All the crazy things I’m up to

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:

  1. Creating an app (so close! Just need to figure out how to use PhoneGap plugins with PhoneGap Builder)
  2. Building a short-course or workshop to teach (maybe two) that I could do at a moment’s notice, then building an ebook around it.
  3. Starting up a chapter of ProtoHack (a non-code hacakthon) in San Diego Los Angeles.
  4. Programming – learning (and/or getting better at) Ruby, Python, JavaScript, MongoDB, Angular, PhoneGap, Swift
  5. A twitter account @JustTheFactoids and website where I give factoids that I think are funny or interesting. I hope to make mugs/T-shirts or artwork or something out of them.
  6. A twitter account @BullshitDoctor where you can ask me anything
  7. Erotic photography (link available upon request)
  8. Figuring out gardening
  9. Cooking as gourmet and as cheap as possible
  10. One blog post a week
  11. Creating a school and immersive course to teach people how to code
  12. Making more art and having more shows
  13. Starting an audio podcast (doesn’t matter what, I just want to get on the mic and practice and get better)
  14. A TV comedy show based on a company like Lyft called TOWT
  15. An app and a company around it that enables bartenders and bar/restaurant owners to create a happy hour on the fly
  16. A goth industrial band called R.I.V.E.T. (or maybe Rivet. We haven’t decided yet)
  17. Writing an ebook on how to take good 360º and/or panorama pictures with your phone
  18. An interface and store for internet enabled gauges that are works of art
  19. Illegal miniature installations

I (try) to come up with 10 ideas every day

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.

A more honest work history

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.

I built a LEGO© house in Google’s new Build with Chrome thing

Using Chrome’s Build application,  I built a virtual house out of Legos.

My LEGO© house in Australia

This is a house I built using Google's Build app

This is a simple house I build out of virtual LEGOs in Google’s Build app.

Here’s the link to my virtual Lego house in Australia.

It works like a simplified version of Google’s Sketchup app. If you have worked with Sketchup, or even if you haven’t, you should be able to figure it out pretty quickly. But once you do, be prepared to waste a lot of time working with virtual LEGOs.

How to Intuitively Pick Web Colors

After a while, you can get a feel for what a color will look like just by reading the 6 letter and number combination preceded by # that you use in web design known as the hexadecimal color value. Here’s how (after the jump):

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