Smooth Harold, The Blog of Blake Snow

How to get “rich”

Blake — Mon, 28 May 2012 15:48:18 +0000

I was searching for “internet authors” last week and stumbled on this man’s webpage, who dubs himself “the best-selling Internet author of all time.” I chuckled a bit upon reading his claim and seeing his photo, until I realized he knows what he’s talking about on at least one subject, How to get rich: In the long run, [...]

Keep telling yourself excessive work hours are a noble endeavor

Blake — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:09:42 +0000

When I was younger and dumber, I used to work 11 hour weekdays, half-day Saturdays, and was mentally distracted with work for much of the rest of time. Although I work for myself and have a ridiculously flexible of schedule, I vacationed very little at the time. I was seeking fortune and professional notoriety. I [...]

Four albums you should be listening to but probably aren’t

Blake — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:00:14 +0000

Either I enjoy music more than ever or 2012 is off to a great start. Either way, here are four recent albums that you should, at the very least, consider sampling: Alabama Shakes, Boys & Girls ($5). If musical eras are in fact overactions to previous eras, then Alabama Shakes might have just ushered in [...]

At the movies: Is applause appropriate in the absence of performers?

Blake — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:11:55 +0000

Whenever I hear a theater audience applauding for a movie, even one I enthusiastically approve of, I look like this: At the same time, I’m happy to applaud during live events when the recipient of the applause — usually performers or athletes — are in attendance. But it’s always felt “wrong” for me to applaud after a pre-recorded film concludes, unless [...]

You don’t have to “put in your time” to take time off

Blake — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:47:24 +0000

As I’ve said before, the idea of overworking yourself while you’re young so you can relax later in life is bunk. Which is why I take issue with the below remark by Amber Mac, writing for Fast Company on how to validate your unwillingness to take time off: I’m not saying that [notable businessmen who leave [...]

Why I love web comments

Blake — Fri, 04 May 2012 17:19:31 +0000

Reason #428: The YouTube comment thread for Maurice Ravel’s masterful single-movement crescendo, Boléro. Some of my favorites: doesn’t anyone ever feel bad for the drummer? if i could squeeze my whole childhood into one thing it would be this song If I had a dollar for every poorly written Ravel piece, I’d have zero dollars. I love the part from 0:00 [...]

How to fix online comments in one fell swoop

Blake — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:07:46 +0000

Trolls — breaking online comments since 1994. Online comments and reader reaction to news are often enlightening. Unless of course they’re disrupted by attention trolls, which they often are. Which is why commenting for the most part is still broken. Even the world’s largest bloggerprenuers know this. Blocking trolls, however, is useless. They just create new accounts to perpetuate the [...]

This wired life: You’re still doing it wrong

Blake — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:59:32 +0000

The below commentary by Sherry Turkle in the New York Times is brimming with so much contemporary wisdom, I’m gonna share my favorite excerpts in the hope you’ll not only read the entire article, but ponder what it’s telling you: I spend the summers at a cottage on Cape Cod, and for decades I walked the same [...]

Timex “easy reader” is precisely that

Blake — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:57:09 +0000

The Timex easy reader is the best watch I’ve ever owned. The reason: The clock typography is perfectly weighted, sized, and immediately recognizable. You might say a watch is just a watch, or that the time it takes to discern one analog clock from another is immaterial. It’s not. After using my smoking hot Puma watch for a year, the [...]

Proof that lack of focus kills a company (or how to save Sony)

Blake — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:21:55 +0000

The New York times ran an insightful piece this weekend on the decline of Sony, which is valued at just a quarter of where it was a decade ago, and just one thirtieth the size of Apple: “Sony makes too many models, and for none of them can they say, ‘This contains our best, most cutting-edge [...]