Rick the Musical ELK

An ELK is a content creator who is enthusiastic, likeable, and knowledgeable. One such is Rick Beato: musician, teacher, and much more. Rick has just posted to his YouTube channel the 100th entry in his series, “What Makes This Song Great?”

In each entry, Rick demonstrates how the different parts contribute to the whole track. My favorite example is the third in the series, on Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne”, with a great account of Larry Carlton’s guitar solos.

Who are your favorite MusicTubers?

Flickr-ing Out? Maybe Not

Flickr wasn’t actually Flickr for very long. It launched in February 2004. It was acquired by Yahoo in March 2005. I had got my free Flickr account earlier in 2005. I enjoyed and admired Flickr as a great mix of content and community.

Flickr ceased to be Flickr, not because it changed under Yahoo, but because it didn’t change very much. In 2017, Verizon acquired Yahoo, including Flickr.

SmugMug acquired Flickr about a week ago. SmugMug? It’s another of “the oldest and biggest photography-oriented internet companies”. The quote is from Glenn Fleishman’s article at Fast Company.

It looks as though Flickr is in good hands, for the first time in over a decade. So I’ll keep my Flickr Pro account for the next few months.

For a while now, I’ve been taking photos with my phone, and not posting many of them. But I’ll post this one: boat dock in snow with Christmas tree.

Later this year, I hope to have a camera, and an online home for my photos. I hope that SmugMug’s management of Flickr will be such that I don’t have to move the old ones, and just restart uploading and organizing the new ones I like.

My Own Devices

Mobile devices are on my mind at the moment. I have an iPad 2 that recently turned 6 years old. And I have a new Android phone, because my previous phone just bricked.

I didn’t expect the iPad 2 to last this long. I didn’t think that Apple products were meant to last, but to be cast aside for fresher Apple stuff. My iPad 2 hasn’t always had the gentlest of treatment.

But on it goes, insisting that its software–iOS 9.3.5–is up to date. What it really means is that it can’t go beyond that version of iOS. That’s a good thing. I don’t want it to go to iOS 11, under which some of my favorite apps will not run.

As long as it holds up, I will continue to use it for apps such as Polyhedra, Card Thief, Through the Desert,… and many more. I’ll also use it for email. It seems to struggle most with web browsing, although that may be the fault of the Guardian’s site.

My Android phones have been rather less long-lived. My Motorola Droid Maxx turned into a brick a few days ago. It was itself a replacement for a similar phone that suffered from terminal boot-loop.

I now have a Samsung J7 V (for Verizon, I think). So far, so good.

But I’m wondering whether the 6 year old iPad 2 will outlive the new phone…

Gingrich on Trump

Some of what I heard on Trump and Trumpism from Newt Gingrich has subsequently become a lot more interesting. On January 17, I visited the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC for one of a series of presentations on Trump and Trumpism, given by Newt Gingrich. This post captures some of the notes and recollections that have become more interesting in the intervening nine or so weeks. I’ll include at the end an overview of the presentation.

Many of the things that now strike me as I now look at my notes were about specific individuals. This was in mid-January, remember.

Gingrich can forgive Trump virtually anything for at least the next two years, because he is not Hilary Clinton. I am not on a Newt-watch to determine the limits of Gingrich’s forgiveness.

Trump’s “team of winners”… yes that’s a quote. Continue reading “Gingrich on Trump”

Putting The “We” in WEB

Who fumbled the web? That’s a question I’m asking, mainly at a site called Fumbling the Web. The story so far: if any one organization can be said to have fumbled the web, it’s Yahoo; but that would be a gross oversimplification. So, if FtW turns into a book, many chapters may focus on a single organization, and how it fumbled some aspect of the web.

Who fumbled the web? We did. (That’s at least one chapter, and probably a thread running through FtW.) We’ve been doing so for over a decade, and seem likely to keep doing so. Now, about the “we” in web…

The post title was on the cover of Newsweek (with exactly that punctuation and capitalization, although I’ve changed such things elsewhere in this post). The issue was dated April 3, 2006. The cover showed the founders of Flickr, looking as happy as you’d expect given that Yahoo had just paid (an estimated) $35 million dollars for their business.

Bradley Horowitz, then of Yahoo, sounded like a happy acquirer.

[T]hey had millions of users generating content, millions of users organizing that content… people not on the payroll actually building the thing.

Continue reading “Putting The “We” in WEB”

Where on the Web? Wither Yahoo?

What combination of web sites and services to use?

My own answers include:

  • This site–changingway.org–will remain my home on the web. The move to the new host–SiteGround–is complete.
  • WordPress as Content Management System. Keen users of WordPress might want to check out the page on the choice and customization of the Twenty Sixteen theme.
  • Google, for many services, including email.
  • Facebook, a service I dislike used by a high proportion of the people I like.
  • Yahoo, which deserves its own list of points.

Yahoo!

  • Should I, like millions of people, keep using my Yahoo email? Or should I, like many others, abandon it?
  • Should I continue to use Flickr as my main photo site? I don’t think that Yahoo did much with Flickr after acquiring it.
  • Did Yahoo fumble the web? That’s a wider question, as is…
  • How will the Yahoo/Verizon deal work out?

That’s enough, before I veer any further off topic. What combination of web sites and services to use?

Changing Host

This site, having been at WordPress.com for many years, is moving to SiteGround. So is management of the domain changingway.org.

The move involves bits and pieces spread across several organizations:

  • SiteGround
  • Automattic, who run WordPress.com
  • GoDaddy, who used to manage the domain changingway.org
  • Other organizations involved with domain management
  • Google, where the email associated with this site used to live (and will probably live again)

The site content seems to have arrived safely at SiteGround. Everything else should be fully settled in soon.

Bruce's "Badlands" Blasts Bad Boss

Donald Trump is the President of the United States of America. What songs are appropriate to this state of affairs? I’m sure I’m not the first to nominate Bruce Springsteen’s “Badlands”.

“Badlands” is far from new. It was on Bruce’s 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town. Here’s a live performance from that year.

Why is “Badlands” so relevant, almost 40 years later? Here are just a few of the reasons.

Other reasons that should also be on the list? Other songs appropriate to the moment? That’s what Comments are for!

A Crowdfunder's Strategy: A Late Look at Jamey's Book

Who? Jamey Stegmaier, co-founder and president of Stonemaier Games, and author of A Crowdfunder’s Strategy: Build a Better Business By Building Community. Games from Stonemaier include Viticulture and Scythe.

What? This is a look at, rather than a review of, Jamey’s book. I haven’t read the physical book cover to cover, although I am familiar with the material, having read it (usually in fuller form) on the Stonemaier website.

When? I’m writing this in early November 2016. Jamey’s book was published in September 2015. So is this really a late look? I think that it is, partly because 14 months is a long time on the web, where crowdfunding happens.

The book is written for creators of reward-based crowdfunding projects, such as the project that Jamey created for Scythe on Kickstarter. In return for funding the project, backers received rewards, mainly in the form of the game itself. They did not receive equity in Stonemaier Games; had they done so, we’d be talking about equity-based crowdfunding.

The primary explicit message of the book is “that you will significantly increase your odds of crowdfunding success if you focus on building community, empathizing with supporters, and developing trust-based relationships.” You might already have guessed that from the book’s subtitle (“Build a Better Business By Building Community”).

A secondary, less explicit, but still vital message of the book is that: in crowdfunding, details matter; and there are a lot of details to consider, and decisions to make, before, during, and after a crowdfunding project.

Jamey discusses many of the decisions and details involved in crowdfunding. He does so using his experience as the creator of multiple Kickstarter campaigns for tabletop games. I think that he generalizes well from his own experience: he is keen to share the lessons he learned, while being careful not to over-generalize. I find him to be an engaging writer, but you can judge that for yourself using the online sample chapter.

Do I recommend A Crowdfunder’s Strategy? Yes! Am I going to address some specific qualms you might have about giving Jamey and his book your time, attention, and (possibly) money? Yes! Am I going to carry on in Q&A (question and answer) format? Yes!

Do I recommend it for projects other than tabletop games? Yes. The book was intended from the start for “all types of entrepreneurs who are intrigued by the idea of crowdfunding”. The book as published is true to this intention.

Do I recommend it for platforms other than Kickstarter? Yes. It’s about crowdfunding and community, rather than about the specific platform Jamey and Stonemaier used. It does include a paragraph on each of multiple platforms, but that’s the sort of content that can rapidly become out of date, and hence may be better accessed on the web than in a book.

Do I recommend it, given that Jamey has blogged much of the same content? Yes. The book is not a hasty paste of words from the web. The content was largely rewritten, and then organized and edited to make a coherent book. I should add that I recommend both the book and the blog: they are complements, rather than substitutes.

Do I recommend it, given that it was published over a year ago? Yes. The main lessons on crowdfunding and community are still valid. For example, Jamey explains mistakes he made, so that his readers don’t have to: those mistakes are still easy to make, and well worth avoiding.

Do I recommend it, even for people who may never create a crowdfunding project? For some specific groups of people, yes. You may be researching a school or college project. You may be a fan of Stonemaier Games interested in the background to the games themselves. You may be interested in how the tabletop game business is changing; it has certainly changed a lot over the last few years, with many of the changes related to crowdfunding.

Having recommended the book, I’ll close by pointing out one of the ways in which a blog may be better than a book: it may allow discussion of its own content. So feel free to leave a comment here. Thank you!

Beware Malware

“Beware malware” is a friendly reminder to all, and one I should have given to myself when I attempted to download some software for my son yesterday. I was in too much of a hurry to be careful about what I was downloading.

I was after Kodu, the game programming tool. I now know that the file kodu-game-lab.exe is malware “which may bundle additional software offers including toolbars and browser extensions”. The quote is an understatement.

After some more careful Googling and downloading, my PC now seems returned to health. Thanks to Junkware Removal Tool!