A Wild Leg Tickle Appears

Ta da! I made a comic at Rage Builder.

New Blogger Interface: +1

At first glance, I like it a lot. Google will be re-branding Blogger as Google Blogs (and Picasa as Google Photos) in the coming 6 weeks (thanks for the info, @martymankins). This effort is in the interest of making their empire & all its constituents seamless. To prep for that, they've overhauled the interface.

I've never been connoisseur of these things, but since I'm not truly computer-literate I make a good litmus test person. If I find it easy & intuitive, if I don't stumble & get confused in making something happen or finding the cog in the machine I need to work on, it's a winner. So far, it looks like a success by those measures.

I'm not crazy about all the orange color on the dashboard page though :P. I do think I like how it's set up.

More thoughts to come as Rome gets built, I'm sure.

How To Be An Intolerable Interviewer

I like to be positive, so I contemplated scrapping this list and writing an earnest “How To Be a Stellar Interviewer”. I may go on to write that, but I’m still pretty irritated right now, so this stands.  Please indulge me; this morning I was pissed off listening to some idiot mangle an interview with one of my heroes. This list is not comprehensive and is leveled at that villain’s style in particular. When I write the positive version, I will be more thorough.

How To Be An Intolerable Interviewer:

1) Gasp, coo & say “Wow” at your subject’s every utterance. Be familiar with methods people use to  compensate for lack of genuine interest: clenching their smile, using ingratiating intonation, feigning thrill. Put a see-through veil over your arrogance, scan your subjects’ words instead of truly listening and nod your head with something approaching pity.

2) Interrupt your subject at nearly every turn. Palpably wish he’d keep his answers snappier. Goose-chase interest by pulling your subject in different directions and force him to backtrack if he’d like to complete his thought.

3) Assume your phraseology is superior and that your audience is an idiot; reiterate your subject’s answers ("In other words...") as if you were his only hope for coherence. Suppose that your purpose is to make your guest more interesting than he is on his own.

4) Place your own interests regarding your subject and his topic above that of the audience - and even that of your subject. Seem preoccupied with an aspect of his endeavor that has little or nothing to do with his larger passion.

5) Be vague. Be inarticulate. Ask “What’s [that] like?” (Fuck you. If you’re lost for a specific, well-put, thoughtful, intelligent question, please say, “Please talk about [that]”, or something comparable.)

Image credit: http://paulvargaradio.com

6) Don’t be well-prepared. Rather than bringing some excellent ideas to the table, bank on something in your subject’s current sentence prompting your next question. Meander in a loose, ill-directed & sloppy conversation rather than constructing a strong stage upon which your subject can shine.

7) Feign learning what you already know (“Ohh, you were born in Brussels? Wowww”) for any of the half-dozen misguided reasons you do that.

8) Use vaguely passive-aggressive word choice to liven things up with a pinch of defensiveness from your subject. Repeatedly put things in such a way that he’s stuck correcting you, thus sounding overly picky or sensitive.

9) Forget that this is about everything before you: your subject, the audience (professionals, fans, piqued bystanders who are interested in him and what he does), his thoughts, his personality, his point of view, his difficulties and solutions, his story. Forget that your job is to reliably and respectfully frame that picture, bind that book.

A Wild Image Culling Tool Appears!

You know how you fall in love with an image online, so you save it somehow? Maybe you email it to yourself & stick it in a pics folder. Or you keep it on your computer, or a photo-sharing site (or you Tumblr/Tweet it), etc., where it then gets mixed up with pictures you snapped yourself and other unrelated shit? And now your faves are scattered throughout cyberspace.

Enter my new crack cocaine: We Heart It.

It is only for images you come across while hanging out online; no ‘browse’ button for loading your own pictures (except your profile pic. Read ‘Dos & Don’ts’ - check out the first ‘Don’t’).

It’s social media in that you may find & follow others, but it’s gloriously silent: no text, no chat, no articles, no news, no noise, just images special enough to have been culled from the vast eleventillions of internets.

Using it is ridiculously easy: drop the bookmarklet onto your toolbar. When you come across a keeper, click ‘Heart this’ and you’ll be prompted to choose the image, tag it if you like, and cull it to your stash.

If you start using this, please tell me or follow me: ccnomad.

Sasquatch Balloons

I love pictures like this:

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]Credit: Jason Ross of Seattle Theater Group

STG's Concerts Marketing Manager Jason Ross offers a great report on his trip to the Sasquatch Music Festival <-here. The above pic is of the audience cheering on The Flaming Lips - always fun & unique in concert. Jason got (among other things/people) a great action shot of true rock star Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. Nice work, Jason :-)

P.S. I work via Staff, Inc. for STG, the people who manage the Paramount & Moore theaters.

Sasquatch Balloons

I love pictures like this:

Credit: Jason Ross of Seattle Theater Group

STG's Concerts Marketing Manager Jason Ross offers a great report on his trip to the Sasquatch Music Festival <-here. The above pic is of the audience cheering on The Flaming Lips who are always fun & unique in concert. Jason got (among other things/people) a great action shot of true rock star Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters (scroll roughly halfway down). Nice work, Jason :-)

P.S. I work via Staff, Inc. for STG, the people who manage the Paramount & Moore theaters.

Day 275/1

Goals by February 29, 2012:

$15,000 (or better) saved

Slimmed down, fit & flexible (numbers & other reductions in vagueness to come as I math things out)

First draft of novel (finally) complete

Brain/mind sharpened back to optimum levels - no more cloudiness, sludginess. Math may not be available for this one, but I'll recognize the progress when I see it

Develop and/or commit to more specific goals as the days tick down & the shape of things emerges (I have some things in mind, but I need to see what the pace of progress of the more general goals is first)

No, this isn't turning into a diary of my 'leap' to the East Coast, but every so often I may pop in with a progress report.

 

Thanks for indulging me :-)