A Midwinter Playground in the Hudson Valley:
Nice article from the Times on my sleepy little town, out here in New York City’s hinterlands. Some solid recommendations in there, for anyone passing through.
Introductions
In the course of business I make a lot of introductions, and in turn, I also get introduced to a lot of people. Often that’s nice: people need things that I have, and I like to share. Great synergy!
But sometimes it can be annoying, and these helpful WordPress bloggers will tell you why. You should listen to them and be less annoying:
- Alex Iskold: How to ask me (and others) for an intro
- Fred Wilson: The double opt-in introduction
- Hunter Walk: Don’t carpet bomb for introductions
- Liza Kindred: How to ask for or make an introduction
- Mark Suster: I’m moving you to BCC
The American Hippo Bill
The water hyacinth is a purple-flowered floating plant that’s native to the Amazon, and is popular, at least in the northern United States, with man-made pond owners—it’s pretty, provides oxygen and shade for fish, and acts as a natural water filter. I sold thousands of them through my summer job in high school.
The plant is also a particularly aggressive invasive species in warmer climates, because it reproduces at a staggering rate (doubling its population within two weeks)—overtaking entire lakes or waterways, preventing water flow, killing native species, and wreaking all sorts of havoc in the process.
In the early 1900s, Louisiana Congressman Robert Broussard introduced a plan to fix not only that problem, but a national food shortage as well: hippos.
Louisiana Congressman Robert Broussard introduced the “American Hippo bill” to authorize the importation and release of hippopotamus into the bayous of Louisiana. Broussard argued that the hippopotamus would eat the invasive water hyacinth that was clogging the rivers and also produce meat to help solve the American meat crisis. Former President Theodore Roosevelt backed the plan, as did the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Washington Post, and the New York Times which praised the taste of hippopotamus as “lake cow bacon”.
Needless to say, the bill didn’t pass—they lost by one vote.
Three Months
A few months ago I started running. I was a bit overweight and generally feeling sluggish and creaky after a summer/lifetime of being pretty sedentary. So I put on the sneakers I bought last time I tried to pick up running regularly and…just started doing it, lest I overthink it and wind up on the couch researching all the exercise gear I need and whoops, I’m back where I started.
I’ve been using Nike+ to track my progress. This is what my first run looked like—pretty pathetic:
And only three months later:
This was a personal record for distance and time—the weather was crummy, otherwise I think my pace could have been a bit quicker.
I’ve run almost 200 miles since that first run and have lost 17 pounds, hitting my (admittedly arbitrary) goal weight exactly three months from when I started.
Three months ago the idea of running for an hour without stopping felt impossible. The human body is a crazy, remarkably adaptable machine.
Matt Cutts on the scarcity of open source services
Matt Cutts on the scarcity of open source services:
Open source is really good at creating products. Almost any commercial software package or product like Word, Excel, Windows, or Photoshop has a great open source equivalent. However, open source has been less successful at creating services. Where’s the open source version of Google, or Facebook, or Twitter, or Gmail, or Craigslist?
I (unsurprisingly) think the answer looks a lot like WordPress and Automattic, with a combination of distributed and centralized systems complementing each other.
BBEdit 11
Adam Engst has nice love-letter-as-product-review for BBEdit, my go-to text editor since I started using a Mac regularly in 2001, on the occasion of version 11’s release.
I’ve tried Textmate, Coda, Sublime, and probably a dozen others, and always come back to BBEdit. Aesthetically it’s maybe not as polished as the rest, but I’ve yet to find anything that matches its power while keeping the UI still very simple and out-of-your-way.
AirSonos
I’ve really enjoyed my Sonos wireless speakers since getting a couple Play:1s earlier this year. They sound wonderful, and there’s just something really neat about walking around the house and having music follow you from room to room. We’ve been listening to a lot more music together as a family, as a result (the kids’ recent favorites: The Beatles, and regrettably, Pitbull—although my three year old singing Timberrrrr at the top of her lungs is amusing).
But while the hardware is great, I find the Sonos apps largely frustrating to use—they’re only lightly-integrated with iTunes, and overall are just poorly designed and unintuitive to me.
Enter AirSonos, a Node.js project that adds Apple AirPlay support to your Sonos devices. You’ll need to install Node and the AirSonos package, and run the whole thing from the command line—none of which is particularly challenging (I got it running in about a minute)—but once that’s done you should be able to broadcast to Sonos natively from any of your devices.
Cash and Anxiety on the Weird New Internet
Cash and Anxiety on the Weird New Internet:
What can Publishers Learn From This? A literal interpretation: SUBLIMATE YOUR IDENTITY ENTIRELY, EVERY MONTH, because nothing else works, and the next PlayBuzz of Viral Nova could appear tomorrow and just totally house you out of nowhere.
Geek Dad
You can have a lot of fun with a four year old, a hidden Bluetooth speaker, and some text-to-speech software.
(Alternate title: It’s Been a Really Long Winter and I’m Running Out Of Ideas For What To Do With These Kids)
I’m a pretty good brother.
via Instagram
Using Gravatar with Salesforce
This is pretty hacky, but with a bit of Javascript you can replace the default avatars for Contacts and Leads in your Salesforce account with Gravatars instead.
Here’s the script, and you’ll need to follow these instructions to get it loaded in Salesforce.
I’ve only tested this with the Salesforce account I have access to…no reason to think it won’t work for you too, but your mileage may vary.
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Spoiler: We All Wear Pants
The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work is a behind-the-scenes look at our company, Automattic, and its unique culture—it comes out today, and I really think you should read it.
It’s packed with great lessons for your business, but my recommendation is more self-serving: after nearly 3 years working at Automattic, I’d really prefer to never again have to explain that: 1) yes, we are a real company making real (and successful) products, and 2) despite working from home most days, I actually do wear pants (and I’m pretty sure my coworkers do too).
50 million websites, or twenty percent of the entire web, use WordPress software. The force behind WordPress.com is a convention-defying company called Automattic, Inc., whose 190 employees work from anywhere in the world they wish, barely use email, and launch improvements to their products dozens of times a day.With a fraction of the resources of Google, Amazon, or Facebook, they have a similar impact on the future of the Internet. How is this possible? What’s different about how they work, and what can other companies learn from their methods?
To find out, former Microsoft veteran Scott Berkun worked as a manager at WordPress.com, leading a team of young programmers developing new ideas. The Year Without Pants shares the secrets of WordPress.com’s phenomenal success from the inside. Berkun’s story reveals insights on creativity, productivity, and leadership from the kind of workplace that might be in everyone’s future.
Warwick Valley Feed and Grain
Really neat building that they’re in the process of tearing down.
Gardening in the dark
via Instagram
For The Record
John Roderick, David Bazan (aka Pedro the Lion), and El May joining Kathleen Edwards on For the Record.
So good.
You Are Here
via Instagram
The buzzards are back.
via Instagram
Hello?
Really impressed with Google Voice’s transcription capabilities these days.
Office Space
My former employers at Mansueto Ventures (publishers of Inc. and Fast Company—not a shoe company or VC firm, as others have suggested the name implies) have a pretty sweet office. It’s so nice, in fact, that we often rented it out to TV and commercial producers for use as a set.
I spent about 10 minutes on YouTube and tracked down a handful of the spots that were filmed during my time there:
MediaSet, starring Hugh Laurie and Uma Thurman—my buddy Michael also caught House lounging on the couch that some of us used to nap on during all-night launches.
Fringe—shot in our boardroom.
Marriott—This was shot down the hall from my office; I heard that “smoothie” line about one hundred times that day.
Kit Kat—that’s a fake wall, for some reason.
I Can’t Believe This Is Really Happening
In celebration of the collaboration between Volcom and Yo Gabba Gabba!, Biz Markie, Wayne Coyne, Jack Black, Mark Mothersbaugh and Jon Heder alongside the Yo Gabba Gabba! characters Muno, Foofa, Brobee, Toodee and Plex, got together to create a music video featuring an original song written and performed special for this magical coming together called “I Can’t Believe It’s Really Happening” performed by Biz and Wayne!
Yo Gabba Gabba! is one of those rare, bright spots of childrens’ entertainment that I actually enjoy just as much as my kids do. This is no accident, of course: Biz Markie and Mark Mothersbaugh have recurring segments on the show, and they regularly feature folks like The Flaming Lips, Mos Def, Amy Sedaris, etc. They even recently reunited one of my all-time favorite bands, Rocket From The Crypt, albeit for a totally goofy and forgettable song.
Also, a bit of trivia: RFTC‘s lead singer (and serial-band-starter) John Reis introduces every musical act on the show under his pseudonym, The Swami.