Derek K. Miller - Penmachine words music comment - Vancouver, Canada

There are some pretty views from the Fairview neighbourhood of Vancouver, but it is now officially my least favourite part of the city. It's objectively far nicer than many other parts of this region, but that doesn't matter.

Part of my dislike comes from a job I had there back in the '90s. There was no backbreaking physical work or relentless tedium (I encountered those in earlier jobs, installing alarms and working night shift at a gas station, respectively), but it was still the worst position I've ever held, because the psychological environment of the place was positively poisonous. I would take the longest lunch hours I could, sometimes walking down to False Creek and sitting on a grassy knoll, just staring into the distance eating while trying to purge the stress from my system.

I quit after nine months, during which numerous coworkers had come and gone, some quitting after one day and others (including the person who hired me, who'd been with the company since it was founded) being summarily fired for often arbitrary reasons. I'm amazed I stayed so long.

But that's not the main reason. It's because Fairview is also home to the B.C. Cancer Agency, where I spend far too much time these days. Counterintuitively, the people there, from volunteers to doctors to nurses to technicians, are overwhelmingly wonderful, friendly, helpful, and understanding. The building is nicely decorated for a medical facility. It runs like clockwork—I've never had so many appointments with such complex interrelationships run so smoothly and on time, or been apologized to so profusely when things run late or get postponed.

And yet, it is the Cancer Agency, where I have gone for CT scans and radiation treatments and chemotherapy and emergency prescriptions of blood thinner injections. It's where my doctors told me that my cancer had spread to my lungs. True, Fairview is not where I spent the worst days of my life, late last July when I had lost 50 pounds, was hooked up to two IV poles in a ward at St. Paul's hospital, and could only lie in bed—not bathe, walk, eat, or even drink—for several days.

Yet somehow Vancouver's downtown West End, where those worst days did happen, still holds too many other happy memories, of fireworks and new love with my wife, and childhood walks in the park with my grandmother. Fairview is where I'm reminded, all the time, of how broken my body still is. Even driving through it on my way elsewhere, I feel queasy, my subconscious focusing on the nauseating chemical soup of chemo I get there every two weeks. Tomorrow is the next infusion.

Sorry, Fairview. I can't help it. You suck.

Labels: cancer, chemotherapy, ctscan, fatigue, linkbait, memories, radiation, surgery, vancouver

For no particular reason, I recently created a Flickr photo group called Your Geekiest Photo, and added mine, from 1985:

If you have a dark, dark nerdy picture in your past and don't mind revealing it to the world, I'd appreciate if you joined the group and added it. If you're not already a member of Flickr, you can sign up for free.

Labels: flickr, geekery, linkbait, photography

As someone who's been a Vancouver blogger for more than seven years, and podcasting here for almost three, I often hear the question in the title of this post. But that's not what the questioners usually mean. What they want to ask is: Can you make a living from blogging and podcasting?

The short answer is yes, but don't go and quit your day job just yet. I didn't say that just anyone should try to pay for your food, lodging, and transportation needs (plus those for your spouse and kids) from blogs and podcasts, or that you could make a huge living from them. It's possible, but I don't do it, and haven't even tried. You should be aware that, just like anything else, making a living online would be a job, not some sort of free-money fantasy life.

My wife, who's also a blogger and podcaster, and I were talking about it this morning before she went to work (she's had the same stable, rewarding, good-paying professional day job for more than 15 years, and isn't planning on quitting that anytime soon). For us, our online activities are hobbies. They bring in a little money from ads and sponsorships, usually enough to cover their costs and maybe buy the occasional dinner.

Blogging for money

The people I know who work as bloggers, like Arieanna, work hard. She writes at least five different work blogs (plus others) all day, every day, sometimes until late at night. (If I had to scour the news for links about Mischa Barton all day, I'd probably go batty. And that's just one blog.)

If you look at blogs that are popular enough to pay people's salaries—like Arieanna's and the others at b5media, or the Weblogs Inc. network that includes Engadget and its siblings, or successful independent blogs like Daring Fireball—they tend to be very focused and updated many times a day.

They often attract lots of comments, which require moderation and feedback, and their posts tend to be well sourced or individually researched, and also well written and concise. In many cases, the words are carefully crafted to attract search engine traffic, and the blogger may spend quite a bit of time writing about things he or she isn't all that interested in, or at least (as in any job) may have days where the job is just a slog, rather than a joy. Money-generating blogs take a lot of effort, skill, and time to maintain. They're work.

In other words, don't expect to dash off a paragraph every couple of days about what your kids ate for breakfast and have the ad revenue pour in.

Now, if you can find a day job where you spend a significant part of your time blogging, that's another matter. If I weren't on medical leave right now, I'd be doing that over here (notice that the "Daily Blog" isn't very daily while I'm absent). But that blog—and private internal blogs and wikis the company runs behind a firewall—is just a slice of my day job, not the whole thing, so I don't think it counts either.

Podcasting for money

Podcasting, as an even newer medium than blogging, has an even less-established income stream. Search engine optimization and contextual advertising don't work as well for podcasts, audio or video. Like most bloggers (and like me), the vast majority of podcasters do what they do as a hobby. They (like me) might bring in a bit of cash from sponsors and podcast network advertising and so on. But podcast production is even more labour-intensive than blogging, and unless you put out shows quite frequently and build a significant audience on an appropriate topic (or topics, if you can manage several shows), it will be pretty hard to pay a mortgage.

Even Leo Laporte, whose This Week in Tech (TWiT) network attracts some of the biggest audiences in podcasting (numbering the hundreds of thousands each week), and who runs an extremely efficient podcasting operation largely by himself, still has a day job. Several, in fact. He remains a widely syndicated radio host, as he has been for decades, and also helms a cable TV show on which I've appeared (as a guest paid only in exposure and with a free take-out lunch) a few times.

Leo probably could make his podcasts a full-time gig, but presumably chooses instead to funnel what money he gets back into the network and to honoraria for his guest hosts. Others, like podcast pioneer Adam Curry, have used venture funding to create a buffer while they try to build businesses like PodShow into something large and viable.

Individual podcasters who work hard can also make a job of it. No one I know well does that, but among the tens of thousands of podcasts out there, a small number can keep their hosts fed, clothed, and housed. Again, those tend to be focused, well produced, frequent—and lucky. If you got into the game early, or happened to hit a certain niche at just the right time, or worked hard on a concept that struck a chord with the (still relatively small) podcasting audience, and then hustle like hell, you might be able to quit that day job, if that's what you want.

It used to be about the music, man...

In many ways, being a podcaster or blogger is like being a musician. Far more people play music, or blog, or podcast, for fun than make a living at it. I was a full-time musician for awhile in the early '90s, and it was tough work, with long hours, lots of low-budget travel (not a requirement online, fortunately), and crappy pay. I quit after I got married, because that life wasn't what I wanted long term.

The people I know who have made a career of music—and several of the guys in my band do just that, even though I haven't—aren't Rock Stars. They're working professionals. They do a lot of different things: they teach music, work as studio sidemen, tour with established acts, make instructional videos, play at casinos, entertain at weddings and corporate meetings, compose soundtracks, produce and engineer other acts, give seminars, and record jingles. They keep accounts, pay taxes, save money for retirement, buy health insurance, and run their careers as businesses.

I think anyone looking to work in blogging in podcasting is going to have to do something similar. Be professional, work hard. Use your online activities as leverage to do other things. Even in my blog's early days, it didn't make me any direct money at all, but it brought in plenty of work when I was a freelance technical writer and editor. Similarly, being an expert blogger or podcaster (or even better, both) can help you make money in other ways—such as helping other people and organizations make blogging and podcasting part of what they do.

It's not magic, it's work

If you're going to make money online, you'll need an entrepreneurial impulse, or you'll need to work with others who do. You need to know how these new media work, and how to promote and take advantage of them in all sorts of ways.

The Web and its technologies are still a frontier, and you'll probably have to bust your butt to succeed. You need to flexible and see opportunities you might not expect—selling cool T-shirts and mugs and stuff might make you more dough than any kind of sponsorship or advertising, for instance.

Or, if you're like me, you might prefer to let your blogs and podcasts be fun things that you do on the side, not something that you have to do every day, and which might burn you out after awhile.

The Internet is pretty damn cool, but it's not magic. Those who succeed on it are the same ones who succeed anywhere: they're smart, skilled, and have good ideas. They make realistic plans and knuckle down to put them in action. They hustle. And sometimes they fail and have to try again with a wiser view.

Labels: b5media, blog, johngruber, leolaporte, linkbait, money, podcast, web

Wrote this to an online retailer in the U.S. a few minutes ago:

Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I was just about to buy one of your products, but backed out when I discovered your only shipping method is UPS. I'm in Canada, and UPS is notorious here for egregious and mysterious "brokerage" fees when clearing customs, and also for slow or mishandled deliveries. See here:

• Never use UPS
• Never got a delivery right
• How to avoid UPS brokerage charges
• UPS lawsuit

These experiences are not unusual—I have refused, if given any choice, to use UPS as a carrier for the past ten years because of repeated problems and extraordinary fees.

Shipments sent via FedEx (express or ground), regular parcel post, and other services do not generally encounter these issues. If you can provide any alternative shipping method other than UPS, we'd be happy to make a purchase. I'm sure there are many other Canadians who feel the same.

Thanks!

This follows UPS's latest snafu here at our house, attempting to charge us almost $90 in brokerage and other fees for a shipment of cosmetic samples sent to my wife that she didn't purchase and was not going to sell. Under instructions from the manufacturer who shipped it, we refused the delivery and will have it re-sent with another carrier.

Avoid UPS for anything shipped into Canada. Better you know this now than learn it the hard way as I have.

Labels: americas, fedex, linkbait, ups

Let's start off the year with one of those taggy blog post things. I stumbled across it at Jen's site last night, which is when I filled it out:

• Your last meal: appies
• Something on your desk/work area: microphones
• Your New Year’s Eve plans: family
• The smallest gift you received this year: adenocarcinoma
• The largest gift you received this year: life
• Something you wish you hadn’t eaten so much of during the holidays: nuts
• On your feet: callouses
• Your hair: greying
• How many other countries you’ve traveled to: nine
• One country you dream of visiting: Antarctica
• A hobby you’d like to take up/revisit this year: cycling
• A hobby of yours that died (aww, buh-bye) this past year: bass
• A publication you subscribe to (print): Wired
• The most embarrassing subscription in your feed reader (if you have one): egofeeds
• One of your favorite stores to window shop dreamily in: L&M
• One of your favorite online stores to window shop dreamily on: cameracanada.com
• A color you love to wear: purple
• Your bed pillow: doubled
• The color of your kitchen counter: 1967oleum
• What you plan to do when you get up from the computer: sleep

Why not try your own, either in the comments here, at Jen's post, or on your own blog? The rules: answer all questions with one word only; you may need to get creative if, for instance, your favourite store is more than one word. This will be strictly enforced, in a scary way that shall not be revealed unless necessary.

Labels: holiday, linkbait, lists, meme, writing

• 10. Zero charge time, infinite talk and standby time.
• 11. Impossible to lose or misplace.
•  9. Built bicep strength with prolonged use.
•  8. Always perfect reception within its coverage area (the kitchen).
•  7. You could dial it while holding the receiver to your ear.
•  6. Distinctive ringtone audible everywhere in the apartment.
•  5. Simple, easy-to-understand rate plan with full carrier subsidy.
•  4. Pleasant and firm tactile feedback for every digit dialed.
•  3. Elegant, timeless design that never went out of style.
•  2. Much more effective for hammering nails and bludgeoning robbers.
•  1. Worked reliably for 27 years without replacement—or even, as far as I know, a single repair.

Labels: apple, family, humour, iphone, linkbait, lists, telecommunications