Business Strategies for Health and Nutrition Coaches
March 20, 2012 | Business & Commerce
Between us, Kathryn and I know at least a dozen, maybe two dozen health and nutrition coaches. And some of them don’t have as many clients as they want. If that's you or someone you know, read on for a few brainstormy thoughts I had on building your practice.
Caveats:
- Not everything will apply to everyone. Take what you need and leave the rest.
- Motivations differ. Some people may not want to make a lot of money but just want to coach to have access or discounts on specialized products. Cool. Take what you need and leave the rest.
- I'm not a health coach, nor do I play one on the Internet. But I have been self-employed for 15 years, developing a comfortable lifestyle of clients and projects that are satisfying and remunerated. Take what you need and leave the rest.
I wrote this over a lunch hour. It's not extensive, or even fully thought-out. It's a series of brainstorms. Take something and run with it. Report back.
I have been influenced over the years by Alan Weiss, and Bryan Franklin and Jennifer Russell. So if you like this stuff, by all means go buy their programs. Tell them I sent you - who knows, maybe I'll get a commission or something. (Or don't tell them, it's okay with me.)
People Need You, and They Want You
You're a health coach because you care about people and their health, right? Looking around it's obvious that most people need to upgrade their health. What you need to do is attract them to you. You don't need to "sell" them anything, but they sure would like to buy things that can help.
This distinction is important: People don't like to be sold (and, probably, you "don't like to" sell), but people love to buy. How do you help them buy, without sullying yourself with the selling biz?
Meet them where they are. Don't offer them the whole enchilada on first meeting. Don't criticize them, or correct them, or judge them, or make them feel inadequate because they buy cheap food at Sam's Club. Recognize that buying food at Sam's Club means they want a fast, inexpensive way to not be hungry, and if it's healthy so much the better.
So one cool thing would be to teach how to make inexpensive, healthy, fast, one-pot meals your family will love. Or, how to use a blender to make a fast, healthy, awesome milkshake your kid's friends will beg you for, that also boosts their immune system.
Obviously the marketing language could be upgraded here, but my point is that when you meet them where they are you are addressing their specific concerns and moving them one step closer to where they need to go. This will magnetize people toward you, and then you can ask them questions about what they need, and then you can help them get what they need.
The Internet is for Scale, not Starting
I used to think the Internet was a great place to develop free content, give it away, build a list, and then convert those folks to paying and higher-paying programs. That's all true, but it's not the starting point.
The starting point is direct one-on-one sales to individual people. One thing I got from Bryan and Jennifer that really stuck with me is that if you can't get your friends to use your stuff, or tell their friends about your stuff, you don't have a business. Especially if you're giving it away for free.
More importantly, you don't have a growing business until people you know tell their friends, without prompting, and those friends have a good experience and tell their friends. Until you are getting extensive word of mouth referrals, your website is an excellent place to blog about topics of interest, offer some free stuff in return for list signups, and represent you and what you're all about. But it's not the center of your world - people are. People you know, people you meet, and people who need to meet you.
And you don't even need a website. Bryan's mom started one of the first executive coaching businesses and she earned over a million dollars a year several years before she put up a website. Even today she still doesn't have, and has never had, business cards. Her entire 25-year multi-million dollar coaching career was built on doing good work, and getting word of mouth referrals.
Improvise
Don't be stuck on your products, services, methods, or models. Think of your existing material as a base to build on, examples of how you work, or modules to reconfigure for specific formats (online, telephone, one-on-one coaching, live events, etc).
In other words, if you have a collection of awesome gluten-free dessert recipes and someone tells you they're looking for gluten-free recipes don't just pitch them your desert recipes - ask them what they need: Breakfast, lunch, snacks, kid snacks, supper, deserts? Then, offer to give them your desert recipes and work together to craft a week-long menu plan that fits their family's lifestyle.
Maybe they've never bought coaching before, so don't call it coaching. Maybe pitch them on two sessions, one 90-minute session at their home (or Skype, but see "scale vs starting" above) to understand what they currently do, and then you go away and build some potential menus, and come back for another 90-minute session to go over it. At the second session, offer them another session on preparation. Maybe even offer to come over once a week for five weeks and prepare supper with them - or in the afternoon before everyone gets home. You'll do one new recipe a week and after five weeks they'll have a whole new set of healthy, tasty stuff to add into their rotation.
Maybe form an alliance with one or more home chefs, who will prep meals and deliver food (or make it in their kitchen), so there is a resource to deliver pre-made healthy meals available. Maybe you get a cut of that, or maybe you don't - just keep focusing on delivering solutions that people need, one step at a time, and create products and services based on these conversations.
Again, conversations: Don't just pitch a bunch of ideas on your website and hope people find them. Talk to people, figure out what they need, and build the muscle of offering them something that would help. Once you've offered the same thing to a few clients and they're regularly buying the offer, then build an online product and pitch around it.
Trust your skills and abilities to improvise with the goal of helping people move toward what they want.
Help Transform Traditional Medicine
I'm glad the medical system exists as it does for emergencies, weird occurrences, cancer, etc. But we all know it's undergoing a long-overdue reset toward maintaining health instead of repairing failure.
The opportunity is that they need help figuring out how to do this. The challenge is that doctors especially are often arrogant know-it-all's who look down on 3,000 years of Chinese medicine or the value of a balanced diet and lifestyle, to pick two easy areas of stereotyping. So, find the ones who are ready and help them out. Here's how:
Get out your Google Maps and start making a map of all the doctors, chiropractors, clinics, etc in your region.
Make a simple, nice-looking, printed leave-behind piece. Ideally you would print this on your home printer so you could iterate a few times, but only if it looks top-notch and a doctor would be proud to have a stack of them in their office. Here's one my friend Uschi did that's pretty nice. It could be improved, but leaving nitpicking aside, this is on nice heavy glossy paper, it has a good photo of her, it has a testimonial quote, and it tells people how to contact her. Her website isn't much more. But it's enough.
Visit the offices from step one door-to-door and introduce yourself. You probably won't meet the doc on the first visit (though you might) but you can size the place up, offer your intro piece, and see if you can make a business appointment to follow up. Some places you won't want to partner with, some won't want to partner with you, and some will be a perfect match.
Don't try to pitch them on everything all at once. Make them aware of you and what you offer. Ask if they have clients who have mentioned the symptoms you have experience in treating. If not, ask them, "What's the biggest problem you see that your clients/patients need help with?" Make a new medical friend, see if you can help them out, ask them to refer people to you.
Here are some places the relationship could go:
- Leave a stack of your cards/brochures in their waiting room
- Develop a formal referral procedure, where it's easy for the front desk to send people your way, just like lab work.
- Offer to do a free one-hour talk at their office (or off-site) for their clients about a topic you're expert in.
- Offer to give their clients a discount on your services or products.
- Offer to work out of their office one morning a week at no cost - you will survey their clients about their needs, tell them about your services, and if anyone takes you up on it the doctor bills the client and you get, say, $40/hour (the doc will bill you at $100/hour or something). Yes, you invest time, but you will have access to people who need things, and if this gets going you could do full days on-site or multiple half-days. The doc is happy because it's a new income stream, and they only pay you if clients use the services. (Don't get hung up on the doctor's markup - accept anything reasonable to start and grow it over time.)
Etc etc etc. Improvise. Keep offering your services and make friends who want things sort of like what you offer. Then tune your offerings to exactly what they want.
Speak Up!
Offer to speak at the local Rotary Club, Lion's Club, or other business networking lunch organizations. Join Toastmasters - you'll get practice in speaking and also meet another set of people. Get out there and talk in front of any group that will have you. Not about your products or services, but about stuff busy business people (mostly guys) care about: Fast, easy, cheap, better.
The value of parking your car further away and walking into the office, eating healthy business lunches, travel snacks that keep the pounds off, how to avoid soft drinks by replacing them with something better, how to get kids to eat more veggies, healthy vacation destinations, fun learning vacations for the whole family. The best exercise you can do in 10 minutes a day. Healthy gifts your spouse will love.
These all sound like a cliché, but they are the topics, off the top of my head, that any lunch scheduler will eat up in a heartbeat.
Bottom Line
You're looking for people who can afford to care about their health. You're probably not (yet) covered by their insurance, so they need to have the resources to spend on themselves. They may also have a lot more resources than you, which can sometimes feel weird until you get used to it.
A good book is Dan Kennedy's No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent. This book will get your head wrapped around how to find and sell to people who can afford to pay you. It's written in a brash, bold style that may turn you off - don't let it. That style is what you need to adopt to win the money game. Learn from it, integrate it into your own style, and work from there.
Allow Enough Time For Success
Don't start when you need to make next month's mortgage payment. Don't expect miracles from your first cold-calling campaign. But start. Visit those doctors again 6-9 months later, "Just checking in to see how things are going..." Some of them might mention you to their spouses, who will want to learn more. Some will have a single client 4 months later who could use your help and they'll root around for your worn-out beat-up brochure from their pile of office literature. Some might tell another doc friend at a golf tournament and that doctor wants to learn more. You just never know.
Start this week. Build for the future.
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Visiting Las Vegas
October 4, 2011 | Travel
I'm a live-in-the-woods and visit-the-city kind of guy, and visited Las Vegas twice this year. Vegas has never been a real draw for me - I only gamble with my time, not money; I don't drink all that much; I don't smoke; I don't eat a lot - Vegas couldn't compete with NYC, SF, or LA for my travel imagination.
But on these two trips to Vegas (in May, for TEDxSinCity, and in August, for the American Sociological Association meeting) I decided it might be the most creative city in America. I had a really good time (mostly) on both trips.
It's creative because there are hundreds of shows, each of which is employing dozens or hundreds of creative specialist professionals to do set design, acrobatics, acting, singing, makeup, lighting, multi-channel sound, etc. It's amazing. Even the malls and storefronts have a creative "take."
Here are my travel tips:
- Stay on the strip. The hotels are fun, it's great to be in the center of the action, and Vegas cabs are expensive. I stayed off the strip in May and it was a hassle, and way more money to get around.
- Did I mention Vegas cabs are expensive? It costs about $4 just to close the door, and in a morning of running errands between Caesar's, NYNY, and the Palazzo I spent about $40 including decent tips.
- Spring for a show. All the Cirque du Soleil shows are amazing. We saw Zumanity, which was amazing. A friend who has seen them all said "O" was the best because of all the water. Order tickets in advance online and get good seats. You're in Vegas, you may as well enjoy what they do best.
- If it's hot, and you don't like the heat, pay for the cabs. We had a lunch meeting at the Mirage, and we were staying at Caesar's Palace. Got in the cab, said, "Mirage, please." Cabbie said, "Buddy, it's right next door." I'm like, "Yeah, it's 110 degrees! Not walking to a meeting and arriving drenched." He shrugs. It was $10, and totally worth it.
- There are amazing high-quality restaurants in Vegas, and you should go eat at them! Don't go to the now-overpriced buffets, get a super-quality dining experience with killer service and awesome entrées. I don't know much about sushi, but friends who do took me to Sushi Roku and wow, it was great! I do know about beef, and splurged on the NY Sirloin tasting menu (pdf) at Wolfgang Puck's Cut and wasn't disappointed. Plus, where else can you decide to spend $400 on dinner for two? You don't get that chance every day. A friend's favorite restaurant is Craftsteak. Pick your favorite food style and I bet (heh) you'll find an exemplary experience in Las Vegas.
- In full disclosure, most days on the August trip we ate at the food court at Caesar's. It was good enough, and cheap enough.
- Shopping is amazing. I needed a new suit for my wedding, and bought it at the mall attached to Caesar's. It wasn't even that expensive, as suits go. There's all kinds of stuff you don't see every day, and because tourism is down, etc, there are sales and people are super-friendly and helpful. I dislike shopping completely, and found shopping in Vegas easy and essentially fun.
- Here are the Apple Stores in Vegas, 'cause you never know....
- People really like to show off their bodies in Las Vegas. Whereas in Boston, if you smile at someone because of what they're wearing you might get a black eye, in Vegas they smile back and slow down. Male, female, straight, bi, gay, lesbian, people are dressing for display, and enjoying the looks. I found this captivating and liberating. Much more of a "you look mahvelous, dahrling" vibe than any sort of creepy weird vibe.
- And, you can get anything you want, really fast and easy. K arrived with a really nasty knot in her neck, and had to do a presentation the next morning, so at 8pm I'm calling around the hotel to get her a massage. Being really clear that "my wife has a debilitating knot in her neck and shoulder" and we were not looking for a "massage" but an actual real neuromuscular style massage, someone was able to show up in our room in less than 30 minutes. It was amazing.
Here's a fun talk by the Mayor of Las Vegas from the TEDxSinCity event. And here's Fred Mossler, a senior guy at Zappos, describing why they're relocating their entire workforce to Las Vegas.
Of course, after a week on the ground in Las Vegas this introverted country-mouse was wiped out and ready for it all to end. I know that in a world where externalities were priced appropriately Las Vegas wouldn't exist. It's in the middle of the desert, after all. There's no water, except there's water everywhere. People shouldn't be able to survive there, except there are people all around. That said, since they built it, and people still hold conventions there.... The trips were super-fun, and I highly recommend planning to have a great time while visiting in Las Vegas.
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Backup Brain in Action
February 10, 2011 | Life
Some of my best work has been catalyzing and facilitating the efforts of others. Awesome cross-pollinator. Excelled in the "state-induction" crew role at Tony Robbins' UPW. All-around technology / human experience geek. Hands-on or high-level.
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Recent Favorite Links
January 5, 2011 | Governance | People & Society
Probably best to open them all in tabs and browse around....
Breathtakingly good writing, a futuristic background
Robert Baird bring in the Language poets
Interesting comments from Zbigniew Brzezinski
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iPad, Flash, HTML5, and F2F Social
May 11, 2010 | Life | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
Although I'm big into tech I'm not really much of an early adopter. I tend towards buying 2nd- or 3rd gen products right as they're released. My theory is that this is the sweet spot for cost/benefit.
The iPad is different. After watching the introduction video (twice) I couldn't get it out of my head. Not because of how Cool it was, or – as an iPhone owner – because of how a bigger screen would "fix" some of the issues I have with heavy iPhone surfing. The brainworm that the iPad became was very subtle, and had to do with human interaction. Not so much human-and-computer, though there's that, but human-to-human.
You might have a sense of how the iPad changes the game if you live in a house where more than one person has a smartphone with a web browser and you've surfed together after supper at the dining table. Or if you've had a dedicated computer in the kitchen or family room, where people can look something up on a moment's notice and not break the conversation. Having an always-on Internet integrated with daily life (vs. the "computer" as something over there in the office) is just different.
So I pre-ordered the first-gen $499 iPad. And indeed, I still think it's a big deal. It's totally full of 1.0, but none of it matters. It's been available barely a month, all that will get sorted out. And yeah, when they do add a camera it will be better, etc. But the social component is here now. And the way it's changing websites is here now. The Apple/Adobe HTML5/Flash saga is all part of it.
John Gruber's Daring Fireball has had a number of interesting links, as have others. Reading them in in bulk will give you a sense of what I'm talking about.
Fred Wilson: I've changed my mind about the iPad.
The iPad, and the Staggering Work of Obviousness
The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash
Scribd CTO: “We Are Scrapping Flash And Betting The Company On HTML5″
Introducing Scribd in HTML5 (Web geeks, try selecting some fonts....)
Try reading all that and not getting a sense that always-on, always-with-you Internet will change your life.
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MarsEdit 3.0
May 4, 2010 | Software
If you regularly write blog posts, and do so on a Mac, you should be using MarsEdit – a real post editor – and not some browser-based textarea junk. There's a new 3.0 version out today, and you should download the trial and then buy it in support of excellent independent software authors!
I mean, just having cmd-shift-a to link highlighted text will make your life easier every single day.
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Morning Smoothie
April 23, 2010 | Life
The other day I mentioned my blender breakfast lifestyle and someone asked what exactly I've been putting in the BlendTec. Here's the current recipe with a few options.
Notes: When I say, "Tbs" I usually mean "heaping Tbs" – dump the stuff in there! If I use the "~" symbol it means I don't measure but am guessing the amount (just dump it in there!). I add the ingredients in this order because some of them start to expand and thicken in water.
- 8 - 12 oz water
- Big handful of leafy greens: spinach, lettuce, kale; mix it up.
- 1 Tbs raw cacao powder
- 1 Tbs hemp powder
- 1 Tbs hemp seeds
- ~ 1/2 Tbs cinnamon
- 1 Tbs rice protein, vanilla or chocolate (whatever's around)
- 1-2 Tbs ClearVite (horrible website!)
- 1 Tbs Vitamineral Green
- 3 drops liquid SteviaClear (that stuff is strong!)
- 1 Tbs psyllium husks
- ~1/4 cup Goji berries, maybe 20-30
- ~1/4 cup Mulberry berries, maybe 10-20
- 1/4 cup frozen blueberries
- 6-8 ice cubes
Sometimes:
- 1/2 Tbs chia seeds
- 1 Tbs macca powder
For years I ate a bagel with peanut butter for breakfast. Then for a few years I ate a 6 oz turkey burger for breakfast. Then for a few years I ate a peanut butter sandwich with Ezekiel sesame bread. This smoothie has far more nutrition, and keeps me full longer. I haven't priced out the per-serving cost, though it's got to be higher than a PB bagel. But it's so much healthier, and tasty. Much morning yum!
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Co-ops, L3Cs, and Hybrid LLC/Co-ops
March 17, 2010 | Business & Commerce | Cooperatives | Governance | People & Society
I wrote a comment to Don's post, but it was too long for Blogger to accept....
I have a close friend who started one of the first VT L3Cs a couple of years ago, and his intent was to signal that they weren’t out to get rich but to do something interesting and useful that a “traditional” investment wouldn’t normally value. I suppose if somehow they become billionaires that will turn out to sully the L3C pool, but it would be good to get some data on how L3Cs are performing, and what the outcomes are, and then tune the law accordingly prior to rejecting the form out of hand because of, well, I’m not sure what the argument against them is. Innovation is good. Why not in corporate forms?
The challenge for cooperatives, speaking from close experience, is that, due to their traditional rejection of “marketing” (granted, slowly changing in some areas) the public associates co-ops with alternative dirty hippie funny-smelling weirdo food shops from the 1970s. Part and parcel of the whole culture-war thing. So it’s true there are huge swaths of the economy organized as cooperatives, but the executives at, say, a large electric cooperative, don’t have incentive to play up that aspect of their organization because it might lead to more oversight of their own leadership or their business decision trade-offs. Plus, and perhaps less cynically, the AP (for example) doesn’t have much incentive to promote it’s internal organization - there’s no easily noticed benefit to the listener/reader. Great long-term benefit, but our collective ability as a species to connect the dots from short-term actions to long-term impacts is now well-known, and a likely failure-mode leading to our future extinction.
Another challenge, more structural, is that cooperatives, by nature, provide the opportunity – and at the same time *require* people – to self-organize. But we live in a convenience culture. It’s all about saving time and money, everywhere you look. Coops typically take more time (to set up, operate, participate in) and cost more money (lack of economy of scale). It’s great if people want to take responsibility for their own destiny. But it goes against the entire cultural thrust of the infantilization of America. We don’t take responsibility for anything we do!
Finally, it is difficult for the cooperative movement to make affirmative statements about the value of coops because of 1) lack of knowledge, skill, or experience in “attention-marketing;” and 2) they’re not cheaper or faster. Thus, we only hear about coops in reaction to something else: L3Cs, single-payer health care, non-meltdown banks, etc. As a general rule it’s tough to make a positive case when it’s framed as a negative reaction to an external event. (I speak from challenging personal experience.)
Cooperatives have a huge value to offer people, but I think the most likely case in the modern culture is they will rise again to respond to some very large societal problem, or take better hold as worker-coops rather than as consumer coops. Workers have far more incentive to self-organize, it’s a smaller group, and the incentives are aligned. A nice smaller-scale alternative to union collective bargaining. And, if we actually pass health reform, people may have the chance to be a bit more entrepreneurial without corporate health insurance as a friction to leaving their jobs.
And this gets to why I think hybrid coop/LLCs are so valuable (and not a bastardization of the coop form). Having personally started three LLCs, and been an early employee in a couple of venture capital funded startups, I can tell you starting a business is hard. Raising money is hard. Running a business profitably is hard. Moral and social trade-offs abound daily. The idea of a worker coop that can sell up to 40% of it’s stock to long-term value investors has the chance to completely change the perceptions of coops noted above. The investor sees a group of committed workers with real skin in the game (not semi-worthless future-vesting stock options), and the employees attract capital – where the capitalists can get an actual return, even if it’s a lower or longer-term one – rather than being limited to what they can scratch together themselves. This form could be the fuel to push cooperatives affirmatively forward, rather than always looking backwards and saying, “If only they’d considered cooperatives....”
Otherwise coops are going to have to get good at the sort of “hard-sell marketing” that captures a reader’s/listener’s attention and directs it to what the speaker is saying and why it benefits them in concrete, right-now terms. I look forward to the day coops are confident, savvy, marketers of their own brand of humane goodness in this harsh overly-capitalistic world.
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Cherry Table
October 9, 2009 | Life
Dear Friend,
I have enclosed a photo of what I believe to be a cherry coffee table. It measures 2' x 4' x 17"H and is in very good - really quite close to excellent - condition.
The table - it does not yet have a name - was given to us last year by M.G., former board president of the B. Food Co-op. He had purchased it direct from the source while on a two-day spree in the Rt. 2 corridor of furniture manufacturers in Massachusetts. He offered it up because, after several years of trying, he could not really fit it into his furniture scheme. 2' x 4' - just too big. And, just bought too much furniture that day. He's been giving things away ever since.
We haven't found a purrrfect spot for it either, even after a year of considering the nearly-infinite range of possibilities. But now we've started to make some halting initial conceptualizations - to say nothing of the future potential actual *physical* manifestations, - of a move toward a more zen minimalist approach than our current post-integration maximal mashup would allow.
And so today we find ourselves in the same predicament. It's a nice table. Sturdy. Good condition. Holds a LOT of book piles. You can sit on it. Nearly perfect size for a couple of cat beds. You can see it here, in the enclosed grainy low-light iPhone spy photo, eBay style, stepping out in one of our objet arrangements which some have called, "The Annex Appendix Bric-A-Brac Congregation Diversity Evincement Fez" series.
Imagine the possibilities....
Picture yourself owning this fine table, set properly amongst your cherished belongings. Imagine your books, your tea, your cats, your very selves, enjoying the large, welcoming platform for your every purpose. Feel the smooth polished surface with your fingers. Listen to the solid "thump" you hear as you place it firmly onto the floor in the precise location you feel is best. Change the location at any time.
Experts say that nothing can occur that you can't also imagine, so in that sense you now already possess this table, in your minds. A simple matter of manifesting that reality - for yourself and your family - is all it takes to immediately create a stronger, smarter, sexier, AND wealthier version of your best self.
The most amazing part of this offer? You can have this very table - not a very similar table as seen elsewhere or in stores, but the very same table itself that I have described herein - for the exact same price which we ourselves paid: FREE!!! You sure don't hear that everyday! Let's spell it out: F-R-E-E-!-!-!. You heard correctly. Free as in beer, and also free as in speech. Gratis and libre, indeed. Absolutely, positively, 100% free. Senza soldi. Pas d'argent. Nolo denario.
There is only one of these fine tables. It won't last forever. Like all assemblages of atoms and matter, it will eventually cease to exist. Unlike most carbon-based bipedal life-forms, it doesn't really care. But you care. You care because you're you, and you care. And now, you have the opportunity to care about this table, and fondly remember the many years of pleasure you've received from caring for it.
When would you like to take free home delivery of this fine quality heirloom?
M & K, Co-Founders
Zen Minimalist Potentialist Industries
Shadow Ministry of Information and Architecture
Annex Appendix Bric-A-Brac Congregation Evincement
Comcast Sector, The Internet, Earth, Milky Way.
10:53PM GMT-5, Julian 281, 02009
[Update: This item has been claimed.]
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Why not to burn bridges
August 5, 2009 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Karlyn, via Twitter, asks: "why is it so important to not burn bridges when you're leaving a job? especially if the person you're burning it with already set it on fire"
- There is no absolute truth.
- Different people will have different views of a) What bridge-burning is; b) Whether one should burn bridges or not; c) Who is right; d) Who is wrong; e) Who "started it."
- Future a) Employers; b) Colleagues; c) Customers d) Friends; e) Lovers; will wonder what will happen to them in a possible future "falling out."
- Everyone reaps what they sow. No need to further the bad vibes.
Apparently they don't teach much about human relations in MBA school. As if managing people were an insignificant part of the job. Not surprising given the quant focus in our business culture.
Just Another Datapoint for my theory that everyone should do four to eight years of weekly depth analysis starting a few years after college (or workforce entry). Would do a society good.
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State of the Backups
May 26, 2009 | Technology
In the past few weeks a couple of folks have asked what I'm doing for data backups. Here's the story.
First, I bought a ReadyNAS NVX with RAID, so I could stop worrying about a single hard drive crash ($1,400). This was more money than I wanted to spend right now, but it forms the hub of everything data-related going forward.
[A brief digression rationalizing the expensive NAS purchase. The ReadyNAS is also an iTunes server, so I can pipe music upstairs to the big-rig stereo once I buy another gadget to connect the wifi to the stereo preamp. I like the Squeezebox Duet, but it's a little long in the tooth and I'm hoping to hold out long enough for an 802.11n version, which I have to assume they're developing and will deliver at some point. There's nothing wrong with the current version, but the rest of my network is 802.11n instead of b/g, so I'd rather wait. Someday I hope Apple builds a home media server, but the AppleTV ain't it for me, especially since even they claim it's only a hobby.]
For off-site backups I bought a NewerTech Voyager Q bare hard drive backup unit ($99), based on Dan Benjamin's review. His followup review is also useful.
I bought two WD Caviar Green 1 TB drives, and will probably buy more for rotation. Amazon has them for $109.
Then I got some WiebieTech anti-static cases to carry them around, $7 each.
I use SuperDuper! to do the actual work of copying stuff to the bare drives. I will also – soon! – make a SuperDuper! schedule to back up the laptop to the NAS. Right now I do it manually to an external hard drive and also to the off-site bare drives.
Essentially, K carries the bare drives in their anti-static cases to her office, and I ask her to bring them home when I want to do another off-site rotation. A bank safe deposit box may also be in my future to make this easier. Note that these bare drives are unencrypted, so if she or I lose a drive data is exposed. We treat them like a pile of $10,000 bills. I.e., don't leave them in the car while going to the gym.
The NAS is currently a 1TB setup (two 1TB drives in a mirrored RAID config) with two empty drive bays. So right now I can back that up to an external 1TB drive. But when I add another 1TB drive to the NAS it will be a 2TB setup (with one empty drive bay). Then I'll need a $300 2TB drive for off-site backup. If I get to a 4TB NAS setup I'm hoping they have 4TB drives, or that I can easily split the data and backup to two 2TB external drives.
My brother, crazier than I am but also with more reason to go the extra mile, actually bought a second NAS and a foam-padded hard case to hold it, and backs up his primary NAS to the secondary one, taking the second one to and from the office. That's certainly the most robust method, and if one goes down, there's no restore - just plug it in and give it the same IP address. But that's an expensive solution.
The online backup stuff I looked at, including the ReadyNAS Vault service, ended up pretty expensive, around $125/month for 250GB. If you don't have all that much data check out JungleDisk which is an interface to Amazon's cloud storage. It's $0.15/GB/month, and gets good reviews. It takes a long time for initial upload but it's probably fast enough on the nightly deltas.
The biggest thing I'm worried about right now is a fire or theft of the NAS. I've probably got a decent weekly schedule going for off-sites, so the impact would vary depending on exactly when disaster struck. I've thought about moving the NAS out of the office, maybe hidden in the basement ceiling far away from the furnace, possibly near a basement window. Then your typical pawn-shop house thieves (or maybe former investment bankers) would be less likely to rip it just because it's there, since it wouldn't be visible and blinking its lights at them, looking all valuable and come-hither. And if the house were burning down I could potentially break the window, root around and yank the thing out of the ceiling. I suppose if the house were going to be empty for more than a weekend I'd do a round of off-site backups and move the disconnected NAS and hide it somewhere. But not in a dresser or a closet, since that's the first place to look for valuables.
If I ever build a house or an office outbuilding, I'm definitely making a secret room, or at least a secret storage stash for stuff like this.
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Apple WWDC 2009
April 7, 2009 | People & Society | Software | Technology
If you read my post last year and want to make plans, here's the link.
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The Twitter Inversion
April 5, 2009 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Perhaps another time I could elaborate further on the profound nature of Twitter's interaction model. There are flaws, but it's wired us together in as many ways as there are participants. Today, by way of illustration, here is a screenshot view into a couple of minutes of my Twitter stream:
The stream actually starts on the bottom, so right off the bat if we want to experience time progressing in the familiar direction we are reading from bottom to top, the opposite of what we expect. Thus, leaving Kansas, we hear from some characters. Context is everything.
Daniel Jalkut owns Red Sweater Software, makers of the fine MarsEdit, the weblog editing tool upon which I sculpted the very words you're reading. We've corresponded by email on a couple of topics. Nice guy. Lives about two hours south of here (in Boston) and I've always thought I should get myself down to one of the various meetups in that area and say hello sometime. His tweets and posts are each of equal quality.
Next up, Howard Rheingold, an old online friend from The WeLL, who lives in Northern California. When I got fully online in 1988, Howard was there waiting, pointing the way. We met during Internet 1.0 at the offices of Caucus Systems, maker of a well-designed multi-user conferencing system similar in interaction structure to The WeLL. I doubt I'll ever forget riding the DC metro with Howard in his bright orange silk suit, hand-painted leather shoes, and white derby. You can turn heads dressing like that. It's unlikely Howard remembers me, but no matter, I love you too buddy.
OM_o is the Open Museum (online), produced by Heritance, where I am a director serving on the board with several others, including friends and founders Maureen and Jeff Doyle. The visual design of openmuseum.org is a fork of the xhtml/css codebase I wrote for GiftEcology.com (nee Handmeon.com). I usually always check the links posted here because the objects are interesting and the stories are good. And they're friends and I'm on the board and I usually have thoughts on the interface evolution and I'll probably see them soon so I want to stay up to date with the project.
And then, look, right there, just above OM_o is Maureen, who lives in Vermont. Always nice to see her. But wait, I don't like seeing those duplicate Tweets – no no, that suddenly feels like PR. I need to email her a link to this blog post, because I want to encourage people to never do this. Don't multi-tweet with pasted text. Adopt a specific identity for each posting account, or simply tweet for yourself, as yourself. Using that imperative to make a leap to the broader issues around 'social media marketing,' I pretty much agree with everything in this 10-minute video by Perry Belcher. (Some language not safe for work.) He's coming from the Internet marketer perspective but watch it anyway, he's right on beat with the social media rap. In another video he claims to have earned in excess of $50 million on the Internet, and also that he has personally paid over $10 million to Google AdWords advertising. If you're thinking about making money online he's probably a good guy to listen to. But whatever you think about that he speaks for me on current business best practices using Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Above Maureen is my close friend and all-around great person Meg Maker from New Hampshire. You should go and read Maker's Table, her food and wine blog, right now – this post will still be here when you get back. I've known Meg 20 years, we've worked together in many different roles and structures, and we see each other socially many times a year.
Above Meg is Dave Winer, a brilliant, visionary, hard-working nerd of the first order, who lives in Berkeley, California. Dave was instrumental in creating among other things, RSS, which is what blogs use for subscriptions; podcasts, which are now ubiquitous; and outlining, which is taken for granted but wasn't really in use much prior to Dave's "ThinkTank" and "More" software. Dave also kind of invented the idea of "bullet charts" for presentations, sort of a proto-PowerPoint feature built into More.
Finally at the top, Dan Benjamin, who I've never met or corresponded with, but who I came across because in 2007 he wrote the best-ever articles on Ruby/Rails/MySQL/etc Mac OS X installation and configuration. I think he lives near Orlando, Florida. We've corresponded a bit via Twitter. He posted something about BBEdit and opening projects, and I @replied (quickly) along the lines of, "X doesn't just work?" To which he @replied me something snotty, like "@notio, no, obviously, X doesn't just work." (I paraphrase.) [See update below.] I felt horrible, like I'd annoyed the Master, and wondered if he'd make it so that my specific computer could never read his website again, but then several other people who I also follow @replied him with the same idea, before they saw his response to me. So then I didn't feel like quite such a dunderhead. Dan's a very serious meditator, so I know in my heart that his tone to me was not personal but was just part of his practice.
Now, take another look at that screenshot and tell me: Are these, you know, inane, unnecessary, frivolous, 140-character "messages?" To me, because of the context, not so much – it reads like human conversation. Not transactional messages between humanoids, but conversation between people. If you've ever transcribed recorded conversation literally you know it's really something to read – you can hardly follow it. If I think about conversation as "messages" then most conversations don't pass for quality of messages. But what's nice about human conversation is that it has all sorts of structures and processes and norms and degrees of freedom so we can actually get to know each other and find common interests, aside and apart from the transactional and informational quality of messaging.
In that two-minute snapshot of my Twitter stream I am updated on lives and perspectives, and am provided opportunities to further engage with links to several topics. I can reply if I want, or not. Some people I know well, others only through this medium. It's not email, it's not threaded, you have to be concise, the company is growing quickly and there are a lot of hiccups.
And yes, there are ways to sort-of spam Twitter and people are discovering ways (cough, TweetBlast, cough) to make sales with viral Twitter schemes, but there's one big difference.
If you don't like your Twitter stream content, you can un-follow people, and you'll never hear from them again.
How different from email lists, where names are shared and sold and the spam never stops. Here attention is earned, not demanded. That inversion makes the whole thing worthwhile, because even if Twitter dies, we'll have experienced this form of communication.
This new form is such that the listener is in control of the attention paid to talkers, and once you experience this you will never want to go back to letting the broadcast-era talkers attempt to dominate your attention and listening. This interaction model started with RSS subscriptions, and has now hit the mainstream with Twitter.
The future? Let me know when I can watch the most creative advertising whenever I want. That will be fun.
Update: Dan Benjamin commented below, and due to a problem with my TypePad ID I am unable to write a comment response on my own blog. Gotta get off this platform. In any case, I don't mean to overstate the case – I'm sure whatever Dan said was reasonable, because after reading him for several years I think he's a reasonable guy – my intent was to convey my internal horror of tossing off a flip comment to an expert. Apology accepted, with my own apology added for good measure!
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Patrick Byrne at Dartmouth Tuck School
February 16, 2009 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
Patrick Byrne visited Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business this evening. It was something of a local event, since Patrick and his father, Jack Byrne, both attended Dartmouth. The 90-minute format was was structured such that three '09 Tuck students each asked a question and then the audience asked a bunch of questions. His answers were very complete thoughts with muti-minute responses.
Jack was president of GEICO insurance which was owned by Berkeshire Hathaway, owned by Warren Buffett. Because of this Warren was a regular houseguest at the Byrne's in the 1970s and Patrick grew up hearing Buffett describe his approach to thinking about business. Some Buffett pearls:
On buying companies: "Always try to buy a dollar for sixty cents, forty if you can." Byrne continues, "Sometimes, every once in a while, like now, maybe twenty cents for a dollar."
On buying stocks: "Here's something adults don't understand. When you buy a stock, don't think of it like a piece of paper that moves up and down. Instead, if you buy the stock, and the stock market closed tomorrow and you had to hold the stock for five years, would you still buy the stock? That's the question. Act like you're buying a part of the company that you're going to own. Because you are."
On buying bankrupt RTC real estate in the '80s: "If you're not going to kick a man when he's down, when are you going to kick him?"
After graduation Byrne started a nine-month master's program in philosophy at Stanford. He was diagnosed with cancer, and during the next four years (age 22 - 26) was in and out of treatment. He said he had three rounds of remission and return, each putting him in the hospital for three to nine months at a time. An interesting side-effect of this was that having fallen so far behind his peers he was never trying to keep up or prove anything. After beating cancer a couple of times he decided to live his life in six-month blocks, hoping for the best, and doing things he wanted to do. He went on to obtain a master's degree from Cambridge University as a Marshall Scholar, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford.
During this time he alternated between school and various real estate deals, sometimes with his brother. Often this involved buying RTC properties, doing a company turnaround, and selling for decent profits. They purchased a large (one million ft2) mill building in Manchester NH ("a skyscraper lying down") for $3.5 million ("the price of the carpet") and sold it 20 months later for $10 million.
In November 2000 the Wall Street Journal delivered an ego-puffing profile that covers this era pretty well.
Byrne spoke passionately about education reform. He is a strong supporter of school vouchers. He ties this issue directly to our competitiveness in the world economy. Byrne believes Americans are living in a cloud of illusion. We think we're such a great world competitor, but we forget at the end of WWII we had bombed all of our industrial competitors to destruction. We cleared the table and ran the house. But now the world has rebuilt it's industrial and educational capacity, and we have become the consumers, not producers. We cannot ever be competitive in the world with our current 140 year old educational system. We spend $11,000 per pupil per year, significantly higher per capita than other industrial countries, yet by any measure we rank in the bottom quintile of performance. We cannot fix this problem by throwing more money at it. The "guild" (teacher's unions, administrative apparatchiks, etc.) has little left to argue its case except fear of change.
Along the way he had alluded to structural corruption in the American capital markets, closing with an anecdote about a news story in India that presented America as a cautionary tale of capital corruption. At this point a student asked if he could be more specific in his criticisms of the capital markets, and we transitioned into a long segment on financial corruption.
The Wikipedia entry covers the basics, but essentially he claims there are loopholes in the stock settlement system – originally designed to allow some flexibility and elasticity in the case of systemic issues – that allow "options market-maker exceptions to rule 203b1." He joked this could be more memorably named, "The Madoff exception." This is related to changes in Regulation SHO exemptions. The whole ball of wax you may also know as "naked short selling."
This is wicked complicated, and I'm sure I don't fully understand it, but what I gather is: When you buy a stock a seller has sold you the stock. The two of you need to "settle" the deal, where they get cash and you get a numbered stock certificate. Sometimes, for a variety of logistical reasons, the stock certificates cannot be physically transferred at the exact moment the cash arrives. So the settlement company is allowed to write an IOU for the certificates. Most buyers don't take possession of the certificates, so they don't actually know this has happened.
He wrote an infamous slide deck about this called The Miscreants’ Ball.
For a long time the SEC took the position that this didn't matter. People didn't abuse these IOUs! But then in 2007, the SEC changed their mind and wrote:
Regulation SHO's grandfather provision was adopted because the Commission was concerned about creating buy-side volatility through short squeezes if large pre-existing fail to deliver positions had to be closed out too quickly....
That's secret code for, "If we forced everyone to deliver on the IOUs the market would realize those stock certificates had been sold several times over on various small foreign exchanges, sucking $2 trillion out of the system without anyone noticing. We don't want them to notice all at once, so we're going to forgive all the ones we know about and pretend they don't exist."
In other words, what supposedly wasn't happening yesterday is today so bad that if we acknowledge it the financial system would collapse. Again, this is wicked complicated, and I'm sure I don't fully understand it. But I have a feeling he'd agree wholeheartedly with Catherine Austin Fitts.
Long story short, when he took Overstock.com public they were the first company to do an IPO dutch auction – an OpenIPO – Google followed them two years later. They took a lot of flack from Wall Street, and since he had worked there people he knew told him he would be a pariah. He got an unusual phone call from a guy who told him he was living in South America out of a backpack so the Mafia didn't whack him, and Patrick needed to watch out. Byrne didn't believe him, but the guy said, "Watch. What's going to happen is: First these five prominent business journalists will write hack jobs on you or your company. Next you'll find your stock trading on exotic foreign exchanges where you've never listed. Then you'll have a Federal investigation that will amount to nothing but will take a lot of time and money. Finally, you'll find your company on the top-30 list of stocks with fail to deliver positions." Over the next four months all of those things played out, Byrne got in touch with the guy, and they started to piece together how it all worked.
Byrne's blog is Deep Capture, where all this is laid out is long-form detail. It's worth noting that he has critics. After last year's financial meltdown, he feels the intellectual argument is over.
He said he's paid millions of dollars over the past four years on attorneys and economists to gather freedom of information act requests, sue hedge funds and options market makers, and fend off the SEC. He believes the SEC is a "captured" regulator. In this case "captured" doesn't mean "control" but more like "cognitive capture," in that the industry behavior is considered so normal, and so obviously correct – it's a market, after all – that if there's a rule violation they must have written the rules wrong, because this is in fact what the industry does.
Toward the end someone asked about the supply chain he built with Overstock.com, and how it's different. He thinks supply chain theory is the most important and a highly undervalued aspect of retail business. The short version is the normal retail distribution system can't deal with small quantities and odd lots. Overstock built their system to account for this. Their warehouse is "random load" – there isn't a single place where items sit, because the items are always changing. Took a long time to get it right.
Byrne told the story of where the fair-trade worldstock idea came from. Again, the bio covers the basics:
During a vacation in Southeast Asia Byrne found many village artisans were held back by the lack of retail channels, as their production was fragmented and the quantities produced were small. He further realised the Overstock model was perfectly suited for their needs.
In this case "during a vacation" meant cruising the country on a motorcycle, before eventually driving over the edge of a bank and fracturing his arm, 15 hours from medical care, and being carried to a family's hut. When they say, "he further realized," what they mean is, while smoking whatever it was the family gave him to smoke – "I didn't ask" – to take his mind off his broken arm, awake and alone blazing in a hut in Southeast Asia in the middle of the night.
Byrne called it the best idea he's ever had.
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Facilitating Online Identity Management
January 26, 2009 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites | Software
Companies should make identity management easy within their online services. Specifically, it's becoming more and more desirable to have a "split my identity" feature.
For example, I have a Twitter account. Turns out I like Twitter. (It wasn't always the case.) Eventually I want to split my twitter stream into a personal stream and a business stream. The business stream would be open to followers. The personal stream I'd probably restrict to people I've met in person. When I'm posting about selecting music for vacuuming, that's personal-stream material. When I'm wishing out loud for a feature improvement in Adobe InDesign that can be public.
But what if I decide to split my streams after I have 100 followers, not all of whom belong on the personal list?
The current practice is to start announcing on the existing account that you have a new account – "if you haven't met me in person I'm planning to block you, so go follow me over at this new account." You might announce this every day for a week, perhaps a few times on the last couple of days, then go block everyone you haven't met in person.
Some followers will make the move, some won't. Unless you care a lot you probably won't track who fell off the list, especially if you have far more than 100 followers.
It would be better if I could choose which followers to "move" to the new account. That is, I would choose which followers will follow my new business account instead of my existing personal account – without any action on their part. I move their "following" subscription to another identity. Maybe they get an email letting them know.
That's it: no business rules, no criteria, no searching. Just a list of followers (rows) and maybe two columns of checkboxes – people could be on either or both lists.
This wonderful solution assumes that the service can associate my two accounts with each another. In other words, one person can have more than one account. For many services you are allowed to have more than one account, but many times the service uses your email address to create the unique account.
It's very convenient for developers to use an email address as a login – I've done it myself. It's convenient because it's guaranteed to be unique without any development effort. No downcasing, no uniqueness checking, the user doesn't have to remember lots of different login names, etc. But if every account requires a unique email, then this "split my identity" feature is very, very difficult – potentially impossible – to implement.
To allow each email address to have more than one identity is a very big architectural change if the initial design didn't account for this idea. Changing the one-to-one relationship of a login account to a one-to-many relationship will likely have a lot of "ripple effects" throughout the codebase, so the development cost will be very high. Thus the probability of developing the feature is low. Well-financed services can do whatever they need to do to service their users. Bootstraps and startups usually cannot.
Had the service started out with this idea it would be much easier to design and build, even if they didn't implement it at the start. This is a good example of the importance of key architectural decisions made early in the design process. Sometimes you know what you'll want to do in the future, and sometimes you don't. But it's worth spending enough time in the very earliest design stages to think through the implications of the trade-offs you're making.
In theory this problem is an aspect of what OpenID is supposed to solve, going further by abstracting across websites and services, not just within one service. It's designed by Brad Fitzpatrick, so it's probably the right idea. Reviewing the history you can see why, in general, adoption by developers is slow (but growing and accelerating). But even using OpenID, the service will have to build their data model around a one-to-many login/account relationship. Twitter's growth provides a good example of why the effort might be worth it.
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Link Love
January 16, 2009 | People & Society
Shout out to the The Macalope, who noted Notio's comment over at Megan McCardle's place, regarding her annoying Apple commentary. I had left an earlier comment, suggesting she use Daring Fireball as a primary source, but it didn't make it through moderation.
I was just connecting the dots between the Macalope nomination for Michael Wolff as jackass of the year, as outlined earlier today, and Megan, who failed to win this particular round, though not without consideration.
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Economics Blogs
January 9, 2009 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
I gave a talk to a local business group about blogs, Twitter, social media and all that, and one of the participants emailed asking for blog recommendations to learn more about economics. Here's what I suggested.
I think Umair Haque is by far the most interesting 'business strategy' writer right now. Strategy has to take account of economics, and he's pointing the way forward.
It would be hard to leave out Paul Krugman, having just won the Nobel Prize and all. I happen to agree with his politics, but he's worth reading even if you don't, simply because he's so dang smart.
Barry Ritholtz called BS on the housing market several years ago, and his irreverent take on things keeps him in my regular reading list. You will learn a lot about how to interpret relevant numbers and statistics from him.
Nouriel Rorbini is SUPER-smart, and was also a contrarian to the bubble mentality. His predictions will probably be scary, and more-so once you notice that he's been right most of the time.
There's the Freakonomics blog which is always interesting for always-different reasons.
Locally, Andrew Samwick of Dartmouth has always had good pointers and a take on things that doesn't always line up with my way of thinking.
Tyler Cowen gets a lot of linklove, and though I don't read him often, it's good to check in once in a while.
The Calculated Risk blog is interesting, as is The Cunning Realist in that they are anonymous, but the insight is obviously deep and worthwhile.
Probably the most important thing to do is follow links in the posts. When you find an author you like, and they link somewhere, it's like a citation to the background source. You'll often find good related blogs this way.
Also, look at blogrolls. These are the links of blogs the author scans regularly, something of a recommendation – "if you like this, you'll probably like that." For instance, the blogroll at Barry Ritholtz's blog is excellent for the econ topic.
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Introduction to Grateful Dead
January 8, 2009 | Arts & Culture | Life
So, you have a new friend, and one day she says, "You should burn me a Grateful Dead CD because I'm really not familiar with anything they've done." You say, "Sure," and a few minutes later your head explodes as you reel from the possibilities. It takes a week of full-time leisure-thought to sort it all out and find an entry point....
The catalog is vast. 30 years of concert performances. Over 3,000 shows, most of them available as recordings! Hundreds of songs in the repertoire. Dozens officially released concert CDs. Thousands upon thousands of authorized private non-commercial concert tapes and discs. The Internet Archive has 2,854 multi-hour downloads online, and it's certainly incomplete.
You start by wondering how your friends might answer this question. So you ask a few, and their first response is to laugh. "Wow, not sure. I don't know...." is the typical response before their voice trails off.
Do we start with the old experimental shows? (No.) Or the most modern powerhouse shows? (Maybe.) The middle years, at the peak of their creativity? (Possible.) Pigpen-era? Keith-ear? Brent-era? We certainly know enough not to start with the Vince era.
Do I burn something I like? Or something I think she will like? Do I pick something with clean sound, or something gritty, real, and otherworldly? Do I choose an official release so it's nicely edited, or a tape I recorded myself in the '80s?
When people asked this during the college years I'd just give them a copy of whatever I was listening to at the time. It was always changing, there was always more. If they liked it, or even if they didn't, we'd just bring 'em along the next time the Dead were playing nearby and see if they caught the live magic lightening. Or maybe they liked it a lot, and wanted to drink from the fire hose – they'd bring over a tape deck and spend the weekend copying cassettes. Tape flip every 45 minutes. Oh, the slow lazy days of real-time dubbing. Roll another one.
Today, virtually none of this is possible. We have only the recorded legacy, and a lot of it. Today, we burn 70-minute CDs in 14 minutes.
For starters, let's eliminate the studio albums. Although there are some worthy of listening, there's no sense in starting there. The Dead experience revolved around live performance. Maybe a Dick's Pick concert release? But then what to say? That 1971 show that turned Donni into a raving Deadhead? The 1983 one with a chunky Scarlet Fire? The '77 Fox Theater shows? That weird '74 Alexandra Palace show that makes you feel like you're tripping just listening to it? Maybe that '73 Oklahoma show because it has such a hot summer beer-drunk lazy vibe?
Dick's Picks narrows it down but doesn't really help the selection process. Maybe we should just have an all-Dead weekend and see how that goes....
How about if I just burn the five-disc chronological set, So Many Roads? This was put together by scholarly Deadheads, with carefully selected songs and thorough liner notes. It flows well, and you can start in the middle and work out toward the early and late years. But you don't want to overload. She just asked for a sample, a taste, you don't need to deliver a box-load of discs to paw through.
Maybe Dozin' at the Knick, that's a pretty safe bet. The playing is quite tight; the polish meets anyone's standards, and it's from a good era. But somehow, no. Can't tell you why. Probably a good second round offering.
What about an audience recording, like Lewiston 1980? Well, that was a short-lived thought. It is a rockin' fantastic show, and it seems like every Deadhead I know was there, except for me. And the audience recording on archive.org is a fantastic representation. But, man, that show is dead to the core. I think it's best left to round three or four.
What about a multi-track release like Go to Nassau? This was a contender, and I listened to it on my commute for two days. Strong contender. But, like Dozin', not quite right. A little too rock 'n roll, not enough representation of the thoughtful, mellow side. Yes, I know that High Time is rarely played and it's well-played on this release, but still.
It came down to eras. Late '70s, early '80s, or late '80s/early '90s. Each has their charms—and there are other options but these seem best for introductory material—and it depends a lot on what the prospect likes and listens to already.
In the end, I decided on the remastered versions of Reckoning and Dead Set. Two live recordings from 1980, when Brent was new but settled in, and highly polished in production. Reckoning is all acoustic, so you get the Folkie Country Dead, and Dead Set is electric, with the more typical sound. The innovative recording technique pioneered new ground, and the band, rarely allowed to play sophisticated and intimate venues like the Warfield Theater in SF and Radio City Music Hall in NYC, rose to the occasion with fresh, tight ensemble playing. The remastered versions are two discs each, with a lot of bonus material. It's still four discs – what can a deadhead say? – but split in half by the acoustic/electric difference.
I figured if that floats then round two will be a single show (complete experience), from the west coast (home field advantage), in a small venue (raise the stakes), from the Dan Healy era (psychoacoustic sound effects). So we're talkin' probably the Greek or the Frost, maybe Ventura, from the 1980's.
On a plane to Detroit I listened to a soundboard from 6/19/1989 (Greek Theater). It's a serious contender. The headphone experience was something else. The harmonic vocal processing, the stereo exchanger effects, the setlist, Garcia's heartfelt Candyman, Crazy Fingers, and Knockin' – really brought me back, I tell 'ya, even on a plane.
I think a full survey of the late-eighties Greek and Frost shows is in order, but if you had to choose today you could do a lot worse than the 6-19-89 at the Greek.
[I wrote this in August, 2006, but never posted it. I think I had intended to link up a lot of the text and never got to it. Decided to post it today without the link farming.]
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Stop Counting Calories!
January 8, 2009 | Life | Nature & Environment
It's amazing!! Did you know salad has almost no calories!?! But a bacon cheeseburger with fries and a coke is nearly a whole day's calorie budget! You can eat as many carrots as you want! - they're like free food calorie-wise. But ice creme, whoa! - smaller portions, please. And then, exercise: If I did almost ANYTHING in movement I could eat more junk food! That hour of snow shoveling this morning was worth a muffin or something, maybe even a chocolate croissant. Mowing the lawn for 90 minutes burns 900 calories - a guy could have a couple three beers on a sunny day and yet his beer-gut expansion would be neutralized. They say God works in mysterious ways....
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Yglesias and Ambinder and sometimes Klein
December 19, 2008 | People & Society
Now that the election is over, my main two politics blogs (i.e. daily) are Matt Yglesias and Marc Ambinder.
Yglesias came out of Harvard in 2002/3(?), did a stint at Talking Points, then the Atlantic, now at Think Progress. I like his focus on policy implications, with a snarky style that suits me.
Ambinder is a reporter at the Atlantic, with good sources and clear analysis. He's more of a "what's really going on" guy, which fits my insider identity. ;)
I still read Sullivan, but he's best when he's got a bone to pick, and after dispensing with Clinton, McCain, and Palin it will be a while before there's an opposing force of requisite magnitude.... (Although Rick Warren is taking the bait this week.)
I also kind of like Ezra Klein, who has a focus on healthcare. He's a little more rambling, and topically kind of all over the map, even for a blog, but worth checking maybe weekly, because when he's got it he's really got it. I actually really like his attitude; I can't really place why he's not a daily skim.
It's amazing how much time I reclaimed after the election. Some days I must have been spending three or four hours a day reading politics. I'm rationalizing that it was all part of raising the energetic vibration to get Obama elected....
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Downloading .asx video streams
October 21, 2008 | Business & Commerce | Software
Say there's an online video that is only available for real-time streaming, and you want to watch it offline at your non-'net convenience, like on a plane or on your iPhone. A lot of these streams have urls that end in .asx. If so, here are some (techie, Mac-centric) references that will let you download them and watch them later.
The Major MMS page is a good starting point. You'll quickly realize that the .asx file is just a redirector that has an mms:// url inside of it. In most cases you'll need to figure out what the mms:// url is.
Chris James Martin also had some good pointers, though his curl-based approach didn't work for me. I forget why, but I moved on.
You'll probably also end up at jwz's saving video streams page, no surprise. Short version:
mplayer -dumpstream -playlist url -dumpfile filename.wmv
Unfortunately, even after downloading the mplayer source, configuring, making, and installing it, this didn't work for me due to a "stream not seekable" error, which I could not debug, even with Google. Oh well, got some geeking in. Although it failed, and I didn't have the time to hone my ninja chops to master the source, this is probably the most promising long-term and flexible approach.
In the end, I used an application with a graphical interface to mmsclient, AFSRecorderX. You still have to figure out the mms:// url, and then you paste that into the url field, and choose "mmsclient" from the Tool pop-up menu. There is a "Select" button to choose a destination folder, but it doesn't do anything – everything is saved to the root (/) of your hard drive no matter what you point it to. Sometimes AFSRecorderX will spew a lot of information into the log section of the window, which you can ignore. It will not tell you when it's done; you'll have to occasionally check the file size of the download and eventually when it stops you can open the file and see if you got it all. Sometimes the log stops, and you think it's failed – you might reboot your computer, or even your network, and re-try several times. Only when you leave it alone long enough will you notice that the file size is indeed increasing, and it's working correctly. It's not apparent why the log is sometimes flying by like a 9600 baud modem, and why it sometimes stops dead, regardless of the success of the download. Despite the hackish nature of ASFRecorderX, it worked, and if you want the video badly enough it's currently the most straightforward approach.
Net-net, so to speak: The academic and corporate overlords that want you to watch video only in real-time streams are going to a lot of effort to make them hard to download. But, like all things code, if you're willing to go through your own personal video stream download hellfire, you can do it, because in the end, the data manipulates pixel-bits on the screen, and if you have access to the stream, you can do something with it.
The complete and total fall-back hack, the gawd-am-I-really-going-to-have-to-do-THIS? solution would be to use SnapzProX and make a real-time recording of the video window on your screen. I wasn't willing to stoop that low.
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Mostly Twittering
October 14, 2008 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites | Technology
Thoughts are shorter-form these days. Twitter is a good place to follow me. Example:
New Macbook video: http://bit.ly/1xNvDH Awesome emo marketing, utter techporn, richly deserves to be parodied.
So there's that....
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Here Is What Is
September 12, 2008 | Arts & Culture
It's a beautiful work of art, expressing a unique vision of music-making and the creative process. It is officially 93 minutes long, but there's another hour or more of extra footage, just as good as the main event. It is Daniel Lanois's movie, Here Is What Is, and I recommend it without hesitation. (Previously)
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Labor Day Weekend (Four-Day Edition)
September 2, 2008 | Life
- A beautiful and easy hike in the White Mountains with a friend.
- Sunburn.
- Great dinner out with said friend and our partners.
- Finally, a day to sleep in.
- One electrical outlet added.
- One closet light and switch removed.
- The lawn mowed.
- The dining room layout redesigned.
- Wow, Sara Palin.
- Another closet light and switch removed.
- Took advantage of big Home Depot paint sale and stocked in 15 gallons of paint and primer, in five colors and 2 tints.
- One visit to the emergency room due to a nail embedded in a 2x4 bashing and bouncing off the top of my head. Hey, head injuries bleed a lot!
- Lunch with mom and family.
- Supper with dad and family.
- Experimented with fruit fly trap. Incinerate or drown, that is the question.
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Byrne/Eno Return!
August 18, 2008 | Arts & Culture
Big news in music! The Website The NY Times story. And, the tour!
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Clay Shirky on Governance Models
July 18, 2008 | Cooperatives | Governance
Noted for the future: Chris Heuer interviews writer and speaker Clay Shirky. The important moment for me come in at around 10:15, continuing to the end, where he desires a new model for governance and corporate structures. He wants a co-op model, but doesn't know it yet. I plan to educate him.
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25 Seconds of Joy
June 25, 2008 | People & Society
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The Death of Postmodernism And Beyond
June 23, 2008 | Arts & Culture
This is the first philosophy article that ever seemed relevant to me.
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Better to ignore than to critique
June 23, 2008 | People & Society
dayna boyd: "In an attention economy, it's better to ignore than to critique."
I'm deeply disturbed by the proliferation of troll-like behavior in contemporary life. Why are public figures increasingly appearing whose whole identity is wrapped around driving others batty? Why does it seem as though more people are starting to write controversial books purely to make money off of the attention they receive when others attack them? Why are reputable publications publishing these authors' tirades against others that are intended specifically to draw them out in a public fight? I guess we know the answer... Or at least the equation. Attention = money. And in the world of media, attention = advertising revenue.
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Desiderata
June 19, 2008 | Arts & Culture
It's worth reading Desiderata once in a while:
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
