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My best unpublished drafts of 2011
Jan 5, ’12
10:21 PM
The way things go with kids and life and work and all that these days, I’m not having any sort of big “this year I’m going to get back to blogging” feeling right about now.
Too busy. Find me on Twitter. Maybe I’ll use Tumblr more. Maybe not.
Which brings us to a list, not of my most popular blog posts of last year (and really, who has the ego for that in 2012?) — but rather, of my best unpublished drafts.
Be inspired.
1. My ultimate journalism hacker masters program (April)
Looks like this was a response to a Dave Stanton survey of some sort. I might have responded in his form. Maybe. Here’s a key quote from the unpublished draft: “Media Theory for Online Journalism: Diffusion and adoption theory, organizational psychology, and the…” That’s really it. It trails off right there. Nothing after the “the.”
2. The thing about the redesigns nobody asks for (July)
Remember that unsolicited redesign of a few pages on nytimes.com that one guy posted with a lot of negative attitude tied to it? Yeah, people like me really loved that. (Pretend I wrote loved in that fancy new sarcasm reverse italic treatment, naturally.) If I could somehow find what I tweeted about back in July, I would embed it here. Somehow.
3. ONA11 takeaways and unpublished tweets (September)
ONA in, uh, wherever it was, was great this year. (Was that Boston? Seriously.) I took some great pen-and-paper notes while trying really hard to be physically and mentally present in sessions, and not burying my face in my laptop or phone until the Google News team announced something sort of interesting while standing right in front of me. (Standout.)
But really, I was having a great time, writing things down, and got the idea to write down some things I might want to tweet later. Never published. One fun bit involved sitting behind @nytjim and watching his workflow in Tweetdeck while a big news story of some sort was breaking during a keynote talk, or something.
4. The new cameras (October)
#stuffscoblesays
5. In which you help me prioritize some unnecessary home electronics purchases that likely won’t happen anytime soon (December)
In which I think better of publishing a plea for advice on our first high definition television, blu-ray thingie player enabled with some Internets so we can watch old TV on Netflix, and maybe some sort of Airplay speaker, but do we need that if the blu-ray thingie player with Internets gets Pandora? This stuff is hard, guys.
6. My best unpublished dra
Oh.
This.
Dec 21, ’11
12:17 PM
@andymboyle not every piece of journalism software is a public-facing news app built on deadline.
— jonathanstray (@jonathanstray) December 21, 2011
Workspace
Nov 18, ’11
12:21 PM
Workspace: Great notes on a home office setup, including an adjustable desk that isn’t always standing or sitting, plus a “thinking chair” for lean-back time. From Trent Walton.
The newspaper that almost seized the future
Nov 16, ’11
8:47 AM
The newspaper that almost seized the future: The amazing true story of digital innovation and atrophy over more years than you’d expect at the San Jose Mercury News, from CJR.
The blog post about that time I spent the week in the hospital and they took out part of my intestines
Nov 3, ’11
8:27 AM
If we’re friends on Facebook, you’ve likely already pieced most of this together. If not…
Last Friday night, I was slammed with stomach problems like I’d never experienced before, and by the time the #snowtober storm started on Saturday morning, I was on my way to the emergency room. First ever ambulance ride.
A day later, a colonoscopy turned up, well, some weird stuff in my large intestine, and a day after that I was in surgery.
I’m happy to say that the report on the chunk of intestines they cut out of me (and hey, go ahead and take my appendix while you’re there) showed no sign of cancer, or Crohn’s disease, or another easily identifiable chronic illness.
So they’re sending my guts up to Johns Hopkins to get a second opinion from a specialist, and we’ll see if I just had a fluke infection of some sort, or if I’ve gone off and reinvigorated research on some rare disease.
Either way, I’ll be healed up from the surgery and back in action shortly.
As far as how you can help, there’s no clear “gastrointestinal mysteries foundation” to throw money at, but if you’d think about donating blood sometime soon, I’d appreciate it, since I’m three units deep into IOUs at the moment.
Oh, and bros? Get that colonoscopy.
Wanted: The Unfollowemator
Oct 25, ’11
7:55 AM
As a Twitter user, I want a way to automatically unfollow users who mention specific terms with a certain sentiment, so that I can easily filter out people with which you just can’t argue.
Acceptance Criteria:
- This tool should use the latest version of OAuth to allow the user to connect their Twitter account to the application.
- This tool should allow the user to enter a keyword or keywords into a text field, then choose an emotional state (probably limited to positive/negative in the first iteration) to filter on.
- For example, a user might search for positive mentions of “McRib”
- The tool should display a few example tweets, and a paginated list of users that will be unfollowed.
- The list of users to be unfollowed should include checkboxes, allowing the user to uncheck any box before confirming their unfollows.
- After confirming, the user should be presented with an option to automatically unfollow all users who match this query in the future.
35
Oct 19, ’11
4:00 PM
I accidentally filled out a marketing survey this morning and realized I had slipped into a new demographic.
Ouch.
Older.
A short list of things that make me want to buy an iPad
Oct 18, ’11
6:42 AM
- Instapaper 4.0
- The Guardian
- Flipboard, still
- Tabbed browsing in Safari
- Lugging a 15.4-inch laptop around to meetings
Any better reasons?
Is Dan Sinker’s book making me angry?
Oct 11, ’11
7:42 AM
Well, no, of course not.
In fact, the Epic Quest makes me happy every time I pick it up. I’ve caught myself pages deep, on the couch with my four-year-old who is impatiently reminding me that she has a book of her own in mind, and hey, why is there a duck on your book, and then I snap out of it and Quaxelrod heads back to the end table, where he sits perched atop an unfinished Clay Shirky tome that is infinitely more relevant to my day job.
Anyway, the funny thing is, I don’t curse on Twitter. Or if I used to, I don’t now. I keep it clean. Maybe an “effing” from time to time, which is a word I never speak away from a keyboard. Ever.
But reading in my imagination’s flavor of @mayoremanuel‘s voice has led me into the habit of narrating mundane things like my honestly-not-bad-lately commute in a similar, profane fashion.
And now I’m trying to decide if it’s therapeutic or sociopathic.
But I’m not trying that hard.