Take the survey – the more the merrier.

I just took A List Apart’s annual web business survey. Check it out and contribute to help give them a decent selection of responses.

Booking Bands + Campfires

Just got back from a great 3-day excursion to the Lassen Volcanic National Park and highly recommend it to anyone looking for amazing scenery and bizarre geologic formations. With places like Yosemite and Tahoe so close, I think this park isn’t top of mind and I was completely unfamiliar with it.

One of the highlights was sitting around the campfire playing Booking Bands with my wife Jennifer and our friends, Mouy and Ian. I first learned of this little brain exercise when I heard Jim Coudal speak at the SXSWi festival this past March. When the floor was opened for questions, Coudal said any questioner needed to open with a booking band. I took it a step further by adding Hollywood to the mix: Interview with a Vampire Weekend at Bernies (if you follow the link to Jim’s speech, my question is on there at 37:10).

Basically, try to combine a band name with the title of a book (or vice versa). Coudal described the creative process occurring in your brain as massive rolodexes where you might lock on a band name and then begin rifling through book titles trying to find a match.

One thing all four of us realized is that we all need to read more. Needless to say, the game never ends. I spent most of Monday randomly sending IM’s with Mouy when one of us would come up with another one. I started writing down our list and I’m sure I didn’t get everything from around the campfire. So without further ado….

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zero7 habits of Highly Effective People
The Old Man and the Sea & Cake
National Velvet Underground
Big Black Beauty
The Flying Burrito Brothers Karamazov
The Doobie Brothers Karamazov
The Bacon Brothers Karamazov
The Allmann Brothers Karamazov
The Beach Boys from Brazil
The Petshop Boys from Brazil
The Boys from Brazilian Girls
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Theft
Al Green Eggs and Ham
The Dangerous Book for Boys to Men
KRS-1 Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Love in the Time of Choler-Abba
A New Earth Wind and Fire
Cujo Strummer and the Mescaleros
Jimmy Eat World According to Garp
Interview with a Vampire Weekend
Everclear and Present Danger
Three Cups of TRex
The Sorcerer’s Stone Temple Pilots
Cat Power of One
Cat Power of Now
Of Mice and Men at Work
Arcade Fire Starter
Slaughterhouse Five for Fighting
The Woman in White Stripes
Cinderella
Steppenwolf
A Midsommer’s Night Dream Syndicate
All Quiet on the Western Front 242
System of a Down and Out in Paris and London
Oliver Twisted Sister
Flaming Lipstick Jungle
Aimee Mann of La Mancha
Three Musketeers for Fears
Lovely Bones Thugs & Harmony
Shiny Toy Guns, Germs and Steele
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Leave a comment with yours!

Spontaneous beauty

There’s a site/blog I’ve passed around to some peeps in the past called the Daily Monster. When I first discovered it, designer Stefan Bucher was on monster #87 or something like that. Today, he’s just posted monster #200 and it’s yet again impressive. I can relate to the spontaneity of his illustrations because I also often make an illustration out of spilled coffee on my notebook.

It’s a great exercise to try out because you’re drawing your creativity from a deeper place within.

It’s been quite some time since I had visited but Stefan sent out a polite email announcing his completion of the 2nd 100. The public evolution of his illustration style has been fun to observe. Over the course of time, he’s built up a great following, been featured in some prominent pubs like Wired, Business Week and the Onion. All of this because he did an idea just to do it. This passion of his has turned into books, DVDs and surely it’s been an exposure vehicle to win new business for his design profession.

Well done, Stefan. You’re an inspiration.

How to Become an Eco Bounty Hunter

Tim Ferriss, Treehugger.com and Gizmodo team up with a great contest to help reduce tech-waste. Specifically, they are targeting the phone companies to accept old and discarded cell phones through the mail. Great idea.

read more | digg story

Gaping Void’s off the tweet

So, yes, Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void has gone cold turkey on Twitter. It seems some people are upset by the whole situation. This is a pretty fascinating example of how a brand (in this case, a person) is ‘owned’ by its fans. Much like when an artist does something drastic at the risk of alienating fans (Dylan goes electric, oh my), Hugh’s fans feel a sense of ownership and therefore, betrayal at his abandonment. I think they’re attached to the “ideal” of Hugh and not the person. It’s classic relational misunderstanding and something we’ve all probably experienced when you dug someone and they didn’t dig you… errr, or vice versa. Heh, yeah, vice versa…

I don’t feel like Hugh left us all high and dry, especially since he’ll keep his blog going and continue to draw cartoons.

What I’ll miss from his tweets are some of the “finds” he passed along either from other twitterers he followed or interesting articles he came across. We just won’t get that from his blog. He followed a LOT of people, much like Robert Scoble does. Used in this fashion, Twitter can quickly consume your day if you’re not prudent with your time.

I met Hugh at SXSW this year and he was both friendly and attentive and these traits could be what drove him away from Twitter. You just can’t have THAT many personal contacts without sacrificing something else. Maybe he will come back to Twitter and use it like some suggest: as a way to blast 1-way communications. That would be grand, but in the meantime, I know where to find the cat and I look forward to more ‘tooning.

[UPDATE] Late on the 15th, Hugh re-emerged in the Twitter universe and started slinging some serious mud at folks who were dragging his name, reputation and “brand” through some other serious mud. It was acerbic and today (the 16th) it looks like he removed the nasty comments from his Twitter thread (if that’s possible).  The drama continues.

Taking it to another level.

In an earlier post, I talked about MOO and their exemplary service they provided me. Today, I had another taste (indirectly) of someone going out of their way to be kick ass. Of course, it all began with Gary Vaynerchuk and Wine Library.

My parents were about to visit and I wanted to ask Gary for some hidden vineyard gems in Sonoma. He and a bunch of other internet intelligentsia were in Sonoma a couple weeks ago and I attended a party at De Loach where Daniel Burka of Pownce and Digg told me his favorite visit of their day had been to Forth Vineyard. Wondering if there were other places I shouldn’t miss, I sent Gary an email which he promptly forwarded to Wine Library’s Wine Director.

Ian’s list was extensive and sure enough, Forth made the list. I contacted a couple and everyone responded with gracious replies. Gerry Forth replied that though they don’t have their own tasting room, he’d be happy to meet my parents personally at their co-op tasting room and gave me his cell # to pass on.

About 4 hours later, I’m talking to my dad and he’s raving about what a great guy Gerry was and how interesting his whole story is.

So, a public shout out and thank you to everyone who helped; you have an advocate for life.

Twitter Updates for 2008-04-05

• Great weekend to all! #
• @sharayray I’ll let you know if we rally. I’m not sure how long the play will be, plus Jen will be recovering from the Cinderella ride. #
• http://apps.facebook.com/wilsonclash/vote.php Go find Tim Letscher’s photos and vote for him. </Shameless plug> #
• @garyvee When *don’t* you think like that? You’re like butter; on a roll. #
• @ijustine Explain dinglepops. #

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Twitter Updates for 2008-04-04

• @emmanuelmota Drag, re: the MOO card misprint. What went wrong? User error? #
• @KRITSTIEQ needs to step up on the avatar front. Lemme know if’n you need help. #
• @ShaRayRay *thwack #
• Sitting here with @KRISTIEQ showing her some Twitter love. #

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Fascinating Decay

My daughters were in our back garden over the weekend and returned indoors with the skeletons of tomatillos. I have been wanting to play with the Leica’s macro capabilities so this seemed like a great subject.

I could have shot photos of this all night, but here are nine that I feel turned out s’alright.

Twitter Updates for 2008-03-30

• It’s satisfying to get some tunes blowing through the speakers and cleaning house on a sunny day. Bring spring. #

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