A Convoluted Post About Comedy, Louis CK and Me …
I wasn’t willing to be mean during the legal divorce stuff. My advice to any nice guy is BE MEAN or get screwed. When she divorces you, loving her is irrelevant. I gave up pretty much everything I created in the last five years of my marriage in exchange for ideas not yet pursued. One thing I got to keep from the past is iYule.TV. It’s a 30-minute, beautiful film of a fireplace optimized for iDevices. You can get your copy here for $4.50 with much gratitude from me!
$4.50
Download Link will be emailed to you within 24-hours.
Here’s my convoluted segue …
I WANT to be producing GeekBrief.TV. It’s my baby. It got taken from me and perverted by the most worthless man I ever met. Now my challenge in life is to want to want to do something else. That isn’t exactly easy, but I don’t seem to get a choice because I’m not rich enough to hire lawyers to make my choice an option.
I have this asset, iYule.TV. It was featured in the New York Times and on Conan O’Brian. I didn’t sell it last year because, after the torture of divorce, I just didn’t care. This year I’m working on wanting to want something else so I made it available. It’s beautiful. It’s a DRM-free film with a request that purchasers don’t give it away.
More convolution …
I feel expected to produce a tech/gadget show. I have one ready to go, but my gut says tech was the place to be at the start of podcasting. Comedy is the place to be in podcasting now. I listen to comedians like Marc Maron, Adam Carolla, and Joe Rogan talk about podcasting and it makes me feel like I’m back in the day when we were pioneers in this thing. The safe part of me wants to move northern California and work on tech shows. The innovator in me wants to move to L.A. and work with comics to do something brand new.
More convolution …
So Louie CK does this absolutely amazing show called Louie. You can see it on Hulu. It shows the future of entrepreneurial entertainment. That show made me a fan. A few days ago, Louie CK did an experiment that made me very jealous. Jealousy is one of my weak points. He released a concert on his website, selling it with Paypal for $5. That’s great and as a fan, I’m glad he found this route. My problem is he’s been on Fresh Air on NPR and the Tonight Show and covered on all kinds of blogs suggesting he’s done something first. He hasn’t. He followed the path laid out by geeks and it has worked for him.
He shared the details and any geek could tell him, he got screwed!
The video production shot over two performances cost him $170,000. Raise your hand if you live in new media and could have produced the same thing for $30,000? Then he paid $32,000 for his “robust, reliable and carefully constructed website.” Again, I ask geeks in the room, could you have not done the same site for $12?
Here’s my point …
The geeks have figured this stuff out. I can’t speak for others, but I look up to comedians and I don’t want to see you get screwed. Connect with us and let us help you revolutionized distribution!
Louis CK is selling a 1.12 GB video of a stand-up concert for $5. I’m selling a 1.13 GB film of a fireplace for $4.50. He broke even after selling 50,000 copies. I broke even after selling 30. That’s not the point though. His break even can sustain his life. Mine can’t. The crucial success point I learned about from producing GeekBrief.TV is to create an intersection between fame and geek. Fame + Geek = Money.
I could save a comedian huge dollars on production, but I can’t deliver the same kind of attention … not yet at least.
In the mean time, thanks for buying a copy of my fireplace for your pocket!
$4.50
Download Link will be emailed to you within 24-hours.
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A Tribute to Dennis Ritchie | Guest Post by AndrewUK
Whilst there was some mention at the time of his death, Dennis Ritchie will never remain in the public conscious as much as Steve Jobs, who died a few days before him. Steve Jobs’ achievements are clear for all to see, the rise of the iMac (and the translucent plastic colours that appeared in all types of products soon after from staplers to buckets); the iPod and iTunes; the iPhone; and then the iPad. As consumers we all have, or know someone who has, purchased one of those products. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ continue to mention Steve Jobs and his Apple achievements. But what of Dennis Ritchie and the legacy he has left us?
To a Geek the answer will be as the author of the programming language C and as a major partner in the development of UNIX. I sat in the pub many years ago hearing the hushed conversations of those versed in C or C++, never one of them, but able to appreciate the power it gave them to produce great software.
But to a consumer what did he do for us? A large number of things that we just accept as the infrastructure of our digital lives;
Dennis Ritchie 9/9/1941 - 10/8/2011
To send this post to Neal, my email will have traversed many systems running on UNIX/Linux;
Of the websites on which I research data every day, many are running on Linux servers;
If you accept the statistics quoted by Wikipedia, 90% of todays supercomputers run a variant of Linux. Scientific research that affects us all is probably facilitated by Dennis Richie’s work.
Use a Mac Mini, MacBook, Mac Pro, iMac running OS X? There’s UNIX at the core of that;
Use a programme on a computer, there’s a good chance it was written in C or one of the programming languages that spawned from it.
Use a set-top box for cable, satellite or as a Personal Video Recorder, yes you’ve guessed it, Linux could be in there too.
The list could go on and on. And it will no doubt continue to grow as Linux and OS X form the heart of many new consumer implementations we can only dream of now,
To some he will remain an unsung hero of our digital age, to many a name to search for on Google or Bing if they can be bothered. And to me? Whenever I hear mention of Steve Jobs’ death, I will think of Dennis Richie, as the New York Times so succinctly put it, a “Trailblazer in Digital Era, Dies at 70.”
printf("Never Forgetn");
AndrewUK
Read MoreAndrewUK is the most loyal commenter on NealCampbell.com. He wrote suggesting I write a blog post about Dennis Ritchie. I posted links to other people’s tributes at the time of Ritchie’s death on social networks. I’m ashamed to say, Dennis Ritchie wasn’t a name I knew until we found out about his death. I have a connection to his work, obviously, but no emotional connection to the man. Believing it’s better not to write at all than to write without an emotional connection to the subject, I asked Andrew to write the first guest post on NealCampbell.com. Andrew doesn’t have anything he wants to promote. He doesn’t do social media and doesn’t want a link, so instead, he gets my gratitude for sharing what Dennis Ritchie meant to him.
How to Add Facebook Comments to WordPress Blog
I’ve noticed a trend with this blog, and how I tend to connect with other blogs. I’ll see a link in Twitter, on Google+ or Facebook that I’m interested in reading. I’ll click through to read it and then move back to the social network where I saw the link to comment. People do that with this blog too.
I wanted to add Facebook commenting to NealCampbell.com to see if it makes commenting more popular. When a blog is just starting to grow, commenting is one of the ways bloggers get paid. It’s not money, but encouragement to continue writing that creates a happy blogger.
I tried a couple WordPress Plugins before finding the one I’m now using. I chose Simple Facebook Comments for WordPress by David Nelson. It is super simple to get working. Have three tabs or browser windows open, one for Facebook, one for your WordPress site and one for these ten easy steps:
- Download it from David’s site, or even easier search for Simple Facebook Comments in the Plugins section of your WordPress Dashboard. Look for David’s name to make sure it the right one.
- Install it. Activate it. Find it in your list of Active Plugins and click Settings.
- Go to https://developers.facebook.com
- Click Apps and then the button that says + Create New App
- Don’t get scared! You’re not going to have to code anything!
- A pop-up box will ask you to give your App an App Display Name. Pick anything and it will tell you if that name is available or not. It apparently doesn’t matter what you name it. I didn’t fill in the blank for App Namespace.
- Add your contact email and that’s all you HAVE to do for it to work.
- Go back to settings for the Add Facebook Comments to WordPress plugin in your WordPress Dashboard.
- Enter your facebook user id, probably your name, and then the Facebook App ID that was generated when you created your App.
- Answer the rest of the questions in the Add Facebook Comments to WordPress plugin settings, save it, and you’re done!
How to Un-Friend Someone on Facebook for iPhone or iPad
Sometimes when analog friends ask a tech question, I want to ask if they’ve ever heard of Google. Mostly, though, I just feel useful and answer the question without being a smart-ass. Then I repurpose my answer as content for NealCampbell.com!
Last night a friend asked how to unfriend someone on Facebook using the the iPhone Facebook App.
Here’s what you do in three easy steps…
- Tap Friends in the Facebook App to pull up the list.
- Tap the name of the person you want to breakup with on Facebook.
- Tap the icon you’d use to message them and you’ll see it right there! A big red Unfriend button.
Facebook will warn you that you and that person will no longer be friends on Facebook, but if you’ve searched for how to unfriend someone and read this blog post, I’m pretty sure you’re sure that Facebook relationship is no good for you. Time to move on and be happy!
Read MoreHidden Messages in Facebook
Oh my gosh! Mashable posted a video that every Facebook user needs to see!
There is a “feature” in Facebook Messages that hides messages Facebook tech decides may not be important to you. When you click Messages, a link to Others appears underneath. When I clicked that, I found I’d received a bunch of messages from people encouraging me as I went through the divorce.
Watch this and let me know if you also missed important Messages:
Read MoreRobert Scoble’s 40-Minute Look at Flipbook for iPhone
Robert Scoble saw it and said, “WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW.”
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