Rob Spectre - just your average self-produced superhero var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push([’_setAccount’, ‘UA-1608534-9’]); _gaq.push([’_trackPageview’]); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script’); ga.type = 'text/javascript’; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:’ == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl’ : 'http://www’) + ’.google-analytics.com/ga.js’; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();
Just before the American gridiron football season started, I hit up a bunch of old hacker buddies of mine and made a proposition: Let’s make an LLM powered Fantasy Football league. No human decision allowed - every choice over the season must be made by a model. For fun, we set up some ground rules: 1. Each manager picks a model and uses it for the season. 2. Everything around the model is…
There was a day, past the dawn of modernity but before the dusk of the electron, when dusty haired miscreants gathered around glowing tubes, spinning dials to tune into the tales of tricks they could never turn. Stuffed under pillows, hidden under covers and only as loud as they could dare, some person beamed a story told through song that they conceived for an audience they couldn’t measure…
Gifts (Propagandhi cover) at The Ghetto Penthouse
Coming out of the heaviest season of our collective post-modernity, I’m a few bands are continuously spinning as winter reluctantly loosens its grip on New York. For your consideration. Good Luck - Into Lake Griffy Fairly technical Telecaster-driven indie from Indiana. Songwriting puts me in the mind of John K. Samson or John Darnielle with some challenging and catchy riffs. Frontman duties…
A member of my family reminded me today of a piece I wrote a few years back on loss. While today is a different anniversary, the memory is fitting and merits a repost here . — Even four years later, there will still be occasions that feel like a magnum slug. Happening in unexpected places at inconvenient times, all the glorious, momumental, completely insignificant bullshit that’s…
Sometime during the summer of 2009, I think, a Boxee user reached out over email to report a problem with a feed for one of the apps I created. I can’t recall the problem or find the original email, but that user and I talked for a few minutes nearly every other week for the next five years. Sometimes Gavin would share a link to something going on in the Smart TV space or a particular video…
After days that drug on like weeks filled with hours passed like heartbeats, you tell a barely-conversational cabbie at JFK you’re headed to Brooklyn. And then - only then - do you breathe easy. He shoots onto the Van Wyck on ramp with the same familiar rush you feel at 8am when you get off at your subway stop. Like shot out of a barely open door at Union Square or 42nd Street or…
/var/null: Don't Fly During Ramadan : chimeracoder : A couple of weeks ago, I was scheduled to take a trip from New York (JFK) to Los Angeles on JetBlue. Every year, my family goes on a one-week pilgrimage, where we put our work on hold and spend time visiting temples, praying, and spending time with family and friends. To my Jewish friends, I often…
After dumping a Sunday afternoon into getting Ubuntu to install on my Zotac GF9300-D-E with RAID enabled, I figured I’d post a quick how-to as extensive Googling never compelled a solution. A divergence from the usual pit farts on a snare drum that occupies this space, but I know others are going to run into this problem and the solution is awfully janky. The Problem After a hard drive…
Corbin Reading A Book (When Corbin Can’t Read)
One of the teams I worked with at Young Rewired State got featured in The Guardian : Young Rewired State hoped to build network of young programmers an appealing field in America’s stalled jobs market
It was ass early for this philosophy major to be awake and presentable on a Saturday, but nevertheless, there I was. It might well have been the same collared shirt I wore for high school graduation. Even with the small pool of conspirators that I joined, it showed. There were maybe - maybe - a dozen of us, gathered to walk a quarter mile down the main drag of that tiny college town, bearing signs…
My Talk at SXSW Interactive 2013 : If you’re swinging by the big rodeo in Austin this year, hope you’ll catch my talk on Saturday 9 March at 11am in the Four Seasons Ballroom. It’s tips from your 30th employee on “Your Execution Year” - the oft troublesome, nary mentioned year when you scale your idea into a real business.
“ We think it’ll go on forever. We think we’ll never lose the people we love. And then, just like that, it all vanishes. Like a dream. But a good dream I think. A very good dream. ” - The Amazing Spider-Man #700
This is a demo I put together for Adventure Capitalists - fun tune for everyone working from home this week.
Webcam Pointed At Evacuation Zone A in Brooklyn : Since I live close to Evacuation Zone A south of the Williamsburg Bridge, I went ahead and put up a webcam for Hurricane Sandy. DJing a tasty mix of punk rock and indie - Ted Leo was even kind enough to offer his endorsement .
This morning I woke up in Barcelona and checked my inbox to find an email from Donald Trump. Kind of.
The Edge Of Knowing What Everything Costs : I wrote a piece for Fast Company’s leadership section that went up yesterday.
Would love to find out more. Can you reach out to rob [dot] spectre [at] gmail?
A year ago last Friday I left eight years cutting code and plumbing servers to take my very first marketing job. Prior to then and even before in college and high school, hard skills were what paid my bills - technical work building stuff mostly for the Internet. Everything I had done up until last year required only the soft skills needed to send a group email or interview a candidate, certainly…