Happy St Patrick’s Day
Yet another week with to little time for RB. So to keep you busy, I offer my people this brief time line of our glorious past.
Southpark Yourself
I really don’t have time to waste like this.
I would make a good looking character though, maybe next season.
link via Jason Calacanis
Blogging for fun and profit
A cool response from Tim Bray, one of the Sun Microsystems bloggers, to some of the stories circulating lately about how blogging can be dangerous to your career.
Ten Reasons Why Blogging is Good For Your Career
1. You have to get noticed to get promoted.
2. You have to get noticed to get hired.
3. It really impresses people when you say “Oh, I’ve written about that, just google for XXX and I’m on the top page” or “Oh, just google my name.”
4. No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice.
5. Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage.
6. Knowing more also means you’re more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open.
7. Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people.
8. If you’re an engineer, blogging puts you in intimate contact with a worse-is-better 80/20 success story. Understanding this mode of technology adoption can only help you.
9. If you’re in marketing, you’ll need to understand how its rules are changing as a result of the current whirlwind, which nobody does, but bloggers are at least somewhat less baffled.
10. It’s a lot harder to fire someone who has a public voice, because it will be noticed.
It all makes sense, there are definetly a few cats out there who seem to have gone out of their way to get fired as a result of their words. But for the most part expressing yourself, unless you happen to be retarded, is not going to hurt your advancment.
Where oh where has my Paxton gone?…
It’s been over a week since I’ve written anything for RadioBall, which is the longest stretch of down time the site has seen in a few months. The last two weeks have beaten me up pretty good as far as brainstorming sessions and my own development on more than a few projects I’ve found myself involved in. So I figured I would make up for my lack pf writing by laying out some of those plans for ya’ll.
1.Volcanoboy has seen a rather impressive increase in traffic over the last month, both with user activity and content development. Duncan has added some great new features, like the new VB jukebox, to the site as well as made some outstanding refinements. Considering all of our growth thus far has come strictly word of mouth, the recent upswing is more than welcome. Expect a few big announcements in the next month or so, as our plan for world domination is right on schedule.
2. Duncan, Mike Mars and I will be recording the first podcast for 15gis.com, part of the Volcanoboy Media Network. The last week on that front has consisted of laying out the technical aspects of the recording. Not that there will be any revolutionary use of the technology per say; but our plan is to record all of the shows in the field to better represent the community were catering too. If you feel that the world has been lacking any sort of user friendly, progressive broadcast of independent music, we’ve got the programming for you. “15 Gigs of Fame”, will only be the first of many topical podcasts that are planned for distribution via 15gigs.com. The first show will be Monday March 7th, immediately following this month’s Networking Mixer which runs 8-10pm at the Lucky Dog Music Hall time around. While I’m on the subject, if you haven’t been to a Mixer yet, I can not urge you enough to give it a go. These events are by nature what you make of them, but the affiliations that are being made through these events have more balls rolling faster than I had previously thought possible in ol’ Worcester.
3. Finally. For over a year now, Duncan, Greg Munroe and I have been talking about putting together a television show. The original concept was to capture the general level of ridiculousness that seems to come about every time the three of us are together. Think Jackass meets Tom Green meets David Letterman meets the Iron Chef meets Spice on Demand. The idea being to put together a show in a format that will be suitable for both public access distribution (because it’s just that good) as well as web casting, think video blog. The hold up has mostly been one of timing, the three of us just don’t have much to spare, but general disorganization surrounding the idea has also been a factor. Well we just added a fourth brain to the mix and I think this cat has the power to finally get things cruising. The oh so talented David Parmenter, will be taking the helm essentially as our producer, but due to his proven skill behind the camera he’s also going to be taking the reigns as our video director. I predict this project will lead, very quickly, to either a gig with Comedy Central or a slightly larger criminal record. Either will be acceptable to me as long as it’s all caught on film.
4. Music. There was a time when music was my focus. Then the Average White Boys fired me and I was relegated to 2nd string scenester type hanger-on; dark times my friends, dark times indeed. Not to long ago, the amazing Dj Shame pushed 72 virgin tracks of his musical mysticism my way. The plan was to work out, at the very least, an EP with fellow local Nytmare. The two of us finally got crackin on that yet to be named project last week, expect some utterly fantastic product to be rolling out the doors very shortly. It’s been way to long since I was on a stage. I’m looking forward to driving yet another stake through the heart of all that is good and pure in Worcester.
5. A week or so ago Brian Goslow from Worcester Magazine contacted me for a story he is working on relating to Wi-Fi availability in the Worcester area. There was a time, not to long ago, when I took almost daily Wardriving trips through the city. When I was working as an EMT it was the only way that I could be sure I would be able to grab net access on my down time. It was a fun hobby, but became less needed as I moved into the office world. I have stayed up on the technology involved so it was a welcomed offer to accompany Brian for the article, but I still wanted to make sure that when we get together I have the tools needed to show him the data I think he’s looking for. So I’ve been tweaking my laptops 802.11b and purchased a fancy new GPS unit, my old one just diddn’t do it for me anymore, to be able to pull together some maps for him. I get pretty anal when it comes to crap like this so I’ve definitely spent more time planning than Womag will make use of. But at least I’ll be prepared. For those that read WoMag on a regular basis, I belive if done right this could be one of the most important stories they run through the near future. A municipal Wi-Fi program NEEDS to be in place if the city goes forward with its redevelopment plans in the Front and Franklin St areas. We are so far behind in Worcester when it comes to the overall community approach to technology, its beyond sad. Since were talking about a population only a generation beyond it’s glorious industrialized past, that’s not too surprising. But unfortunately if we don’t get on the stick now; we’re sure to get beaten with it later.
Needless to say, all that plus the occasional diaper change has got me tapped. So what do you have that I can work on? Don’t want to get bored.
