Author Archive
Time Out Chicago features the Logan Square crime blogger
Nice little piece about “Timmy.”
Discussion thread on Hacker News, where this held the top spot for a time.
The Windy Citizen is hiring an ad sales rep
Back in January, I redesigned my community news site, The Windy Citizen, to focus in on one thing and one thing only, a Digg-style reader-picked list of front page stories.
Since that time, our site has grown consistently week to week. New members have joined up. Our submission numbers have been inching up as well. It’s been a real treat to watch the community blossom.
But as the community has grown, our advertising and sponsorships programs have not, due to lack of time on my part to focus on them.
So just today I’ve posted a listing on Craigslist for a part-time advertising sales rep. You can read it here.
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I also wrote a blog post over on The Windy Citizen explaining why I’m doing this in greater detail and offering up more examples of how well everything’s going. You can read that here.
In the first two hours since posting the listing, I’ve received two resumes. We’ll see how this goes.
Mark Cuban at Techcrunch50
I really enjoyed this interview, conducted at Techcrunch’s annual startup weekend, because you get the sense that the guy has fun doing what he’s doing. The best part is Cuban explaining what he did with the money from his first acquisition: lifetime airline pass.
YCombinator Dropout Shares a Cautionary, Cringe-inducing tale
A tale of woe in three parts.
Stories like these make me glad to be a solo founder.
via hacker news.
Into the White: Beautiful Wordpress Theme
Found via Smashing Magazine
One of the prettier WP themes I've seen lately.
The Task: If effort’s not a myth, then let’s give it a go…
Let's see how this goes, eh?
This is the first entry on my new homepage, BradFlora.com, where you will (eventually) be able to learn more about my work, what I’m working on now and what I’m learning as I’m going through it.
About Me
I am a multimedia journalist, web producer and open source web developer. My day job is serving as publisher and founder of WindyCitizen.com, a social news network for Chicago. I also consult on news-related web development projects and develop Wordpress and Drupal-based web applications on a contract basis. I live in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood and am a Midwesterner at heart (i.e. I get antsy when I can’t see the horizon). You can follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/bflora or e-mail me at bradflora at gmail.com
For the last year, this site was an automated clip aggregator, pulling links out of Google News anytime my byline was in them. From time to time it would dredge up a story about one of my doppelgangers – there are at least 4 other out there, my father, a Maryland-based 10-year-old surfer, a photographer and a few years back there was a wrestler in Iowa who’s disappeared off the google radar. As might imagine, it wasn’t the most compelling presentation.
And I wasn’t creating anything there. Just storing links to stuff published elsehwere.
Toward a more efficient day
A recent Seth Godin link on Hacker News got me to rethink what this site could be. In “Is Effort a Myth” he tackles the widespread belief that “success” is based ENTIRELY on factors outside one’s control: luck, looks, connections, health – rather than on the one factor anyone has total control over: effort.
I’ve heard this argument before, often at church on Sunday mornings, and it always registers. I’ve often found myself chalking up other people’s successes and even my own to outside factors. The problem with this, of course, is twofold:
- You’re left feeling discouraged and (falsely) powerless.
- You’re never able to fully accept credit for a job well done.
Godin offers a challenge of sorts in his post, aimed at entrepreneurs, bootstrappers, executives, anyone facing a formidable challenge:
1. Delete 120 minutes a day of ’spare time’ from your life. This can include TV, reading the newspaper, commuting, wasting time in social networks and meetings. Up to you.
2. Spend the 120 minutes doing this instead:
- Exercise for thirty minutes.
- Read relevant non-fiction (trade magazines, journals, business books, blogs, etc.)
- Send three thank you notes.
- Learn new digital techniques (spreadsheet macros, Firefox shortcuts, productivity tools, graphic design, html coding)
- Volunteer.
- Blog for five minutes about something you learned.
- Give a speech once a month about something you don’t currently know a lot about.
3. Spend at least one weekend day doing absolutely nothing but being with people you love.
4. Only spend money, for one year, on things you absolutely need to get by. Save the rest, relentlessly.
As someone who is in fact self-funding a startup, a diet like this reads like a useful roadmap. So let’s give it a go from now until Christmas.
First let’s see how these points apply to me:
Task 1: Delete 120 minutes of “spare time” from your life”
I think I can just about get there through two steps:
No more ESPN: I watch Sportscenter every day. I do not play football, baseball or basketball and yet I follow these sports from a distance, daily, because the program provides a reliable, never-fail disitraction from whatever code/design/writing/life problem I’m facing. Clearly, this time can be better used elsewhere.
More deliberate newsgrazing: I spend a great deal of time each day simply reading weird news on the web. As a journalist, this is an essential part of my day. However there are a few sites I read that add little to nothing to my knowledge of the world or Chicago that I can do without. For the next 3 months, I’ll steer clear of just a few of them.
Task 2: Fill that 2 hours with useful stuff
1. Daily exercise – I’ve never been big on exercise, but there’s a decent 2-mile circuit here in Old Town that I’ve jogged a few times. I can do this 5-days a week.
2. Read relevant non-fiction – This means being more consistent in reading more obscure local stuff.
3. Send thank-you notes – I get a lot of e-mail. Designating a few minutes each day simply to follow up with people and see how they’re doing would be great.
4. Learn new digital techniques – There are problems with WindyCitizen.com that have vexed me since day 1. Rather than continue to fixate on them, I can instead learn small technical tasks that could eventually lead me toward the solution.
5. Volunteer – I have friends that are very active in service at church and elsewhere. For all my talk about “being a good citizen” I could stand to do something like this every week.
6. Blog for 5 minutes about something you learned – And this is why I’ve rebuilt BradFlora.com, as a place where I can post short updates on something new I’ve learned each day. Some of these updates will be embrassingly simple, but by writing about them I’ll be able to better retain the knowledge.
7. Give a speech once a month about something new you’ve learned – Every now and then I’m asked to speak on work-related topics. I can be more deliberate in seeking these out.
Task 3: Spend one day a week with people you love
This is a secular way of saying “take a sabath.” For those unfamiliar with the concept, the Sabath is a day of rest when no work can be done and when one is meant to be focused in on God. My church attendence (I am a member at the Moody Church) has been pitiful lately, though I have started attending a 1-hour Bible study once a week. I will get my butt out of bed Sunday mornings and stay off the computer on Sundays for the next three months.
Task 4: Only spend money on things you absolutely need for a year. Save the rest, relentlessly.
For the last 6 months, I’ve definitely been following the first part of this edict. However I also realize that I could be more deliberate in cutting out impulse expenditures.
I recently signed up for Mint.com, a web service that tracks your personal finances for you. After a month of using it, it’s showing me some pretty disturbing things, chief among them the fact that I spent over $150 at McDonalds last month! Yikes.
So I will take a look at my spending patterns and also make a commitment to save 10% of every dollar I make, in addition to the 10% that I tithe at church. Before I went off to grad school, I was aggressively socking away 55% of my salary each month. I can’t afford to do that right now, but I can be saving SOMETHING.
Ok. This is a tall order. I’m not going to be able to keep up with most of this stuff, but it’s a start. We’ll give it a go this week and see what comes of it. Wish me luck.