Lost and Found: A video experiment started in 2006

In 2006 I was diligently working on my (still unreleased) new album “The Longest Post”. With that I decided to create a couple music videos both as an experiment on if I could make something fun, and to have a visual way to distribute some songs.

A couple apartment moves later and the hard drives with the music videos were lost.

Until now. In October, 2010 I found the hard drives while cleaning out my music studio and decided it was time to show them to the world.

They weren’t completely finished, however. But a couple nights of some polish and fixes made it so the first, “Got Skillz?” could be released. And here it is.

Some things of note:
You can tell it’s from 2007. Old school web pages and apps. You see an old version of YouTube complete with a greasemonkey script changing the background color of it running within an old version of Firefox.  I was running a lot more extensions then than I remember.

Also given the lack of resources as far as what video I had to work with I experimented with using the game/app/world of “Second Life” for some of the character stuff to emulate the “party in the computer” vibe.

The video “Got Skillz?” tells the story of the party inside the computer. The song says “Get off the floor, and get on the net. The dance you see there is unbelievable I bet.” and the video shows it to be true.

It also mocks the world of rap music by itself being a rap song, but showing how the character of Real-ity doesn’t belong in the ghetto with the homies and would probably just find the nearest computer and get online.

See below for a “behind the scenes” video from when I was working on this originally (February 2007).

Check out facebook.com/​pages/​Real-ity/​192311904989 for updates and new tunes. And as always gabekangas.com to see what Gabe is up to.

The video

Real-ity – Got Skillz?

“Behind the scenes, February 2007″

Weekly Song Recommendation: Mark Mallman – Mother Made Me Do It

I haven’t done a music recommendation post in a while.  It’s certainly not weekly, but I’m not changing the naming.  I don’t know, stopped feeling inspired, I guess.

Well fuck if I don’t feel inspired now.

I’ve always been a fan of Mark Mallman’s.  It started, like many of artists I enjoy do, seeing a show of theirs without knowing who they were beforehand.  This is a prime example of the Gabe Kangas music/movie introduction theory.  It is as follows:

Don’t miss the previews.  One of the new movies may be your new favorite movie ever.
Don’t miss the opening act.  You’re going to the show anyway and they may be your new favorite band.
Don’t just go for the opener.  The headliner may your new favorite band.  You’re there anyway.

Simple enough.

That was in Chicago.  Last fall I was in Seattle and Mallman happened to have a show at a club there a night I was free, so of course I went.  Loved it like the first time.  Grabbed the newest cd.

And then all was quiet until this weekend.  Mark Mallman presented Marathon 3: The 78 hour song.

Live from The Turf Club he played music 78 hours straight.  Him, along side his 400 page binder of lyrics he had prepared, rocked it.  The backing band would change every hour, and aside from ~1min bathroom breaks (while the song continued via the band) and the time a doctor pulled him off the stage (he sprained his ankle… and that whole not sleeping for 78hrs thing) he was on stage playing his song.

I can’t really recap it in all its glory, since I wasn’t physically there.  But through the magic of Twitter and the live video stream of the event I was pretty invested.  But if you’re at all interested check out the liveblog via CityPages.  Here’s a photo they took:

But I must say, watching this thing go down was a firsthand ticket to a man’s journey into madness.  While his first couple days of 24/7 rocking looked like they didn’t take a toll on him, this last day I could no longer decipher the genius from the madness.  His banter with the band started to consist of “I weigh 600 pounds, I think I’m going to die.  This isn’t healthy.”  He had a conversation with his dead grandmother.  He talked to his guitar player about going to Bennigan’s to eat, but realized they were out of business.  It just kept getting weirder.  His voice was going out as time went on and I wasn’t sure if he was going to make it the full 78 hours.  I mean, look at the guy.

But he did.  And it was awesome.

So in the honor of a man who when asked why he would do something so crazy replied with “because”, I recommend you check out this song from his “Live from First Avenue” album, the first album of his I got.  I like it because it has that live energy that I experienced this weekend remotely, but… you know, coherent.

If only everyone loved their craft so much they wanted to see what the extreme of it consisted of.

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#TheCabin Mobile for iPhone

I’ve always said if I took all the time and effort I spent into side projects and spent them on something else I’d have a lot of cool other things.  But I’ve spent some nights and weekends working on this new little app, my first submission to the iTunes App Store.  (Approved in 8 days, FYI)

As some of you may know, for the past 15 years I’ve been helping manage an internet relay chat (IRC) channel I started called #TheCabin. Recently I finished up an app called #TheCabin Mobile for iOS.

The project, as most of my projects are, was to create something to do the things I couldn’t do easily before.

The first feature I really wanted: Easy sharing of photos directly to the channel.
Previously in order to share a photo I’d do the following:
* Open up the camera app
* Take a photo
* Open up dropbox or CloudApp
* Upload the photo to a public place, copy the URL of the image
* Open the IRC client
* Paste the URL into the channe.

Now within the app there are two options: Take new photo, use old photo. You select one, type something about it, and off it goes for all your (my) friends to enjoy. I already find myself using and loving it.

Of course I had to integrate a quick way to jump directly into the channel. Most of us hardcore cabiners (those who hang out there) already have our multitudes of mobile IRC options, but I wanted something for a first timer, just downloading the app from the app store, to jump into the channel as easy as possible. To do this I use a few different web based IRC clients. None of them are perfect, unfortunately, so that one that’s best for you at the time can be selected from the options in the app.

It lists on the main screen who’s currently in the channel, and you can view Tweets/Facebook updates from cabiners who’ve been posting.  You’re also one tap away from reading #TheCabin Wiki (the r33tipedia).

So is this app for everyone?  Or anyone but me?  Probably not.  But it’s up on the iTunes App Store if you want to come hang out with my friends and I.  I don’t recommend it.

Equilibrium had it right

I’m a person of logic. Things that I don’t see I don’t believe. Things that don’t make sense I don’t assume to be true. Faith isn’t really a thing I take part in, and I do things when I see a reason to.

I let logic determine my decisions in life, but unfortunately there’s circumstance where not only do I let that slide, but it goes completely in the other direction. Doctors call that little issue of mine “major depressive disorder” and it’s something i’ve battled my whole life. The part of me when I let things that I know shouldn’t bother me to bother me, and where I make decisions not based on logic but instead on faulty emotion. Emotion isn’t logic.

I had to leave Twitter. At least for a while. I was unable to continue to watch people’s worlds literally scroll by me. For every Tweet that said “I’m so happy!” I only think “fuck you.” For every “I love the summer and my friends!” I think “I hate when people are happy.” I sit home and read about how happy others are, even though I know the filter of the internet makes things often look better or worse than they really are. It effects me far too much.

I cut out Facebook. At least for a while. I found myself commenting on things and saying things I regret later. I’m only spreading the emotion-based hate to others. That’s not fair.

You don’t know how much this pisses me off. Me feeling things that I know are 100% illogical. I have no reason to be “down” or “unhappy”. I know I am because of faulty neurons not sucking up enough serotonin in my brain. I realize that’s a fault of my body just like if I were born blind, or my right arm didn’t work, or whatever. It’s just a thing. Though it grabs me so fucking hard and I can’t shake it.

So as I try to and I cut out the internet activities that pushed me in the first place I realized something. I wasn’t just cutting out the “I’m so happy!!” comments that made me so down, but I’m cutting out the people. And the sad part is cutting out the people really makes things better.

Shortly after pulling myself away from the digital world and the many hundreds of people that inhabited it every day all of a sudden my expectations were reduced of that world. If you remove the people you consider “friends”, you don’t get disappointed. Being alone isn’t any longer “I wish I was out with people right now” but instead “I wonder what new podcasts are online.” The expectation of friendship and happiness is removed when the people are removed.

To me, that’s a great feeling. If you look at me a year ago I had a lot of great friends I spent a lot of time with. In that year so many things have changed. Every person I considered a close friend has moved forward with their life and into a world I don’t inhabit. Cohabitation in relationships, marriages, births, moves out of the area, etc. The world has moved fast this past year and that’s not a bad thing. But unfortunately it is something that ignites the faulty emotional part of me and makes me react with “I don’t care how much fun you’re having at the beach, shut up” when the Twitpic gets uploaded.

I hope everyone is well. I apologize 100 times over for “being that way” and I honestly hope everyone is having the best summer of their lives. Maybe you can tell me about it some time.

TechStars for a Day, startup culture, and my comparisons to Omaha

Alright, stay with me.  I promise you’ll get something at the end.  I don’t promise you’ll like it, though.

I attended TechStars for a Day in Seattle.  If you want to know what this rockin’ organization does check it out.  But in short, they are a business accelerator.  Get your company off the ground in the most awesome way possible.

It seemed like a classic case of serendipity. I was behind the controls at Big Omaha helping the speakers tell their inspiring stories when an email invite came in from TechStars to join them in Seattle to hear more about the program and to give them an opportunity to meet me. It was at this point I was faced with a very important decision: jump up in excitement or let Tony Hsieh finish his talk. History shows what path I took, I didn’t interrupt, and everyone got a free book. So good on me for that one.

I didn’t know what to expect. The only person I’d ever met that’s gone through the TechStars program was Matt Galligan from SimpleGeo. I used the opportunity of Big Omaha to ask him what he thought of it after going through it. He recommended I absolutely make it to Seattle to see what the inaugural Seattle TechStars class has to offer.

So Sunday I jumped on a plane and headed to Seattle feeling not just as a representative of #MysteriousDottie, but maybe as an unofficial spokesperson of Omaha for a day as well.

Showing up Monday morning I met so many people.  All seeming to fit in a category of person that I honestly can’t say I’ve really met before.  They are passionate about launching or improving on something awesome.  Everyone had an idea and regardless of what happened that day, what happened in the past, or what happens with TechStars or otherwise they are going to launch this particular thing that means so much to them.

Even though these companies are all technology based there was zero talk of tech.  Nobody asked me “so what are you building your company with?” or asked my opinion on web frameworks.  No side discussions about browsers, operating systems or programming languages.  Nobody cared.  If you were to ask someone the (increasingly awful) question “What do you do?” you won’t hear “I’m a ruby on rails developer” but instead “I run a company that does X.”  I always joked with @lasertron that her title in the world was “Textiles Engineer” and that seems to be a parallel to these business owners.  She’s as much of a engineer of fabric as these people are programmers.  It’s a means to an end to build something completely radical.

I won’t lie, there was an air of competition.  I want to guess there were maybe 30 companies in attendance, between one and four people per company.  This however is very narrowed down from the hundreds that apply from all around the world.  While each person there is supportive and excited for everyone else, they all want to be a member of the final ten companies that will be selected in June.

An example: Andy Sack, the director of TechStars in Seattle, mentioned he had forgot his camera and asked if anyone in attendance had a camera that wasn’t a camera-phone.  I was the only person to raise my hand.  I was dubbed the official TechStars for a day photographer and I did my best to make sure I captured the event.  Though unexpectedly I got a few people telling me that it was a “good move” to volunteer to take pictures and get an “in” with the TechStars committee.  Honestly, that was the last thing that came to mind when raising my hand to say I had a camera but others saw it as a strategic move.

I got to meet a handful of mentors and past TechStars companies.  Urbanspoon, Feedburner and Everlater were in attendance.  There’s something really great to be hanging out casually with the team from Urbanspoon, asking them specific questions about their mobile development strategies.

So enough about facts and what I saw.  You’re here for my thoughts.  So here are my personal reflections.

To me it felt like I was taking Big Omaha a step further.  Where just a couple weeks ago I was being told to follow my dream, an event like this with knowledgeable, real world tested companies were pointing me in a direction to do so.  From founders openly discussing the mistakes they made to groups saying openly they really had no idea how to program before embarking on the path to their idea it opens up a layer of “realness” and detail to each person telling their story.

Much like me when I decided I wanted to build something awesome you start developing more questions than answers and our local community is lacking on those answers.  Having people be completely transparent in detail about not only the things they’ve done right, but also what they’ve done wrong helps so much when giving people the tools they need to launch the next really great thing.  Now that I see the startup community of Seattle (and before that TechStars having Boulder and Boston classes) I hope Omaha starts making the steps to go that direction as well.  But as I’ve mentioned to others Omaha is slightly in a chicken and egg situation.  In order for people to open up about how they launched something great we need a handful of something greats to launch.  And for that to happen there is that possibility that the best scenario is to leave the area.

I know, the infamous least popular opinion of all of Big Omaha.  But you’d be surprised how many mentors and successful business owners in Seattle told me how I need to get into a bigger pond.  And I’ll stick by the thought that for some people it is a valid choice.  Until Omaha has a culture that strives to enable people to succeed in their dreams not just in great community (that we have), but in experienced mentors and investments that are geared to the startup sector, people may be spinning their wheels.  Sorry.  <3 you guys.

I don’t say that to stir controversy, but more to be appreciative that these types of things exist.  The opportunity for someone like me, just some random dude in Omaha, to visit, if only for a day, is a great thing.  I encourage any of you if you have an idea and some first steps on executing it to apply to TechStars, or YCombinator or local institutions like the Halo Institute.  Maybe it’ll be the move for you to take your idea to the next level.  Maybe it’ll be a complete waste of your time.  For me even if I never hear from TechStars again just the application process and being a part of the club for one day was worth the effort.  You learn something just trying.