The Merlin Show

Video: John Roderick on String Art Owls, Copper Pipe, and Bono's Boss

Merlin — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:51:26 -0500

Long story (not very) short? One night in 2003--after killing it in front of audience of about 30 lucky people in Oakland--The Long Winters needed a place to crash, and my wife and I were happy to oblige.

So, they drove their Big Stinky Blue Van over the bridge, slept on our floor, and by breakfast the next morning, it'd become clear to me that I'd provided lodging to a man who was not only very likely a member of my karass--he was also one of the smartest bullshit artists I'd ever met.

Almost eight years later, although I don't see him nearly as much as I'd like, I still count the guy as one of my best pals ever.

That's John Roderick. And, I think you need to know about him.

John doesn't read this site--he's more of a Twitter person--so I don't risk feeding his astounding excess of dignity by saying he's one of the most gifted writers and bon vivants of our generation. He's just the best. In large part because he's congenitally incapable of suffering bullshit.

This was never more apparent than the Saturday morning in 2007 when we sat in my back yard and talked about a lot of stuff. Playing guitar, advertising on the web, the evil work of promoters, and why everyone is always trying to shortchange everyone on copper pipe.

That talking became a four-part interview I ran on the late and occasionally lamented The Merlin Show, and, to this day, it's one of my favorite things I've been lucky enough to post to the web.

So, y'know how I'm definitely "not for everyone?" Well, John is really "not for everyone."

He's opinionated and arrogant and undiplomatic and unironically loves Judas Priest--meaning everyone will find at least one thing not to like about him. Despite being hairy and enjoying laying on your bed, John is not exactly a teddy bear.

But, John's also right a lot. And, he never sands off the edges of his personality or opinions to make you theoretically "like" him. Which, it will come as no surprise to you, is a big reason I love the guy more than a free prime rib dinner.

So, why the jizzfest about that awful jerk, John Roderick?

Because, as I noted the other day on the Twitter, in our first episode of Back to Work I misattributed a line that should have been credited to John. Which in itself is unimportant, except inasmuch as finding that link to correct the error got me watching our 50-some minutes of chatting again. I also received some at-responses and emails that reminded me how much people enjoyed our chat.

But, really it made me realize how much that rambling morning in my back yard still resonates so much with stuff I care a lot about. Independence. Agency. Directness. And, never apologizing for wanting to get paid. Also, guitars and talkative hippies.

So, anyway. John.

I edited all four parts of the video into one big (streamable/downloadable) movie that should make it way easier to watch at a sitting. Should that interest you. Which it may not. Which, as ever, is totally fine, and kind of the point.

But. If you like Dan and my new show (and, seriously—God bless you magnificent bastards who helped briefly make B2W the most popular podcast in the world [gulp]), I think you'll really like this interview a lot too. I hope so, anyway.

Thus, submitted for your disapproval, permit me to present my four-year-old visit with the acerbic, opinionated, and reportedly unlikeable bullshit artist whom I respect and adore more than just about anybody.

Meet Hotrod.

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”Video: John Roderick on String Art Owls, Copper Pipe, and Bono's Boss” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 21, 2011. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

The Merlin Show: John Roderick, Jesse Thorn, true HD, plus a cool new Flash player

Merlin — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 05:22:20 -0400

The Merlin Show

Over on my video podcast, The Merlin Show, we recently wrapped up our epic 4-part interview with John Roderick from The Long Winters (n.b.: part 3 is my favorite episode of the show so far). And, just yesterday, we posted the first in a six (6) part visit with America's Radio Sweetheart, Jesse Thorn, who's the host of the nationally syndicated public radio program (and, arguably, the best podcast [iTunes] in America), The Sound of Young America. (And now I can't stop saying "webmobisode" -- damn you, Jesse Thorn).

I hope you'll stop by if you haven't visited with us in a while. Plus -- thanks to the generous nerd skillz of our friends over at Blip.tv -- you can now watch each and every episode of The Merlin Show from the comfort of this handy dandy Flash viewer. (Note that you can jump to any episode by clicking on "GUIDE"). And, yes, please do feel free to "SHARE" this far and wide.

And, finally, please consider subscribing to The Merlin Show in iTunes or via the podcatcher of your choice. As of our latest episode, the Apple TV version of the feed goes out at full-on HD 720p (thanks, HV-20s!).

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”The Merlin Show: John Roderick, Jesse Thorn, true HD, plus a cool new Flash player” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on June 05, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

TMS: John Roderick, Chris Wetherell, and John Vanderslice

Merlin — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:03:46 -0400

The last week or so of The Merlin Show has featured three fun interviews with independent musicians -- talking about Macs, handling email, and figuring out how to get paid. Stop by for visits with John Roderick, Chris Wetherell, and John Vanderslice (or view the videos right here, after the jump...)

John Roderick

John from The Long Winters brings his surly but lovable wisdom to my backyard, clarifying how he's like a building contractor and why he has to make sure no one tries to screw him on copper pipe. (Note: Contains strong language and frank discussion of show business) [View full show notes]

Click To Play

Chris Wetherell (part 2/2)

Chris from Citizens Here and Abroad and Dealership returns to talk more about how bad (no, really bad) he is with email and how surprisingly little dough a band makes from touring. [View full show notes]

Click To Play

John Vanderslice (part 3/3)

JV returns to talk about how to take a Mac on tour as well as why he stopped using Apple's Address Book and Mail.app for his 5,000-fan mailing list. [View full show notes]

Click To Play

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”TMS: John Roderick, Chris Wetherell, and John Vanderslice” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 05, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

TMS: The Mountain Goats' Peter Hughes

Merlin — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 05:51:49 -0400

011: Interview: Peter Hughes | The Merlin Show

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In today's episode, Merlin talks with Peter Hughes of The Mountain Goats about the logistics of wired touring, keeping a tour diary on LiveJournal, and why The Mountain Goats don't have a MySpace page.

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”TMS: The Mountain Goats' Peter Hughes” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 27, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Vox Pop: Want HD video from iTunes and Apple TV?

Merlin — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 12:03:07 -0400

Since the new TV can handle video up to HD's 720p resolution, there's been a lot of speculation about whether the iTunes store will eventually start selling HD content, such as TV shows and movies. You can bet that the desire for that quality of presentation is theoretically out there (at least it is for this HD TV owner). The problem, as many folks have discussed at length, is that the file size for HD movies, in particular, may be prohibitively large for the garden-variety home broadband user.

As Greg Keene notes, "With simple math, we can extrapolate that a 2-hour movie would be about 3.9 GB." That's not only a substantially lengthy download for, say, a residential DSL subscriber, it also represents the investment of over 10% of the available space on the Apple TV's drive (as well as, it should be noted, an equivalent chunk of space back on your Mac or PC's disk).

In his very good "Apple TV: iTunes Store Movie Quality vs DVD, HD, Cable," Daniel Eran writes:

Since the existing "near DVD" quality movies are already large downloads, Apple would either have to highly compress HDTV or accommodate much longer downloads. Don’t expect a sudden move to HDTV from iTunes...

Apple optimistically estimates that broadband iTunes users can download its “near DVD quality” movies in a couple hours, so HD movies would either take well over a day of sustained downloading at full tilt, or require far more compression.

This is one reason I think the Apple TV may be giving a kind of temporary competitive advantage to producers of shorter-length HD content, such as -- well -- let's say video podcasters. It's a big reason behind our decision to start shooting and releasing The Merlin Show in 720p over the next month or so. The current hi-res version of the show -- which actually looks pretty good on my Apple TV -- is presented at widescreen 854x480, which makes our most recent, 14-minute episode weigh in at 88 MB (about 6 MB/minute).

Here's a comparison of the three screen resolutions (720p, hi-res/854x480, and iPod/320x176) for reference (This is just for relative size comparison; you can mentally change the image's "mm" to "px.")

Seems to me that the typical expectation for podcasts is that, while they will be released on a relatively regular basis, they will also get downloaded automatically in the background and then get synched to a device like a Video iPod or TV for viewing at the user's convenience.

But, movies, and to a lesser extent, single episodes of TV shows, strike me as more of an impulse item -- something you want to download and watch more or less now. Knowing there's two hours and multiple gigs of disk space between you and Norbit might be a disincentive to downloading, right? But, then again, people don't seem to mind the wait of their Netflix queue, right? I dunno. You tell me.

Given the constraints of time and disk space, would you purchase (and wait for the download of) HD content for your TV? What do you think is an acceptable resolution for content on your HD TV? Anybody hacked on their unit yet? Whither TV, iTunes, and HD?

”Vox Pop: Want HD video from iTunes and Apple TV?” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 25, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Jeff Veen on simple tools, meetings, and leveraging the commute

Merlin — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 06:48:11 -0400

009: Interview: Jeffrey Veen, Part 2 | The Merlin Show

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In this second segment of our interview with Jeffrey Veen (here's the previous one), Jeff talks about making the best of meetings (and the time around them), lofi capture, and the beauty of simple tools -- including both paper and UNIX apps.

I especially like when Jeff discusses how he uses his shuttle commute time; by knowing that he can rely on firewalled time to bookend each work day, Jeff can confidently lob tasks out of the moment and into that quiet and reliable commute session. I find this a very GTD-like practice in that it sets aside time for processing, organization, and reviewing -- leaving the hectic work day free for pure doing.

(BTW: here's the book on writing that we talked about: On Writing Well by William Zinsser)

Jeff Veen: Part 1
Jeff Veen: Part 2

”Jeff Veen on simple tools, meetings, and leveraging the commute” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 19, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Robert Daeley on configuring for QS proxies

Merlin — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 05:41:21 -0400

Enabling Quicksilver proxies and application menus | Celsius1414

Robert Daeley has posted an excellent appendix to yesterday's screencast on Quicksilver proxies.

Because, like most Quicksilver power users, I run the app in full-bore, bleeding-edge mode with all the plug-ins installed, I tend to leave out some of the rubber-chicken-waving that new users need to go through to make advanced features work properly. Robert picks up the slack nicely with this swell tutorial. Many thanks!

Merlin Mann’s new episode of the Merlin Show posted yesterday teaches very powerful Quicksilver-Fu, enabling you to access the menu items of any application, as well as introducing the concept of proxies. These techniques belie the mistaken impression that Quicksilver is “merely” a program launcher — it is an application master. ;)

What isn’t clear in the ‘cast is the settings, downloads, and brand of incense you need to burn in order to make all of that happen. I’m pretty sure the below covers everything, but let me know if I missed something.

Read all of Robert's article.

”Robert Daeley on configuring for QS proxies” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 13, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

The Merlin Show: Quicksilver proxies for application menus

Merlin — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 05:54:46 -0400

008: HOWTO: Quicksilver: Application Menus | The Merlin Show

Click To Play

Many of the most diehard Quicksilver fans don't know "proxy objects" even exist. Proxies are a sexy way to build actions and triggers around abstract QS items such as "Current Application," "Finder Selection," "Album Now Playing," and even meta-stuff like "Last Command" and "Quicksilver Selection."

By making a trigger to "Show Menu Items" in the "Current Application," you can get Quicksilver-based access to almost any pull-down menu in a given OS X app. In today's demo, I show you how to bring this fast access to any of the bajillion drop-down menu items in Macromates' Textmate.

If you enjoy The Merlin Show, please consider subscribing for free via iTunes or Democracy, or just point the "podcatacher" of your choice at http://feeds.themerlinshow.com/TheMerlinShow.

”The Merlin Show: Quicksilver proxies for application menus” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 12, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

The War of Art, and JoCo on becoming a "true person"

Merlin — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 11:51:36 -0500

007: Interview: Jonathan Coulton, Part 2 | The Merlin Show

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I first heard about The War of Art from David Allen during our GTD podcast series last year. I finally picked up a copy a couple months back and read it in an evening. Like a lot of self-help books, it's longer than it needs to be (and it's not actually very long to begin with), but it does make some great points about what its author calls "resistance."

Resistance can be thought of as anything that pulls us away from doing the work we know is most important to us. It takes many forms (including procrastination, fear, distraction, and negative self-talk), but the effect is often similar: we find or permit all kinds of barriers to keep us from becoming the person we want to be, or from completing the thing we really want to make. Whether that's being a published author, a composer, a playwright, or a painter, our impulse to create constantly battles an impulse to do something else, or to do nothing -- to not upset our weirdly comfy stasis.

This book came up twice in my recent interview with Jonathan Coulton; both in part one and today's recently released part two. Jonathan strikes me as someone who has, so far, succeeded at talking down the resistance he'd faced, and now he's doing what he's great at, and, in his words, he's working hard to become the kind of "true person" that he wants to be for his daughter.

I think it's really important to underscore that beating resistance does not have to mean quitting your job or doing something equally dramatic; it just means that you identify and then choose to beat the crap out of whatever perceived obstacle keeps you from doing your work. You "go Pro" as Pressfield (not "Pressman") says, making it all about the work, and not allowing yourself to trail off when it gets hard or when you have to fight in order to get your stuff done. Pretty inspiring stuff, as far as I'm concerned.

I really liked this second part of the interview with JoCo; particularly when Jonathan confessed that his lack of an email system has him "screwed."

007: Interview: Jonathan Coulton, Part 2 | The Merlin Show

”The War of Art, and JoCo on becoming a "true person"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 08, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

TMS: Screencast on Quicksilver's "Comma Trick"

Merlin — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 12:03:59 -0500

006: HOWTO: Quicksilver: The Comma Trick | The Merlin Show

For Quicksilver fans, today's episode of The Merlin Show includes a short screencast on how to do the (still-surprisingly-little-known) Comma Trick.

(Hint: As a Mac OS X screen demo, this is an episode you may prefer to watch at high-resolution)

Click To Play

(Sharp-eyed? How can you tell this wasn't the first take? :-) )

”TMS: Screencast on Quicksilver's "Comma Trick"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 05, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"