Blogs that I have to talk about
So tonight I decided to just wander around the web and follow links wherever they may take me. This is a great way to waste 5 hours after you spent a few toiling over some hickory-smoked country style ribs. The wife said they were too smoky. My counterpoint was that there is no such thing. I feel I won that battle easily.
Anyway, for some reason I stumbled back to zenhabits.net. I’ve talked about this site briefly before. One thing that seriously caught my eye was the amount of self-promoting commenters. I mean, these people whore themselves out with such shallow and useless 3-sentence comments. Not that brevity is a bad thing (I sure could learn a bit about it). However, saying things like “Great post again, Leo. Zenhabits is a fantastic site!” when you should have noticed that the first fucking sentence talked about it being a guest post make those of us who have brains think that you and your site are too stupid to bother with.
I mean, some of these people even comment and go “I talked about this very thing on my site, -link-” and close saying they are done with their shameless self-promotions. While I appreciate the honesty, when over 50% of the comments are useless drivel designed to get backlinks, it really ruins it for the rest of us who only post when they have some actual insight or a question about the topic.
I did wind up clicking the link to one of the sites, just to see what it was. Then I clicked and checked out a few more sites. And immediately I was ashamed of my pet project, ilifehack.com, which I gave up after the first few days for one specifically great reason: My heart was not into writing fake productivity articles that I don’t truly believe in. When I write on here, it is because I am inspired to write about it. For example, this very post is chronicling things I found interesting on the web in the past few hours and how I got to them. These are things I don’t want to forget any time soon, and I learned quite a bit (as I usually do). I think things like ‘StumbleUpon’ have their uses, but I find that I usually do much better in learning a lot via the web during these surfing sessions by filtering out all the crap I don’t want that I see linked to from a trusted source, and then exploring that which I do find interesting.
Seriously, let’s take a look at Marc and Angel Hack Life. The issue with a blog like this, compared to Zen Habits, is that it is disingenuous and it basically steals from all the real “lifehacking” gurus like Leo Babuta (of Zen Habits), Timothy Ferriss, Seth Godin, so on and so forth. This is something that I caught myself doing, which is why I stopped updating ilifehack, and I was ashamed because I didn’t realize just how many of these crappy rip-off blogs there already were. I did read one post about 40 must-read non-fiction books, which was great since it was a list right up my alley as far as productivity and lifehacking and all that go, but many of the titles were repeated in other lists like ’30 books you must read before you are 30′ and the millions of other “x amount of whatever you need to see/do/read/watch/listen to/have sex watching/invest in/etc.”
Even worse, those lists can be found probably on all the other rip-off sites that are backlinked from the comments. Speaking of the comments, you might be asking what comment prompted me to actually click on their link? Here you go:
Really? I know the article was chock full of stupid in the first place (seriously, 3 printed pages to tell me that fad diets don’t work, eating healthy is a lifestyle choice, and get off your ass and exercise is just a waste of my time and I stopped reading after the first few paragraphs), but do we really need to whore ourselves out like that?
Anyway, with that said, I for some reason clicked the “links” link which took me to tumblr page for ZH. Here is where the real gems lie.
First of all, there was a link to the 37signals blog, Signal vs. Noise, which I regrettably have not read regularly up until this point, and I really need to. I did read “Getting Real” which was a fantastic book about how to approach software (especially web app) design by throwing out all the conventional methods. The initial link was just to some comparison of library designs, but it led me to a fantastic post about the idiocy of freemium apps (this does not include ad-driven sites), and it had a great video of David Heinemeier Hansson that led me down another rabbit hole.
First off, the post was great because the bar really is set too low and this new wave of web apps is going to be the next dotcom bust. Mind you, I love the idea of many of the apps. However, Evernote only makes $79,000/month in revenue and doesn’t expect to be profitable until 2011. That’s 2 years away, and Evernote has already done a good amount of programming and has been around awhile. This is what is being touted as the next best thing? Please.
Now for the video. Immediately I identified with DHH (I’m only typing his full name once this article) as far as personality goes. He is often accused of being arrogant, with a ‘my way or the highway’ approach, and obviously is satirical and employs the use of dry humor. On top of instantly seeing a lot of myself in him, what he said was brilliant and allowed me to change my own outlook as far as starting my own company and such. It is easy to get caught up believing you have to be the next Facebook, or sell out to Google in 2 years, but the fact is if you can take like 2000 customers, charge them $40/mo. for a service that you yourself recognized the need for, and can make a million a year on it, why wouldn’t you? Why do we need a $250 million company? Not that my intention was to ever go that high, but still the point being made is great.
Of course, I also recently started trying to learn Ruby, and by extension, Ruby on Rails, because I appreciated the no-nonsense approach of the language and what the developers are aiming for, so I was quite aware of who DHH was even if I didn’t really know much about him. Eventually I got to his blog, and there are two posts that I loved regardless of how short and silly they might seem.
The first is “I’m an R rated individual.” In 5 simple paragraphs he managed to sum up my outlook on life and why I try to take the approach of “Well, if you can’t accept me for who I am, then I don’t need to know you anyway, so kiss my ass.”
The next is “Potty mouths.” Cursing is something I feel very strongly about because it is insane to me that people actually act like it pains them to hear curse words. I know it doesn’t, because I hear and say curse words every day, and quite honestly “shit” has the same mental and physical effects on me as much as saying “oatmeal.” I curse like a sailor as well, “fuck” weaves it’s way into my daily language, and it is not because I am unintelligent or do not have a strong vocabulary – I do. However, I’ve said time and again that when you watch a movie and something horrible is about to happen, the lead character yelling “Oh fiddle sticks!” simply doesn’t convey the true emotion that “HOLY FUCK!” does. I’ve read about someone’s college professor saying he would curse until someone could come up with a word that equals the emotion behind the curses when he uses them, and I have to agree with that as well. And quite honestly, I think it is just asinine that saying “The F-Bomb” is perfectly acceptable on TV yet “Fuck” will get you a huge FCC fine. Everyone knows what they are really saying, it isn’t as if “F-bomb” suddenly makes people think of rainbows and ponies and “Fuck” makes them think of AIDS and starving African children. Thank god for the internet, for awhile I felt like I was the only one who thought these kinds of things were horribly stupid.
So moving on, I clicked a pretty picture of a spinach salad that led me to Iowa Girl Eats. Everything about this blog should scream at me that I should hate her because of how “suburban America” it is, but this girl comes across as genuine and really lives what she is preaching. It also doesn’t hurt that she is a cutie, and she isn’t an idiot when it comes to writing. Peppered throughout the articles are “What is your favorite whatever?” in bold, and it makes you feel like for a fleeting second she might actually be talking to you. It engages the reader and hooks them, and I’m all in. It wasn’t long after reading a page worth of posts and clicking the “Older Posts” link at the bottom that I found myself 8 pages in.
As mentioned, I think it is all about how genuine she comes across. I think she truly loves what she does and wants to share her passion with everyone, and this is what separates a great blog from the rip-off artists who comment on every post made on Zen Habits.
The food looks great. I intend to try some of the recipes, and it isn’t about eating all natural, organic foods because that is the chic suburban thing to do, but rather it is a cornerstone of her healthy lifestyle. It centers around using raw ingredients, especially ones that are in season, to create some really great, simple food. Even more impressive, she photographed a trip to the grocery store that cost around $51 and got tons of great, fresh food to cook with, so it can be economical too. And I love the variety, even simple stuff like a grilled peach with barely sweetened ricotta cheese topping for dessert. I intend to keep reading just to try to simplify my own food. All too often I am caught up in using a myriad of spices to get complex flavors or to try to liven up a healthy dish. What is great about the blog is how well she is able to pair food items so that their flavors play off of one another.
There were a few other things I saw tonight, but none really of note (although, this makes me want to buy a Mac and redesign my office just so I can be cool too). Still though, I have to hand it to Signal vs. Noise and Iowa Girl Eats if you are looking for great blogs on either general software and tech design or easy to make culinary treats.
“Simple practical advice indeed.
Eat clean and exercise regularly. Done.
;-)”