The behind the scenes area of my blog is very much like the glimpses you get behind the scenes of most award shows. Everyone is all dressed up spiffy (sans pants), celebrities are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, lots of sculptures being passed around, envelopes being opened, and a bunch of ugly nerds sporting boy-band style headset microphones making sure everything looks kosher to the audience.
I recently upgraded my WordPress installation (that is the blogging platform that SYP runs on) from 2.6 to 2.6.1. It was pretty painless as far as updating files on a server go, but I also took the chance to make some template changes based on feedback that you have been sending me over the past few weeks.
You should now notice that when you make the window smaller then it should be that things don’t jump around as much. If you are part of the 10% of my readers who use Internet Explorer, some of the quirks aren’t worked out yet, so you may want to give FireFox a run for it’s money. If you are part of the 18% of that 10% that is using Internet Explorer 6.0, you really should consider upgrading it to 7.0 AND still using FireFox. Soon all viewers using IE 6.0 will see an annoying little message telling them they should upgrade. I’m going to make this message as annoying as possible over time (to the point that it would enduce a seisure from an epileptic), so go get your update on.
I was reading The Economist Technology Quarterly today (do I smell nerd on your breath? It was only one officer, I swear!). Two articles in it really struck my fancy, one of which this post will be devoted to. It was an article titled ‘Open Sesame’ (here is the PDF if anyone wants to read the entire article).
The gist of the article was about the Open Source movement and how it’s carrying over from the software realm into the hardware realm. Device manufacturers are releasing more and more of their schematics to allow the niche communities that know anything about chip schematics to build enhancments for their devices, or utilize them in ways that the manufacturers hadn’t originally planned. It’s an exciting prospect, and the article glazes over a few such companies and communities that have had success with the model.
My love for all things Open Source is apparent in the way that I work and my natural inclination to tinker with things (and getting to tinker with devices that were designed to be tinkered with can be even more fun). It’s also apparent in the work that I do, since all of my work is based on Open Source content management systems like Joomla. But that isn’t the source of excitement for today.
Here’s where you wipe off your drool (sleep drool if I’m boring you, lust drool if this is softcore nerd-porn for you). The main reason I lingered on this two page article (only two pages for those of you who thought the Google Chrome release comic was too long) was because of the following section.
OpenBooger With Its Pants Down
First of all. Second of all, ‘moko’ is slang for booger in Mexico. Do you think that the founder (Sean Moss-Pultz) of OpenMoko knew that he was naming his company OpenBooger? Third of all, I think it’s time you re-evaluate (chipmakers of the world, I’m looking at you) what having your pants off in public really means.
In a closed system, in a closed environment, in a closed source world, having your pants off in public can be a scary and embarrassing prospect. The whole world is seeing you sans your pants. The whole world is seeing something they aren’t supposed to. But once you change the name of the game, and open it all up, it’s nothing to be scared or embarrased of. If the name of the game is not wearing pants, and having your source/schematics/chips open (and declaring so), then having your pants off in public becomes the norm. You have nothing to hide, you are succeeding in the open model because you have shed your pants.
It’s a win-win. You no longer need pants, can sound all world 2.0 with your newly adopted open source model, and your customers will be happy with the added functionality and flexibility that such a model proviedes. Not to mention you will leave all the Pant Wearers (PW’s) feeling self-concious. Afterall, pants that you arent wearing, can’t make your ass look big.
Many of you have asked me how I got the name for my blog. Since yesterday the site and half the Internet were down, I couldn’t post it. Today, here it is:
[18:25] Lynn: i have them email open, i [18:26] Lynn: ‘ll just forward even though i havent checked it out [18:26] Me: okay [18:26] Lynn: youremaail@gmail right? [18:26] Me: with one a [18:26] Me: yes [18:26] Lynn: sans the double a [18:26] Lynn: ya [18:26] Me: .com [18:26] Me: at the end tooo [18:26] Me: sans the o [18:26] Me: sansyour serif face [18:26] Lynn: yesyes sansyourpants [18:27] Me: sansyourpants [18:27] Me: ! [18:27] Me: .com [18:27] Me: what a great domain name [18:27] Me: or band name [18:27] Me: or blog name [18:27] Me: i think its gonna be my blog URL [18:27] Lynn : sansyourpants ? [18:27] Me: yes [18:27] Me: .com [18:27] Me: do you like it? [18:27] Lynn: i bet its taken [18:28] Me: doesnt resolve [18:28] Lynn: o [18:28] Lynn: nice [18:28] Lynn: its pretty catchy [18:28] Lynn: but could be read as smutty by up tights [18:28] Lynn: which is maybe funny too [18:28] Lynn: nerd smut [18:29] Me: nerd smut [18:29] Me: from a beach hut! [18:29] Me: SansYourPants.com [18:29] Me: ‘Nerd smut from a beach hut.’ [18:29] Me: dont tell anyone
I can recall sitting in the den of our brick house (like the three little pigs) in Maplewood New Jersey at six years of age watching television. I used to watch Nickelodeon back in the day (I would still watch Nickelodeon if I had television service). Once every few weeks during the commercial breaks there would be this animated short of hippos, cats, dogs or pigs playing a sport. Most of them were only like 30 or 40 seconds long (apparently they were appropriately titled Sports Cartoons).
Like most of my peers at the time, I enjoyed these shorts. Unlike most of my peers at the time, it occurred to me that I should keep a pad of paper and a pen (even at the ripe age of six I never made mistakes) by the television so that every time one of these shorts aired, I could write down what sport was featured and what animals were playing it. Why? So I’d have a list of course! I’ve always been a list-maker.
At that age, just to have a list was the drive/motivation/reason for doing things. Just about two decades later, so much has changed. I still keeps lists, but now the list is what drives/motivates me to do things. Being a self-employed (although my entirely lively-hood at this point depends on one person giving me work, thanks Amanda) freelancer/consultant/code-monkey/henchman-for-hire means that I need to self-motivate. This isn’t usually a problem for me, but everyone has their days. As a result I have come up with a way to get the work done even when I’m feeling unmotivated.
I call it the Happy Feet method (thanks Kimmie). For those of you who haven’t seen the film, I present you with this clip (play close attention to the last few seconds):
You have to trick yourself into thinking that you are already being productive. When you are feeling unproductive (and therefore are actually unproductive) shifting into ‘productive mode’ requires you to make a change. That change requires effort and motivation which you clearly are lacking. Therefore, if you trick yourself into thinking you are already being productive, you aren’t requiring any changes of yourself, you are just rolling with it. So you may ask, how does this certain somebody manage to trick himself (especially with that razor sharp wit of his)? It’s simple, the list.
Most times I am feeling unproductive, my list consists of large tasks that have been hanging over my head for quite some time and I have fallen into the habit of putting them off, I’m aboard the procrastination train and oh brother it’s a smooth ride. When the list is empty except for these items, my motivation is at its’ lowest. So here is where you make a fool of yourself.
Decide two things that you need to do that are normally too small/insignificant for the list. These are the type of things that take relatively little time (compared to the items that normally go on your list). Good examples are taking the trash out, taking the dog for a walk, or taking your pants off. Now write them down on your list. If you have spaces in your list, do yourself the added favor of separating the two, one near the top and one near the bottom as to appear like you are randomly attacking items in the list (this doesn’t work if your list is prioritized). Now, do those two things. As you complete them, cross them off your list.
Ten minutes ago you were so unmotivated and unproductive that you had nothing to show for it. Now ten minutes later you’ve crossed not one, but TWO things off your list! YOU ARE ON A ROLL BABY! VIVA LA HAPPY FEET METHOD.
It’s not every day that you get to meet your father. I am not sure ‘get’ is the proper term to use here, so maybe ‘it’s not every day that you meet your father’ is more accurate. For obvious reasons, you only really meet a person once or twice ever. In colloquial-speak we often say “yeah, I’ve met him a couple times” but what we really mean is we’ve been introduced to him several times. When you meet someone, it extends beyond the introduction, you learn a little bit about them and they about you.
If you are as awesome as me, when you meet someone, you also leave your mark on them (like a dog does on a bush or tree). This way, you prevent yourself from ever being someone who is met several times. They meet you once, and they remember you, some type of exchange (no fluids please) takes place in which they feel like they know you and you know them so the meeting part is done. Feeling like you ‘know’ someone doesn’t mean that you ‘know’ someone, and hence actually ‘knowing’ someone is the next step…then if you like them you get to ‘know’ them in the biblical sense…but I digress.
Most of you don’t remember meeting your fathers (or mothers) because you have been with them since birth. Even if your parents separated when you were little (or old) you still spent time with each of them regularly or semi-regularly or exchanged mail/calls/txts/cards/pants/etc. Sometimes parents die before we get to meet them, or sometimes parents aren’t equipped to be parents and they put us in better care, and sometimes our parents don’t know they aren’t equipped to be parents and are named Britney Spears and we get removed from their custody by court order.
So in the mathematically rare situations when someone is about to ‘meet’ their father for the first time in 20 years, what is going through their head just before they walk into the room? I have no idea. Even if I had a faint idea (which I do not), I’m sure no words could even begin to capture it all. What I do have an idea of however, is what the text message on my phone reads right before that person goes into the room.
You got to steal from the time of a life that’s passing by. – Stephan Jenkins
It was only a few days ago that I was mathing through the dilemma of ‘time’ as we all get older, in one of my posts. I also just got done reading Getting Things Done by David Allen a few days ago. It is a strange thing to be so conscious of how much (or how little) time is passing and what you are doing with that time. It is also a strange thing to be in Hawaii where time has much less societal importance then other places I’ve lived (namely New York and Tokyo), but maybe not so strange as it may be what allowed me to be so conscious about the whole time issue.
For those of you not in the know, GTD is a system that guides its practitioners into a series of behaviors/methods that allows them to reduce stress and increase efficiency and productivity both in work and personal lives (and everything you do). It sounded like a good thing to learn and implement, and after reading it, I can confirm that it still does. For someone with slight OCD tendencies it helps aid me in processing everything that I need or want to get done in life into it’s own place, and more importantly out of my head. It’s not until you have a complete list of everything ever that you want to do or accomplish in life (from getting a new toothbrush to retiring before 60), that you can really begin to prioritize or make decisions about what is reasonable to expect to get done.
I realized that I want to do it all. Not everything ever, but everything that would ever make it onto my list. I don’t knowingly suffer from any attention deficit disorders, but I do suffer from something drastically different that has very similar symptoms. I am interested in too many things, and so my attention can be kept focused on one thing for only so long before I realize that there are way too many other things on the list that I need to get started on. It’s never about boredom, or the inability to focus, it’s about the ability to focus on too much at one time (but not enough concentrated focus).
Even as I type this my iTunes is playing through songs on shuffle and I actively skip or replay songs as I see fit, my iChat is open and I am engaged in conversations with people in Israel and California, Word is open with two wire frames of the same web-page (one as the user sees when logged in and the other logged out), Firefox is running with 4 tabs open (my Basecamp work to-do list, MouseHunt application in Facebook, my WordPress back-end, and the Something Awful forums), Coda is open with 3 php files that comprise the component I am developing from the wire frames in Word. All this on two monitors while my left leg is shaking rapidly and my right hand is petting Maxine.
I can’t do it all. I can’t even get relatively small and simple things done half the time. It’s not that I don’t have enough time though. I say I don’t have enough time, but the thing is, I know people who get more done then I do and they don’t have any extra hours that I don’t have. We all live by the same clock (just in different time zones), we fill the exact same hours with very different things. I’m not alone (Amy leaves Friday for two months, but even then I won’t be alone), but I have also noticed in recent conversations with many of my friends that they experience similar thoughts/feelings about the time in their life and how they are spending it.
Make a list, of everything you want to get done ever, ever. Or just start it with some big/medium/small picture stuff. Are the decisions you are making about what to fill your time with really what you want to be doing? Can you envision those hours a little bit better? If you make them better, are you moving yourself towards one of the end-goals on the list? Are you working towards anything on the list at all right now? How hard will it be to adjust to working towards things on that list? I don’t know, but I’m about to find out. The less time and energy I spend on things not on the list, the more time I spend pantsless.
Time for another episode of ‘Pimp Your Friends’ here on SYP. If you are an avid Polaroid user (who isn’t?), it will be old news to you that the company announced earlier this year that they were discontinuing the production of film for their cameras. This was pretty sad news for the small community of photographers (and hipsters that felt the need for ironic accessories) that still use Polaroid cameras, as the price of Polaroid film on places like eBay and private sellers got pretty expensive (for those of you don’t know why google Supply and Demand).
My dearest friend Nicole Cordier is both a photographer and tries-not-to-be-but-she-is-just-not-cool-enough-not-to-be-a hipster, and this has resulted in her buying up half the remaining supply of Polaroid film on the market for one of her projects. She is a kick-ass photographer (and mutant). If you’ve ever seen that picture of the Navy sailor who just returned from World War II and is kissing some broad in the middle of the street in Times Square, then you’ve seen her work. If perchance you haven’t, you can check it out at her website, you won’t be disappointed (unless you believed me when I said she took that picture of the sailor and chica in the 40’s).
On my most recent visit to the city that never sleeps I got to spend some time catching up with Nicole talking about how stale the IMF and World Bank have become, Eastern Europe as an emerging Albino Sheep breeding ground and it’s impact on the Canadian wig market prices, etc. (We really just got some greasy-ass food and pointed/laughed at people who looked like all they do was eat greasy-ass food). We also made some home-brew Orangina with some Tropicana Orange Juice and San Pelegrino in the park, but I digress.
Those things were all a gas. We really did have a ball. Which is important, but what is more important is that Nicole had been working on putting her computer hacking skills to work in creating a new blog for herself called Cake For Dinner. It had just about launched and we did some bantering back and forth about Tumblr and Wordpress and why we were/weren’t going to use each platform, and all that geek-cheek (I might have just made that term up, I’ll do a search after posting it). She also gave me a present which she had seen down in Florida that reminded her of me (cause it’s so much fun it makes you pee a little), and when I say ‘gave’ me, I mean we had to walk to Urban Outfitters twenty minutes away so she could buy it and then give it to me.
She knows me well, because it was a book. But it’s a good book (I used to think that was an oxymoron until I was in my early twenties), and it will be fodder for a series of posts here on SYP in the near future, as well as some existing posts on Cake For Dinner. So thanks Nicole, for the book, for the bootleg Orangina moonshine in the park, for getting your blog up-and-running (‘If Nicole can do it, then I should be able to do it in half the time with none of the effort!’) and for always being down for some Cake For Dinner (or cupcakes for lunch as it were). I hope this post finds you with your pants…off.
My good friend Benjamin Costello (‘Jamin) released his long-awaited album this week entitled ‘Start Again Tomorrow’. It’s been quite some time in the making, and I know he is ecstatic with how it turned out. I’m sure he’s also happy that it is available to the many hands that have been grabbing for it for so long.
He has been performing two shows a week, an hour a piece, via live web-cast on Stickam which you should check out if you get the chance. I’ve always thought that performing for an hour or two a week for an audience in a comfortable setting is a brilliant idea. It’s a low-level commitment on behalf of the audience and it also capitalizes on the potential to attract any of the millions of people who are bored on the Internet at any given moment.
The rub with doing live web performances so often is that you have to be good. There is no editing the video post-facto, there is always someone watching, and if you are as good as ‘Jamin then that could mean up to 13,000 visitors within an hour. A few shows ago he was featured on the Stickam homepage and as a result he got a lot more exposure then he was anticipating. That is a lot of emo tweens knocking at your web-cam.
I’ve had the privilege to hear the evolution and refinement of the album over the last few years, more actively in the last few months, and there are two songs that are really next to none. I honestly enjoy most of the songs on the album, all for different reasons, but ‘Girl’ and ‘Just For Now’ are really outstanding. During one of the recent Stickam shows I was chatting with our mutual friend Matt as ‘Jamin was playing ‘Girl’ and our discussion went something like this:
Matt: Whose song is this?
Me: ‘Jamin wrote it.
Matt: Really?
Me: (Pause to think about it, to make sure I wasn’t lying) Yup.
Matt: Wow. This song is really good. The kind of good that you don’t want to believe it was written by someone you know.
Me: Yes.
I think Matt summed it up pretty well. Again, not to take away from the other tracks on the album, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to hear either of those two tunes on the soundtrack to a successful indie film in the near future. Anyway, a job well done ‘Jamin, for those of you who you dig ’singer/song-writer’ acts(with each passing day I hate that phrase more and more, but how else to describe it? ‘Man and his music’?), do yourself a favor: Go buy the album, kick off your pants, sit back, relax, and enjoy.
I just got a newsletter email from Paul saying that it was the year anniversary/birthday of his album release (‘Cycles’). It seems like it came out only a month or two ago, but after checking my calendar, it has in fact been a year. This is ridiculous and also important, for two reasons.
The first reason is that another album can’t be far behind. In the decade or so that I’ve known Paul, he has been involved with the release of five or six full length albums and countless EPs/demos/singles. According to this track record, it’s about time for Paul to start working actively on his next album, which is exciting. Since his move into the heart of the Lower East Side, his sound has gravitated in a very different direction then us old-timers were accustomed to, and that makes the impending album a very new/scary/exciting prospect.
The second reason is that a year has passed in what seems like only one tenth of the time. His email isn’t the first instance in which time has seemingly flown by. I am a very logical and practical person, and thus have always known that the more time that passes the less value each passing second/minute/hour holds. For those of you who are no good at maths (or those who are just generally unintelligent), I’ll break it down for you.
When you are 1 year old, 1 year is 100% of your life.
When you are 10 years old, 1 year is 10% of your life.
When you are 20 years old, 1 year is 5% of your life.
What this means it that as you get older, each increment of time is a smaller percentage of the whole. When you were six years old, and your mom told you that you could get a puppy when you were nine, she said “don’t worry, it’s only three more years”. If you were smart, you would have reasoned with her in response “mother dearest, that means I have to wait another half of the time I’ve been alive, are you bat shit insane?” You didn’t though, you cried until Rugrats and Doug came on, and then asked again in another few months.
So now when you have to wait a year or two for something, it’s no big deal. Products get announced a year or two before they go on sale and it’s standard procedure, people get excited, and no one cries. Should you though? It’s only 4% (let’s round up) of your life to wait a year for something you’re excited about, but according to my other calculations it’s 4% of a life that you will only have one of. So you get excited, but just for a day or two. You don’t hold out, don’t waste the time in limbo, because before you know it the next big thing will come out to be waiting for or excited about, and the funny thing about those 4%’s is that they start to add up.
Here’s to enjoying each and every 4%, sans crying about the waits, and sans waiting all together, and of course sans your pants.
Somebody’s been using a new shampoo! – Ethan Dulles
I’m going to Chicago this week, and I’m going to be staying at my friend Aimee’s. Now that the airlines charge you for the weight of each individual fucking hair on your head, I figured I’d not bring any of my shampoo/soap/toothpaste that need to fit certain size restrictions and be in certain types of containers, to avoid the headache. I know, I know, just throw them in a Ziploc bag, it’s not hard. Well I don’t know about you but the Ziploc ferry doesn’t make stops at the beach hut. I don’t just have Ziploc bags of the right ounce requirement handy because I don’t need Ziploc bags. The great thing about takeout is that it comes in containers that are perfect for leftovers, you don’t even need to have plates.
Obviously I could just get to Aimee’s place and use whatever is available, and she wouldn’t know that I’d been wheezing the juice (I’m a low maintenance kinda guy anyway). But for some reason I decided to ask. Her response was “yes yes yes” which was to be expected, but then it was followed up with “you know that by now”. I did know that, so why did I ask?
I didn’t ask because I actually cared what her response was. If she for whatever reason had said no, I still wouldn’t have brought my own. The response I got implied that I should have already assumed that I could in fact use her shampoo/soap/toothpaste. No big deal, just a small deal.
What other kind of shit should I “know by now” and not need to ask? What do my friends “know by now” and not have to ask me about before doing it? Close friendship is an exclusive VIP club with a long list of unpublished benefits and I think it’s about time someone started making a list. One day I’m going to stumble upon one of my friends doing something that they thought they “knew by now” was okay to do. I’ll ask them to take their pants and leave.
