February 2010

Buzz and Aardvard and Twitter and Facebook and… Ugh!

/Warning, on this big scale of quality of the written word this piece is much closer to the ‘stream of consciousness rant’ than ‘well though out argument.’ What that means is I will likely jump around a lot and I reserve the right to change my opinion on anything I say at any given moment./

This week we saw the launch of Google Buzz and the acquisition of Aardvark by Google for $50 Million. These two things have sparked a lot of discussion about the social web and how we all use it and what specifically we use it for. I have a lot of feelings on these things but I don’t know that focusing in on my explicit experience with them really makes any difference. I tried out Aardvark for a while and after getting a grand total of zero useful replies to anything I asked (once I asked for recommendations for a local dive bar and got responses suggesting scuba diving schools) and frequently got pinged to ask questions that would be much better just sent to Google. Luckily LMGTFY was there to keep me amused, briefly, then I quit it as the annoyment trumped the utility. The Buzz launch was similar in that I was very excited to see it added, then every time I looked I just saw posts from my friends that I’d already seen elsewhere. My point being neither of these things have instantly compelled me to use them. But neither did twitter originally and since then I’ve fully admitted that it’s changed my life.

But again my personal experience isn’t important, the overall experience of the people using it and the people who may end up using it is much more interesting. I know that the big hype around Buzz is it’s use of open standards, similar to identi.ca. But I think it suffers from the same problem as identi.ca which is if all my friends are on twitter, even though I know identi.ca is “better for the web” so to speak, I don’t have any reason to switch. I’m not going to twitter because of the technology, I’m going there to communicate with my friends, and so without my friends, as a user I don’t have any motivation to use this other platform.

Spreadshirt is missing the point

Yesterday I announced the launch of R3515T.com which is largely powered by Spreadshirt. In my announcement post about it I explained that I’ve printed and sold t-shirts via different companies for most of my life but only now had print on demand services, like Spreadshirt as well as Cafe Press, PrintMojo, Printfection, Zazzle and others gotten to the point that I thought I could actually use them as the main production and fulfillment piece of the business.

I launched a new thingy

This is the longer ranty version of the story, for the short and sweet one just go to R3515T.COM and see for yourself. Basically I just launched a T-Shirt company/brand/thing but it’s not your normal t-shirt/brand/thing as I’ll be focusing a lot of attention on limited editions and using some web stuff to release new shirts all the time, and kill old shirts all the time. So yeah, that’s the short bits. If you are still interested keep reading.

Positive Spam

I have been getting some of the nicest comment spam recently. Really, it’s touching. Here’s a few samples:

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I can’t tell you how much it means to me to be thought of so highly by comment spammers. Thanks guys!!

On points and writing every day

(This is an example of what I write for 750words.com. This was today’s entry and was motivated by this get satisfaction thread. Here is the stats page for this entry so you can see how it all works.)

I can already tell today’s writing is going to be a wash. It’s almost 1pm and I haven’t gotten to it yet. I definitely find that the earlier in the day I spit this out the more creative I am for the rest of the day. That said I also think I do my very best writing in the afternoon or evening so this is more of a grease the wheels thing. Of course, if I don’t get to it in the morning then I’m bummed and stressed that I need to get it done and that is on my mind for the rest of the day until I sit down and make it happen.

I don’t mind the pressure to do this every day but the pressure that I haven’t done it yet in the day gets to me for some reason. There has already been a discussion between folks today about the point system here and what is a good motivator and what isn’t. There is a point awarded for every time you write 0 to 750 words without any interruptions greater than 3 minutes which would imply you wrote without distractions like getting up to go to the bathroom, making a phone call, eating, checking e-mail or twitter, etc. Just siting down and pounding it out. I actually really like this and it forces me to get the flow going and just spew all over the page. Usually by about 300 words I have my groove on and I just keep moving until I know I’ve crossed the 750 line.

I go out of my way to make sure that I don’t have things that are going to bother me for 15-20 minutes at least, half hour is better but that is generally what I need to make this happen. I got really freaked out the other day because I heard a delivery truck pull up when I was mid writing and I thought I was going to have to answer the door. It’s not so much the distraction that causes me to lose the point that bothers me, it’s that the threat of losing the point forces me to get into a writing groove that I can’t get into when I’m stopping to think or do other things. If I break the train of thought for any reason then I have to start all over again and it takes another 300 words or so for things to get moving again.

This is not a feeling shared by my friends. J is upset with the distraction point because he says he can’t focus on writing because he’s too worried that he’s going to miss that point by thinking about something. T agrees but actually doesn’t like the points at all and wants a way to hide them all together.

I don’t know, I think if it wasn’t for the points and the ranking that goes along with them I’d rather just be writing in a text editor on my own machine. This would give me more security and a totally stress free environment to do that in. The opt in stress of the points and the consecutive daily streaks is incredibly motivational for me and even at the height of my writing peaks I’ve never written as much in as many days as I have since I stared this project. There s something about this set up that really works for me and I think I’d be really bummed if it changed away from that.

Of course I could keep up the writing on my own and just track my word counts and consecutive days but I feel like I’m accountable to the site for some reason which works better. If I was just doing it on my own I feel like it would be so much easier for me to just blow it off on a very hectic day or tell myself I’ll just write more tomorrow to make up for it. I can’t do that with 750words.com which I like. I have to write every single day otherwise I have to face the fact that I didn’t. I can’t just pretended I had a good reason which is what I’d do on my own I think.

I certainly understand that isn’t the same thing with other people and each person has their own motives and reasons for doing this or writing in general but I’ve found that this daily brain dump, all in one shot, don’t think about it, just write, works really well for me. For instance, this is just over 750 words and took me barely 14 minutes to write. Go!

I’ve given up using soap & shampoo forever

Towards the end of December I came across an article written by a guy who had given up on using soap and was now washing himself with water alone. My immediate thought was this must be some dirty hippy and I felt sorry for anyone who lived or worked in close proximity to him – however I was interested in why someone would make a choice like this so I sat down and read both the article and the extremely long comment thread which made much more sense than I expected it to. If you have some time I recommend reading it though the author, Richard Nikoley, is active in the paleo-scene so a lot of the comments reference those ideas. But this post isn’t about that article, it’s about my own experiences.

The thing that stuck out to me the most, and resonated with my own philosophy was that it seemed silly that we would have evolved into creatures that needed a bunch of corporately produced and marketed chemicals smeared all over our bodies everyday just to get by. For the most part I’m kind of a “this happens for a reason” person and I don’t think every single things needs to be messed with. I very rarely take any kind of pain killers for headaches or cold medicine for sicknesses. Of course I very rarely get headaches or sick which helps. Maybe those two are related, the people I know who are always sick and always having headaches and always taking things to suppress those symptoms.

Long time readers know I also have a oft cited personal manta about regularly examining my actions and making sure I am doing things for the right reasons, and I decided, rather publicly a few years back, that just because I did something yesterday is not a good enough reason to do it today. As I was reading this article I started thinking that the only reason I was using soap was because I’d always done it and had always been told I needed to. I’d never questioned it, but now that I was questioning it I wasn’t coming up with very convincing answers. Maybe these chemicals were messing whith my body’s own chemistry and creating the need for themselves?

I was reminded of my experiment with some of those acne face pads in high school. I didn’t really have zits, but I saw the commercials for the pads and how they made sure you didn’t get zits and like any other kid in high school I didn’t want zits so I bought some an put them to use. within a few days I had more zits than ever. If I’d believed the hype I would have doubled up on them to get rid of this nasty zit problem but instead my first thought was that the pads had fucked up some kind balance on my face and caused the zits they were supposed to be preventing. So I stopped using them and the zits went away and I never had the problem again.

I wondered why I never used that rationale with soap. The same math was there. I have dry skin on my arms that gets flaky and itchy and dandruff. I’ve spent likely thousands of dollars over my lifespan on special soaps and shampoo to solve those problems, which they do for a day or two, but if I don’t keep up with them things go crazy. But I’d never considered that these things might be just as much at fault.

The article said that it took the author about 2 weeks for things to stabilize, and that before that things were nuts, so if you were going to try this you should give it a month just to be safe. I figured, what the hell, I’ve done weirder things for a month at a time, so this was worth a shot just to see. So for the entire month of January I haven’t used any soap or shampoo while showering. The results are freaking me out on a daily basis, and I’m actually a bit annoyed I didn’t think to try this sometime in the last 35 years.

If you are anything like me this is probably bringing up a ton of questions so let me try to answer some of the ones I’d have myself.

Do I stink? No. I didn’t say I stopped bathing you dillweed! I just stopped using soap and shampoo when I do. I still shower daily but now a long shower lasts about 5 minutes tops. I also still use deodorant but on a whole I actually smell better. Some people can not smell their own BO, I’ve always been hyper sensitive of mine and I smell better after a month of not using soap then I would missing one day of showering with soap. Tara also keeps pointing out how good I smell, even before I tipped her off to the experiment. Which by the way was almost 3 weeks into it.

Dandruff? Pretty much gone. Seriously. I’m shocked but it’s true. This was definitely something that went crazy during the adjustment time though, I’d say about 2 weeks into it I had bigger flakes than I’d ever seen in my life. That shit was like an avalanche. But they went away, and my head has been less dandruffy than it’s been my whole life. I do find if I rinse my hair with water every day I see a few little flakes, where as if I rinse it every other day or so I don’t see anything.

But that isn’t the only hair-benefit I’ve seen. I have pretty thick semi-curly hair which has always been a nightmare to maintain. Since starting this it’s become softer and more controllable than ever. I actually find myself touching it a lot without realizing it because it feels so different.

Dry skin? Gone. In fact not only is my dry skin gone, my skin as a whole feels softer and healthier than I can ever remember it feeling. Again this is something Tara keeps noticing totally unprovoked.

Adjustment time. The first two weeks were definitely weird. My skin was super dry, super oily, then dry again. As I mentioned I had super dandruff and in general it was a little nuts. But I chalked that up to my body trying to correct itself and get back in to balance since it weren’t involved in daily chemical warfare anymore. Today is the month marking point and I’d say I think things are pretty much in order. If you are going to try this yourself definitely give yourself a month. If you try it for a week things will be super wacky and you’ll think it isn’t working, but trust me – stick it out for the month.

Hands – I still wash my hands, especially before cooking and after using the bathroom. And I use soap for that. For some reason that actually makes a lot of sense.

Personally I’m just blown away by this and like I said I can’t believe it’s something I didn’t question earlier. I’m psyched on how it’s played out and can’t imagine using soap or shampoo again. Extra benefit I just realized: less crap to worry about when traveling!

(Photo by Somewhat Frank used under CC. I tried to find a better image for this post, but doing a google image search for “soapy” with safe search off didn’t really produce the results I was expecting. Try it yourself. Just not at work.)

UPDATE: ONE YEAR LATER I just wrote a year later update for BoingBoing – check it out if you are curious how this has played out so far.