Category: Thoughts

Sam Anderson has a wonderful profile of Weird Al in The New York Times Magazine. I read through it all this morning, and when Yankovic talks about his writing process, it really jumped out at me:

But it turns out that Weird Al approaches the composition of his music with something like the holy passion of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Looking through the “White & Nerdy” file felt like watching a supercomputer crunch through possible chess moves. Every single variable had to be considered, in every single line. The song begins with a simple sentence — “They see me mowing my front lawn” — and even here Yankovic agonized over “lawn” versus “yard” and “my” versus “the.” He sifted through phrases in gradations so small, they were almost invisible:

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A decade ago, my wife and I saw our entire lives change in a moment when our oldest son was diagnosed with brain cancer.

That moment, of course, was a series of events. First, a checkup at the pediatrician’s office that ended with our doctor raising some concerns. Then the ultrasound the next day that ended with the doctor telling us to drive to the local children’s hospital, without stopping. There was a team of doctors and nurses waiting for us, he said.

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Casey Liss:

In around a month, I will no longer have a traditional job. I will be focusing my energy most especially on my family, with my two podcasts and side projects like Casey on Cars following behind. I do have some other things in the hopper, other than Casey on Cars, but I’m reticent to announce them before I know they’re ready.¹

I’m also entertaining other kinds of work. The impetus for this change is about being around for my family, so I don’t want to take on a 40 hour per week gig. However, if you need a hand with something interesting — especially if it involves either teaching or leveraging RxSwift — let me know.

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A friend of mine who works in this weird market of indie tech content has a saying that he doesn’t “have a single unpublished thought.”

I don’t really know what Sparks means by this phrase, but it’s one that I turn over in my mind quite often.

One on hand, this phrase could be applied to work. Building an audience over time means sharing a lot. Blog posts, podcasts, tweets and YouTube videos begin to add up, and the machine always has to be fed new content or the whole thing comes to a screeching halt.

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I was honored to speak at AltConf back in June. I spoke about my first two years of independent life, and some of the assumptions I had about making the transition to working on my own stuff full-time. Things I assumed would be easy were really difficult, and I really struggled the first nine months or so of working for myself.

Video of the talk is up now. I hope you enjoy it.

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The day I wrote about in this blog post took place eight years ago today:

It was one of those typical hospital sofas.

The rubbery, terrible green, squeak-when-you-move jobs. It was long enough for a couple of people to sit on, but too short for any normal sized person to lay down on. The cushions were made of some type of foam that probably should be reserved for things like dampening vibrations in car doors.

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Barack Obama:

All of us, regardless of party, should throw ourselves into that work — the joyous work of citizenship. Not just when there’s an election, not just when our own narrow interest is at stake, but over the full span of a lifetime.

I’ll be right there with you every step of the way.

And when the arc of progress seems slow, remember: America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We the People.’ ‘We shall overcome.’

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Like a lot of people, I typically find the holidays hard to deal with. There are a lot of reasons for that — past and present — so most years, I come into the new year feeling down.

I know this about myself, as it’s been this way for a long time. This year around Thanksgiving, I had a moment, sitting in traffic and I realized what was on the horizon. While I am not fully in charge of my long-term, here-and-back-again depressive tendencies, I decided then to be more open and honest with a handful of people about how I was feeling through the holidays. I tried to make a solid attempt at being more engaged and in-the-moment as the holidays progressed.

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Last Saturday — September 17 — I noticed something as my iPhone 7 Plus was completing a restore from iCloud backup:

After picking the device up from my desk, it was clear the sounds are coming from back of the phone, possibly from the CPU. It seems to get worse if the iPhone is under load. It’s loud enough to be heard even if the iPhone is just sitting on the table. I don’t have to put it up to my ear to hear it.

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Instead of running RSS sponsorships this month, I’m raising money in support of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as part of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Click here to learn more and donate.

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In the nearly seven and a half years of being the parent of a child with cancer, I’ve heard this line a bunch from people sharing their own story of pain or grief:

It’s nothing like what you guys are going through.

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I’ve always had a strong sense that places are important. I’m not a particular sentimental person about some things, but my strongest memories are very often associated with specific locations.

I wrote about this five years ago on this very blog, when I trespassed in a hospital due for demolition visited an important part of my family’s history.

(Just a little warning: that post is intense. I couldn’t re-read all of it.)

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One year ago, I published this:

I’m leaving my 9-5 job to work on Relay FM, 512 Pixels and my freelance business full time.

The last 12 months have been nothing short of amazing. If you’ll forgive the introspection, I’d like to talk about what I’ve been up to for the past year.

In the fall, I attended both Release Notes and XOXO Festival. My Relay FM co-founder Myke Hurley gave the keynote address at Release Notes, and killed it. It was great to meet so many people in the indie design and development field outside of Twitter and WWDC.

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