Journalism takes time.

April 17, 2013 news No comments

I know the news is frustrating you right now. I get it. You want to know what’s going on and you want to know it right this second. But you have caused the very problem you complain about.

By demanding news nownownow you force news orgs to work faster than they can verify – because if they don’t you look away and pay attention to the ones that will serve you hot ‘n fresh news faster, even if it’s wrong.

You reward the folks who give in and then blame everyone for giving in.

It does not work both ways.

News takes time. Truth takes time to verify. Either you reward people who take their time and od it right, or you give in to the panic and hard dick that makes you need to know everything this very second.

One of those will get you better journalism and news. The other will get you sores from chafing.

So stop rewarding people for making the situation worse, stop thinking the problem doesn’t start with you and end in reduced journalism, and start fighting for better journalism – because I promise you this: journalists want to do better, work harder and deliver sounder reports.

Let them. Encourage them. Reward them. Please.

Or keep whining about it and railing when faster doesn’t mean better and why can’t you just have everything you want.

Your move, Internet.

The Glory, The Glory – ep 54

April 14, 2013 podcast, the glory the glory No comments

Look Episode 54 of The Glory, The Glory with Aidan Morgan and Adam P. Knave is here! This week is more doctor Who thoughts, some Beiber and a TV surprise!

You can subscribe to the podcast only RSS feed right here at this link and also click the button below to listen/subscribe to the podcast on iTunes:

The Glory The Glory

The Glory, The Glory ep 54 Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As always, you can also just hit play above, as well. Thanks, and we hope you enjoy!

Bible readin’

April 9, 2013 NY Life No comments

Mentioned this to D.J. Kirkbride earlier but I tend to, every few years, spend a few days reading the Bible. Now there are a few things to keep in mind here:

1 – I went to a Catholic school from grades 1-8.

2 – I am in no way Catholic / Christian / etc. It just ain’t my bag. At all.

I’ve also read bit of a translated Koran (not like reading a bible in English ain’t a translation, of course), bunches of Buddhist stuff, most of Dianetics… I like reading religious texts, I guess. It’s funny when I was a kid I went to my father and said I wasn’t sure this religion stuff worked for me. I just wasn’t feeling it but wasn’t sure at all. And he took me to a shelf (more shelves of books than you can imagine where I grew up) and said “Well, read these and find one that does if you want.”

So I did. All sorts of mythologies and stuff just crammed into my brain. And I still do.

But somehow the Bible thing strikes me as almost odd. And I don’t know why. I have nothing against Catholics in general (the Church itself I have issues with but that’s a different thing), and yet it always makes me feel like… I’m cheating, maybe.

Also Bibles are fantastic bits of work. They’re often just pretty. The two I have (a study Bible and a non) aren’t really pretty at all, but they can be. I like pretty books.

I guess I’m also fascinated by religions, in general and mythologies in a larger scale. But yeah. Bible time. Still strikes my brain as odd. Just one of those things, I guess.

The new face of war…

April 8, 2013 humor, tv, wtf?! No comments

The times are changing. G.I. Joe and Cobra have both sufgfered huge losses in funding and recruitment. And now they have… new plans…
———————————
cobraco“Hello! You used to know me as Cobra Commander! Yes! I plotted to take over your stupid countries with might and power. Of course I did! Wouldn’t you, if faced with the sort of sniveling weakness you yourselves display?

“Sadly there has been a downturn in recruits for my Cobra soldiers. As such I have been forced to reconsider our methods. So I am here today to announce that Cobra will no longer exist. Instead I shall use my army, my weapons and my masterful plans to help you get into the best shape of your life. Organically. Safely. Artistically!

“From here on out we are…. YOGA! Yes, so please address me as the Yoga Commander. My Yoga soldiers will help tone and stretch you. We will work together to ensure your peak physical conditioning, as well as spiritual growth!

“YOOOOGGGGAAAAAAAAAA!”

———————————

duke“Uhm. Hi. Excuse me. But don’t listen to Yoga Commander. He wants to train you in soft pliable ways to take over your mind and use you as his Downward Facing Army. Do not listen. Do not follow his lead. Do not trust him.

“Instead, come with me. I’m Duke. And while, as leader of G.I. Joe I commanded forces against the man you now call Yoga Commander, I, too, have seen a new day dawn.

“With that in mind, and our need to confront the forces of Yoga on their own terms, let me introduce you to G.I. Jazz! We’ll get you in shape the American Way! With sweat and hard work and possibly crying. You’ll cry, cadet! You’ll cry hard! Jazzercise on this level isn’t just for anyone!

“No, you have to prove yourself worth while to be a member of G.I. Jazz, but if you can, the world awaits you. Justice awaits. Say no to the forces of Yoga and sign up, today, with G.I. Jazz!

“Remember! Spin Class is half the battle!”

SEO needs to die.

April 3, 2013 brainmeats 2 comments

You know what doesn’t work? SEO. It’s bullshit. Flat out. Sorry, guys. But the entire idea that you will sell more/get more customers/readers/etc. by upping your ranking on a damn search engine is broken at the core and meaningless when you look at it.

We can start with the fact that 99% of all SEO is designed to push bullshit sites up the ranks. Now I’ve even recently seen people blaming Google for this. “There are people in the field who misuse it and Google should be stopping them.” Nope. Google’s job isn’t to police your industry. It’s a sign that the industry itself is badly broken.

The problem is in the core concept though.

SEO is a short-cut. Short-cuts don’t work. They might give you a fictional bump, a rise in hits that seems like it helps, a ranking that says “Hey look I show up faster” but it isn’t growing your business, no matter what that business is. If you want to build a successful business it takes work and time and selling something people want more than they want that other thing.

But, you think, how will people find out? Not, I point out, by search engines.

Remember when we used phone books and companies would name themselves AAAmazing Cleaners so they would land at the top of the listing for cleaners? They thought it would help and yet that just isn’t how most people work.

The people who do work that way are one-offs, small time fluff that might end up in business but generally take up your time. They’re people who threw a dart and will waste your time with nonsense more often than not. That is in detriment to your business, not help for it.

Instead people ask friends. They think of places they’ve heard of, through their community. People try to use places with a reputation for doing good work. Those are the places that survive. And they aren’t the ones screaming to find shortcuts to the golden land.

So you build your name in the community. You do good work, you talk to people, engage them and be a part of things. You put in the work. Good writing on a website, clear information, follow-through and great customer service. And yes shady folk will skim content from you and use SEO and end up on top of rankings. Great! Let them get the chaff! Takes it off your hands. You want to spend your time with the people who are serious and will come back and will talk about you and enhance your standing in the world – not the yapping fish that swim away more often than not.

Stop chasing short cuts to success, even when they look like they’re working they will be short term and hopefully any business you want to build should be long term. Put in the work, it’s harder but it pays off over the long term and is the only thing that matters.

The Glory, The Glory – ep 53

March 31, 2013 podcast, the glory the glory No comments

Hey, it’s Episode 53 of The Glory, The Glory with Aidan Morgan and Adam P. Knave! This week we discuss the new Doctor Who, Captain Power and more!

You can subscribe to the podcast only RSS feed right here at this link and also click the button below to listen/subscribe to the podcast on iTunes:

The Glory The Glory

The Glory, The Glory ep 53 [ 1:21:32 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As always, you can also just hit play above, as well. Thanks, and we hope you enjoy!

Easter 2013

March 31, 2013 comics, idea file No comments

Time again, as it has been every year since 2004, to post the annual Easter comic! And here you go!

Peas in a pod

March 28, 2013 NY Life 2 comments

Talking to Laura and just made a peas in pod joke (about moving PODs, but anyway) and it made me flash to something I had to stop and write about.

When I was a kid, I got these stuffed peas.

And I remember once, being in school and being sick. I went to a Catholic school and the nuns were a wee bit strict. They assumed if you ever said you were sick that you had to be telling lies. Had to be. So they called my dad. Now, you need to understand my father wrote for a living, and did his writing in the middle of the night. His bedtime was while I was at school.

He would wake up, supposedly, in time to get my from school. Some days that worked with a margin or error less than two hours. But anyway! They called him. Which woke him up. And they told him I was supposedly sick and they weren’t sure if they believed me, but they had to call him to let him know.

He grumbled something at them and said he’d come get me.

I had bronchitis, I used to get it a bunch, so it’s a pretty sure bet that’s what it was. But I remember I felt so bad, so so bad. And as we walked home, I felt worse. We only lived a few blocks, like a 1/4 mile from the school, so we walked and I thought I would die.

So my father stopped because there was a new (doomed to be short-lived) toy store on the way home. He thought he could distract my death with a present. In reality he just thought it would shut me the hell up, of course, but hey.

The store had a bunch of things, stuffed toys and robots and space ships and I just wanted to curl up and die and then I saw these peas. I had to have them. I don’t know why but my love for them was simply immense. Truly immense. My father looked at me like I had a fever… oh wait I did have a fever, but he got me the peas:

peas

And I loved them. So much. For years I kept them around because, hey, stuffed peas! There have been stuffed peas since but they aren’t as cool so to hell with them. Of course the stuffed peas I had go for hundreds of dollars or some shit on eBay now so… I guess I should’ve held onto my peas. But no, I lost them at some point I think. Or someone threw them out. What ever. Doesn’t matter.

What matters is, for a while there, I deeply loved a set of 5 stuffed peas in a tiny zipped pod.

The Glory, The Glory – ep 52

March 24, 2013 podcast, the glory the glory No comments

Welcome to Episode 52 of The Glory, The Glory with Aidan Morgan and Adam P. Knave! We talking Being Human UK, Alan Moore and a few other things this week, as Aidan struggles with his mic a bit.

You can subscribe to the podcast only RSS feed right here at this link and also click the button below to listen/subscribe to the podcast on iTunes:

The Glory The Glory

The Glory, The Glory ep 52 [ 1:09:27 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As always, you can also just hit play above, as well. Thanks, and we hope you enjoy!

Digital isn’t the only answer.

March 22, 2013 NY Life, writing 2 comments

When you have a ton of deadlines that cross each other you learn to adapt. That adaptation can take funny forms.

I use Google Calendar for all my schedules. I have Google calendars I make to schedule every project that I share with any collaborators. I keep my personal schedule updated with everything I do that can at all be scheduled. It’s glorious. It’s very busy, lots of colors, and it keeps me n track. I have a widget to show me my upcoming events on my phone, every time I look at it, and I keep it open in windows at my desk. My calendar is my life, these days.

Except it isn’t enough. You see, outside of just events I also have deadlines that can’t be put into a calendar the same. I can’t put a deadline into a calendar for three months from now and feel the weight of it every day. I can make a To-do but Google’s sucks mostly and, frankly, pretty much all of them suck. They don’t tell me enough, in the way I need.

I need to know what I need to work on every day, when stuff has been half done and needs to be pulled forward or put on the back burner or will intersect with something else. I needed… something. A pad of paper!

Except then everything gets lost. I jot down stuff for Weds, and then Thurs and then Weds again and where’d it go? No. So I thought about a paper planner. And I looked and there were a host. All of them these nice 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 jobs.

Eh, felt too small. I like to write notes to myself too about whatever I’m working on. So I found a nice one that took 8 1/2 x 11 pages and ordered some Two-Page-Per-Day calendar sheets and there we go.

And now I have a big brown leather briefcase looking thing. And it tells me what I’ll be working on tonight when I get home, and what I need to work on after dinner and notes for each. And if I don’t finish one of them, I will write it down for the next day. I will also, tonight, write down what I need to work on tomorrow.

See it isn’t a book that needs to come with me to the day job, or needs to move around much at all. I might take it to some meetings but most of those are on the phone these days anyway. So I just need a big book that becomes a temp, ever-shifting, out-board brain for me.

All of this is a long way of saying:

“Sometimes the best solution is not to throw technology at a problem but to throw it away from a problem.”

Like all the best technology the trick is knowing when to use it and when not to. For my use, in this case, the best solution happens to be paper and a pen and a binder for some types of events and Google Calendar for other types.

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