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The Daily Ted talk

August 25, 2010 4 Comments

Yesterday on Twitter, my friend Kri posted the following:

One of my favorite morning rituals. A new, interesting topic, every day.

I’ve watched several of the Ted videos in the past, but I find that I often spend twice as long deciding which video to watch. There are 700+ available online, so how on earth should I decide which one to watch?

So I did what I always do in situations like this, I programmed a solution; The Daily Ted.

It’s super basic, as it should be. Click the link and it will take you to the page and you already know which column and row to click on. Don’t think, just click and enjoy. If you enjoyed the vid, come back and leave a link on The Daily Ted page.

Honestly, I built this for myself and for my purpose it is just fine. But, since I can’t leave well enough alone, I’ll likely end up taking this a little further and update the script to actually embed the video on the page to make it handy for others, too. Until then, just click and enjoy.

Filed Under: General

book review: Rework

May 26, 2010 Leave a Comment

In the span of a week, two people both recommended I check out the book Rework (Amazon affiliate link). That would normally be enough to get me to pick up the book all by itself, but when I found out it was written by the guys from 37 Signals, the developers of BaseCamp and other kick-ass web applications, I was sold.

Rework is a book of advice for new business owners. Somebody else I saw online said it has “Little gems of common sense.” I couldn’t agree more. Most of the topics in the book are things that, if you sat down and thought about it, you probably already new. You may even apply many of the tips to different parts of your day-to-day life, no matter if you own a business or not. But, for small business owner (like me), getting a reminder from time to time is never a bad thing.

For me, this book was all about timing. After recently quitting my job to start a new company, many of the topics covered in the book really hit home. That’s most likely why it was suggested to me by my friends.

One thing I really enjoyed was the real-world examples they gave, many of which had to do with things that took place in their own office. Hearing how they dealt with issues and how they came to decisions reminded me that our problems aren’t unique. We are facing some of the exact same issues they were. No company becomes successful over night, and seeing how other companies have struggled, but come out the other side to succeed is reassuring.

If you are looking to start your own company, or if you’re working in a start-up, you should check out Rework. You aren’t going to find any Earth shattering secrets, but you may just find a gem or two that helps you take that next big step.

Filed Under: General, Reviews Tagged With: ,

Take time to say thanks

April 9, 2010
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When you spend your days working on code, there will sometimes be days where everything you think should work won’t, and things that shouldn’t work do. These days tend to push the frustration levels to the tipping point. For me, today was one of those days. I spent 10+ hours trying to find and fix a bug in some code that was working fine on my development machine, but just would not play nice when we moved it to the client’s server. Thankfully we came up with a solution and I didn’t have to leave it unsolved. That would have made for a sleepless night as my mind wouldn’t be able to let it go.

After some dinner and a movie, I sat down to check some emails I had ignored during the day. One email was from a lady I spoke with back in December. She had been having an issue with a WordPress theme and I made her a short video to show her how to fix it. It turns out, she had saved the email I had sent her and referred back to it in order to solve the problem on her own. She wrote me a quick note to say thanks again even though I hadn’t lifted a finger for her in nearly 5 months. That one email turned my entire day around! Such amazing power in the two quick sentences she wrote.

Is there somebody that has helped you out who’s day might be brightened up by a quick note of thanks? I can think of a few myself and I plan on writing them as soon as I finish this post. Like, now.

Filed Under: General

Blog World Expo: The Party Edition

October 22, 2009
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One of the greatest parts of any conference is the after parties. Have your conference in a town like Las Vegas and it’s not hard to imagine that the amount of parties available to you is mind boggling. We definitely did our share of partying, too!

Here’s what our weekend looked like:

Wednesday Night
Mural of ShayneWe had friends arrive on Wednesday, so after I went to the Track Leader Orientation, we all headed out for dinner and a nice long chat. We followed that up by surprising Shayne with a 8′ x 9′ mural of his Twitter avatar in our photo studio. If you ever want to make a mural yourself, let me tell you that this was 120 sheets of paper and 4.5 hours of cutting/taping/hanging. But it was worth it!

Thursday night
Ted Murphy & John HawkinsThis was the first official day of Blog World Expo. I spent a few hours at the convention center, but mainly just to meet up with and say hello to a few friends in from out of town. The fun began around 5:30 when we met up at Bar Louie for our weekly Beer n Blog meetup that was set to kick off the WordCamp weekend. We had a turnout of about 60 people including a few people I had beer really looking forward to meeting; TechnoSailor (Aaron Brazell) and Ted Murphy from Izea (pictured with me here). Both of which, as expected turned out to be really nice guys. After spending 4 hours downing Blue Moons with the group, we headed home to rest up for the marathon day we expected on Friday.

Friday Night
Jeep hitting beam in parking lotAfter a full day at WordCamp/Blog World, we headed out to the Hard Rock Hotel. You know it’s going to be a good night when you are pulling in to the parking garage and the guy in front of you is towing a Jeep on a flat bed and you get to watch the Jeep hit the “7′ clearance” sign followed by the next 3 concrete beams. Ahh, welcome to Vegas. (sorry the photo isn’t better on this one!)

Once inside the Hard Rock, we headed to the poker room where Blogs With Balls crew had organized a charity poker tournament for Ante Up For Africa. Pro poker player Annie Duke co-hosted the event and brought along a dozen big name poker pros to play in the tournament as well. Each table had 1 pro poker player and 1 pro blogger. They had put bounties on each of the pro bloggers, so if you knocked them out of the tournament you’d win a gift basket. I’m happy to say I knocked out our table pro and took home 7 xBox 360 sports games! We had a great time it was all for a great cause! HUGE thanks to Dan Levy for getting me and my friends in to the tourney and for putting on such an awesome event! Check out the video on YouTube.

Saturday Night
After WordCamp/BlogWorld ended it was time to strap on the party boots just one more time before sending everybody home. We started off hitting up the official BlogWorldExpo BBQ that went on poolside at the Hilton. They had an open bar and a HUGE spread of great food. The party was well attended by tons of speakers from BlogWorld which was nice since I was busy running WordCamp all weekend, I wasn’t able to chat with many of them during the previous 2 days. I really enjoyed getting to chat with Darren Rowse in person since I’ve been reading his blogs for such a long time. It’s was also nice to be able to chat face-to-face with people I don’t get to see in person too often like Jim Kukral, Aaron Hockley, Shayne Sanderson, Austin Passy, Darin Hardy and at least a dozen others.

Aaron Brazell & Jeremy Wright signing KaraokeOnce the BBQ was over we had to make a tough decision between two events that both sounded like a lot of fun. In the end we opted for the one that required zero driving. We walked inside the Hilton and headed over to the spot where they were doing #TechKaraoke. Nobody from our group sang, but we amused ourselves by watching the drunk geeks singing (I use that term loosely) and by having a “Fake ReTweet war”. Don’t know what that is? Well, the bar had a large screen (10′ x 10′ -ish) where they were showing Twitter messages that people had tagged with #bwe09. So, what you do is write up a tweet in the form of a retweet of your buddy. For example:

RT @my_buddy: Wow, I sure hope this rash goes away! Another great time in Vegas! #bwe09

This would then scroll across the screen and we would laugh our heads off. There is nothing like childish humor plus alcohol to make for an incredibly fun evening!

After a few hours of Karaoke and fake tweets, it was time to head back home and spend Sunday resting up! We were a tired crew after 4 long days and nights. But, we are looking forward to doing it all again next year!

Filed Under: Entertainment, General, WordCamp Tagged With: , , , ,

Comedy, the hard way

August 16, 2009
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A week or two back a good friend invited me out for an evening at a comedy club here in town. He had received complementary tickets, and I was glad to have the opportunity to hang out with my friend, so this seemed like the makings of a great evening!

We arrived to the casino an hour early. We made our way to will call where we picked up our tickets without incident. Having at least 30 minutes to kill before it was time to make our way inside the show room, we stopped off at the bar and had a beer. We were having a great time BSing when I looked down and realized it was 5 minutes until show time. We drained our beers and headed on over.

When we walked up to the door I could already see inside. The place was empty except for maybe one or two tables. The hostess walked us to a table right up front. Having been to MANY a comedy show in the past, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be sitting so close. All it takes is for one comic who thinks he’s the next Don Rickles and you are in for a long night. We took our seats and a within a few minutes the MC for the evening took the stage to a smattering of applause. I immediately flagged down the waitress and ordered another beer. This was going to be tough.

A -large- part of the fun of going to a comedy club is laughing along with the rest of the crowd. There have been many times when somebody in the crowd gets laughing so hard that they, in a way, become part of the show. This fuels the rest of the crowd to laugh and cheer and because of it the comedian settles in to a rhythm with the crowd and feeds of it.

But what if nobody’s laughing?

Here’s the thing, there wasn’t anything wrong with any of the comedians specifically. If you put any of them in front of a crowd of a couple hundred people, they all would have done just fine. Especially the ‘headliner’. He was really funny. But, with only 8-10 people in the audience, it’s hard to build up any sort of real laughter. Think about it. If somebody tells you a joke, even if you laugh, you are only going to laugh for a couple seconds. Now, consider that not EVERYTHING the guy says is funny to all 8-10 people. So now you have 3 or 4 people doing little more than chuckling at any one time. This is not a situation where it’s going to be fun for the crowd or the comedian.

Thankfully the show wasn’t very long. That’s probably due to the fact that none of the comedians had to pause waiting for laughter to die down before telling their next joke. We were able to salvage the night by heading across town to catch the second set of the Sin City Sinners. What’s not to love about a bunch of rockers playing ’80s cover tunes in a small club with Ron Jeremy hanging out at a table with no less than 3 hot blond chicks at any given time?

If you plan on going to a comedy club and you walk in and realize the place has less than a dozen people in the audience, save yourself and ask for a refund immediately. You’ll thank me for it.

Filed Under: Entertainment, General Tagged With: ,

Not just any tequila will do

July 8, 2009
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How do you say happy birthday in Spanish? I’ll tell you how, Chinaco tequila!

chinaco-negroI have long been a fan of Chinaco tequila. I even wrote about taking it to our company holiday party back in 2005. But last summer while on a business trip in Santa Barbra I was having lunch at a tequila bar called Left at Albuquerque and found a bottle of Chinaco I had never seen before. I asked the bartender about it and he said it was called Chinaco Negro and was an extra anejo tequila. I didn’t feel comfortable having a shot of tequila just before hopping in to the rental car to drive back to the airport, so I passed up the opportunity to try it out. I have been kicking myself ever since.

On Sunday we had a few friends over to celebrate my birthday. I was extremely excited to open the gift presented by the entire group to find a bottle of Chinaco Negro. We each had a shot and I have to say, this tequila is, without a doubt, the best tequila I’ve ever had. I plan on keeping this around for a while and enjoying it slowly.

I had to do a little research to find out what the differences are between the different types of Chinaco. They all have to do with how long the are aged. The Blanco isn’t aged, Reposado aged 8 months, Anejo aged 3 years and the Negro aged 5 years.

You can read about the Chinaco Negro tequila at tequila.net

Big thanks to Chris, Gloria, Marcia and Charles for this amazingly awesome gift!

Filed Under: General Tagged With: ,

Clearing out the domain drawer

May 22, 2009
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I’m never sure how exactly this happens. But, for the second time in a couple years I find myself with a crazy amount of domain names in my godaddy.com account. Most of these I purchased with ideas in mind for projects. Some got thrown in as part of a bundle when purchasing a specific name. Regardless, I have 50 domains that are either not currently being used or developed. If you are interested in any of the following domain names, send me an email (john [at] johnhawkinsunrated [dot] com) with your offer for the domain.

30SECONDREVIEWS.COM
ARTICLEHAWK.COM
BACONFAN.COM
BANGPHOTOS.COM
BESTGOLDSTAR.COM
BLOGGITUDE.COM
BUSTABLE.COM
BUSTCUPS.COM
BUYSELLLAPTOPS.COM
CHERRYMILFS.COM
CLICKYOURSELF.COM
CURVABLE.COM
CURVEABLE.COM
DESERTCARLOANS.COM
DINNER365.COM
EASYBLOGTHEMES.COM
ETC5.COM
FLATPROFIT.COM
FREEMILFCLIP.COM
F**KINBRAZIL.COM
F**KINGFORUMS.COM
F**KPEACH.COM
FUNKHOLES.COM
GADGETDORKS.COM
HANDLEDOMAINS.COM
HOTSTUPIDGIRLS.COM
JCPORN.COM
LUSTPAGES.COM
MRAFFILIATEPROGRAMS.COM
MRPACKAGER.COM
MUSCLERELAXER.BIZ
NASTYSEXDOWNLOADS.COM
POKERCRASHCOURSE.COM
PORNRALLY.COM
PSSW.ORG
QUEENOFCOUPONS.COM
ROCKSEXPARTY.COM
SHOOTVIDEONOW.COM
SSJOY.COM
STUMBLENETWORK.COM
SUBPRIMECRISISMANAGEMENT.COM
TEAMDONK.COM
THEBJ.COM
THEGAMEPLAYER.COM
TRIPTOTHESTORE.COM
TWITTERROCKSTAR.COM
VASTPORN.COM
WEBMASTERPORNO.COM
WELLWTF.COM

If you are interested in developing any of these domains as a joint effort, I’m open for that as well.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: ,

Using WordPress as a CMS for Affiliate Marketing

April 26, 2009
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On April 25th I spent the day at WordCamp Reno-Tahoe where I gave a presentation on using WordPress as a CMS for affiliate marketing. Other than being the MC for WordCamp:Las Vegas, this was my first time putting together slides and a speech and presenting it in front of an audience.

For those who weren’t there, unfortunately not many of the sessions were recorded. I believe most of the presenters will be uploading their slide decks and, from what I hear, they will be linking to them shortly from the WordCamp Reno-Tahoe website.

Here is the slide deck from my presentation:

I had my handy-dandy Flip video camera with me and recorded my presentation which you can see here:

Using WordPress as a CMS for Affiliate Marketing from John Hawkins on Vimeo.

Thanks again to Colin Loretz for putting on a fantastic show this weekend and especially for letting me be part of it.

Filed Under: General, Technology, WordCamp, WordPress Tagged With: , , , , ,

Around Vegas: Nelson, NV

March 24, 2009
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This is the first in a new series of posts I plan on doing highlighting some places I’ve visited recently around Las Vegas. When you mention Las Vegas, everybody immediately thinks casinos, gambling and strip clubs. But, you’d be surprised at all the interesting and diverse places there are to see in and around Las Vegas. I plan on visiting as many of them as I can find.

This past weekend, my love of photography and my desire to continue to find new and interesting places to shoot photos took me to Nelson, NV. Nelson is a ghost town roughly an hour Southeast of Las Vegas. It’s tucked away on a secluded road that you’d never think to turning on to unless you knew what was out there. Because of that, there isn’t a lot of traffic that rolls through Nelson. But, once you do make it out there, the place has a lot of cool things to photograph.

Nelson has a couple old barns, a saloon, gas pumps, old rusted-out vehicles, a water pump and even the remains of a plane crash. OK, the plane crash is actually from a movie that filmed out in Nelson, but still cool to shoot. Inside the main building you’ll be able to see a bunch of artifacts from the area and dozens of photos of all the movie stars that have filmed movies in the area. One of the scenes from Kevin Costner’s ’3000 Miles to Graceland’ was filmed there.

If you plan on going out there for a photo shoot, be sure to call ahead and let them know you are coming. They are happy to have you come out, but they’ll give you a small set of rules to follow. (They have some people living in some of the buildings, so they steer you clear of bothering them.) Also, be prepared to leave a little cash in the tip jar. I don’t know if it’s a requirement, but the people out there are so nice and inviting, you’ll be compelled to.

There is an hour-long gold mine tour that you can take (we didn’t, but I’ve heard it’s really cool and I plan on going back with the kids to check it out myself) and you can also schedule canoe and kayak tours. We didn’t realize it when we first got there, but if you stay on the road past Nelson, 5 miles later you’ll end up at very secluded part of the Colorado river. We saw a few people on the river on jet skis and a guy and his grandson sitting on the bank fishing.

I had no idea any of this was out here. Big thanks to Nate for inviting me along.

Here are a few shots I took in Nelson and at the Colorado River.

BarnPlane CrashChipped Paint
Rusted car and SaloonColorado River

Filed Under: General, Photography Tagged With: , ,