Check out this week’s episode of the Ottawhat? podcast. New every Thursday!
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I’m going to talk to you today about self-improvement. As somebody who makes a lot of stuff and then puts it on the Internet, it is very easy for me to look through my “back catalogue” and see that the thing I did two months ago is just TERRIBLE. I can’t even bother comparing my 8-week old project to the one I just finished, because they are on completely different levels. Take, for instance, a recent episode of Future Tech Chat:
I know I’m kind of burying the lede on this one, but frankly I’m a little nervous about asking people to help me out and to continue to improve. I’ve created a profile on a creative support (aka crowdfunding) platform called Patreon, with absolutely no expectations as to where it will go or how much it will help me. I will continue in earnest with all the projects I’ve already been working on (I’m so lucky that basically everything I do on the Google platform is effectively free), but having some funds available will enable the technology I work with to improve, and I’ve tried to include some perks that will encourage you to help me out. The Patreon funding model is either on a per-project, or per-month basis, but I’m told that you can make a donation for a month and then simply cancel your subscription and support me in a small, lump sum kind of way. Honestly, any positives the use of this platform gets me are more than I’m expecting. You can find me on Patreon at the link below, and thank you to all of you who are already supporting me by sharing my work and chatting about important or mundane things with me on a regular basis, it means more than I can possibly tell you. I would also welcome other methods of support, financial or otherwise, if you’re skeptical about crowdfunding but would still like to help. I just really want to keep making stuff.
Sometimes, you find yourself wanting to recommend cool things to friends and acquaintances. At times like these, I like to blog about them. My music and podcast recommendations of the week are:
Ed Sheeran: x (Deluxe Edition) – Music on Google Play
Episode 98: Underwear (with Thomas Middleditch)
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Everybody has quiet times during the day when you might listen to music. Do yourself a favour and have a look through the catalogues at podbean.com. There are so many great podcasts to enjoy, and they don’t have to take you away from driving, cooking, or your favourite online activities.
Honestly, no beverage holds a candle to simple, clean water. In addition to keeping your joints and blood vessels properly hydrated, drinking water regularly reduces feelings of hunger, goes a long way towards preventing kidney stones, and even though it doesn’t have sugar or caffeine, it tastes amazing!
Listen, I know you’ve heard Twitter‘s elevator pitch. But what I’m trying to tell you now is that even if you think you won’t use it, you should make an account and at least see what it’s like. You can follow celebrities, sports icons, news outlets, friends, acquaintances, there is never any shortage of reasons to try it.
Seriously, walks are the easiest physical activity you can do, and they’ve been scientifically proven to increase creativity, reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, and give you the chance to get some much needed Vitamin D. You’ll thank me.
Humans are very community oriented by nature, something that we tend to forget when we are online a lot of the time. Take some time during your day to share something you’ve enjoyed online. It’s also been shown that giving somebody something makes you feel better than getting something you want from them, or for yourself.
I don’t think I’ve ever written about something as much as I’ve written about allowing people to follow your public updates on Facebook. Going to this link and letting “Everybody” follow you won’t make anything you do on Facebook more public, it just gives you more social clout. And that’s all anybody wants…
You seriously want me to explain this one? Sex has been shown to boost your immune system, floods your body with painkilling endorphins, and has been Earth’s most popular leisure activity for billions of years. Go have sex right now and then come back and tell me it wasn’t awesome…I rest my case.
I spend a lot of my day working at a computer alone, speaking to nobody. Humans are social creatures who were not made to do that, so go and strike up a conversation with that friendly looking fellow/lady you see every day, you probably have something in common and didn’t even realize it.
There is very little that can make me feel better when I’m down than having a good cry. Aside from the fact that it’s not seen as the manliest of activities, it’s a great way to let out a lot of stress we all build up in our increasingly complicated lives. You did your best, now go have a cry.
I don’t care if you dance like nobody is watching, or if you are very conservative and shy about it. Dancing is great exercise and it’s so easy to find good music these days, it’s usually only a click or button press away. The best thing you can do on any given day is sing and/or dance!
Check out this week’s episode of Future Chat, where we talked about bicycles. Live every Saturday at 12:30 EDT!
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In no particular order…
1. When you posted a link to a video in previous iterations of Facebook, it would give you a big beautiful image of the thumbnail for the video, along with the title and a little text. NOW, when you post a video, you get a small, square thumbnail that crops out the sides of the image, and the post is mostly text.
This change was made to promote Facebook’s own video service, which isn’t even a video service, but now only videos uploaded directly to Facebook will get a nice, good-looking video player that will play on the site (automatically, by default). Facebook is not a video site, you don’t need to make it one!
2. When you post something as a Facebook page, only about 10% of people who follow your page will actually see it via that post. You have the option to spend money to “promote” that post, but otherwise the vast majority of people who have subscribed to see updates from your page will not see anything you post.
This is actually true of regular people posting things as well. Facebook now curates your news feed so much (because people have so many Facebook friends this is the only way to do it and stay sane), but the result is that because people don’t want to feel guilty about un-friending, we all have such massive friends lists that it’s impossible for you to see all of those updates without being driven insane.
*I haven’t tried this myself, but it seems to me that creating a Facebook group for your brand or product is the way to go, when people join a group, they get notified about every post by default, which I think is the behaviour most people would expect when following a thing on Facebook.
3. Facebook has a system in place where people can basically turn their accounts into Twitter accounts, allowing friends of friends, or strangers, to follow their public updates. Since 99+% of people don’t know about this excellent feature, I’m unable to follow really interesting people I don’t necessarily want to be “friends” with. If this feature were better advertised, Facebook would be a much better social network.
Go to https://www.facebook.com/about/follow to see what I’m talking about.
Check out this week’s episode of the Ottawhat? podcast. New every Thursday!
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