Blogs and newsletters on their way back? And Red Hand by Nick Cave- what a blog!
The past couple of years we have heard that a blog was something of 2000’s. The rise of Youtube and more recently, the popularity of podcasts, were supposedly make blogs a thing of the past.
But the debatable recommendation and influencing practices of Youtube, and other advertisement-backed social media drive people away from these platforms. At the same time there is a increasing number of people being driven away from tradiditional media, finding the “breaking news” tactics distracting and misguiding.
As a replacement for these, the blog seems on it’s way back, as is the newsletter (via email!) informing the readers of blog updates. Blogs are not found through google searches or Facebook recommendations, but through recommendations by real people. Thus providing a source of manually curated web content by like-minded people.
One of these treasures I found today is Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files blog.
https://www.theredhandfiles.com/
Ed Ruscha’s Sunset Strip interactive
You probably know Ed Ruscha’s Sunset project, in which he photography all the houses along Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. He published this project in the book simply called Every Building on the Sunset Strip.
Getty has created a beautiful website – a piece of art on itself – that allows you to explore the project.
https://12sunsets.getty.edu/map/narrative?d=0.42006&mode=no-map
Seth Godin’s Graceful – beautiful advice
Record density wisdom/word ratio in Seth Godin’s free ebook Graceful.
Download from Seth’s site here.
Internet besties
I love these places on the internet. In no particular order, for now.
Austin Kleon – Drawing writer with a great blog.
Brain Pickings – Maria Popova’s labour of love on books and other beautiful things.
Mr Motley – Great Dutch site about art.
Beeple-crap – Wonderful artist, became known for selling digital works as art with NFT’s. I think his daily work is immensely inspiring.
Boing Boing – Despite being somewhat North-America oriented, a beautiful site by my favorite internet person Mark Frauenfelder. (You will have to accept too many too disgusting ads, that are apparently needed to keep the site alive.)
booooooom – A beautiful art platform. Scrolling around cheers up your mind.
Swissmiss – A design blog it says, but it is much more. Run by Tina Roth Eisenberg. I would say it is her personal “thing that delight me on the web” log.
https://www.dirtyharrry.com – For a visual orgasm.
Seth Godin – Well, guess it needs no elaboration – Seth Godin’s blog. All about making a ruckus.
The Correspondent – Probably the most refreshing journalistic platform in the world, focusing on “unbreaking news”. Here the original (even better) Dutch De Correspondent.
Derek Sivers – Slow thinker comes to unique points of view. Now redirecting to https://sive.rs/. Hope he will re-start posting.
kk.org – A wealth of Kevin Kelly interesting initiatives, thoughts, articles, stuff.
elsadorfman.com – The website of Elsa Dorfman, 20×24 Polaroid portait photographer. An relatively old website I found recently after she passed away. This site keeps engaging me.
B – Blake Andrews’s long running blog. On (street) photography, and other interests from Blake.
Recomendo – another site/newsletter by Mark Frauenfelder.
Atlas Obscura’s stays surprising with its beauty
Atlas Obscura is a wonderful website displaying the world’s most wondrous places and foods.
Starting low budget and 100 (or so) free resources
Start a website on for free on wordpress.com or tumblr. Try it out for a few months.
Start a shop on eBay or Amazon. For free. Only pay for the place when you sell something.
Write a book with pen and paper. Publish on Medium. Or WordPress.com. Be surprised about the feedback you get.
Join a writer’s forum. For example Authority.pub.
Draw on used paper. With an old pencil.
Sell on Etsy. Or on your own free site. Advertise amongst your friends.
Build an email list. Use Mailchimp.
Use public transportation for your business trips. For every ticket you buy there is an invoice associated. No need for a lease car that cost you hundreds of euros even when there is no business.
The benefits of constraints: focus, creativity, discipline
A million things distract; you can only focus on one.
Start on a shoestring. It’s more fun.And constraints fuel your creativity (David Byrne).
You focus on what you want to achieve. Not on other shit.There are a million things that can distract you. There is only one thing to focus on.
Starting on a low budget, gives you focus, makes you disciplined about priorities.
What you need to get started as a developer
If you want to develop stuff, you can do that almost for free.
An old laptop with Linux will suffice. A new reasonably performing laptop will cost you 350$. Get a used one that is even better, for less on ebay.
Linux will cost you nothing.
Development tools will cost you nothing.You don’t need an 8 core machine and a 17″ screen.You will learn. Build skills. For nothing.
Here are 100 free resource I love
Don’t get lost. Use the stuff you need.
Productivity.
Evernote,Scannable,Skitch,Pocket.Linux.Open Office. LibreOffice.Mozilla Thunderbird.Filezilla.Gmail , hotmail (yes we think that is normal now, free email).
Storage.
Dropbox, Google Drive, Stack (!!), iCloud, OneDrive.
Programming.
XAMPP, WAMP, LAMP.php, python, Java, erlang, Javascript, node-red.Git.Jenkins.LiClipse, Eclipse.Notepad++Atom
Education/learning general.
Edx.Khan Academy.
MOOCs.
Internet marketing: AuthorityHacking, Henneke Duistermaat.
Duolingo.
itunesU.
Podcasts.
James Altucher, Tim Ferriss, Seriousy…, Startalk, TED, a16z, The Nerdist, The Art of Manliness, Freakonomics Radio, Akimbo, a16z, Jordan Harbinger, Rolf Potts Deviate.
Fun.
Pokemon Go.
Volgbrothers.
Casey Neistadt.
Candycrush.
(Totally not fun anymore: Facebook. I only use it for groups I am in.)
Photography.
Eric Kim, The Candid Frame, Ted Forbes, streetrepeat.
Instagram (mwa less and less fun), Snapseed, Phototoaster, Camera+, Flickr.
But best get your own wordpress site and build it the coming 35 years.
Cheap cameras on eBay.
Weird shit.
Wired.
Calm.
The School of Life (and The Book of Life).
Interweb.
WordPress (.com), Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Medium.
DuckDuckGo.
Talk (chat).
Skype, messenger, Line WeChat, Viber, Whatsapp.
Activity/Sport.
Strava.
Crea.
Adobe draw/Sketch.
Free wifi.
In the train, MacDonalds, some airports.Free wifi finding apps. Instabridge.
Business.
Mailchimp.
Gnucash.
Togaf. Archi, Archimate.
Mozilla Thunderbird.
Slack.
OBS Studio.
wikipedia.
Travel.
Google maps.Free wifi finding apps. Instabridge.
Low budget / high value for money
Evernote premium.
transIP hosting. hostgator.
Napoleon Hill en public domain boeken
Ik las op aanraden van meerdere mensen het al vrij oude boek Think and Grow Rich van Napoleon Hill. Wonderlijk actueel.
Het boek is public domain en te lezen en downloaden van meerdere sites. Bijvoorbeeld https://archive.org/details/NapoleonHillThinkAndGrowRich_201706 en van Amazon.
Geïnteresseerd in public domain boeken, dacht ik een lijstje te maken van sites waar je public domain boeken kunt vinden, maar dat is er natuurlijk al: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvq99b/how-to-download-the-books-that-just-entered-the-public-domain bijvoorbeeld.
Change This
Wonderful works on Change This, amongst which:
How to be creative:
https://changethis.com/manifesto/show/6.HowToBeCreative
The bootstrappers bible:
https://changethis.com/manifesto/show/8.BootstrappersBible/
A so much more…
Jewelry blog
While searching for something completely different (The Cathedral Effect), I stumbled upon this blog by the Lauren B company. I has an incredible wealth of information in that blog about jewelry. It is very thoroughly done and nicely written. I have no interest whatsoever in jewelry, but this blog is really good.
How I stumbled upon this blog: there is a concept in jewelry for engagement rings called Cathedral Style Engagement Ring Setting. See this post. Geeky details, lovely