kevin rothermel

New Year’s Resolutions, for real this time.

kevin — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:59:37 +0000

Early in December, I decided that this year I would take on some New Year’s Resolutions to finally take action on a few ideas that I’ve had, and I posted some initial thoughts on what they could be here.

I had two rules: the first rule was that they had to be resolutions with clear finished-states … none of the typical, arbitrary things that people pursue like “be more organized.” The second rule was that I had to post them publicly in order to generate some fear of consequence for not following through. It’s easy to rationalize not doing something if no one else is there to call you out on it.

So after much deliberation and procrastination, and taking into account feedback from comments and real live humans on my earlier post, here’s what I’ve decided on for my New Year’s Resolutions for 2010. None of it will be easy, but I think all of it will be interesting/useful/rewarding.

Finish the two drumming method books I bought last year – Drumming has always been my foremost talent and thing that I love to do, but for the past 10 years or so I haven’t been putting in the practice time that I should to be as good as I can be. Last year I bought two method books. One is called Extreme Interdependence. It was written to help develop coordination between the limbs, and it’s ridiculously difficult. I think I’m on page 3. The other is called The Drummer’s Bible: How to play every style of music, from Afro-Cuban to Zydeco. Originally I planned on practicing 15 minutes a day, but there will be days when that is impossible.
Write two blog posts per week – I once commented to a friend that nothing kills a planning blog faster than having a planning job. I’d like to get this thing back up to full speed this year because I like doing it, I feel guilty when I don’t do it, and it forces me to think about things that I otherwise wouldn’t. This was originally supposed to be one post a day, but I’m not sure that would be good for anyone.
Take a storytelling class – Most of my job really boils down to telling stories, as does most of the things that I enjoy doing. I want to get better at it. And it would be helpful for the next item on my list:
Write a novel – I’ve wanted to write a book for a long time, but I’ve never really had the time, and I’ve been kind of scared to start one. After I learned about NaNoWriMo from Claire, my perspective changed. Get over the fear of writing something terrible, and just write something at all.
Finish Learning Processing – I started this programming book a few months ago, but was sidetracked by some huge projects at work that required some late nights.
Take a web programming class – I want to continue to learn programming so that I might be able to make use of it one day. Maybe Ruby? Not sure where to take a good class for this though.
Build one web thingy – Put that programming knowledge to good use by designing some kind of application for the Web.
Write a business plan – Mike K. has been stirring my desire to start something up since we were back at VCU Adcenter. I have some ideas, now lets see what one looks like on paper. Maybe it will pave the way for more?
Run a 5k – I need to be in better shape, and I think that training for a 5k could help me get there.
Become an early riser – I’ve made an allowance for the arbitrary here. There’s so much more I could get done if I could drag myself out of bed at a decent hour regularly.

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BARF MAC

kevin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:12:44 +0000

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Get your ohm on, bro!

kevin — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:07:40 +0000

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Radio finds out that people are liars.

kevin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:58:25 +0000

The NYTimes is running a story today about how the radio industry has switched from paper diaries for people to self-report what they listen to, to electronic “portable people meters.” And it turns out (shock, horror) that people don’t listen to what they said they listened to. They often just reported what they thought would paint them in the best light.

Some of the findings:

When 12 major areas, including New York and Los Angeles, switched to the system last year, classical radio’s market share fell 10.7 percent in those areas.
Talk radio’s market share declined 2.6 percent in the study of areas where the meters were used.
Spanish-language stations’ ratings declined sharply — at Univision’s KLVE in Los Angeles, for example, ratings fell 54 percent in the first quarter of 2009 from the same period the year before, leading it and other broadcasters to testify before Congress on Dec. 2 that the new system is discriminatory.
Men had been thought to make up 34.7 percent of the soft-rock audience, according to Arbitron, based largely on paper entries. This month, Research Director and the publication Inside Radio released their analysis of meter-only cities from July through October, showing men make up 40.1 percent of the total light-rock audience, a jump of 16 percent.

It’s going to be interesting to watch more and more conventional research get debunked by the data streams that we’re all emitting. I’m off to listen to some light-rock.

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Humans in Danger: Maui Edition

kevin — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 01:30:28 +0000

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kevin — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:38:44 +0000

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For all of your B-roll needs…

kevin — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:39:05 +0000

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New Years Resolutions (in beta)

kevin — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:40:23 +0000

I’ve never really made new years resolutions before. Partly because they are doomed to fail for most people, but mostly because I annually forget think about them until people start telling me about the fantastic things they are going to (not) do next year as the ball drops.

This year is different. There are a number of things that I’ve been meaning to do (zefrank might call it Brain Crack), and I thought that making them into actionable new years resolutions would make it easy to put together a plan and accomplish them. In order for this to work, the first rule was that they had to be things with clear finished-states … nothing arbitrary like “eat less meat” or “be more hilarious.” The second rule was that I had to post them publicly in order to generate some fear of consequence for not following through. It’s easy to rationalize not doing something if no one else is there to call you out on it.

“nobody calls me chicken.” – McFly

So with all of this in mind, I sat down the other night and wrote out a list of the things that I wanted to accomplish this year. Some of them seem doable, some of them might be really difficult, and maybe there are things that I’ve left out. So I thought posting them early, in beta, would give me a chance to revise and optimize the list before 2010 actually hits.

Here’s the list as it stands now.

Practice drums 15 minutes every day – Drumming has always been my foremost talent and thing that I love to do, but for the past 10 years or so I haven’t been putting in the practice time that I should to be as good as I can be.
One blog post a day – I once commented to a friend that nothing kills a planning blog faster than having a planning job. I’d like to get this thing back up to full speed this year because I like doing it, I feel guilty when I don’t do it, and it forces me to notice things and think about things that I otherwise wouldn’t.
Take a storytelling class – Most of my job really boils down to telling stories, as does most of the things that I enjoy doing. I want to get better at it. And it would be helpful for the next item on my list:
Write a novel – I’ve wanted to write a book for a long time, but I’ve never really had the time, and I’ve been kind of scared to start one. After I learned about NaNoWriMo from Claire, my perspective changed. Get over the fear of writing something terrible, and just write something at all.
Finish Learning Processing – I started this programming book a few months ago, but was sidetracked by some huge projects at work that required some late nights.
Take a web programming class – I want to continue to learn programming so that I might be able to make use of it one day. Maybe Ruby? Not sure where to take a good class for this though.
Build one web thingy – Put that programming knowledge to good use by designing some kind of application for the Web.
Write a business plan – Mike K. has been stirring my desire to start something up since we were back at VCU Adcenter. I have some ideas, now lets see what one looks like on paper. Maybe it will pave the way for more?
Become an early riser – This kind of seems arbitrary … I need to think of a way to make this more concrete. Maybe something like “wake up at 5:30 every weekday” or something like that? That sounds brutal.
Learn to hunt – Not to sound too crazy, but I feel like if peak oil comes, we’re all in really big trouble. And this would be a necessary skill to live. Also, I want to learn to do more things that don’t involve computers. Real world things.
Learn how to build a drum – Again, I want to learn to do more with my hands. And start a company. And have a better drumset. And have an excuse to use powertools.
Run a 5k – I need to be in better shape, and I think running would be a good way to get there. Training for a 5k will give me a goal to reach which might help me get there.

So there it is. Anyone have any thoughts, suggestions, criticisms or comments to give before the big 010110 gets here? What are your resolutions going to be?

(image stolen from here)

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Sentinel X-Mas MP3: Silver Bells

kevin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:38:52 +0000

Happy Holidays! We recorded a Christmas song. You can download it here:

Silver Bells – Sentinel

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Please vote for my band to open for Muse, Metric, etc…

kevin — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:28:03 +0000

Hi there.

I don’t normally like to use this space for things like this, but my band has been presented with an opportunity by the local San Francisco radio station, Live 105, to open a huge concert featuring Muse, AFI, Vampire Weekend and Metric. We’ve made the initial cut from 115 bands to the top 15, and now need people to vote for us so that we can make the top 5.

If you have a few seconds, I sure would appreciate it if you could make your way over to vote for SENTINEL HERE. I can’t even express how fun it would be to play the Oracle Arena.

Thanks!

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