The Authentic Eccentric

Happy Anniversary, Robert - I can’t believe it’s been seven years already. It’s fun to be linkblogging with you.

F.T. Rea was one of the earliest freelance artists that I worked with who was actively making money off Kinko’s art projects. One of my most prized possessions is a full set of his Iran Contra playing cards, scored as a thank you present during one of the first weeks of the Grace St Kinko’s turnaround. Watching Richmond blogging bloom this past year with F.T. in the middle of it was an awesome sort of déjà vu.

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First, just to get it out of the way - I totally blew NaBloPoMo -

The great image comes from Sara at Moving Right Along, one of my favorite NaBloPoMo finds.

If you’d like to keep up with what I’m reading these days, you can now follow my link blog by clicking here. You can also visit Active Gray Matter for my latest posts on self-employment and entrepreneurship.

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Last Thursday, in a fit of energy and local inspiration I signed up for NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month)*, which neatly coincides with the allies launch of Active Gray Matter (AGM).

For those of you scratching your head going huh, AGM is:

Active Gray Matter (AGM) is a socially based learning community that uses the wisdom of the crowds to build, maintain and run a business incubator for people with chronic or disabling conditions. While there are several online communities for people with chronic or disabling conditions, they are based on a medical model of disability and largely focused on health issues. AGM offers an environment that presumes that people with chronic or disabling conditions are independent and critical thinkers capable of fulfilling the functional roles of traditional business incubation experts.

During the remainder of November I’ll be blogging both here and at AGM with more information about the startup process, finding backers, creating a sustainable business model, the joys and perils of bootstrapping, self-employment of launching a crowdsharing projects.

*For the record, I’ve already missed two days. I’ll improve as we go along.

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One of my favorite writing inspiration sites is Creating Passionate Users, Kathy Sierra’s marvelous technology blog.

Today, Kathy has an appalling post on why she was forced to cancel her appearance at ETech - her life has been threatened by some cretin cyber-bullies.

I am shocked and angry that Kathy is in danger. While I don’t personally know her, I’ve been a regular reader since the blog launched; she generously shares her knowledge and time, and seeing her re-paid this way is horrific.

How someone could make her a target for their vitriol and hatred is unimaginable, yet the proof is undeniable. I don’t blame her for repudiating a culture that allows and in fact celebrates this type of behavior. It is unacceptable under any circumstances and I agree that a strong stand must be taken to prevent it from continuing to spread.

While I selfishly hate to see her go, even for a short while, I wish her all of the safety and peace she can muster.

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The 18-month Jamestown 400 commemoration got a big boost with this announcement today:

The Following Statement Is Issued By The Press Secretary To The Queen

The Queen, accompanied by The Duke of Edinburgh, will pay a State Visit to the United States of America from 3 to 8 May 2007.

Her Majesty will visit Virginia from 3 to 4 May to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement.

On 5 May, The Queen, accompanied by The Duke of Edinburgh, will attend the Kentucky Derby.

From 6 to 8 May, The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh will be in Washington D.C., for a visit hosted by President Bush and Mrs Bush.

The trip will be the queen’s fourth state visit to the U.S. and is sure to bring additional attention to the Jamestown 400 celebration, which is already shaping up to be one heck of a party for the Virginia region.

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While I’ve been silent a lot lately, I haven’t been idle. My most recent project has been helping a former client sell some equipment on eBay. Yes, eBay - I haven’t used them in a few years, but their audience *is* massive, and he wants to clean out his storage unit, so I agreed to help.

It’s still somewhat of a hassle to list on eBay, but it’s gotten easier from the last time I did battle with it back in 04. I was able to list 5 pieces of equipment in 3 hours and sold 1 the first day. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was to experience an internal phishing attack. Luckily, I switched to Firefox and avoided it. More eBay thoughts after the jump, along with screen shots. [Read more →]

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Colorful Surf Boards on Waikiki Beach Hawaii
Originally uploaded by Pink Sherbet Photography.

I just got news from the Kinko’s grapevine that Brad Krause passed away in late January from cancer.

[Read more →]

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Tonight, the Krewe du Vieux kicks off the 2007 Carnivale season in New Orleans with its “Habitat for Insanity” parade. The Krewe du Vieux is perhaps simultaneously the most individualistic and the most traditional of all New Orleans parading krewes.

[Read more →]

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I’ve been keeping an eye on Scott Eric Kaufman’s meme experiment. It seems it took on legs:

Posts that contain "Acephalous" Meme per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

While you can see a huge spike of blogs linking in during the first 2 days, it quickly trails off, illustrating again the “long tail” effect.

What is more interesting (to me) is to monitor the spread through blog topics and time - from knitters to lawyers, artists to architects, the willingness of non-academic bloggers to participate surprised even me.

That it continues to spread more than a dozen days after his initial post has implications for businesses and organizations looking to leverage the blogosphere for promotion. Specifically, campaign times, personnel, expiration dates and server loads need to be examined carefully.

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This will be the 12th Christmas since my mother passed. Although I miss her keenly throughout the year, the first holidays were brutal. One of the ways I cope is to embrace some of the traditions I miss so much and find new ways to share them.

One of the first things I remember learning to do with my mom was to make candy, specifically, fudge. She learned from her mother, who learned the recipe from her mom. It was a special holiday treat for us, since it was expensive to make and took several hours. We often got a piece of carefully horded fudge on Thanksgiving, carefully wrapped in tin foil, but only if grandma or mom had time. At Christmas, however, it was part of the tradition - there was always a tin of it out for guests.

I remember making batches of it once the season turned - most of it in the pot above. It’s a fussy, picky recipe prone to screwups, which we ate anyway. Learning to do it right simply meant you didn’t make hockey pucks or burn it. If the fudge didn’t candy it became frosting for a cake or ice cream sauce; if it did, it meant hours of cutting tin foil squares and wrapping it.

I have no daughters to pass the tradition on to, but thanks to the internet, I can share it with you.

The recipe (if this is hard to read you can click the image to see a larger version):

Most important detail? Don’t stir this fudge once you start cooking it. Even if you think you know better, don’t - it will ruin the batch, I swear - I’ve tried it. Just let the heat, pot and temperature deal with that for you - you’ll be rewarded with an enjoyable treat.

If you’re thinking of trying this recipe out, I’ve loaded up a Flickr set of the stage by stage process so you can avoid all the mistakes I made along the way of learning to create an edible batch. The flickr example is for a double batch of peanut butter fudge without nuts, enjoy!

* To adjust for flavor, 1 square = 1 ounce, ergo 4 oz of peanut butter chips = 4 oz of chocolate.

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