ROLEY

  • Monday, October 9th, 2023

    Here’s a reminder that functional doesn’t necessarily mean correct. I had a link in the sidebar for YouTube that you’ll notice is no longer there. Turns out that when you click the link, it treats it as if it is a video, and tries to bring up that video in a lightbox. When you create a sidebar menu from WordPress Pages, it’s doing what it’s supposed to. Hat tip to the guy who told me the link was broken.

    To fix this, I need to get more under the hood than I have in years. You may remember that this used to be a Squarespace site. If I can keep this exact look, it might be again. WordPress themes are so damn clunky sometimes. I tell you, there’s more on the backend of this theme than I think is necessary for how minimal I want it to look.

    Time to make it correct.

  • When I-95 Isn’t a Route, It’s Content

    I swear, there are some days when I happen upon something so weird out here on Beyonce’s Internet that it beggars belief, but then I have to remember that it is the Internet we’re talking about.

    On my bucket list are items like driving to Key West, Route 66, and the Pacific Coast Highway. On a lark, I decided to see if anyone on YouTube had ever recorded it, and not only had they but there’s a whole genre on YouTube of POV driving. To my amazement, this stuff gets massive subscribers and views. After thinking about it, I suppose it might be a kind of white noise or something someone puts on while doing something else. I find it fascinating, so I decided to make a few videos and see how they performed on my channel. To my surprise, they are the most popular videos I’ve made.

    I’m not sure if I should be grateful for the new subscribers and likes, or bitter that my podcast performs so poorly by comparison.

    Of course, I plan to continue making my podcast. However, this driving content works for me on a few levels. First, it’s bringing people to my YouTube channel. Secondly, I am one of those freaks who likes driving long distances for the view and the quiet so I get some therapy out of it. But most importantly it’s a kind of content I’ve found that I love and that I can do. I can start here in my hometown and grow outward to a regional thing. I’ve already made videos of driving the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, Ocean Highway in Ocean City MD, driving to Williamsburg, Shore Drive, and Atlantic Avenue here in Virginia Beach. Shortly, I plan to drive from Nags Head to Hatteras and make the circle from Virginia Beach to Elizabeth City, taking the Currituck Ferry. At some point, I wish to take the Cape May-Lewes Ferry and drive to Atlantic City.

    I’ve also decided that some longer journeys will require train or plane journeys and a rental car back, like trips to DC and Maine. These are in the more distant future because that will require a budget. It was suggested that I push the Patreon for stuff like this, but I don’t know if I want to do that. Right now, this is just for fun.

    I’d like to increase my subscribers and views on the YouTube channel to join the Partner Program, that much is certain. That takes 500 subscribers and 3000 watch hours in the last 12 months. I’m a long way off, but it’s not a sprint. Even if I don’t make it work in the next year, I’m happy for whatever I get.

  • Shutter Saturday: The Jug Handle Bridge

    The Jug Handle Bridge is a recent addition to the Outer Banks. It goes into the Sound, then curves back towards land to disembark at the Rodanthe Roundabout. The reason is pretty simple: The Outer Banks is eroding and sinking, and the people that live there insist on living in a Short Term Paradise and need a bridge to get them there.

    But the bridge is so new it’s almost white, and very stark and minimal. On the day we were there, it was practically a clear day. It almost looks like a bridge to nowhere. It’s a clean, elegant photo.

  • Friday, October 6th, 2023

    I got rid of X(witter). I don’t listen to news or political podcasts anymore. If I want to hear what’s going on in Congress or the White House, C-Span is a primary source. I have plenty to do during a day to doomscrolling social media. I finish what I have to do during the day and I find I have no time to sit on social media.

    I’ve been able to create because I’m taking the time to do that first before I do anything else. I let stuff go. Amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care about anything that doesn’t matter.

  • Thursday, October 5th, 2023

    Social Media Warriors. Keyboard Commandos. People who don’t know how to human.

    Chaos Agents, bomb throwers, soundbite seekers, world burners.

    This is what we’re dealing with if you let it in.

    Do we need to? That’s the question.

  • Wednesday, October 4th, 2023

    Here’s something to think about: Did the anonymous nature of Social Media make it harder for us to let stuff go? Hell, even work from home might play a role. The cocooning we’ve done the past few years may have weakened our ability to human. So we lose our filters and we say what we think without giving a rat’s ass about the effects.

    We all might be an island, but we’re all islands on the same damn planet. We need to remember that.

  • Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023

    Here’s something I forgot from the corporate world: If someone has a job that centers around one thing, without which they would have no purpose, expect that they will fight like hell to keep that one thing to themselves.

    I forgot that’s a thing.

    When I offered to help someone by doing that one thing one time before they arrived, that person taught me how to do the thing, and then added several steps to the process that I am unable to do, so that I am unable to do the thing.

    This is the only thing this person does.

    It took me a minute to let that go and not take it personally. It’s not personal. Not to me. It’s deeply personal to that person. Let them have it. It’s not worth the fight.

    Just get on about your business, and thank your lucky stars that your job doesn’t revolve around one specific task.

    Right?

  • Monday, October 2nd, 2023

    “When two control freaks fight, one is killed and one is injured, but nobody’s giving up a goddamn thing.”

    I think that’s in The Art of War, Cubicle Farm Edition.

  • This Used To Be My Playground. Or Drug Of Choice. It’s One Of Those.

    I realize that it might be a bit counterintuitive to talk about overusing social media on social media, but let’s talk about overusing social media on social media.   

    This has been weighing on my mind ever since Elon, who I will from this point forward refer to Incelus Maximus, Sooooper Geeeeeenius, bought Twitter.  It’s clear to me that he wishes to normalize the kind of toxic wasteland you’d find on 4chan or 8chan or worse.  Yes, I’m pretty sure there’s worse even if I’ve never seen it AND WHY WOULD I WANT TO SEE IT?  This rant is about not social media-ing, for crying out loud.  

    Grover Norquist, on an NPR interview in 2001 famously said “I’m not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”  That’s what Incelus Maximus is doing to Twitter, or X, or whatever he needs to call it to make himself feel like a man.  He bought the playground we all use, and he’s systematically taking away the swings, the slides, the merry-go-round, and the see-saw, until it’s a bare patch of land that he can pave over. 

    As a result, I’ve been roaming around all the new playgrounds to see what I like, but then I had a thought.  Why am I doing that?  Why do I feel like I have to find a new place?  I’m not sticking around the old one much longer, but who says I have to *go* anywhere?  

    I know, I’m telling you this on a podcast that I also post to TikTok and YouTube.   Not the LEAST bit hypocritical.  Hear me out.  There’s a difference between creating content and consuming it.  One actually puts something out into the universe, the other will take your time and your health if you’re not careful.   I think one of my problems has been the mindless consumption of social media instead of sitting down at my desk and creating something.   You know how this goes, right?  Sit down, pull out your phone, open a soul-stealing app, and then the next thing you know the kids have Masters degrees and you’re in a home needing a wipe and the nurse can’t understand front to back like the rest of the staff.  

    The only solution that makes sense to me is to create before I consume.  I will pick a home for social media, but create my content primarily for my own website instead of giving the techbro of the month the fruits of my labor.  

    On a completely unrelated note, there should be some labor.   Some kind of labor.  

    Any kind of labor.   

  • Shutter Saturday: Girl In The Dunes

    From our trip to the Outer Banks, this person was just sitting in the grass on top of the dunes reading. She began to turn her head as I started taking pics, I don’t think she was aware I was shooting her. The other two shots have her looking up into the sky with the back of her head towards me. But this…

    I am the last person to tell you that my photos are worth a damn, but I love this shot.