waving from the west coast

August 02, 2015

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(public post)

hey guys.

nothing huge to share, just checking in and here for a ramble…

i finally made a more-or-less full recovery…it’s hard to tell when you’re preggo and everything feels weird anyway. but i felt good enough to get on a plane to come to california, where i’m attending a geeky conference called foo camp, and thus it was that i finally got to meet matthew inman, a.k.a. the Oatmeal. if you aren’t a fan, you should be….go look at his work, which i’ve admired for years, here: http://theoatmeal.com/comics.

(he also just had THE MOST BACKED KICKSTARTER OF ALL TIME – with over 200k backers – with his “exploding kittens” project, for people who like kittens, and explosions: https://www.kickstarter.com/proje..).

there’s been a lot of chatting around foo camp about social media and the future of online communities. i helped guide a fantastic discussion yesterday about death and facebook and the way we deal with “the negative” in an internet world that wants us to be so “positive”. i’ve been staying at zoe keating’s place with maria popova (http://www.brainpickings.org), and we’ve been having long, sad talks about how disturbing facebook has become. i’m really glad to be driving blog traffic here to patreon….but facebook still has its claws in all of us, and it seems to be getting more and more conniving about what it will and won’t deliver. none of us can come up with a solution to the dillema: facebook is where everybody is hanging out, but it’s not geared to “help” you, it’s geared to make money for facebook.

i may write a longer screed about that at some point. my hands feel painfully tied.

speaking of all that, i came here to foo camp hoping to make headway on my search to find geeky, passionate permanent staff additions to AFP-world, which is something i’m going to be asking you guys for help with (i know i’ve been saying it for a while, but life keeps getting in the way of me really buckling down and starting the hiring process). stay tuned as usual.

meanwhile, there are blackberries outside to pick.

my belly is keeping me low to the ground.

yesterday at foo camp (which is like a summer camp that takes over an office building) i found myself in a little room full of people on their macs, and i lay down on my back with my feet up the wall, since they’ve been so sore and swollen.

one of the programmer guys was like: “ah yes. my wife used to do that when she was pregnant. she called it The Church of the Floor. The Floor is always there for you. The Floor never lets you down. The Floor will hold you in hard times. The Floor will love you unconditionally and forgive you. The Church of the Floor, yes.”

Correct. And there I shall worship.

other random?

i’m going to post up an open letter that’s important to me tomorrow or tuesday, keep an eye out for that as well….it was something i was just on the brink of posting the day i fled the UK to go be with anthony, and then i just didn’t have the brain or heart to do it. but it’s important.