First Crack 73. The Banjo Brothers Bicycling Bags

I sat down with Mike, Eric, and Pete of Banjo Brothers for the low down on their grocery pannier and what got them started in cycling bags. There’s also some bits in there about how they’re partnering with bloggers like The Fat Cyclist to improve their bags.

Of course, you can buy their bags from Gene over at the One on One Bike Shop.

Hey, Mike & Eric gave me a Banjo Brother’s Mini Seat Bag, listen to the podcast on how it can be yours. Digital Dan Hook over at the Hook Show was the first one in.

  • Uplifter Minnesota, first event March 25th 2-6pm at the Acadia Cafe. Bring yourself, your gear, your passion.
  • DEMO LoFi musician showcases every Thursday night at the Acadia Cafe.
  • First Crack Podcast theme song by Jeremy Piller.

Listen to the Banjo Brothers Bicycling Bags [16 min]

Measure Map = Google Analytics v2.0?

I sure hope so. The current offering (Urchin assimilated) isn’t that useful.

“Bringing Measure Map to Google is an exciting validation of the user experience work I’ve been doing with my partners at Adaptive Path for years. – Jeffrey Veen”

Congrats to Veen, Congrats to Google. To PeterMe and everyone at Adaptive Path, I’m sorry for your loss.

I suspect Measure Map will first be available to domains Google hosts today (blogger.com) by default and positioning Google as the host-of-choice for tomorrow.

Shooting Your Hunting Partners is Poor Form

It would have been a sin to grow up in rural Wisconsin and not go through hunter’s safety and purchase a couple of deer and small game licenses.

The second and last time I went small game hunting, my dad and I were resting on a felled tree when some sort of creature appeared. I raised my shotgun and just as I pulled the trigger I noticed the line of fire would go right past my dad.

Maybe I was 14. Even then I knew shooting my hunting partner was a bad idea. Cheney is 65.

Two years ago, all hell broke loose in my former backyard. What really happened between Cha Vang and a half dozen locals we may never know.

This past weekend, “Vice President Cheney accidentally sprayed a companion with birdshot while hunting quail on a private Texas ranch, injuring the man in the face, neck and chest – Shailagh Murray and Peter Baker.

Christ.

Cheney should probably return to his favorite undisclosed location or take full responsibility for his actions and go on television this evening to apologize and talk about gun safety.

Now it comes out Cheney didn’t buy the new $7 bird stamp for his hunting license. Ironically, the increased fee was probably a result of reduced federal funding. Blah.

Inspired by the Enron – Smartest Guys in the Room Documentary

A decade ago, I was in a job interview for a place I ultimately was employed. My soon-to-be boss asked me how much money I’d like to make in, say, 5 years. It was about that time, blackouts were rolling through California and Wired, Fast Company, Red Herring were all obese with advertising. We were giddy with optimism.

Tonight, I watched 2929 Entertainment‘s documentary, Enron – Smartest Guys in the Room. It took me back to that moment in a more measured, rational, and methodical way than Startup.com. Perhaps 4 years of hindsight had something to do with it. 😉

From the documentary, Enron had a singular goal – to make money.

Problem is, that’s a goal for a robot. A goal as Enron proved, that can be abstracted from reality and automated. Like counting the number of times a file was downloaded doesn’t mean more people have read it – just means it’s been downloaded more times, something a robot can do. Both of these examples miss the point that the goals (money, downloads) are actually byproducts of the process – not the end result.

I remember the number I declared. An arbitrary number. One I’ve stopped paying attention to since working for myself.

Retention is a Measure of Motivation

Ron Baker’s ‘Your Employees are Volunteers’ is a much needed post. It includes gems like:

“Today, knowledge workers themselves own the firm’s means of production in their heads.”

“In fact, your people are actually volunteers, since whether or not they return to work on any given day is completely based on their own volition.”

Thanks Ron. The attitude that employees need employers isn’t limited to the legal profession.

Postel’s Law Asks, What Are You Ignoring Today?

There are quite a few memes circling this week I’m actively ignoring. Things where this sentence is exactly the amount of energy I’m giving them. If you also follow Doc Searls, these are snowballs I don’t think deserve pushing.

This is where the attention metadata stuff gets mushy. I’m talking about the triangles in the corners of the Attention Pyramid, the delta between attention & importance, between impression and click-through, between reading and writing, between Postel’s Law. The things I deem important should be associated with my identity, not the super-set of things I’ve given some acknowledging amount of attention to.

Question is, which is more valuable to snowball pushers; people ignoring them or people in their way?

Something In the Weather or the Genes?

Cooper didn’t sleep very well last night. Up every hour and some change. For a kid that’s been sleeping (or at least lying quietly) 12 hours at a stretch for the past month, this has been unfortunate change.

An even more unfortunate change, I was up – wide awake for way too long. Got a call from my dad (hundreds of miles north) first thing in this morning- saying he wasn’t able to sleep last night.

This afternoon, the green grass in the yard was covered with a fresh layer of snow.

Zillow.com First Impressions

Zillow.com launched today, and since our place is still on the market, I thought I’d check what Zillow’s estimate for 2701 31st Ave NE was. Huh, Zillow puts the marker above the 189,900 we started the listing at. Cool.

Overall, the site is zippy and filled w/ ajax-y goodness (and I can therefore forgive the initial Safari incompatibility). The maps draw fast and come up with more info that I expected.

Outside of finding and refining the value of a house – I’m not sure what else I’d do here – explains the text and banner ads sprinkled across the site.

Of interesting note, I can update house data, add improvements, and choose comparable properties all without creating an account or logging in. The numbers are in Zillow’s terms, “your own private worksheet”. Nice way to provide value without the irritant of another login/password.

The real estate industry is ripe for reform, and Zillow is a much needed start in the right direction of transparency and immediacy. Speaking of transparency, yes, Zillow has a blog.