Since completing a 30-day break from a lot of things, I’ve been too busy to actually write about the experience. I failed on a couple of things. One of those was no meat and another was no beer. I did well but caved in a few days short of my 30-day mark. There are no excuses for this but a lot of people have told me the 30-day mark is fine on one or two things but to give up a dozen things I enjoy for a full month is so intense that it was bound to fail. What’s remarkable is how I never really had any more free time during this break. I managed to fill it with other constructive items. First of all, I blogged more, read more and exercised more. I also went all in on collecting and cellaring beers and that took up a lot of my month. It’s pretty amazing how adding some of my hobbies back into the mix has actually made it harder to write about the detox as now I’m even more busy than before. One thing was important to write and I was reminded of this by a reader who emailed this:

I’ve just read your post about “your tweets” and was wondering.. So when you don’t spend that much time on Twitter, are you still up-to-date? I mean I get almost everything from Twitter: news, interesting things, blog posts, music some people share, apps, etc. How is it living with much less social media?

This was perhaps the most scary thing about closing Facebook, Twitter and other apps and removing them from my devices. I didn’t just commit to abstaining from posting. I abstained from even opening those apps to see what friends were doing. How did I handle this and how did I keep in touch with the world?

One friend suggested I subscribe to a newspaper. I did this while in San Francisco and it was a great way to start my day. Newspapers don’t deliver to my area so I get by with tablet versions of The Times. The thing is, the majority of my news doesn’t come from social media. I selfishly use Twitter and Facebook as broadcast and feedback mechanisms. Social media serves three purposes:

1. Syndication of my Photos, videos and blog posts as well as micro-thoughts that aren’t suitable for long form.
2. Feedback from users on the media I referenced above and answers to questions / problems I have.
3. Analysis of trends using Twitter Search and other search tools for work and personal research

I am not a use-case for the majority of social media users. Twitter has stated that a majority of their accounts have less than 10 tweets. Most of Twitter’s user-base is lurkers who follow other people. Of my 4,000 followers, only a group of about 200 reply on a monthly basis and the 10% do make up 90% of my Twitter replies. For me to use it as syndication tool is very unorthodox.

I will say that just having social media apps uninstalled was difficult to deal with for the first 2 weeks. I wanted to share things or see what a specific friend was up to. This was very difficult to be barred from accessing those services.

The biggest loss was the comfort of not being connected, not the fact that I was missing out on photos of food and drunken rants. I found out about a new Apple announcement hours later instead of immediately after. My life was no worse off with that delay. I still maintained a twice a day review of my RSS feeds which is under 20 RSS feeds around tech and world news. This kept me up to date but I was very careful about what I did read. Another goal was that I don’t read the same news twice even if two sources were reporting a different angle. Also, I would usually read the original press release instead of the blogger’s take on it. I vowed to send less things to Instapaper and books received preference over blog posts. I missed out on a lot of things this month but, as Peter Gibbons from Office Space famously said to the Bobs after being asked, “We see you’ve been missing a lot of work lately.” “I wouldn’t say I’ve been missing it, Bob.”

I missed things but didn’t miss them.

The key takeaway to my break from information overload was a well received dose of perspective. I don’t need to know everything to stay on top of what’s going on in the world. An hour of NPR, a scan of The Times and a twice a day scan of my RSS feeds and I’m good. I’m also debating unfollowing some people on Twitter. For example, Parth Debar is a friend of mine. He’s a smart kid who reminds me of myself of that age. The thing is, I simply can’t stand his tweets following my return to Twitter. He talks about Apple all of the time like it’s all that matters. He makes little puns and jokes about marketshare and stock prices and half-joking remarks about seeing a non-iPad tablet out in the wild and how insane that is. He’s a smart guy and I like talking to him over DM (which requires I follow him) but c’mon man! Enough about Apple. It’s annoying as hell!

There are a lot of guys like Parth. I was one of them but I evolved and now to talk about Apple that much is just depressing. I didn’t realize just how bad it was until I took off for a month and realized how sensational bloggers are at making things up and how insane fanboys are for debating a blog post that some guy came up with in 5 minutes following a press release that was clearly written in 15 minutes. IT’s just too much!

That’s the biggest thing. It’s the curation of content and realizing your time is valuable. That’s what I got out of this. My involvement in social media hasn’t changed as far as the three use-cases I posted above for how I used it in the past. However, my consumption of social media and news has changed in a huge way.

One year ago, I decided to spend $119 and be a part of the growing number of baseball fans who subscribe to a service that provides thousands of games to your television and devices via the web with no commercial breaks and DVR capabilities. It was my way of watching every San Francisco Giants game without any fear of missing out on the action or going through hoops to illegally pirate content. I spent $119 for access to games no matter where I was in the world.

The realities of MLB’s TV service are far different then what is advertised. Let’s go over the great things about MLB.TV. I’m only going to speak on the premium service since that’s what I subscribed to:

• Watch every single live game from Spring Training to End of Regular Season
• Watch games that happened in the past
• Pause, rewind and fast forward games with built-in DVR capabilities
• Games can be views within your web-browser or with dedicated apps that ship on the following platforms:
  • AppleTV
  • iPad
  • iPhone
  • Android
  • Xbox
  • PS3
  • Boxee
  • Roku
  • and more!

You can watch games anywhere as long as there is an Internet connection and that’s pretty awesome. I think the biggest and greatest reason I feel great about paying for a sports service is I become a number that other leagues can pull from. Basically, my paying convinces other groups to create similar services. MLB.TV was first followed by MLS, NBA and now NHL. NFL is the big hold out on an online streaming service. Paying for this shows that there is a market for putting these games online and a market that people will pay for. There are a lot of down-sides to MLB.TV and most of these aren’t the fault of Major League Baseball. The fault lies on groups that demand restrictions. Here are the restrictions MLB keeps in the fine print for Blackouts:

• Blackout Restrictions are a mess. I live in New Hampshire, 3 hours north of Boston yet I can’t watch Red Sox games. The same goes for Northern California and SF Giants / Oakland As games. MLB.TV works for me because I moved away from San Francisco. If I was a Red Sox fan, the service wouldn’t be worth it unless I want to watch the game the next day. Here’s the full Blackout restriction FAQ on MLB.com.
• Saturday games after 1PM are blacked out
• Postseason games are not accessible live. You can pay extra for that I believe or watch them after the game has aired. This is due to TNT / TBS exclusivities (same for Saturday games)
• Oh and that Blackout regions thing also applies to away games. Live in New England and the Red Sox are playing in Texas? It doesn’t matter, the game will still be blacked out.

That’s not all that is wrong with MLB.TV. Here are some more annoyances:

• When I first subscribed, commercial breaks were breaks in the game with a blue screen and you didn’t have to deal with commercials at all. Then, mid-season, I started seeing ads. To start a game, I’d see a minute of ads and a minute during each commercial break. I pay for a service and don’t want to see ads. There’s a workaround. If you use an Apple Devices (AppleTV, iPad, iPhone) you won’t see the ads. That might be different this year. We’ll have to see if they’ve engineered it to work.
• The DVR software sometimes doesn’t work and you must download a special plugin to use it. The plugin doesn’t work in all browsers.

Most of the problems with MLB.TV aren’t decisions made by MLB but their partners, advertisers and tv networks. I understand that but these make for a crummy experience. You can’t watch a local team live and you have to deal with ads.

This year, one major feature was added that I LOVE. At Bat ’2012 for iPad and iPhone are each $15. This is very expensive but, paying this you see live game plays, ball speeds and other stats while the game is going. You can also view highlights. If you subscribe for Audio only or MLB.TV, you can listen to / watch games with DVR functionality. It’s a fantastic application. $15 gets you a lot of great features! For me, I’d have the iPhone App for listening to games in the car and the iPad app I’d use at games or along side my TV as a way to see plays while watching the game live.

The problem with these apps is I’d pay $119 and then $30 in mobile apps. For the first time, MLB is making these companion app available for free to MLB.TV subscribers. AWESOME. This saves $30 for me so I’m stoked about that.

The only thing you have to deal with is that I pay last year’s price, but you pay this year’s price. Previous subscribers are locked in to their original price but, this year’s MLB.TV Premium price is $124.99 (a $5 increase).

Overall, I promised friends I wouldn’t be subscribing this year but I can’t miss out on the San Francisco Giants games so I’m going for another year. The mobile apps being included is a fantastic savings and now the Xbox 360 is supported. You have to love baseball to get this and, if you do, signing up is a no-brainer. Just be warned that if you watch games through a web browser, you’ll have to see a lot of advertisements. That’s my main warning.

You bought tickets to Ultra Music Festival 2012 in Miami! AWESOME! You’ll be joining 150,000 people on a pilgrimage to the greatest music festival in the world and now you just need some tips on getting there and what to expect. I’ve written a few previous guides to Ultra. You can read those if you want:

• Tips for Surviving Ultra Music Festival in Miami
• Why You Should Attend Ultra Music Festival 2011 in Miami
• My Thoughts on Ultra Music Festival 13 in Miami

What I wrote in the past is still very relevant for ravers making their first pilgrimage to Miami for UMF 14. The event takes place March 23rd – 25th at Downtown Miami’s Bayfront Park. Dozens of stages, hundreds of acts and some very expensive beer. Here’s the low-down on Ultra written by someone who has been to the festival 7 times. Talking about Ultra just isn’t as fun until you’ve watched a video. Just when I decide I’ve attended Ultra for the last time, I watch this and realize not going would be INSANITY!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkg3f02dFek&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr6pllT2TVU&feature=related

That’s just the 2nd to largest tent. This festival is MASSIVE and, at this point, the size of it is really just Miami’s zoning, noise ordinances and lack of gigantic public spaces that can hold the tens of thousands of people that storm the gates every day. There have been discussions that UMF would one day leave Miami but, each year, the festival returns home to shake the buildings and we’re all very happy about that. Miami is the best place in the US to have a festival like this. How about some tips?

Getting to Miami:

• This seems pretty easy but I’ll share with you my experiences on getting to Miami on the cheap and efficiently.
• Fly into Ft. Lauderdale. More flights, cheaper flights and the only problem is the ride from FTL to Miami takes about 40 minutes in a shared shuttle bus that costs about $15 each way. You’ll save about $100 on your flight or more and only add about 25 minutes of travel time to your hotel each way.
• Stay in downtown hotels. If you’re in Miami for a full week, spend the first part of the week in South Beach, then move to downtown on Friday. This is huge because each year, I see thousands of people waiting on taxis to take them from downtown back to South Beach. The walk is 5.5 miles on a highway with no sidewalks. It’s a mess and, after dancing for 12 hours, you do NOT want to take that walk. If you do want to party after Ultra after night, SoBe is an option but just know you won’t be able to find a taxi easily.
• Don’t worry about arriving on Thursday. Once again, for those just doing Ultra, the festival starts around 4-5 PM on Friday and the headliners don’t go on until 10PM. You’re fine to hop on an early AM flight and get to Miami around 2PM. Save the night in a hotel and just travel the day of.
• Don’t get a Sunday night flight back home. Use that day you saved by working a full day on Thursday to take Monday OFF. UMF ends at Midnight and even if you can find a 2 AM flight out of Miami, you won’t make it. Get an easy 9AM flight out of Miami and take your time getting home.

Preparing for Miami:

• If you’re like me, March is still considered “Winter” That’s New England for you. Miami can hit highs of 75-80 degrees in March. The low at 7AM might be 50 but it’s usually about 60 and extremely humid. I’m from Florida and love humidity. You’re probably not so here’s what to expect and how to pack.
• Your clothes will stick to you. No, you’re not sweating but the humidity causes clothes to stick and, if your’e a girl, styling your hair will be impossible. Just get a scrunchy and deal with it.
• It’s going to be very hot. Your Ultra uniform should be light and comfortable. Carry only what you need (ID, Insurance card, cash, Ultra ticket). Flip flops seem like a good idea but I’ve had my toenail torn off and my pinky toe broken by people stepping on my feet. Wear comfortable sneakers, shorts and a tank top. If you can pull off a hat, do it. The extra sun protection is great.
• Sunglasses as well as sunscreen are good as well. The problem is, once night-time happens, those sunglasses become useless and you have no lockers to store them while at UMF and there’s no re-entry. So, bring cheap ones. You will probably lose your glasses.
• Prepare to carry nothing with you but, if you must, get an easy to wear purse with a single strap.
• This is Florida. Just bring 3 pairs of “club clothes” if you plan on doing that, then 3 pairs of beach clothes (can also be used at Ultra) and something to sleep in. You’re done.
• It wouldn’t hurt either if you hit the tanning bed before coming down. If you’re not already tan, you stand out pretty bad among the locals. It’s scary.

The Basics to Ultra Music Festival and General Survival tips:

• Ultra does a terrible job at communicating the rules to attendees before the event. If they post rules, follow them but you’re hard-pressed to find them.
• No outside food or drinks
• No nudity but going shirtless once you’re inside is fine (men only)
• No professional cameras which really boils down to no camera lens that is 2-3 inches long. I see plenty of SLRs and DSLRs at Ultra but they won’t let you bring in a long zoom lens unless you’re pre-approved media.
• Camelbacks are fine and they may ask the contents and you just say water. No one has ever tested the Camel-back to make sure it’s not Vodka & red bull
• Purses are fine and so are very small back packs / totes. Expect to be checked if you have a bag and if you have cargo shorts with big pockets
• Rarely do the screeners go far unless you look / act like a total ass. Comply with a request to take off you that and empty your pockets if they ask.
• In all of my years, no screener has asked me to remove my shoes. I’ve heard from friends that keeping drugs in your shoes is your best bet. I don’t do drugs so this is a risk you can take.
• Side-Note: Plain clothes and Uniform Miami Police Department is at Ultra Music Festival. If you are drinking underage or popping pills, you can and will be arrested.

Surviving Ultra Once you get past security:

• You made it past the guys in all yellow and your ticket scanned successfully. Awesome! First stop is to get a wrist-band so you can buy beer. do this first to get it out of the way.
• Buy a bottle of water and drink it down. Trust me on this and you should have been drinking water all morning.
• Grab a schedule and just look at the current time slot and the next. Looking at who’s playing at 11PM won’t help you and you’ll just look at the program 50 times in a day anyway. Look at right now (noon) and 1PM and make sure you know when to move to another tent / stage.
• Take breaks. Every 2 hours, just stop and sit under a tree with some water.
• Don’t be an evil ass and push your way to the stage. You may be a 95 pound girl with cute pink pom pom shoes but EVERYONE you pass hates you with a passion and the fact that you’re pulling 5 girls behind you.
• What’s worse is you getting stuck half-way to the stage and stop in front of me awkwardly because you can’t push forward anymore and prevent like you didn’t just piss off 5,000 people to get here and stop.
• Be responsible. Water is required if your’e going to do drugs. Stop to pee way before it’s an emergency so you can make sure to get to the toilets in time.
• Most importantly, understand you can’t see every artist. You can only see half of the ones you want to see. It’s okay. The same people will be at Ultra next year.

Surviving the Multi-Day Ultra Music Festival Experience:

• You’re in Miami as a tourist or as a local but it’s Miami Music Week so you want to do everything! You want to party till 2 AM at Mansion and then go to another party that goes until 10AM and then get to Ultra at 2PM and party until midnight. The festival is 3 days long. Pace yourself. Here are some tips.
• Attend Ultra and ONLY Ultra. It’s an awesome event. From noon to midnight, you have something to dance to. Chill out at the pool until 11 and then walk over.
• Drink ONLY water. Don’t drink alcohol or red bull. Drink water and you can have some Gatorade as well. When I leave Ultra every night, I walk to a corner store and get a gallon of water, fruits, a protein bar and a gatorade. I inhale it all then go to bed. When I first wake up, I drink 2 glasses of water and get a big breakfast. Failure to do this leads to soreness, nausea and you not wanting to do day 2 or 3 of Ultra
• Take regular breaks. You can’t leave the park and re-enter but you can find a tree to rest under.

Camera Tips (applies to all festivals including Ultra):

• Any camera is fine. Any camera will take photos so don’t go out and buy something expensive your’e just going to drop and cry about
• Don’t use a flash. Under no circumstances do you need to use your camera’s flash at events. Disable it. You’ll waste your battery and have loads of photos of some guy’s head
• Use your iPhone if you want but taking photos / videos while jumping up an down screaming is not how you capture a moment. Doing this just makes it impossible for hundreds of people behind you to see and the result is you get a blurry video if you jumping up and down for 45 minutes
• When it’s time to shoot video or take a photo, stop and separate your self from the crowd and the rhythm. Focus on your subject, zoom and ensure the shot is framed correctly and disable flash and then click the shutter button. Not doing this is just you wasting your time.

Buying Ultra Music Festival 2012 Tickets Online:

• I paid $99 for my tickets. Some people paid $150 and some others paid $300 for their tickets. I believe the highest ticketed rate is $300. Paying more than this is scalping which is illegal in Florida. If someone who is a Florida resident is asking for over $300, setup a time to meet them and then call the police and have them meet that person instead.
• Talk people down on the price. UMF sold out in January so some people will ask for $1000 for a single ticket. Don’t pay this and instead just buy during pre-sale next year which happens in September / October.
• Tickets scanned cannot be rescanned until the next day. If someone says you can meet them and take the ticket for $100 and use it for the 2nd half of the day after they went in, they’re stealing your money. The ticket is useless at that point.
• Don’t post photos of your ticket online. The barcode can be copied and used by someone else and when you show up at the gate, the ticket won’t work.

The price of Food and Drinks at Ultra Music Festival:

Food and drinks are very expensive at Ultra. It’s expensive but you have no choice. Suck it up. The variety is pretty good. Burgers cost $12 and pizza slices cost $10. You can get a turkey leg for $15 and a red bull costs $5-$10 I think. Water was $5 I think but I can’t be sure. Just deal with it because, once you’re in, you can’t leave to eat and come back. Go to subway before going to Ultra and get a huge sandwich. Inhale it and that’ll hold you over until  later in the afternoon.

How to do / get / sneak in drugs at Ultra Music Festival:

This is THE #1 question I get asked the much. I’ve never done drugs before and frankly, I spend a majority of my time getting little kids to the paramedics because the kids overdosed or took ecstasy and didn’t drink anything and passed out. It’s a HUGE problem. My advice is go and enjoy the festival. Don’t do drugs and have a great time. However, people do ask me so I’ll tell you that most people sneak in drugs in their shoes. Having drugs is a good way to trade for food, water and other commodities. I’ve seen drug exchanges ranging from, “I’ll kiss you for x” to “I’ll pay you for X” to “Dude, you got any x I can have?” It’s up to you if you want to do this stuff. Please do it responsibly and don’t turn to me to make sure you don’t die.

That’s it!

See you all in Miami for UMF. I hope this helped.

Keurig Vue System (via):

Brew Stronger. Brew Bigger. Brew Hotter.™The revolutionary Keurig Vue™ Brewer works together with the new Vue™ packs to deliver the ultimate brewing experience.

Fox News:

Green Mountain will begin selling the new Keurig Vue brewers in “coming weeks” for $249.99–more than double the price of its basic Keurig machine. But the machines can brew fancier beverages, with options for cappuccino-like frothy drinks, stronger iced coffee and hotter temperatures.

and

Green Mountain expects the Vue to draw in a higher-end crowd of coffee-drinkers, those who want more options for how their coffee is brewed. But Vue is not trying to be an espresso machine, like Nestle’s pricier Nespresso line, nor does it intend to replace the original Keurig line, Stacy added.

Jtjdt sent this to me because I wrote this post a while back about Keurig machine and the issues with them. I posed a lot of reasons why K-Cups and Keurig are destroying the coffee industry. I’m too busy to really respond to this new machine but I’d like to preface that I’m not a coffee expert. I’m some guy from Florida with a couple of coffee making tools in my house and a passion for taking the time on each cup because I enjoy the taste of well made coffee. That’s really it and I see the threat of K-Cups in many ways.

This machine does a few things

1. Brew stronger coffee
2. Brew different types of coffee-based drinks
3. Brew more coffee per pod but I assume this means the strength isn’t less if you had brewed a smaller cup
4. You also brew the coffee hotter
5. Vue packs are reusable or something of that sort so you’re not just throwing away plastic cups, you’re actually able to reuse them.

Good.

There are still fundamental problems with this system BUT, the arguments I made are mostly moot and I see one things happening that I didn’t write in the last post. That’s the fact that Keurig isn’t truly threatening independent roasters or cafes. Keurig is threatening Mr. Coffee, Folgers and Maxwell House. I believe, after spending a few months heavily entrenched in the beer community, converting someone from Budweiser to Trappist Belgian Ales is a feat that takes place over a few years. However, getting someone to switch from Budweiser to Miller is millions of dollars and a few ads that have girls dancing around in cheerleader outfits.

This argument applies to coffee. Keurig with their Vue system may produce a better cup than Folgers via your Mr. Coffee system and switching to Keurig when Mr. Coffee finally dies and is out of warranty is something a lot of people will do. Those consumers were never going to order $50 worth of fresh beens from Blue Bottle and learn how to make coffee with a Chemex.

Getting angry because someone eats Velveeta cheese, prefers veggies from a can and drinks Bud Lights for that “great taste” is a waste of time. It’s also not class warfare. If I made a third of what I do now, I’d simply drink less beer in order to have better beer. I’d drink less coffee but higher quality and I’d just give up cheese instead of eating the fake stuff. I don’t vote for products with my dollar, I vote for moderation of my products with my dollar. However, the people drinking Mr. Coffee or Keurig could be rich or poor but asking them to stand over a stove and spend 8 minutes pouring a cup of coffee is something they’ll never do and I’m glad Keurig is stepping up to give them more choice and perhaps a better cup of coffee than the 1st gen K-Cup systems.

Technology will ALWAYS be able to catch up to what we can do with our own two hands. Choosing to use our hands when technology has made them obsolete is an individual decision and I won’t ridicule anyone anymore for choosing push-button over manual work.

Thanks Joe for the link.

iMore:

According to sources who have been reliable in the past, Apple currently plans to hold their iPad 3 announcement on Wednesday, March 7, 2012. Along with the 2048×1536 Retina display, the iPad 3 will feature a quad-core Apple 6 system-on-a-chip, and possibly 4G LTE networking.It’s important to note that even reliable information is subject to last minute changes by Apple — the advantage of being a secretive company that doesn’t pre-announce products or directions.

WAIT! WHAT!?!?!?!?

I stopped reading at that point. Yes, it’s true that Apple has been known to change things last minute. However, as soon as you state this, you are washing your hands of any hate when what you wrote ends up not being true. The entire post you wrote is just linking to other blogs that received tips from sources. How many sources are there? At this rate, Apple’s leaky ship has about 500 employees all blabbering about future products when the group working on the product may not exceed 50 AT MOST.

I’m done. I’m going to unfollow people who tweet Apple rumors and I’m following a new ONE STRIKE, YOU’RE OUT policy on blogs that publish rumors.

★

via Wikipedia, Norah Jones won 7 Grammys in 2003 and she has won 3 more since then. That’s more than Adele won last night yet we don’t hear about Norah anymore. She’s still working but we don’t really recognize her. Does talent just go away? Did Norah Jones suddenly lose her talent and ability and thus we no longer award her with awards? No but I’m sort of bent out of shape over how we give out awards and subsequently congratulate award winners.

“She really deserved this” I heard a lot of people speaking about Adele and her Grammy win on sunday night. How did Adele deserve it more than any other artist? Did she deserve it more than Beyone or Eminem? What about the non-popular artists around the world including those without recording contracts. For the Grammys to truly award those in the music industry and make a statement, you need to move on from the popular and edgy cool stuff today and branch out to those who are amazing but yet don’t receive air-time on the standard stations.

Was Adam Levine actually the best person to kick-off a tribute to The Beach Boys? I’m sure there were other more capable talent to do the job so why was Adam picked? Why not Third Eye Blind or Counting Crows? Why not Blind Melon? Oh, those groups are no longer popular. They have talent but they’re not popular and there simply isn’t enough human mind-share to give a crap about more than 20-50 celebrities at once. In truth, it’s much less because we don’t share any similarities with celebrities and thus find it difficult to care about more than a handful at once. This leaves a lot of artists out and your luck can shift from turning down offers to begging for mall openings within 6 months and it’s not fair in my eyes.

Last night, the most telling aspect of the performance was Foo Fighters’ win of a Grammy for best Rock Performance. I don’t like their music but some people do and they are talented guys. Their commitment to music and ability to maintain relevance for so many years is remarkable. Here’s that acceptance speech (via):

“This is a great honour, because this record was a special record for our band. Rather than go to the best studio in the world down the street in Hollywood and rather than use all of the fanciest computers that money can buy, we made this one in my garage with some microphones and a tape machine…

“To me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of music is what’s important. Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that’s the most important thing for people to do.

“It’s not about being perfect, it’s not about sounding absolutely correct, it’s not about what goes on in a computer. It’s about what goes on in here [your heart] and what goes on in here [your head].”

Well said and this applies to any craft. Do you want to write a book? Buy a notebook. You don’t need an expensive computer to write a book or make an album or develop an app. The tools are attainable and the barrier of entry is simple. It was a great message.

Then, as the group exited the stage, an over-produced catchy pop song from LMFAO played them off. That album was created entirely within a studio and maintaining a flow was all these guys had to do. Maybe people will care about them next year but maybe they won’t but the song really showcases what I see which is award shows glorify the cool right now and do little to talk about what last year’s winners are doing. Going to the Grammys two years in a row is a rare thing for new artists and it shouldn’t be. Not every musician can attend that owns a guitar but I feel there’s a way to reimagine this. Where was Norah Jones last night? She was there (according to tweets) but she received no air time. I guess Katy Perry’s blue hair is more important.

via 4ma.me:

Violet confuses the issue with:

I’m not the first person to have a troubling story like this about these people.

Really? Who is the first person, Violet? Got any proof of that statement? Any facts? Any names…anything?

Maybe I can help…here’s an email I sent to a reader a few years ago who invited me out with Shawn for some Macworld events:

I have no problems with Shawn at all. He threatened my life back when I was 16. i sent him some iTunes gift cards and he never redeemed them and once every few months publicly calls me an idiot on the Internet or on his show.

it’s very sad but he’s just that way with people. Shawn is the sole reason I started my macworld events. His closed community of YMLers without letting new people in is not how the mac community should be so when I see all of the emails piling up and requests for macworld info from people I don’t know, I think of shawn and how mean he was to me and other people that I Know and that keeps me going. I credit him completely for inspiring me to do what i do. 

I encourage you to go with him. if he’s invited you out then you must have done something right. Shawn will accelerate your career in the Macintosh blogging / journalism field or keep you from getting some good jobs which is what has happened to me  

Maybe it’s just me and maybe i am stupid or an idiot or deserve for Shawn to “shoot me” next time he sees me but after you meet me I’ll let you be the judge of that and maybe you can report back to him  how I acted at the parties or city tour. If enough people say to him that he was wrong for saying what he said to me then maybe he’ll change his mind.

My grammar was a lot worse back then. I was a young buck just trying to make some friends on the Internet back in 2004 and was a member of Shawn’s online forum talking about Macworld. I specifically said I’d post the Macworld attendance numbers once they were released as someone was asking about them. Shawn came back with a few choice lines that I’ll summarize:

“I’m a speaker at Macworld so I’ll know the numbers before anyone else and I’ll be the one who posts them. Not you. You’re just some kid.”

and

“I’m tired of you. I’ll rip your head off and take a shit down your throat.”

and

“You better be packing at Macworld next year because, as soon as I see you, I’m going to shoot you.”

Moments later, I refreshed the forum and my account was deleted and then the thread was removed. I did get a few compassionate emails from forum members saying, “That’s just Shawn” and that I should ignore it.

I’ve never told this story publicly before and don’t plan on writing it again. I’ve said things in support of Shawn (like this) and in times where he’s asked me to modify blog posts that had inaccuracies, I’ve complied because I do admit when I’m wrong and correct mistakes. I may never receive a note from Shawn on his reasonings for threatening the life of a 16 year old kid who just went to his first Macworld and was stoked to talk with other people about it but his actions did inspire me to start a Macworld blog and my endeavors took me to where I am today.

My advice to Violet is pretty simple. Ignore this because it’ll pass. It did for me and I owe Shawn a bit because he helped me get to where I am today. The death threat was some real inspiration. They can be pretty empowering.

★

When you are operating a website that enables communication between users, there are a lot of very important considerations to make such as how much you provide to the user. Can they post publicly or is this a private person 2 person service? What sort of features do you build in to enable more connective elements between each user and how do you moderate the conversations and content? This is your site and you are responsible for it. Poor community management can lead to a complete implosion of the community and mass exudes’ of users. It’s also your responsibility to keep an eye on things because if illegal content is on your site, it may be the user’s content but it’s on your server so laws don’t always prosecute the uploader and you facilitating adult content, alcohol or other things illegal to minors would land you in jail.

It’s safe to say that management of a community is challenging and no one is going to say that the Alström brothers (Todd and Jason) who operate Beer Advocate have an easy task. Running a community is not turn-key and everyone knows that. The argument everyone is making since as far back as Google can tell is that the site is run poorly and the community is not moderated properly and it’s only a miracle that Beer Advocate attracts more users than it loses because there are people quitting BA each day.

I heard the horror stories about BA before joining. Friends who used the site warned me that the people on the forum were great and supportive but tread lightly because you can get banned for sneezing out of place. Another friend joked that BA is the only craft beer site on the web and the rest, well they are just a place for people to hang out who were banned from BA. Rate Beer, The Beer Spot and a few other Ning based communities are full of people “Banned from BA” who miss the old site and the people but realize that they can finally speak without the fear of refreshing to a 404 page.

With one Google search, I found hundreds of pages devoted to stories about users who were banned. There are 4 Twitter accounts that just report on people who were banned and why along with highly critical tweets about the brothers and how they run things. I posted a question to a Facebook beer group I’m on and 40 comments came in over an hour all with terribly hateful things about the Beer Advocate admins and it’s clear these former users are angry..very angry. Some of the banned users just went off-topic on a forum or posted too many times at once and said out loud that the site was too slow. Others said they did nothing like that but following saying something critical of the site via private “Beer mail” on BeerAdvocate.com, they were banned and told later that the admins monitor private messages too and take critical comments seriously.

The Beer Advocate community relates the Brothers and their small team of admins to that of the TSA. They’re here for your protection but if you try to sneak through with a water bottle or say anything about a plane crashing…even a whisper to your friend, expect to find yourself in a dark room receiving a full cavity search and maybe they’ll let you on the airplane or maybe they’ll just kick you out of the airport. Remember, they’re here for your protection. For some entertainment, here are some great Twitter accounts around the horrid community management of Beer Advocate by its admins:

• @beeradvocatesux
• @bannedonba
• @bawatch
• @occupyba
• @NotBeerAdvocate

For a community around 400,000 users (as of November, 2010), having Twitter accounts tracking bans is simply outrageous. It’s clearly a big problem and some of the feedback I found online is pretty bad. Maybe I should tell my story.

———————-

Of note, I waited 2 weeks before writing this article. It’s important for things like this to set in before coming through with emotion and anger.

I joined Beer Advocate last year but used the site as a reference for beers I was thinking of buying. Right after the New Year, I finally decided to post a review and join the forums. It was fun and, for 25 days, I met some great people who have become friends in person and I’ve traded beers with users around the world and attended tasting events and received tips that have altered the way I buy, store and drink beer. It’s remarkable how much knowledge is on that forum. The Beer Advocate operators made this possible but the community is not them and they are not the community. If a better site came along, there’s a big potential for users to shift away from to the next community. What keeps a user on Beer Advocate? Their data. Data is an investment of time and time is the biggest investment any of us can make and it’s the most valuable thing to have that investment taken away without warning.

My time was wasted on Beer Advocate. The knowledge I acquired was valuable but the time I spent investing in the site with reviews, comments, posts and building friendships was taken away with one click of a mouse over something that any intern community manager right out of college would tell you is not worth being banned over.

This was not a slap on the wrist. This was a 12 hour complete IP ban where I couldn’t even login, I couldn’t access the site and my profile was gone and inaccessible from anyone. To view the forum, I had to setup a VPN in England for $10 and still I couldn’t login. For all I knew, my entire account was removed over a single comment on the forums.

See the image? This is what the Beer Advocate forums look like and that’s a threaded conversation:

Each reply to a post creates a shrinking thread. This is typical on message boards dating back to the 90s but the issue is that this window will get smaller and smaller until it no longer exists. I saw a thread with 20+ replies to it with each post making the window tinier. The last 5 replies above mine were joking about how small this was getting so I added something along the lines of, “This thread will to to a black hole if we keep posting to it. Awesome.” This was the first time I ever posted an off-topic comment on a thread and the thread was already de-railed and I was having some fun.

Soon after, my account was locked out and my home IP address was banned from accessing BeerAdvocate.com. I was certain that the account was gone forever. After setting up a VPN, I accessed the Google Cache page for “Site:BeerAdvocate.com/beer AdamJackson” which showed all pages in the beer reviews area that contained my name. At the time, I had posted about 70 reviews to the site and I copied all of my reviews before Google’s Cache updated and those reviews were gone forever. Some were written down but most were entered right on to the site.

After downloading my reviews, I waited for an email as to why my account was locked. I decided to give it 24 hours and soon, fellow BA members were emailing me directly asking what happened and why my account was locked. They didn’t even know. It was just gone. At hour 12, my account was restored magically and I received a few messages from those friends saying it was back. There was no message saying why I was banned but I didn’t expect one after reading this in their terms of service:

BeerAdvocate.com retains the right to delete user accounts, all associated content, or selective content, without notice or explanation, and may not be held liable for the loss of users or user content. The backup of intellectual property to a non-BeerAdvocate.com Service or personal media device is the sole responsibility of the user. 

A lot of large sites do this because it’s just easier to deal with bans. However, three guys run a site with half a million users. It’s my assumption that they’re not banning hundreds a day. A courtesy message would be nice. If that’s not possible, you should create an automated system that emails out with a reason code of why your account was locked. It’s simple to implement and there aren’t any other sites that don’t notify users with a slap on the wrist first, then a time out and then a ban but always notifying the user so they know why.

Beer Advocate is more than a forum so losing my account means losing actual reviews and private messages and personal content. Restricting my posting to the forum is one thing but locking the account out is completely beyond standard community practices. 1st and even 2nd time offenders are locked out of the area they abused and not the entire site.

I politely engaged BeerAdvocate on Twitter and here’s our conversation and you should read it bottom to top:

and finally:

I was asked to move on from the topic. No thanks. I did “move on” but by moving my account and reviews to another site that’s not Beer Advocate. You can now find me on Rate Beer where I’ve had open discussions with the admins in public and they’ve responded kindly and fairly to my feedback when I had questions.

I have some advice to the folks running Beer Advocate. You lucked out by banning me early on. You really did. Congrats on getting my $15 for a magazine subscription but you won’t be getting it again. You also won’t have the chance to ban me ever again. I have a new home that’s far more open and supportive of its users. If you had done me like you did this guy (quoted below), we’d have some problems:

Over the course of the next 7 and a half years or so I contributed well over 300 photographs, over 300 place reviews, over 2600 beer reviews,  probably in excess of 10000 posts, became a founding subscriber to the magazine and bought several pieces of merchandise.

Seven years of work to contribute thousands of reviews and posts and poof, his account is gone with zero explanation. To this day, no one has told him why his account was deleted. It’s your policy but you should be aware that you’re the #1 site for Beer culture in spite of the way you run things. The people and tools your site has are excellent but the community management is executed in the worst way and you’ll need to radically shift the way you do things because if a site comes along that does have better tools, your irrelevance will only be a matter of time. I don’t believe you have hate or distaste for your userbase but I do think you should hire a real community manager with real experience and not simply have Todd’s wife read through people’s private emails looking for enemies of the state. That’s not how you run things and it’s disappointing that I had to move to a site that has less features and a smaller community. Then again, with employees like this, it’s clear you all care nothing about the bread and butter. You can act and say what you want but just know, comments like this make your users feel disposable:

For now, I’ll be no part of the community. Your calling me a child and treating me like one was in itself childish. You’ve lost my respect.

http://beeradvocate.com/user/profile/AdamJackson/

Update: Beer Advocate has confirmed they read my article by removing my profile from their servers and banning me from accessing their website from my home Internet connection. The reason I didn’t delete my profile was to see how long it would take before they read the post and subsequently deleted my profile. At least they read my thoughts and that’s all I wanted. As for the account, there was no need to keep it around.

via OffBeatReport:

This, to me, is more than just a cleanse. And the 10 Tenets of Whole Living describe exactly what I’m hoping to get out of the next four weeks:

Click through because the 10 things Lauren lists off is inspiring and worth printing off and putting on your bathroom mirror. To change our lifestyles means daily conscious decisions about each step we’re about to take. Making these things a habit takes a very long time but saying them out loud every day helps in a big way.

★

via LaughingSquid:

Are there really this many reality television shows? I’ve never heard of any of them. Each one of the titles sounds ridiculous.

★

via The WireCutter:

I owe my livelihood to technology and I love the raw capability it offers us as a tool, but I fear it a bit more than most people do. It’s a tool, but it’s not quite a hammer, because a hammer doesn’t seduce you into sitting around lonely in your underwear for 6 hours at a stretch clicking on youtube videos and refreshing Twitter. I fear technology because I fear that bad feeling I get after a three day XBox binge I go through every year around the holidays. I fear technology not because I think it’s evil, but because it’s too easy to start clicking and never stop, even if the stream of data starts to go from meaningful to useless after the top 5%.

Reading articles like this has become a common pastime of mine in order to re-affirm my choices lately in how I use technology. Reading an article like this from a blogger I grew up with and respect is even more powerful. Heck, Brian even commented on my blog once. He’s one of the good guys. This resonated a lot…

Thoreau had to abandon work and friends to live simply, but he was not against it. He just had no choice at the time, given the technology at hand.  I think we–and information workers like programmers, designers and writers especially–are capable right now of living a fantastic life that marries the wild vitality that Thoreau experienced at Walden with the better parts of civilized living. This is a life that  Ted, if he were still in his cabin, could be envious of–if we could only muster the discipline to get away from the noise.

Among the trees in my cabin in New Hampshire, my drive home each day is on an old beaten road with no traffic. I live among nature and work at my dream job. I’ve never been happier. Disconnecting has only strengthened that happiness.

★

via NYTimes:

For example, the Nespresso Arpeggio costs $5.70 for 10 espresso capsules, while the Folgers Black Silk blend for a K-Cup brewed-coffee machine is $10.69 for 12 pods. But that Nespresso capsule contains 5 grams of coffee, so it costs about $51 a pound. And the Folgers, with 8 grams per capsule, works out to more than $50 a pound.

That’s even more expensive than all but the priciest coffees sold by artisanal roasters, the stuff of coffee snobs.

Never underestimate the price of convenience. It takes 5 minutes to make my coffee in the morning and I spend far less each year than most daily Keurig drinkers on what many consider “premium snobby coffee”. You push a button, I have to grind beans and then boil water. The results of my labor are cheaper coffee and tastier coffee.

There are hundreds of online resources to help you brew coffee at home but pushing that button is so easy.

★

via AoM:

Typical dietician dogma involves eating small meals spread two to four hours apart, starting with a nutritious breakfast. This, we’re told, stimulates the metabolism, so we burn more calories throughout the day.  It’s also supposed to make us less likely to binge on cookies and ice cream at night.It’s sound advice that’s been field-tested by thousands of fit, healthy, hard-bodied people.

I’m not on board with everything stated in this article but it’s certainly a new perspective and very informative.

★

CNN Money describes how US based mobile operators are suffering from slimmer margins following the iPhone:

AT&T (T, Fortune 500) and Sprint suffered an even worse fate. AT&T posted a stunning 28.7% EBITDA service margin last quarter, compared with 37.6% a year earlier. One contributing factor: AT&T sold nearly twice as many iPhones as Verizon last quarter.

After selling nearly 2 million iPhones last quarter, Sprint’s adjusted wireless margin fell to 9.5%, down from 16% a year ago. The company said Wednesday morning that its margin was significantly lower than it would have been without the iPhone subsidy.

Purchasing wireless spectrum, setting up a nation-wide wireless system and keeping that system up to date as consumer demand increases is very costly. The carriers who take on this risk deserve to make money and remain profitable. The same goes for the power company and cable TV / Internet operators. These companies invested money to bring a utility to each home at a loss and then give consumers the option to utilize the utility or not. I’d say that’s a risky move. Spending millions to setup towers in a town that may not use the wireless company’s service is a risk and one that must be repaid some way.

However, I’d prefer utility companies to operate like the power company. Power companies are profitable without interfering with how you use the power. Imagine how absurd it would be for my local power company to only allow a selection of 5 televisions for my home. Each of those TVs is custom made to work on my power company and no other. If I move to another state or county and thus get a new power company, I’m forced to buy all new hardware. Sure, I get that hardware at a subsidized rate but if I want to buy a new TV, blender or microwave, I’m asked to pay an early termination fee or upgrade fee.

There would be riots in the streets if power companies held their customers that way with fees, exclusivity, 2-year term contracts and only offered a slim choice of hardware on top of a monthly service price.

Wireless and Cable companies have been doing this for YEARS and yet people just sign on the dotted line and accept $8 pay-per-view movies and crappy handsets with a 50 cent fee for every text message you receive whether you want to receive it or not.

Apple may be squeezing mobile operators and soon, cable companies’ margins and there are arguments that less earnings equal lost jobs and now Apple is killing America and blah blah blah. The truth is, Apple’s devoted fan base and leverage on these middle-men to agree to terms that are fair for consumers is our only hope in a world crowded with insane practices in how the customers are treated. If Apple can make AppleTV a box that requires a $20 a month Cable connection + $50 a month Internet connection and a $100 a month cell phone bill and provide an experience we LOVE and not hate, I really don’t care that the operators feel squeezed by that. These guys have enjoyed great margins for years.

MG Siegler weighs in with a similar argument:

Boo-fucking-hoo. The carriers have raked consumers over the coals for years with things like SMS charges, which have a near-infinite margin.

Blog:Foursquare:

Everyone needs recommendations on the go. Your dinner date just went swimmingly, now where’s a great place to get dessert, or see some live music? Or maybe you’re looking to grab lunch – should you go healthy (‘salad,’ ‘grilled chicken,’ ‘wrap’) or bold (‘bacon burger,’ ‘chicken fingers,’ ‘milkshake’)? Whatever you can think of, Explore can be your guide.

Today, we’re launching an updated version of Explore for iPhone and Android, bringing over a bunch of the great features from our recent Explore on the web launch straight to your phone, like changing your location, filtering your recommendations, and photos in your search results! Get ready for personalized recommendations for whatever you’re craving, wherever and whenever you need them!

‘Explore’ is the single most used local recommendation feature on my iPhone. I don’t use Yelp or Twitter or Google Local or TripAdvisor. All of these apps let me down in a HUGE way. Explore is the only tool you need IF you have zero interest in knowing where your friends are.

I say this because Explore needs a special setup to be useful. Here are the qualifications for Explore always being the most reliable way to find things to do no matter where you are.

• You must have lots of friends on FourSquare (I have over 1,000)
• Have friends who travel all of the time to cities that you would travel
• Have friends who actively LOVE adding tips, to-dos and checking in to places in these cities using FourSquare

Every single place I’ve been in the last year since Explore was enabled was enhanced because of this. I rarely check-in to places other than to an airport upon arriving to let friends know that I’m in town. This check-in usually results in comments and text messages with tips and requests to “meet up”. The check-in isn’t that important to me.

The Explore tab is indispensable. Here are some memorable uses for it lately:

• Best Philly Cheesesteak
• Best coffee shop in NYC
• Local and non-touristy Ice Cream shop in Mumbai
• Nearest Internet Cafe in Delhi
• Best Beer Bar in Amsterdam & in Brussels
• The most popular club in San Francisco at this moment (based on check-ins)
• Brunch in Austin during SXSW at a place that’s not crowded right now but friends usually frequent

FourSquare does rank things by most popular universally among people that aren’t your friends but that’s not always valuable to me. Tourists also check-in and rank things amazing as locals get buried especially in big cities. I want local recommendations from locals and I have friends in most major cities. I can filter by what my friends recommend and it’s extremely powerful. Next time you are in downtown Atlanta, open up Explore and you’ll see really great recommendations based on what your friends like. It’s excellent.

★

via Poynter:

After guiding Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and more since 2008 at the Cincinnati Enquirer, TBD (where we worked together) and The Huffington Post, Mandy Jenkins is moving on.

Congrats and that’s impressive. Why move on?

Mandy Jenkins: It’s just a time to move on. I’ve been doing this for a while and it’s increasingly becoming a young person’s job. I want to move past that. My goals, in the end, are much loftier than working in social media.

What’s next?

Poynter asks: But it sounds like it isn’t going to be “social media editor” type title?

Mandy Jenkins:Social media and community engagement will obviously be a big part of that

Alright. Changing roles but doing nearly the exact same thing. At least you’re bringing a lot of experience from the well respected Huffington Post group:

Poynter asks: You’ve been at HuffPost about 10 months, how has that been and what did you learn?

I’m not even going to read her answer because all I can think of is that she just finished setting up her email and Twitter accounts and then started looking for work someplace else.

This is not against Mandy or HuffPo. I see this every day in our industry. When are the Millennials going to start holding jobs longer than 6 months? Mandy has worked for a lot of companies in the last 8 years but her resume reads like every other Gen-Yer I come in contact with. I left two jobs earlier than I wanted to so I’m guilty of this too but giving someone an interview and asking serious questions like, “What did you learn in your 10 month stint?” is a complete joke. We should stop glorifying these short term job choices.

I respect someone more who stuck with a c-level company for 3-5 years than someone who got hired at Facebook and left 6 months later.

Also, if you call social media a young person’s job but you start at Huffington Post at age 30 doing social media, I think that’s a bit misleading. You define young person as college aged but, for you, that was 8 years ago. 30 is young but not by the definition exhibited in this article. Your definition of young sounds like 26. Starting a social media job at 30, by your definition is an old person job.

I’m pulling at straws now but the general complaint here is that for me to respect someone, they need to actually do something and doing something takes longer than 10 months.

★

When thinking about video games, we usually think about Microsoft’s Xbox or Sony’s Playstation. When it comes to online videos of cats and people falling down stairs, YouTube is the first thing that pops into our heads. There was a time when the video games and online videos were so separate, both were rarely present in the same conversation. One company changed that and they’re now known as Machinima.com. Let’s take a step back and discuss Machinima (the art form) and then we’ll return to Machinima.com (the company). Machinima is a mash-up of Machine and Cinema. The most popular historical use of Machinima in the best way it relates to today’s Machinima.com is the artists who used the video-game Quake in the 90s to create compelling stories and films with very little overhead. With a few editing tools, custom maps / items and the Quake video game, filmmakers could use the environment to tell stories. These were captured, edited and then presented to friends and on the web.

The studios that developed video games that were used for Machinima films argued that the films utilized copyright material invented by the video game studios and thus Machinima was illegal. Many of the Quake Machinima titles have been lost forever but perhaps the most modern form of Machinima which was published in 2005 just as YouTube was on the rise is “Red vs. Blue“. This Machinima was created using the Halo video game and features over 100 episodes created over the last 7 years. Here’s a YouTube upload of one episode of Red vs. Blue. Over the years, as computers and Internet speeds both became faster and cheaper, the amount of gamers interested in Machinima accelerated. Ten years ago, playing a video game while capturing it to your PC using a capture card and then editing it and adding a commentary or story-line using a decent microphone was very challenging and equally as expensive. The later issue was how to distribute it. Hosting video online was not as easy then and even YouTube limited uploads to 10 minutes until just a few years ago. It’s only in the last two years that Machinima became something most teenagers could do with a spare weekend and a couple hundred bucks. As a result, online Machinima has exploded.

Machinima.com was formed in the year 2000 by Hugh Hancock as a place for Machinamists to collaborate and show off their work. Although the concept is the same today, the company is a very different animal than it was in 2000 or even 2006. Machinima.com operates a YouTube network that achieved the most video views of 2011 over every other channel on the video site. Youtube, itself has a market share of 43% of all online video. YouTube served nearly 100 billion video views in 2011. For Machinima.com to be #1 on YouTube, this may help to put in perspective just how large the network is and how powerful it has become. The company has raised nearly 15 Million dollars in Venture funds to date and, based on its fund-raising history and current performance of their YouTube channel, they are profitable and growing at an exponential rate.

Today’s Machinima.com still hosts the Machine Cinema that was popularized with Quake in the 90s but there are other Machinima.com videos that are still technically Machinima but not in the traditional sense. The majority of Machinima.com content is game plays with little editing that are start to end matches with commentary from the gamer. In rare cases, the person playing and those commentating are not the same. Machinima.com also produces special weekly shows on gaming news, culture and specialized tips & tricks broadcasts. Finally, the company holds events like their Inside Gaming Awards show complete with a red-carpet and celebrities.

What is most exciting about the company is that very few of the videos are produced by full-time staffers. Machinima.com currently has 150 employees across 6 different offices but has thousands of content creators that create videos for the company directly and these filmmakers are paid based on the performance of the videos once posted online. A small team of full-timers do create content but the bread and butter of Machinima.com’s earnings come from freelancers who are generally “scouted” by the company and sign contracts to create content for the network.

—————-

I was inspired to write this piece in a less orthodox way than most of my reports. The first video game I ever played was Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2 on my very first gaming console, an Xbox 360. Soon after playing the game, I discovered videos with tips and tricks produced by Machinima.com. I began subscribing to interesting gamers who had their own channels in the Machinima.com Partner network and I still watch those gamers today. One thing that was of interest to me is how many of the gamers commentating tended to be younger than I’d expect. Sometimes, I was watching interesting game plays while a 16 year old told me about his High School prom and how nervous he was. This wasn’t always the case but a majority of commentators appeared to be far younger than I  would expect. In addition to this, I started hearing stories from the tech circles I frequent that Machinima.com is a very secretive company that takes advantage of young talent. The company was often compared to most record companies who recruit a clueless teen with natural talent to profit on until the teen burns out or is no longer popular (see Lou Pearlman). Surely, Allen DeBevoise (the current CEO of Machinima) isn’t running a company that exploits talented kids for pennies on the dollar but this is what the majority of skeptics were saying.

The Lou Pearlman identity people were assigning to the company was unfounded until I came across the story of MrWonanother, aka Jake and his problems with a Machima.com contract that he signed. The story, as I know it is that Jake wanted to switch to a streaming service known as Twitch and was forbidden to do so by one of Machinima.com’s recruiters, Rishi Chadha. After years of assuming things were bad, I saw first-hand that things were potentially as I had hear so I began a 2-month investigation to learn the inner workings of Machinima.com and uncover the secrets behind these contracts and how freelancers fit into the business model of the #1 channel on YouTube.

I have discovered a transcript of the chat Jake and Rishi had that afternoon in December posted by YouTube Partner, ObviouslyBen. The transcript is below:

Jake: Rishi you around?
Rishi: Yeah whats up
Jake: I was wondering how I go about leaving machinima?
Rishi: you can’t it’s in your contract
Jake: Youtube states you cannot keep me locked to machinima
Rishi: we can actually, you signed a perpetuity agreement with us what seems to be the problem? I’d really like to help you out here
Jake: I just want to be out of machinima
Rishi: why?
Jake: Im not interested in it anymore
Rishi: Why not if you don’t mind me asking
Jake: Not my thing anymore i can never get in contact with anyone other than yourself, i haven’t beniffited from the HUB which i was told i would, i feel let down in machinima
Rishi: well tell me about all the things you need help with and i’ll make sure you get taken care of that’s what I’m here for, to help you out I can’t let you out of this contract, so your best bet is to work with me here to make this a much better experience
Jake: Well to make it better it would be drop the LIVE feature. i cannot use it, as running the programs to do so make my CPU go up to 90% leaving me 10% to run a high spec’d game
Rishi: i can’t do that either
Jake: Other than its getting in contact with people which i know you cannot help me with, its either i can get the live feature removed or i will have to seek legal action
Rishi: you didn’t read the contract, that’s on you man
Jake: to remove the contract
Rishi: I can get you  in contact with anyone at machinima. i work at the damn office lol
Jake: Of course you can remove the live feature, your just choosing not to it feels, as getting people off Twitch is your job so if you cannot remove the Live part of my contract i will just have to seek legal advise from my lawyers
Rishi: I can’t remove it because you signed a binding contract with us man
Jake: So what if was just to say screw it and go and stream on twitch what action are you going to take?
Rishi: we’ll take legal actions against you
Jake: So you’ll take legal action against the people who make machinima money via videos?
Rishi: well if you break the contract then yeah we would have to man, that’s a legally binding contract you signed you signed the contract, it is your responsibility to read it before you sign it
Jake: How would it look if Machinima legally attacked one of its broadcasters because he asked to leave the program?
Rishi: look man, I’m not here to be threatened
Jake: Im not threating anyone
Rishi: if you want to contact lawyers and seek legal action, go ahead.
Jake: I just want out this contract
Rishi: well you signed a legal binding perpetuity contract so I can’t do anything about it if you want to talk with our Live Stream team, email [redacted] and CC me, they will tell you the same thing I’m not attacking you, I’m just following the legal process that is outlined specifically in your contract. nor is machinima attacking you i didn’t force you, nor did this company force you to sign that contract you signed it under your own free will
Jake: Sure feels like and attack and looks that way
Rishi: no it doesn’t read your contract, this is all outlined in there so how is this an attack?
Jake: I’m a partner of Machinima and I’m asking you if i am able to leave the program because i’d like to pursue other ventures and i’m being denied. I’m being denied by the company i supported, promoted, and helped grow. and its ridiculous you’re making it so hard to leave
Rishi: well here’s I’m coming from you signed a LEGALLY BINDING CONTRACT that states that you are PERPETUALLY partnered with us. PERPETUALLY = FOREVER you should have read your contact more carefully that’s what this comes down to So how am I in the wrong? you made a LEGAL agreement with us to perpetually partner. It’s not my fault, nor is it machinima’s fault. So it’s probably your best bet to go get a better CPU so that you can stream, or don’t stream all together this is a business, and that’s how things are run

It’s clear that both sides should have handled this chat more professionally but it was time to find answers. Is Machinima.com scouting those that don’t really understand contracts and promising the world and then holding them in a perpetual contract to produce content for Machinima.com exclusively forever?

I was skeptical if this chat was staged by Jake. He has said in videos before and after this chat session that he wanted to switch to / return to the Twitch platform which would nullify his LIVE contract with Machinima.com however he may or may not have lied to Rishi about his CPU issues just to sound a bit more innocent than he actually was. We’ll never know as Jake has declined to comment after many attempts to get in touch with him. Rishi on the other hand did agree to a chat with me and his style of writing via Skype was identical to that in the conversation I received above (grammar mistakes and all). When I began asking questions, Rishi paused for a long time and came back with, “…unfortunately I can’t answer any more questions for you…” I spoke with over 50 people over the last 60 days from current and former employees, partners, directors, advertisers and friends of those who have worked there. To the best of my ability, here are some things I learned about the company.

There are three different ways you can come to an agreement with Machinima to create content for them: (via HupitGaming.com’s Forums and confirmed by other sources)

• Partnership Channel = any channel that Machinima.com partners into youTube
• Partnered Director = any youTuber/Director that can post videos in Machinima.com’s channels
• Machinima.com Employee = Personalities like MrSark, Dead Pixel, Hutch, Seananners

I’ve heard that this structure and its definition is always changing but this is generally what the situation is and, for the 3,000+ content creators, they mostly fall into the first two categories. There are channels who are independent and have their own content but are partnered into YouTube not independently but via Machinima.com. They are vouched for and made a partner by Machinima.com and the ads that appear on their channel are sold by Machinima’s ad-sales team with some additional inventory being sold by Google/YouTube as confirmed by Machinima’s CEO in this interview on Beet.tv. The content creators have mostly editorial independence over what is posted to their channel but there are strict rules as to what Machinima.com will sell ads against like the big offense among producers is that there can be zero copyright content on any video (audio, video, etc). There’s another level of creator that is allowed to post content to Machinima.com’s official channels. These individuals are approved in a more strict manner than the channels that are simply partnered. The official Machinima.com YouTube Channel contains stats that I’ll break down with my notes in italics:

• Channel Views:122,234,782 (Number of times this channel has been viewed)
• Total Upload Views:3,011,567,296 (Number of times this channel’s videos have been viewed in total)
• Network Channels:3,242 (Number of Channels Machinima has “partnered” into their network)
• Network Videos:557,587 (Total number of videos in the Machinima Network)
• Network Video Views:20,214,611,028 (Total views of Machinima content + content posted by partners to the network)
• Network Subscribers:79,463,920 (Total subscribers across all network channels)
• Subscribers:4,242,994 (Total Machinima official channel subscribers)

The number I’m focused on is the “Network Channels”. 3,242 of them and it has been speculated that the majority of the channel owners are under 18.  I received a few documents from gamers who were approached by Machinima.com. There are two standard opening email formats when Machinima is looking to recruit new talent.

Hello,

I am with Machinima.com THE LARGEST online network for VIDEO GAME content in the WORLD! I’m in charge of finding talented online content producers such as you. I’m writing to see if you’d be interested in joining Machinima.com’s Directors Program.

There are a lot of reasons to sign up with Machinima.com

• You Earn Money for video views

• We can distribute your work to our massive audience of millions

• You Retain ownership of you work

Signing up is simple and you can terminate the contract at any time.

Here’s a basic rundown of what our agreement entails and what will come next:

• You enter into a consultant agreement with Machinima.com and any videos you submit will be distributed through our network.
• You still own your videos, and can terminate this agreement at any time.
• You will get paid $2.00 for every 1,000 globally eligible (ad-supported) views that your video generates.

Once under contract you have no obligation to submit videos, and you can deliver them to us at your own pace. You are your OWN BOSS! However, the more videos you submit, the more people will see your work and the more money you can make (this is made easier by submitting older videos you’ve already completed.)

If you’re interested in joining the Machinima.com Director’s Program, the next step is for me to send you a contract.

To execute a contract I need the following information.

• Name

• Primary Email Address

• Paypal Email Address

• Phone Number

• Display site link (ie your youtube channel, vimeo, blip.tv, vodpod, ect)

• Legal Mailing Adress (City, State, Zip included)

Once I receive that information I will email you the contract (Note: If you are under 18, you must have your parents or legal guardian sign). If you have any questions, or would like more information, please feel free to contact me at [redacted].

AND here is another standard recruiting template:

I am with Machinima.com THE LARGEST online network for VIDEO GAME content in the WORLD! I’m in charge of finding talented online content producers such as yourself. And I’m writing to see if you would be interested in joining Machinima.com’s Directors Program.

• There are a lot of reasons to sign up with Machinima.com
• You Earn Money for video views
• We can distribute your work to our massive audience of millions
• You Retain ownership of your work

Signing up is simple and you can terminate the contract at any time.

If this sound opportunity sounds like something you would like to pursue, or if you have any further questions, email me at:

[redacted]

I look forward to hearing from you.

My assumptions were that Machinima promised the world to potential creators but that ended up not being the case. Each negotiation is different but, on average, each accepted partner channel receives per-video $50 for the first 20,000 views and $2-$4 for each 1,000 views after that. For most invited content creators, this is a lot more money than they were making already with most of them making zero dollars on a hobby that takes a big investment of both time and money. As Ryan, “OpticJ”, (Director of Gaming Partnerships at Machinima) said to me via Twitter:

“…I do feel it’s [the chat above] taken way out of context and makes it seem like Machinima is some evil empire, when we are not. In fact, we have changed a lot of lives through our partnership program, Made many careers.”

Although he wasn’t available for comment, Machinima Partner DaDoppen did sign with Machinima not because it would make a career for him but because,

“I realized I’m in need of money, or at least will be in the near future, so an extra income like this would be nice.”

That’s why we do most things and this is why someone who is under 18 or if they’re legally an adult but new to business may be blinded by the offers of earning lots of money and ignoring the facts of these contracts which are locking you into a perpetual agreement.

I was able to track down five different Machinima contracts. After having a lawyer review these, things weren’t as outlandish as they were being made out to be by the people I spoke to. The majority of past and current partners I spoke with were disappointed that they hadn’t reviewed the contracts more but these documents differed no more than a standard content creator contract that you would sign for a small production house as a filmmaker, actor or other post-production job.

Standard non-compete agreements were in place that made it difficult for content creators to jump ship to a competing network easily. There were also agreements that content you uploaded while a Machinima partner would be monetized, promoted and leveraged by Machinima forever even though you technically still owned the content. However,removing the video from your YouTube channel seemed to be fine and Machinima would then no longer be able to monetize it. Also, leaving Machinima’s partner network means you’re no longer a partnered channel since you were under their umbrella and you’d have to re-apply to YouTube to get partner status back.

The truth is, I kept finding blog posts, forum threads and receiving statements from Machinima’s content creators that read like this blog post:

In addition to making us feel like shit, they were very careful to make it sound like they were not giving this offer to anyone else. In reality, they give it to anyone and everyone. Quality does not matter.

Aside from Business 101 tactics, there’s nothing wrong with a big company intimidating someone into accepting terms that are favorable to the company and not the partner. Machinima clearly has the advantage but I had yet to find any evidence of wrong-doing aside from a bit of bullying when meeting with potential partners.

Nothing I saw required producers to perpetually upload content to Machinima.com until the end of time. I went to Machinima for answers. After a great deal of time and phone calls made to over dozens of employees, I finally got in touch with a spokesperson at the company who was willing to speak on the record. Here is a brief Q&A chat. The plan was to edit this into the article but I believe a lot of context is lost by piecing this apart. It’s best to share our interview in its entirety:

1. Are there stats about Machinima you can tell me? Machinima has approximately 150 employees. The bulk of Machinima staff is located at corporate headquarters in West Hollywood, with satellite offices in New York, San Francisco, Seattle Chicago, and the UK.
2. How many contracts does Machinima have with external content creators? Machinima maintains a vast network of 3000+ channel partners and directors (combined total) who create content for their personal channel and Machinima’s flagship YouTube properties (Respawn, Realm, Sports, and the Machinima main channel).
3. How young is the threshold for creating content for Machinima? Machinima understands that many viewers are aspiring content creators, so the range is typically between 18 and 34. Should a content creator be under the age of 18, a parent or legal guardian is required to sign any contract with Machinima.
4. Is there an average age of directors? 16, 20? The majority of partners are 18 and older.
5. Has Machinima ever carried through with legal action against a director or partner? Machinima has not had to resort to legal action against any of our partners or directors to enforce our contracts. We believe that is because we are dedicated to providing world-class service, maintaining open lines of communication and most of all,  creating mutually beneficial relationships with all of our directors and partners.
6. Does Machinima require parent or guardian consent on directors who under age for their country of residence? In accordance with all local laws, Machinima requires parental or legal guardian consent on the contract. In support of this requirement, Machinima personnel regularly review contracts prior to processing the channel and initiating the network invitation.
7. What is the action taken if a content creator is found to be under the legal age in their country of residence? In the unlikely event a content creator is found to be under age, Machinima is quick to contact the partner/director, explain the necessity of a parent or legal guardian’s co-signature, and put a hold on the channel until applicable parental signature(s) have been verified. Machinima further supports this educational process by speaking with parents or legal guardians to address any questions.
8. Are there multiple contracts at Machinima and are these set in stone for every producer? Currently, Machinima offers content creators a Channel Partnership Contract and a Director’s Contract. The Partnership Contract is designated for producers who seek to earn revenue from their personal channel, enhance the creativity of their content, and overall increase their fan base. The Director’s Contract maintains similar traits to the Channel Partnership contract, yet primarily differs in the action that Director’s can submit video content to our flagship YouTube properties (Respawn, Realm, Sports, and the Machinima main channel). While we use the same contracts for all of our partners, we negotiate these contracts individually with each partner.
9. Can you explain more about the rumored perpetuity clause? Is it a clause that locks in creators forever? Machinima is dedicated to ensuring partners are happy with their Machinima relationship, growth of their personal channel, and enhanced creativity of their content. Our contracts do not require our partners to continue to exhibit and produce content solely for us for any period of time; however we do require that so long as content is exhibited on a partner’s YouTube channel, then we have the right to sell the advertising against that content. Our partners are free to distribute their content on any other website or through any other means outside of YouTube without any obligation to us. It is important to note that we invest significant amounts of money and time in our partners and often pay our partners more than the revenue generated by their channels because we believe in everyone with whom we partner. Because of this investment as well as our dedicated sales force and incredibly large audience, we are able to create substantial value for our partners on YouTube that they would likely have not been able to achieve on their own or with many of our competitors.  We’re very proud that many of our partners have been able to earn substantial sums of money as a result of our partnership.
10. Is there any talent at Machinima that is locked into a permanent contract with them to produce work forever and only upload video game content to Machinima and no other competitor for as long as they live? We have no contracts like that, nor does any media company. Machinima understands that negotiation and contract revisions are a significant aspect to business agreements. It is always our goal to reach mutually beneficial terms with current and potential partners, to maintain open lines of communication about contract terms, as well to keep an open door policy to field partner questions and goals.

Since my conversations with Machinima.com, I’ve reached out to my contacts of past and present content creators and a few competitors of Machinima to hear their thoughts on these statements. The result is that many of those who spoke up initially to badmouth the company back in December were suddenly hard to reach. The dozens of contracts I received from content creators were filled with the typical legal jargon but those that referenced a clause that locked you into a partnership with Machinima forever turned out to be modified by people who had a bone to pick with their previous employer. Of the two contracts who referenced a permanent lock on all content to Machinima, those sources came forward stating that they were falsified.

At the end of this investigation, I learned a lot about the inner-workings of a company that so often is associated with a healthy mix of secrecy toward their business practices combined with the millions of fans who idolize the company and its stars. The result of secrecy with a rabid fan base is that rumors about Machinima that have been passed forum to blog post to tweet for the past 6 years have become almost folklore. There is no Machinima secret service that comes looking for people who utter the phrase, “Machinima Contract” among friends and this small company that is the #1 channel on YouTube has yet to hold any partner or director to them forever or taken legal actions against a content creator who just walked away.

What started as a story about lies, child slavery and the recruitment of vulnerable talented teens under false pretenses became a story of a company that is focused on creating great content and paying out money to guys who wouldn’t have made a dime otherwise.

I do see that Machinima.com is making an incredible amount of money off their talent and the math I have received from anonymous sources has shown that the company only pays out a small percentage to creators compared to what they themselves make per thousand video views. However, this is not “evil” by definition as I’ll apply the math that most full-time employees do when they are debating becoming a consultant in their field.

Employee makes 75,000 USD a year doing technical support for an IT firm. This works out to about $36 per hour pre-tax. After taxes, it’s more like $20-$25 an hour. He hates that the IT firm charges $150 an hour for his time because he takes home far less than that. His logic is he can start his own company, work for himself and charge $100 per hour for the same work undercutting his old employer and bringing home more cash. Fast forward one year and the cost of doing business such as a vehicle expenses, infrastructure, accounting, business taxes and the time he spends not billing clients with business related activities like advertising, marketing, business management and wooing new clients works out to less than he made at the IT firm where he only had to fix servers and not deal with the other finer details.

In the talks I had with past content creators who wanted to vent at Machinima.com’s business practices, their argument came down to the one I detailed above. “Machinima pays us nothing and pockets most of the money.”

This is not a Machinima problem. This is an economy of scale problem. Once you leave Machinima’s network with thousands of producers and a built in audience of millions, you’ll make the same or less than you did just making content and uploading it.

Like any business, Machinima has its faults. One of those being the grammar problems on display by the front-line of their recruiting staff and partnership teams that represent the company to potential talent but this is not an issue that anyone should be worried about aside from high school English teachers.

In my 60 days of analysis on the company, Machinima is like any other media firm. Things are not all peachy but a company that exploits talented children? Hardly.

It’s easy to forget about our past lives. If you’re pushing yourself to new heights, new adventures and new skills, you of yesterday should be distant and nearly irrelevant.

Elizabeth and I spent an evening in Washington DC catching up with friends she went to school with. There was dining, drinking, dancing and storytelling. It was a nice evening and I was the designated driver. We arrived in DC around 5 and finally went to sleep at 3AM. To be on foot in DC visiting U and H street venues, it was a close resemblance to Polk street in San Francisco. There were kids our age and they were dressed to impress. There were taxis and street performers and beggars and I was among peers.

It was really strange.

San Francisco was only 1.5 years ago but I’m out of touch with drink prices and the realities of Saturday nights in a city. I wasn’t uncomfortable but things were crazy. We all shared stories of city-life except most of my stories felt like a long time ago like it was decades ago. The scary excitement of The Tenderloin surpassed the insanity of DC at midnight but there were similarities as there should be in any big city. I laughed and retold these stories that have appeared many times on this blog but my mind was pondering and sitting still. I wasn’t entertained with these stories.

I was spending an evening with a couple that, combined make more than me but they were living in an apartment above a bar and facing a busy street lined with stop lights. The city was noisy and busy and taxis were honking and speeding past. I got a little stressed out. It’s not anxiety or an overwhelming feeling but it was a feeling that my mind wasn’t happy and would have rather been somewhere else, somewhere quiet and somewhere where I can hear the birds chirp and the wind howling.

I can see the appeal of city-life. For me, San Francisco was something that came along with the technology jobs based there. I wanted to work at a great job and be 15 minutes from a cabin in the woods. That’s what I have now but if I lost this job, there aren’t 200 more to replace it across 50 startups that are competing with each other for talent. In DC, amidst the noise and action are companies who are hiring and are demanding of new cheap talent and old seasoned talent. I’d like to think I’m somewhere in the middle but that apartment was so tiny!

It’s funny to laugh about the all night coffee houses that are, at times, full of homeless people or the fact that the best bars are in neighborhoods that are gentrified and sort of run down. I appreciate that awesomeness of getting a slice of pizza after 8PM but along with that comes a range of other issues like public transit, high fuel costs and living expenses. The woman with us was recently mugged and it wasn’t a show-stopper where the conversation remains with her for half an hour. We listened but then moved on because that’s what happens in cities…you get mugged and then go back to living life.

I don’t really think that either way of life is better than the other. From my cabin to the big city with suburbia right in the middle, each have their advantages. City people come to my cabin to unwind and I go to cities to experience the beauty of a pizza after midnight and walking to a bar. Each have their place.

The problem I’m having is that I can’t decide which one I want. I’ve never been happier at my current place. It’s been the best year of my life but city life is fun as well. Where do I belong in this mix of various living conditions? At 25, I have time to decide but then again, I’m already 25. It’s time to choose so I can settle in to one place and be sure that it’s where I should be.

I may be an hour from a Starbucks…but I don’t have to wait for a bus or walk to the grocery store.

Steve Jobs, “The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their products.”

These two photos really capture just how terrible the experience is when someone tries to buy an Alienware PC (now a part of Dell). Alienware was a company that made PCs that were incredible. I used to tear out ads in PC Magazine and put them on my wall. The Area 51 was a sexy case with components that were simply incredible. Now, they’re just another Dell.

Yes, Microsoft Office is considered an addon that “Adjusts Performance” and after spending over an hour deciding what wallpaper to choose for my new PC, I got overwhelmed and gave up. Wallpaper is a HUGE choice! There’s nothing about this PC to actually customize except for wallpaper and what kind of keyboard you want. This is Alienware we’re talking about. Oh well.

I get asked this pretty often so, following the festivities of this weekend, I opened on my home iMac a few tabs of people I met who are “celebrities” but YouTube stars which is different than a real celebrity. Anyway, I gave it 48 hours. Basically, twice a day I refresh the pages of these guys and see if their accounts are of interest to me. There wasn’t too much going on really and these are interesting people but the past 48 hours of tweets weren’t incredibly engaging. Dom Sagolla wrote about an issue that happens when someone gets more followers or gains popularity as has happened with me and friends on small levels. The more people follow you, the more pressure you have to be reserved, respectful and act as if your Mom was reading each tweet even if your brand is vulgar and sexist, you don’t say everything because 200,000 people will see it.

I see that with a lot of guys and maybe that’s what I’m seeing here. Additionally, these personalities get so many replies that they rarely see even 1 out of 100 and maybe reply to 1 out of 500 replies so for me to follow them, I’d like to reply sometimes and I’d like a conversation to happen. If my reply is never seen or responded to, well I just need that interaction and celebrities don’t connect that way except for the 1:1000 ratio of conversation to amount of replies they receive daily.

So, the reserved personality of the tweets where they’re frankly pretty boring and the constant fabrication of interesting moments for the fans (trust me, not all of the stuff celebrities tweet out actually happens) and the fact that I’ll never have a conversation unless I send an average of 500 tweets to them a month makes the relationship hard and those reasons enough keep me from “following”

Then there’s the spam….

These YouTube personalities (3 of the 4 that I met) post links to their latest YouTube video at least 3 times on the day the video was uploaded and again 2 more times in the next day or two. Each of these tweets doesn’t say, “have you seen my new video?” or “a reminder that I posted a new video today. Like it?” No, the tweets are misleading in a way that you would think it’s something interesting not created by the YouTube person but by someone else OR that it’s a completely new video. Example:

Here is a link to 7 tweets from one person where the same video is in the URL: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,  7

The guy tweeted the same video link within 24 hours. Today, I see FPSRussia (someone else who I was tracking debating on following) replied to someone with this:

He also has posted the same Glock destruction video multiple times and has helped me make up my mind on if I still want to follow him.

This may only apply to YouTuberz but it might apply to others as well like Bloggers and Photographers but you can’t treat Twitter Followers like they’re subscribers. If they want to subscribe to your RSS feed or YouTube channel, that’s fantastic! It’s a great feeling when someone opts in to a channel featuring your content. If you then abuse your Twitter followers just like you would a YouTube subscriber, you’re breaking the circle of trust. Here’s why I follow people:

• To be entertained / informed
• To interact and engage in conversations
• To keep up with friends and colleagues

I don’t follow people on Twitter that don’t meet at least 2 of those items. If you inform me and you’re a friend, that’s great. If you entertain me and we chat on Twitter, that’s great too. I don’t follow my Mom on Twitter. Why? She doesn’t tweet anything I care about and we don’t engage on Twitter. She only meets 1 criteria point. I don’t follow Twitter accounts for companies, blogs, celebrities, media organizations or loud mouths that ONLY tweet out links or ONLY retweet everyone or ONLY have conversations with others. You buy a DVR to fast forward through commercials. Why do you then follow a bunch of accounts who don’t interact with you and spam you with content you never asked for?

I believe that the YouTuberz I analyzed are great people. I say that because I met them and enjoyed their company for an evening. I also believe these people are talented and work very hard but I don’t believe in how they are operating their Twitter accounts. It’s nothing personal but I believe they’re doing it wrong or at least they’re operating in a way that doesn’t represent them as a person (censored tweets or overly sensational tweets about things that couldn’t possibly happen and spammy tweets that link to the same video).

@Hoppecomi is right. We follow you because we care about your content. Don’t spam us with the same link throughout the day. The reason I only follow 142 people and have 4,000 people follow me isn’t that I’m some psycho who gets off on that great friend follower ratio. It’s that I am very selective on who I follow because my time is valuable.

via Gizmodo but their blog title was pretty bad so I adopted my won:

Now SOPA is not segregation, no matter how much we hate it. But with a lesser cause, we’ve shown an exponentially lesser willingness to do anything more than click buttons and change pictures. Do you want to stop internet censorship? Why don’t you try calling a legislator, or organizing a boycott of the bill’s supporter? Even a simple Facebook status or tweet link explaining why SOPA is bad works. Do you want to help Iranian dissidents? Open a web proxy so they can talk safely with the rest of the world.

Or, christ, don’t do anything at all. But turning your profile picture green, adding a black banner over your face, or tacking your surname onto another online petition is the adult equivalent of slapping a peace sign onto your teenage backpack. Fauxtivism is worse than nothing—it trivializes the issue, mistakes gesture for action—and makes you feel good when you haven’t accomplished a thing.

I don’t partake in ANY online activism beyond what is written on this blog. Changing my avatar does so little because you get what you put in. If your only contribution is changing your avatar green, don’t expect it to have any impact on the results of what you’re rallying for or against. I have taking action on things myself by donating time, money or a phone call to things I believe in. I don’t take my blog offline to prove a point like Wikipedia is doing.

So you’re raising awareness? Great! Now, the entire world is VERY aware of the problem but no one has actually done anything about it. While you’re busy spreading awareness, I’ll be busy finding a solution. We should find more solutions instead of just passing this note on to 20 friends with one click of the Forward button in our Inbox.

★

via Quora:

Exercising every day. Nothing beats this. If you really want to make a change to your energy levels on a daily basis, your overall mood, your self confidence, your health and your happiness, then this is one thing that will get you there. 

Back in the day, life was active. To survive, you had to perform tasks with your hands like chopping down trees and farming. Then, things did get easier but people had hobbies that were sporting or were task based. Only the most socially inept sat around building models and reading. Now, just having an active hobby isn’t enough to pull us away from the awesome things we can do just by sitting on a couch.

You will live a half-life if you don’t remain healthy. Believing you’re exempt from this is a lie.

★

via Alternet:

For most of history, meals were very variable. A medieval northern European peasant “would start his morning with ale or bread or both, then bring some sort of food out into the fields and have a large meal sometime in the afternoon,” Freedman says. “He might have what he called ‘dinner’ at 2 in the afternoon or 6 in the evening, or later” — depending on his work, the season and other factors. 

“He wouldn’t have a large evening meal. He would just grab something small and quick. Dinner back then tended not to be as distinct as it has become in the last two centuries.”

And it tended to be eaten in daylight — not because eating earlier was considered healthier, but because cooking, consuming and cleaning up is difficult in the dark or by firelight.

Eat when you’re truly hungry and allow yourself to be hungry. Feel hungry for an hour before you decide to finally eat and, when you do, eat a raw and unprocessed vegetable item followed by a small portion of protein via vegetables or meat and wash that down with two glasses of water. You’ll feel full for hours and hours after without any desire to snack. When you’re hungry…eat again.

★

Via Gizmodo:

An executive in a really nice suit from an up-and-coming display company tells me they plan to ship a half a million units this year. I try to figure out how much that is in kilograms of rare earth metals, but I can’t. Wolfram Alpha turns out to be pretty useless for this kind of thing. The CEO is available for interviews.

There is a hole in my heart dug deep by advertising and envy and a desire to see a thing that is new and different and beautiful. A place within me that is empty, and that I want to fill up. The hole makes me think electronics can help. And of course, they can.

They make the world easier and more enjoyable. They boost productivity and provide entertainment and information and sometimes even status. At least for a while. At least until they are obsolete. At least until they are garbage.

Electronics are our talismans that ward off the spiritual vacuum of modernity; gilt in Gorilla Glass and cadmium. And in them we find entertainment in lieu of happiness, and exchanges in lieu of actual connections.

And, oh, I am guilty. I am guilty. I am guilty.

Speaking of my post about taking a break from tech conferences…

This sort of writing isn’t about CES. It’s about technology as a whole and it’s about how we interact with that technology and how it is utilized. If you use technology like a utility to communicate, educate and create then you’re on a good path. If Technology becomes a replacement to your television, then that’s not how it should be used and yes, I’m guilty of being too entertained by my electronics and then upgrading to the latest tech when it comes out. Read this post and think beyond CES and look at your self in a mirror while reading it.

★

UPDATE: The video I was in is now online. You can watch it here via YouTube or the embed is at the bottom of the post. I make an intro at 4:57. Also, WoodysGamertag posted this behind the scenes video you might enjoy.

Urban Dictionary’s definition of “YouTube Stars”

One of the people in a youtube video that gets mad view counts. although youtube star status can be acheived through any type of video, people who are youtube stars are usually considered to be the type of people who have no lives and think their videos make them awesome beyond comparison.

My sisters exclusively get their entertainment from YouTube. For them, my friend Ben is a “celebrity” and they’re a bit creepy about it. Telling them stories about my friend Justine leads them to tears as if you were to tell me that you’re best friends with Bill Murray except I’d be stoked but not crying tears of joy. Anyone can be a celebrity if their image, achievements and popularity are high. The more you see someone in places that are exclusive like TV, magazines and web sites, it’s a complex we have as humans to follow those people and adore them. The more airplay a band has, the more popular they are despite the actual quality of their music. I was pretty cool yesterday among friends for going to this “YouTube Celebrity House Party” thing but I never really got that excited. For me, living in the mountains, any event is awesome no matter what. Let’s start at square one.

I don’t follow celebrities on Twitter. Hell, I don’t even follow accounts that don’t mutually follow me back. As I’ve said before, that’s an ego thing I have to get over. If you unfollow me, I will unfollow back no matter how much I like the person. So, I do subscribe to a few YouTube channels..18 to be exact but I don’t follow the guys who create these channels despite their tweets being pretty entertaining. I’ll check individual accounts once a month to laugh a bit but never follow. It’s a personal choice. Anyway, Saturday morning I was watching YouTube via my AppleTV when a Call of Duty commentator posted a skiing video…from Killington which is 40 minutes from my house. I was bummed that this guy was at Killington at some point and never did a mini-meetup. Not many people come to Vermont so it would have been a treat. In the description, I noticed he was at Killington right then. I commented on a YouTube video for probably the first time ever saying how bummed I was because my plan was to go snowboarding that day but I wasn’t feeling well after 6 days of eating only juice.

The day went on, I blogged about it and then I received a note from someone via email around 6PM….”Hey, why don’t you hang out with the guys tonight at Killington. Just check our Twitter accounts in a bit.” I did and I saw this:

I texted Elizabeth, put on some pants, grabbed a crap load of alcohol and jumped in the car. At 8PM, we arrived and that’s when the fun started.

As expected, the great thing about events in New England (Not Boston but REAL New England) is when there are events up here, don’t expect a crazy crowd which is great for me because I like more intimate gatherings. It’s why I’m skipping SXSW this year. Large crowds really dilute the experience. I’d prefer to just bullet out everything that happened below but keep in mind and I know this is being enforced too much, I’m not like giddy about meeting celebrities. I got over that in San Francisco over years of celebs being around the tech scene. However, from a “fan” perspective, these are all interesting things.

1. Muscles Glasses poured me a beer. The pour wasn’t very good but having a youtube star make you drinks was certainly interesting.
2. I got to meet FPSRussia
3. I also met the entire Epic Meal Time cast and crew
4. I also got to chat with WoodysGamertag
5. I once again realized that so many of these guys really don’t know what to do with fans. They’re far more awkward about it than the fans are. You guys are celebrities now. Deal with it.
6. I was filmed a few times during the show..not sure if those will make it into the next episode.
7. I got to taste candied bacon cooked by EMT. It was delicious.
8. Elizabeth was able to sit in a room where combined Twitter Followers surpassed a million. I think she enjoyed that.
9. Some really cool people were there. Maybe a total of 15 people showed up outside of the cast & crew
10. I got to see an episode of Epic Meal time being filmed.
11. Laughing your ass of for 6 hours REALLY makes  you abdominals sore. I wish EpicMeal Time would upload the outtakes because these guys are REALLY funny
12. I’m getting TOO old to stay up past midnight. My entire Sunday was ruined.
13. 15 days into my detox of no meat or alcohol, I did have meat and alcohol. I didn’t have a lot but I did falter for one night.

So, that was my night in summary.

Behind the Scenes:

On Sunday the 8th, I had dinner with my girlfriend and that was my plan for the last solid foods until today, the 16th. The 8 day fast became a 6 day fast which is disappointing but I was invited to an event where the food being served was simply unavoidable. I’ll write more about that in tomorrow’s post. After my evening of solids, I spent days 7 and 8 back on the juice. Of the 8 days, I only had juice supply for 6 so a lot of that time was spent with water but with one vegetable juice at a juice bar in town. Overall, things were similar to my last fast. Day 1 is fine but 2 and 3 were pretty painful. By day 4, things were completely fine and I could continue indefinitely. That’s how most people feel during fasting. Hunger goes away and you will psychologically crave food more than your body actually needs it.

The $450 6 day juice supply is so expensive that I won’t be doing it again. I decided after my 2nd juice shipment arrived that it was time to find an alternative. BluePrintCleanse charges $75 a day and that includes the overnight shipping of fresh juice. It’s cheaper if you live in NYC and can pick up the juice each day. I decided to purchase my own juicer. It’s a Breville juicer with different speed settings and is really easy to clean up and is mid-range of their line. I’ll talk more about it after a few weeks of use. This morning, instead of spending $75 in juice, I instead bought $60 in vegetables and that will last me 4-5 days. My weekly investment minus the $200 juicer should come out to $100. I’m thrilled with this number and I’m getting fresher juice and am also controlling which ingredients go in my body. BluePrintCleanse offers a 21 day fast but those juices got boring after a few days. Now, I can spice things up.

Alongside the juice, I also bought a basic $80 Colonix program for 30 days from Dr. Natura. My parents did this at age 40 so I thought my juice diet would be a nice time to also take on this colonix program. I’ve seen results already which is great! I’ll continue that until the pills, fiber and tea run out mid-February.

After completing 6 days of juicing, I was feeling pretty weak. I had energy but not my usual energy. Eating solids would probably be good but maybe giving up on meat is certainly an option for me as I didn’t miss meat. I just missed things like eggs, apples and cheese. I’d love a cookie right now or perhaps some ice cream. Things like that are what I miss, not steaks and burgers. The plan was to go snowboarding all weekend since I have Monday off but I just don’t feel like it. I get lightheaded on my morning run so have decided to spend my time on deep breathing exercises, stretching and simple things like pushups. Most of my time is spent laying down reading. If you like reading, fasting is pretty nice.

My next steps will probably surprise you. I’m going to keep juicing but not fasting. Until I decide not to, I’ll start my day on 15 minutes of juicing where I take roughly 8 pounds of vegetables and juice them into my washed BluePrintCleanse bottles. I’ll make 5 juices and the 6th will be a breakfast drink consisting of 5 oranges juiced with the peels on into a glass of fiber powder.  I’ll have carrot juice for lunch, celery, spinach, kale and apples for an afternoon snack and then dinner can be either a juice OR a well balanced meal of a spinach and walnut salad with chicken, eggs or fish and something hearty like a baked potato. By allowing myself to eat dinner, I can go back to the gym every day and workout without feeling lightheaded. BluePrintCleanse calls this “Juice till Dinner” and I’m excited about it. Basically, I wake up 30 minutes earlier and prepare every meal for the day and set out chicken to defrost and then, before 8PM, I’ve only taken in roughly 500 calories and about 10x what my body needs in fiber and, at dinner, I add another 700 calories in the form of a dinner following my work out and a 300 calorie whey protein shake right before bed.

The new diet will continue until I don’t want to do it anymore. We’ll see how long I can last. I haven’t weighed myself yet but I will be doing that tomorrow at the gym. Of course, for the remainder of the month, my “detox” will continue which is just over 2 weeks from today. I promised myself no meat but once a week and I’m going to scratch that. I may not eat meat every day but there are days I’d like to have it. Where possible, I’ll use fish, eggs and soy based protein in order to adhere to my detox but no promises.

So, that’s the update! Overall, I’m halfway into the detox and everything is great. I didn’t have any weight loss goals for this month. It’s just a reset of my mind’s approach to what I do each day and it hasn’t been easy. However, I don’t miss coffee as much as I thought or beer or alcohol. I don’t miss the things that were thought to be essential to my weekly routines. I like that. I also finished reading the 1st book yesterday and start a new one today. Everything is on track and I look forward to sharing my juicing results with you all in a few weeks!

Elizabeth and I were going to go snowboarding today. She ended up going and I stayed home. The reason is that after 6 days without any solid food, I’m not confident that I can snowboard and stay conscious. I’d rather not push myself. The bad news is that I find out 5 YouTube personalities I subscribe to

• woodysgamertag
• FPSRussia
• EpicMealTime
• whiteboy7thst
• MusclesGlasses

Well, they’re all in Vermont skiing right now at Killington where I have a pass. I shouldn’t have been so lame and I probably could have met up with these guys. Oh well. It’s 12:30 and I’m well into a book so I should just keep drinking juice and forget about it. Sigh.

I discovered this video today:

It takes one person to inspire others and to destroy everything. The fate of the world really is in our hands. I have a fast metabolism so, despite the fact that you can consider me overweight, I haven’t gained a pound in years. My weight at 270 pounds has remained constant mostly because I exercise and don’t’ eat at restaurants too often. My portions are huge but what I’m eating is not big like a burger with fries. However, my portions are big and I started weighing my food leading up to the fasting and detox being performed this month. My average plate of food is 1-2 pounds (minus the plate). I did some math and that works out to an average of 4.5 pounds per day of food which is roughly 31.5 pounds of food per week that I ingest. This is excluding snacks, protein shakes, beer and liquids. This is just what’s on my plate.

That’s absurd.

Starting Sunday, I reduced my weekly food intake to 0 pounds. I’m drinking vegetable juices which do count as food but in a different way. I’m drinking 6 juices at 1 pound per juice.That’s a lot of juice but most of it escapes via urine and nearly all of the nutrients are utilized. My carbon footprint really didn’t go down but I’m sure a few chickens were happy with my decision. We consume 20 billion chickens a year in the US so my 5 aren’t really that big of an impact and I made some local farmers very happy with the juice I drank.

What if we all switched our diets from the 60% Meat, 30% Dairy, 5% Starch and 4% Vegetables to 90% Veggies and only 10% of our nutrition arriving from Meat and Dairy? That’s quite an impact. Protein is vital but it doesn’t have to arrive all from meat. I can get protein from nuts and soybeans. It’s proven that if we switch our diet to 90% vegetables, obesity, depression, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases would drop significantly. Before adding exercise, the health of our world would sharply improve by switching to vegetables.

I love our animals and I respect our animals and I spend extra time and effort to ensure the meat I eat was given additional care but I’m not saying meat is murder (it is but you get the point). I’m just saying, beyond the animals, the actual fate of our society would shift if we simply shift our eating habits.

After 6 days of only eating vegetable juice, I don’t feel any different. I feel pretty great. My 2nd order of juice arrived today and I’ll continue my fast through Monday for a full 9 days without solids. To feel so great and have so much energy seems weird. I though my energy came from meat and solid foods? I feel great.

I’m not the only person doing this. There are more of us who are shifting our diets. Maybe you’re next?

Wes Anderson is back with a new film and it looks fantastic! I believe to like Wes Anderson you must be a hipster but I don’t care. These films are so great. I may do a WA marathon this weekend while I’m on the last 3 days of my fast. Rushmore to Darjeeling Limited. The new film, titled Moonrise Kingdon will be out in May. The trailer is below.

I miss surfing a lot. I miss skateboarding and inline skating and skim boarding and all of those things. What I miss the most is surfing. Snowboarding is NOTHING like sufring. You can pretend it is and you can go fast and carve and take on half pipes but snowboarding is just what skateboarders do in the winter if they’re not fortunate enough to live in So-Cal where parks stay open year round.

Yeah, I miss surfing a lot. This video made me homesick a bit.

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