and decided I’d be the guy to do the video. Obviously, someone had to.
I was up till three in the morning singing it over and over again trying not to slip up on the words. I ended up with a video that advanced from frame to frame of the comic with me singing not over an audio-only version, but over a full version of the song. I sang over this:
It was fun, but because it was 3am, there was a good chance it might was awful. I decided to rewatch it in the morning, and post it then if I still liked it.
When I woke up, I rewatched it and decided it was terrible. I started to write an email to a friend who’s recorded music for me in the past, asking if he could record a version of Modern Major General for me. To help him out, I chased down some sheet music on 8notes, and saw they had a ‘play’ option. I’d spent over half an hour the night before trying to chase down an audio only / karaoke version with no success. But here it was. Found accidentally. I scrapped the email, sped the music up by about 20% because I’m an idiot, spliced it so it allowed for another verse as the comic required, and sang over it over and over again until I made few enough mistakes to be proud of it:
Even then, I was hesitant to post as someone had done a fantastic job beating me to the punch. I figured mine was about 40% faster and way more fun, even if it came 11 hours later. After I posted mine a bunch of great other videos of this came out.
As of now, it’s my biggest one day hit of a youtube video, and the first acting/singing related video I’ve ever had any success with. It’s inspired me to start creating more videos just for the fun of it. I was thrilled to see it get 5,000 views the first couple days, over a 150 likes, and not a single dislike. It really gets me excited for whatever the next project will be.
And a big thanks to Randall Munroe. All hail Randall, king of the internet.
2,000 people a day go to my site, watch my videos, and a couple of them even pay me for it. I get questions, compliments, and comments on a daily basis. It’s a great feeling, but there’s a disconnect.
I forget that I’m helping others, and it gets hard to keep creating. Something’s needed from time to time to spark inspiration.
My regular outings to a room full of business types wanting to learn about marketing or comedy types watching their 3rd show that week has become a routine. I love doing both of those things, but they’re not special. One’s my job and the other my hobby.
That’s why it was such an amazing feeling to head over to a good friend, Meg’s, 3rd grade classroom a couple weeks ago with Andrew, her fiancee, and read to her class.
It was National Reading Day, and Meg was under some misconception that we were doing her the favor and not the other way around.
I left the room inspired and amazed that Meg was with these kids on a daily basis, putting together a new lesson plan every day.
They hung on her every word and were fascinated by everything she threw at them. It was a great experience.
A big thanks to Meg. But also to Vanessa, Isaiah, Lindsay, Alondra, Antonio, Jade, Aiden, Jesse, Emmanuel, and everyone else in the classroom for the cards and the love.
Let’s do this again soon, Meg. Art project next time?
(Images are from the cards her kids sent me, in case that wasn’t clear.)
There’s one concept my improv coach, Brad, has tried beating over our heads for nearly a year. It wasn’t until last week that it finally made sense to me. To paraphrase:
“Every scene,” he said, “is based on a platform, tilt and then a resolution. In other words someone sets something up, something is done to make things weird, and then something resolves the problem.”
An example could be:
A man goes to the grocery store for milk (platform)
The clerk insists drinking eggs are just as good and that’s what the man should do (tilt)
The man decides this clerk is right (resolution)
Another example:
A wife is upset at her husband for being late to come home (platform)
The husband says he was late because he needed to save orphans from a fire (tilt)
The wife accepts that excuse (resolution)
All good scenes consist of a series of platforms, tilts, and resolutions.
In a ‘crazy man/straight man’ scene the straight man will give the platform, the crazy man the tilt, and generally it’s up to the straight man to resolve it.
In ‘peas in a pod,’ the two people find it in a single voice.
When I first heard this idea, I thought it was exactly the same as other improv framings. I thought of the tilt as finding the first crazy thing and the resolution as the end of the scene. I saw how each resolution was the grounds for the next platform and how each move was a shift in status.
It didn’t hit as a new concept until last week when we ran two exercises.
In the first exercise, two players started a scene and the coach stopped it after fifteen seconds, thirty seconds, forty five seconds, a minute, or two minutes. Because none of us knew how long the scenes would last, we started with huge ideas, but not ideas so ridiculous that we couldn’t play them for two minutes if needed. It was far more fun than our normal scene work, and it set the stage for the next exercise.
In the next exercise we were asked to edit the scene whenever there was a resolution. In other words, a scene could be as short as a guy picks up a pen (platform), the pen is encoded with a secret treasure map (tilt…way too plotty, but let’s roll with it), and the two go off to find treasure (resolution and hence the edit).
Most were simpler than that. A cleaning lady confronts a housewife (platform) about her laziness (tilt), and the housewife explains how rich people are inherently better (resolution and edit).
This exercise showed me I’m strong at beating the hell out of an established game and can lay the groundwork for a solid tag run, but I need major work on this fundamental part of improv.
Specifically, understanding my initial surroundings (the platform), and instead of just playing on that, saying something enough out of left field to create a tilt.
Resolutions are great, but tilts are where the fun is.
An obese man in his mid 30’s came through the doors of Starbucks and walked straight towards me as I went to sit down.
“Do you know anything about computers?” he asked.
‘Uh oh,’ I thought.
“What’s the problem?” I asked. To note, the correct answer to this question is always No.
“I can’t get rid of the subtitles when I play a video,” he said.
“I can probably help with that,” I said, “It should just be a drop down menu option. Cue it up.”
He sat down at the table next to me and loaded up his computer. It was one of the swivel touch screen laptops that use a pen as the interface because we live in the future.
“I’m Jeremy,” I said.
“Alan,” he said as I shook his limp wristed outstretched hand.
He started up a movie in full screen, and I looked it over. There was no menu. When I minimized the movie, his Windows bar was set on the top of the screen blocking the movie’s controls. I unlocked the Windows bar and moved it to the side. I got the impression this was the point where he’d normally restart his machine.
I maximized the movie again and found a gear icon. The very first option was a drop down for Subtitles: ‘English’ or ‘None’?
“Here it is,” I said, “All you need to do is hit this gear down here, and then select from English to None like this.” I showed him.
“What do you mean by select?” he asked.
“Just click it,” I said.
“You mean press it?” he asked.
“That should work,” I said. “Give it a try.”
“Where’s do I press?”
I pointed to the gear icon. He pressed it. The same menu came up.
“And now what?”
“You go to the drop down and press ‘None’”
“Can you do it?”
“Well you need to do some of it, or how will you learn anything?”
“Haha. I see. Okay. I’ll try.”
It took three tries, but he figured it out.
“You do have headphones, yes?” I asked.
“I have it all the way down.” He pointed, showing me his plan was to watch the video on pictures only without the subtitles.
“Great. I’m going to get to work now. Glad I was able to help.”
“Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome.”
I put my headphones in. For about 40 seconds he sat there staring at the moving pictures on his screen with his laptop still pointed towards me.
“Excuse me?” I heard over the sound of Brian Jonestown Massacre.
“Yes?” I said.
“It’s still there.”
I went back to the menu and clicked it again and said, “There you go.”
“Perfect,” he said.
He watched the video for another minute, and then packed up his laptop and walked out the door, never ordering a coffee. For me Starbucks is a place to get some writing done. For him, apparently, it’s his own personal Geek Squad.
I had some fun talking about what’s new in Photoshop CS6. The Beta came out 3 days ago, so I’m feeling about 3 days behind. This covers the overall improvements and shows how to use them.
It’s a brief run down of whether or not it’s worth buying Photoshop CS6. Major changes include new video editing, 3d capabilities, and a far more robust layer pallet. Also, a run down on how to use the Content Aware Move tool and actually get results that work.
After recording it, I poked around to see if there were any good videos out there. The plan was to list a few that were decent but not nearly up to par. Instead, I came across this from Ice Flow:
Their fantastic post on the new features of Photoshop CS6 saved me the effort of doing it myself. There’s no point in releasing a lesson if someone already has a better version of the same thing out there.
There are a few others with run downs that are almost as good. Adobe’s sneak peak videos, The Verge, and plenty of other similar ones, but Ice Flow did it best. Upbeat. Well paced. Informative. I could not ask for more. You’d think I’d be upset someone beat me to the punch, but I’m more relieved that it saves me the time of having to do it myself.
Let’s talk meta. Specifically, Circleme – a new social media site that allows users to connect to themselves.
From their site, “CircleMe is an inspiring social way to collect all your likes and find new ones,” or as most of us read it, “Another one? Really?”
If this fails it won’t be because it’s a terrible idea. Rather it’s too soon, dealing with a problem not enough people have yet – the problem of keeping track of too many sites. CircleMe relies on a group of people asking the question, “How can I possibly keep track of the ten social networks I’m on?” and not immediately answering with, “I could get rid of eight of them.”
Instead they answer with, “I could create another network that keeps track of the ten others. That will surely simplify things.”
What scares me is where this trend is headed. Instead of wiping the slate clean with each new social network, as happened in the past, new ones start cropping on with higher and higher levels of abstraction.
A social network that allows you to compare your connections on 10 platform.
A network that compares the number of networks you have to the number others’ have.
A network of networks networking networks.
That last one didn’t sound real to me.
If CircleMe is a network based on the idea of connecting you to yourself, what’s next? A network connecting you to the networks that connect you to yourself? A way to connect to the networks of others connecting them to themselves? A network dedicated to disconnecting from the ones you actually know?
Anything’s possible, and if we’re going abstract with all of this, let’s go all the way. I want a series of networks that allows me to friend people based on how many social media sites they’re connected to, including the sites in the network itself. It’s the only practical way to objectively like people I never plan to want to know.
Perhaps the world isn’t ready for this yet. It’s too soon. But give it time. I have no doubt we’ll get there.
A big thanks to the 80,000 people who visited my site in the last 2 days.
——————
I found it odd yesterday when the amount of comments on my youtube channel jumped by close to 600%. That’s right. I got 6 comments.
Looking at the stats, I had a 2,000 person bump in the last two days, 1700 more than I was used to. I assumed someone had embedded the tutorial on their site so was surprised to see the main referrer was listed as jeremyshuback.com.
Heading over to my Google Analytics, I saw 25,000 people had visited here yesterday. On a normal day, I get about 30 hits.
The referring source was Stumble Upon. I headed over there, and saw 79,000 people had Stumbled me and over 5,000 people had pressed Like.
‘What the what?’ I wondered. There weren’t any major influencers. Instead, 5,000 random people and some strange algorithm brought me to their attention.
I did what I could. I saw who was talking about it on twitter and thanked them for linking. I updated my site so it had a slightly better design and added a stumble button to the bottom of it. If I want to sustain traffic like this, I just need more content.
I’d spent the day getting over being sick, mostly watching the fourth season of Parks and Rec, and this was the sort of kick in the pants I needed to get me motivated again. Which is to say, expect more content soon. Some tutorials. Some Photoshop insights. Some art things.
I have almost 80,000 people who visited my site this weekend. Let’s see where this takes me.
Last Sunday I hit a flow state. I hadn’t reached one in a while, and had forgotten just how amazing of a feeling it is. It started when Urgent Genius inspired me to quickly finish an article. They were running a 48 hour contest that I saw 3 hours before the deadline. The contest revolved around newsjacking something popular. To enter you needed a team of 3 to 8 people willing to work the weekend to create something brilliant. In other words, I wasn’t planning to enter the contest, but it felt like a good arbitrary deadline to work towards.
It was due at 6pm, so at 3pm I headed to a coffee shop and spent the next few hours writing an article responding to Stop Stealing Dreams (a book released the week previous). I was hoping to reach a point where it was worth linking to, but wasn’t happy with how it turned out when I pressed submit at 5:57.
It felt more like trolling then a reasoned argument on the subject, so I wrote a far more researched follow up: Learning Math through Programming.
Still not happy, I headed home and ate.
Trying to think up a decent article, I listed out the classes he thought should be taught in schools. I didn’t see how those classes could be taught without losing far too much of our current curriculum. However, writing an article combining the 28 standard high school classes in relation to his classes seemed like a lot of mental juggling. That’s probably why he never did it in the book. I decided I could sort it out with a reasonable infographic. Doing that by computer would mean spending more time staring at a screen, so instead I took out some construction paper, a sharpie, and a poster board and ended up with this:
I got lost in creating the video, and when I put the finishing touches on the third article of the night, Adjusting the High School Curriculum, it was 2:30 and I wasn’t tired. I had energy from creating at a level of output I wasn’t used to. It ended up as 1800 words in 3 articles, a 3 minute video, and a collection of charts to boot.
The irony is I wasn’t a huge fan of the book. It felt like he watched:
which inspired him to read about a dozen books (listed in his bibliography) and then write a series of blog posts strung together in a ‘manifesto.’ Writing three posts on the subject made it seem like I had a disproportionate amount of passion for his book. It’s just that I am a huge geek when it comes to school policy reform, and this gave me an excuse to write about it.
I loved watching one article idea inspire 12 hours of work. It’s nice to hit that flow state from time to time. It reminds me of why I do this.
The last time I went to Richard Simmon’s studio I pulled my shoulder, was rushed to the hospital, and ended up having my arm in a splint for two months. I did get to answer, “This? Richard Simmons workout studio. No – not a video – his class is about a mile from me.” I also got this amazing note to put on my refrigerator.
The whole episode made me realize just how out of shape I was. I took up P90X. I even started a blog on it: Exercise is Hard
The blog only lasted a month, but I managed to finish the program and still do exercises from it to this day.
——————-
Richard told me he’d comp my next visit there, and I should come soon but not too soon. Last night I finally went back and realized why I’d pulled my shoulder. It’s a serious workout heavy on the shoulders. Even after all my working out, I was still worried. When he went around hugging and kissing everyone before the class started, Richard said hi to Meg, wanted to know if I was her fiancé, and was told I was the guy who pulled his arm in his class.
“Just be careful,” he said and then hugged me.
Throughout the class he yelled at everyone to push harder, and then would turn to me and say, “Don’t push harder. Don’t hurt yourself.”
He yelled at everyone, “You’re all amazing. You’re better than roses. Then tierra’s. I love you all.” That’s a misquote, I’m sure. There was a guy from NPR taping the whole thing, and yes I am featured two minutes in to the audio interview.
Link to my interview on KPCC
At one point Richard turned the music down and turned to me in front of the class.
“Why do you keep winking at me?” he asked.
“You’re just so magnetic,” I said, “How can I resist?”
“And how’s the shoulder doing?” he asked.
“It’s good. It was a year ago,” I said.
“Let me tell everyone the story.” He told some variety of it that ended in, “And I told him I’d be happy to visit him in the hospital and whisper sweet nothings in his ear. Right?”
“Something like that,” I said, “But I don’t remember that offer.”
“Have you injured yourself since?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’d know if you had. Either you have or you haven’t.”
“Then let’s go with no – I haven’t.”
We talked for about a minute and a half, and then he picked on a few regulars.
He came about a foot from me at one point and mouthed, ‘I love you,’ because that’s just the sort of guy he is.
Half the moves were a great workout. The other half were just an effort to make us look as ridiculous as possible and forget the fact we were working out.
The freestyle dance period.
The pick a partner and dance with her period.
The switch partners and dance with her as well period.
But I knew what I was getting in to. Any set that starts with playing it’s raining men twice in a row can only go in one direction.
Which is a round about way of saying, of course I’ll be back.
