying to my wife for a couple of weeks. I then repeated it to Andre Torrez at Toronado on an unusually balmy Sunday afternoon, who immediately "got it" without explanation. (But in case you need one: the idea of Barack Obama as a blank screen onto which we all project what we want to see.) So it was kind of funny, but how to make it work?

I essentially applied the URL idea to a concept I'd seen repeated in various ways in the previous weeks. Namely: Damon Zucconi's Sometimes Red, Sometimes Blue and the aforementioned Andre Torrez' C-O-L-O-R.net, both of which had a wonderfully odd randomness about them, applied to a single page format.  Another thing about both of those sites is that they have really cumbersome URLs if you're trying to key them in. They certainly don't follow the five letter rule of thumb that marketing knobs are so fond of. In my opinion, the rules for domain names have changed. Everybody's bookmarking and linking now because it's crazy fucking easy to do so. A href equals whatever you say it does, mang. You're no longer telling your friend about this great website you saw ("Have you tried Google dot com? I think it's even better than Altavista."), you're linking to it on Twitter or Facebook or Delicious or Blogspot or Digg or email or whatever. And not just you, webdude. Everyone's linking these days. My dad, a guy who won't even leave AOL because he's scared of the Internet, sends me formatted links via email now.

Hence the URL as idea or message. Not that the idea is anything new, but it's one that I think works exceptionally well in the Single Serving Site format. In fact, I think that's the single serving site's greatest strength: it's a super-efficient idea delivery tool. The URL itself is often a function of that idea delivery, but it's the sites' overall tendency towards small, efficient and focused messaging that makes them valuable and, I think, popular.

So that's it. Thanks, Rex and Ryan for letting me get this off my chest.

Oh. And I made a few other single-serving sites as well. Most of them have some combination of features of the above in common. To wit:

http://barackobamawilllookyouintheeye.com
Rather self explanatory, I think.
Interestingly, while Andre provided me with inspiration to launch BOIYNB, his wife Amber helped me with the site design for BOWLYITE, which explains why it looks so much better than all the rest of my sites. I owe the Torrez family a dinner, now that I think about it.

http://yahoorezinr.com
Launched during the summer when the Yahoo! attrition rate was exceptional. Again, I wanted to make something funny, but I was also trying to make a point.

http://whatisgaryveeon.com
I was sort of afraid this one was going to get me sued. It's meant as nothing but a huge compliment to Gary, whose productivity and output are nothing short of stunning. I hope that guy has a good sense of humor and doesn't take me to court. (Oh, and that's a Dead Milkmen reference, but you knew that.)

http://thatbuttondoesntactuallydoanything.com
This is an old school Web reference, but you knew that too. It's linked from the site immediately above.

http://happybirthdayto.eu/
Currently in production, by which I mean I am ignoring it but intend to come back to it really, really soon. Maybe this week. Maybe not. Although it's currently dedicated to the lovely Mr. Brian Oberkirch, and was formerly dedicated to the equally lovely Mr. Erik Malinowski, it has a special purpose for the future. It's eventually going to work like this: http://mhonan.appspot.com/Any.Name.Seperated.By.Dots.Works Oh, man. Please don't steal my half-assed idea.

http://douchi.es
I grabbed this URL with domai.nr, which is a super-hot tool for coming up with interesting domain names. There's an awards site on the way. Try not to win one.

The Shorty Awards are a Sham

If you're a Twitter user, you've almost certainly noticed something about the Shorty Awards in the last few days. Like all awards, they're dubious at best. In this case probably even moreso, as the "awards" or at least the nominations for them, pretty much come down to who has the most followers or best bots. But it at least holds out the promise of a democratic contest, noting that "The five people with the most nominations in each category will go on to the final voting round, held January 5th to 14th."

Nonetheless, some people do take them seriously. One of those people, apparently, is former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki, who seemed at least, to be trying to encourage people to vote for him. Enter Cap'n Smackers. After making a brief run for the humor category himself, Mike Monteiro asked a few friends to start promoting his fake dead dog to the top of the #business rankings.

The very quick back story: Mike has a somewhat curmudgeonly persona  on Twitter. He went through a happy phase, during which he started talking about his fake Bichon Frise, Cap'n Smackers. Somebody else subsequently registered the Twitter username Capnsmackers, and began updating. It was hilarious. So then Mike killed his fake dog.

Anyway. By mid-day yesterday CapnSmackers was shooting up the rankings, not just in business, but overall. By late in the day, he actually overtook Kawasaki, and was leading in business. And this evidently made the Shorty Awards people unhappy, or uncomfortable, or maybe it led them to realize the utter inanity of their sham awards. Likely it wasn't the latter.

And so they changed people's votes.

They changed 83 votes cast by Twitter users, from #business to #funnybusiness. In other words, they rigged the election so Kawasaki can win.

Now, I know somebody out there is going to argue that CapnSmackers isn't eligible because the contest is restricted to the five "people"with the most votes, and Capn Smackers is a dog. To which I say: When was the last time you saw a dog quote Heidegger? Behind that fuzzy avatar, there is a person. But even if there was not, if you open up a vote to the people, you have to accept the will of the people, even if you disagree with that. Just ask Mr. Splashypants.

You may be saying to yourself that this is a lot to get worked up over. That it's just a joke. That I should let it go. But that's beside the point, it doesn't matter that it was just a joke. What matters is that they asked for and received our participation and opinion, are actively using that participation and opinion to promote their awards, and yet rigged the process so that our votes are not counted.  Nobody cast a ballot for CapnSmackers in #funnybusiness; I certainly did not, nor would I have. The shorties changed votes. They attrbuted an untrue statement to at least 83 users who believed in their process. And that's really, really uncool.