I love taking on creative projects, but it's a little depressing when they don't turn out well. I've "produced" a number of songs on my Mac, and they make me chuckle, but I won't let anyone else hear them.
Well, I think of Twitter, Vimeo, Flickr, and my two blogs (TypePad and Tumblr) as ongoing, public creative projects. I'm proud when I put up fun or insightful content, and I get down on myself when I haven't posted in a while.
Here's where limits come in: I rarely fall behind on my Twitter or Tumblr posting, because, the way those sights have built their technology, the most you can possibly hope to do with a single post is still pretty simple. It's hard to imagine spending more than 90 seconds updating either.
This is great, because I don't put mounting pressure on myself to do an increasingly better job with those projects. My TypePad blog (this site that you're reading), however, feels a bit daunting at times. I feel like posts here should be longer, contain original content, and frequent.
Lately, I'm finding that I don't enjoy this form of expression as much as Twitter and Tumblr, because of the pressure that comes with it. My response will be the following: instead of posting roughly weekly, as I have been since October of 2004 (even though my archives are incomplete), I'll be posting closer to monthly, going forward. I recommend you subscribe to the site via RSS, through something like Google Reader or NetNewsWire, which are both excellent, free tools that prevent the problem of frequently checking sites, usually blogs, that may or may not have new content since your last visit.
I'm looking for a way to integrate all of the above listed projects into a single site, so that you'll be able to see my pictures, videos, links and commentary all in a single place. I'd even settle for something like what Zach Klein did, where he has a single page that links to everything. AlexBain.com is supposed to serve that purpose, but it's sorely in need of an update.
In the meantime, I'm going to have my Twitter posts streaming into my other blog, MaximumAlexBain.com, so that you can get 95% of what I'm doing all in one place. If you have this site bookmarked, I'd probably replace it with a bookmark to that site. I'll make sure to mention there when anything worthwhile shows up here.
You'll find that site is more about what I'm doing than what I'm thinking, and the updates are real time, coming from my phone, but the pictures are often blurry. If you like that site, you may also like my cat's site, FurioBain.com. He's pretty clever, for a creature without an opposable grip :-)
Two of my friends started blogging in the last ~1 month. Scott Orn and David Vivero. I recommend reading both of them for the same reason:
Their writing is good enough that, you can either quote them, or steal their ideas, in a conversation, and either way you sound wicked smart.
I've been in enough ridiculous situations with Dr. Vivero that I have goofy pictures of him like the one to the right. Sadly, I have none of those when it comes to Dr. Orn, but he's been kind enough to publish his own, like the one to the left.
UPDATE: I'm embarrassed to point out that I neglected to mention the hottest new blog to hit Europe: LondonLevys.Tumblr.com. My friends, Dan and Esther, have moved to London for a while, and are tracking their adventures through a slick Tumblr blog.
A lot of the time, my blog feels like an experiment in accessibility. I write about the good, the bad, and the ugly, and there's something cathartic about having it all out there. It's selfish and narcissistic, but nobody has to read. I take some decent pictures, and I try to keep the prose short, so I haven't turned too many people away yet.
Well, I had an idea today that might be good or bad, but I've started a second blog called MaximumAlexBain.com. I've jokingly said it's for people who aren't getting enough Alex Bain from AlexBain.com, but it's more for me to test out different technologies. I'm playing around both with this simple blogging service called Tumblr, but also with Cascading Style Sheets and learning how web sites really work, so I thought it'd be good to have a toy to tinker with in the process (like having a beat-up car to take apart and put back together).
A lot of the content will just be blurry pictures from my iPhone. Maybe sometimes I'll have witty quotes. Hopefully, it won't take me too long to figure out how to add both both a Twitter feed and Google AdSense.
I told my sister tonight that the whole thing will be worth it if anyone who reads MaximumAlexBain.com can ever appear superior in a conversation over someone who simply reads AlexBain.com.
I learned about a fun new service today called Twitter. I discovered the service through my favorite blog about Apple. The service is incredibly simple. You send it notes, either in the form of text messages or IM's, and those notes are stored. If other people want to subscribe to your notes, they can. I created a space in the top right of this blog where the notes appear. Different people use Twitter in different ways, but the most common is to send really brief updates about what's going on in your life. I've seen this called "Microblogging". Here's a much better description of Twitter.
I also want to add that, I write on Twitter or my blog because I think I'm particularly interesting. It's just a fun exercise for me, and if it's worth reading for anyone else, so be it. Adam Carolla used to have a rant about privacy freaks getting worried about the government or big corporations spying on them. He'd always say, "You're not nearly as interesting as you think you are! The government doesn't care about the gossip in your group of friends. They're trying to track down terrorists!" This always cracked me up. Anyway, I know I'm not interesting, but about 15 people read my site every day, so I'll keep writing for now. It's at least a decent way for me to keep track of what I've been doing.
There aren't that many blogs I recommend to my friends, because most of my friends don't waste as much time on the internet as I do. Here's one I think everyone I know would get a kick out of: Springwise.com
The site is a constantly updated (~twice a day) blog covering the most interesting new business ideas all around the world.
Currently on the site: artistic barcodes, a system for keeping track of money among friends, a healthy beer for women, and building blocks for children based on real bricks and mortar.
The site also does a great job of proving illustrative imagery for each post.
I should add that I found this site through Digg.com, which is a great new site/service that I've been playing around with.
