This is a story I like to tell because it gives me a little hacker cred.
When I was a kid, my older brother set up a BBS called The Arena. My “handle” was Thy Gladiator. Why was it “thy” instead of “the?” Because I thought it made me seem cool and smart for some reason. My brother was The Metallic Hawk. A much cooler name.
I have decided to start the Blogging A to Z Challenge. What is it? Basically, starting April 1st, you write a new post once a day starting with A and going to Z. It’s a whole thing and people have been doing it for years. I’ve been wanting to do it since I heard about it a long time ago, but I’ve never done it.
So today I start with:
I met someone on this year’s Hacker Trip to China and I’ve been sharing with her over chat messages what I’ve been up to. She suggested I document what I’m doing because I do a lot of strange things. It reminded me that ‘oh yeah, I have a blog.’ Looks like the last time I posted was over 2 years ago.
I really don’t know where to post stuff these days. For a while, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have sort of been my public face, but they get shittier and shittier each year and so full advertising that they have become practically unusable. Also, they are a pain in the ass to get to from China because the government blocks them. So maybe, here is where I need to post this stuff. On my own site, in WordPress.
So here goes. After a year in China, I have a lot of experiences to tell. Keep your eyes on this space.
Don’t know if y’all knew how obsessed with smart phones I am. Well, I am. Here’s something I wrote about myself to try and get my hands on the new OnePlus 3.
In the immortal words of Lionel Richie “Hello? Is it me you’re looking for?” Let me answer that question for you “Yes.”
My company asked me to write a bio to send out and share to everyone’s email. Thought I’d share this with you guys.
I like to say that I am an artist, rock star, and geek by passion, a teacher, coder, and writer by trade. Not the perfect elevator pitch, but I’m working on it. Over the years, I have accrued a large variety of technical and creative experience.
I decided to list all the things I’m doing and see if anybody is interested. Partly to get it out of my head, and partly to and see if anybody wants to collaborate or help me move any of it forward. Listed in order of how serious I am about the project. Links where appropriate. I may have forgotten a few:
Here is a plain text template I use to help come up with 10 ideas every day. Paper works even better, but sometimes a text file works.
I got this idea from this weird millionaire self-help guy James Altucher. Here’s a blog post where he lays out the 10 idea idea.
At first, I just came up with 10 random ideas based on a subject. I think my first list was 10 ideas for an app. I struggled at first (and still do sometimes) to do it every day, but after doing this every day for about two months, I started writing down what the first action step I would take to execute the idea would be next to each idea. The next level where I’m at now, is occasionally the 10 ideas will be for another person, and sometimes I tell them a few of the good ones.
The trick is, you don’t have to actually do any of them, and they don’t have to be particularly good ideas. The point is to train your brain to realize that there are a ton of ways to deal with any given problem, and you can always come up with something.
As a bonus, if I keep doing this every day for a year, I will have come up with 3,650 ideas. If even one or two of the ideas are great and you end up doing it, you will be ahead of the curve.
As a side effect, it helped lift me out of my depression.
I wrote this more honest and braggadocious work history as part of an application. I normally would not be so candid, but I felt like it was appropriate for the company. What do you think?
Freelance coder/designer: Top to bottom (Full Stack?) coding, negotiating contracts and selling mad skillz while overcoming imposter syndrome. Currently working on a PhoneGap app for iOS and Android.
Teacher at AcademyX: Kicking ass learning stuff like jQuery and MySQL super quickly, then teaching it to people. Update March 2015: just learned Angular.js in a week and taught it.
Artist: Making art and actually selling it, sometimes in other countries.
Teacher at Academy of Art: Teaching really smart and rich kids fun web coding and graphic design skills, and schooling them in the history of the internet and computers.
President of YLEM: Getting artists and technologists together to present mind-blowing presentations, agree to be interviewed for a magazine, and getting them art shows in galleries around San Francisco for a monthly membership fee.
Art Director at Urban Moto: Navigating the minefield of newsprint publishing while executing awesome design on tight deadlines for super picky advertisers and an insane boss.
There is an amazing musical form I recently discovered called “black MIDI.” It is the polar opposite of 4’33”, but if you take John Cage seriously, this stuff is worth at least knowing about in the context of experimental, or even postmodern music.
Here is an example:
Hello world! It’s been a long time. Over a year! Wow.
Well, I’m back. 2015 is the year I start blogging again.
Or not. Only time will tell.