I’m Chase Reeves. I collect and develop thoughts on how to make and live matterfully. Mostly for men. Make sense? Hmmm... lots of ‘m’s.

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We’re All Free Agents Now

The Macro Change is a switch from being part of an organization (I hesitate to say “community,” though that’s probably the effective emotional term)-General Motors, Apple, the army, Harvard or State U.-to being Just Ourselves. But it’s not just being part of, it’s thinking like a part of.

Is it necessary to have an actual “job?” A salary? A boss? I’m speaking emotionally, not financially. Is our mental setup such that we are dependent for our inner well-being upon an externally-imposed structure? Are we capable of acting without external motivation or validation or reinforcement?

Today you’re a free agent and so am I. Even in long-term jobs, we must think like entrepreneurs. Our 401-Ks are gone with the wind, along with Tower Records, Borders, and the steel industry.”

Steven Pressfield

It’s about being appropriately engaged in your life.”

I recently created a course for Fizzle on the essentials of productivity specifically for someone building an online business. David Allen featured prominently.

David Foster Wallace & A Brilliant Film

So good on so many levels… the writing, the animations, the film and lighting and setup, the emotion of the music, the fact that the author committed suicide a few years after delivering this commencement speech.

The only thing that’s capital ‘T’ true is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.”

Sync Apple Logic Pro with Dropbox

A tutorial on how to sync Apple Logic Pro files (channel strip settings, vst presets, etc) using dropbox. We do this by creating a symbolic link… some terminal stuff involved, but ultimately not tough.

In the video I show how to do it for the desktop as well… syncing the desktop of one computer to the desktop of another using dropbox.

Symlinks aren’t hard, you can do this. I’ll show you how.

Note: the simplified version is this:

  1. Copy the folder you want to sync from where it is into where you want it in dropbox.
    e.g., ~/Library/Application Support/Logic copied to ~/Dropbox/Apps
  2. Delete the original folder.
    e.g., remove the folder in Application Support
  3. Symlink from Dropbox to the original folder location. (Instead of from original folder to Dropbox).
    e.g., ln -s /Users/chasereeves/Dropbox/Apps/Logic ~/Library/Application\ Support
…that is what graphic design is for.”
We all want to do our best work; that’s the goal. But it’s ok to ship something decent; better than nothing. Stick to True and Good and let the history professors decide what was ‘best.’”

Your’s Truly

The defining characteristic that ties us all together is that we love things.”

Wil Wheaton

Merlin Mann’s Advice to Bloggers Who Want to Take it Seriously

  1. Give away more stuff than you think you should and make it easy for people to get.
  2. Focus on diverse secondary revenue streams and always have eyes open for new and replacement ones.
  3. Don’t do stuff that seems profitable but potentially messes up why people like you.

Found in this wonderful audio from a talk Merlin and John Gruber gave at SXSW in 2009. Highly recommended.

John Gruber on Monetizing Blogging

No one gets into something like this without an obsession, but if your obsession is with the money, and your revenue is directly correlated to page views, then rather than write or produce anything with any actual merit or integrity, you’ll dance like a monkey and split your articles across multiple “pages” and spend more time ginning up sensational Digg-bait headlines than writing the articles themselves. It’s thievery — not of money, but of readers’ attention.”

What’s so great, so amazing, about this racket is that it doesn’t have to be that way. You can obsess over your work, build an audience based on deep mutual respect, and eventually opportunities to earn money from it will present themselves. I don’t know how it works, I only know that it does. [...]

There is an easy formula for doing it wrong: publish attention-getting bullshit and pull stunts to generate mindless traffic. The entire quote-unquote “pro blogging” industry — which exists as the sort of pimply teenage brother to the shirt-and-tie SEO industry — is predicated on the notion that blogging is a meaningful verb. It is not. The verb is writing. The format and medium are new, but the craft is ancient.

John Gruber

We don’t make movies to make money. We make money to make more movies.”

Walt Disney

Flickr: Search Photos by Camera Used

I recently wanted to find all my pictures on Flickr taken with my nice camera (as opposed to my iPhone). There’s no simple button to do it, but here’s a quick and dirty method.

1. Open your Flickr photostream in two browser tabs.

2. In one do a search of your photostream (doesn’t matter what term, just do a search). What we’re looking for here is your flickr user number thingy. This is the number in the URL between “w=” and the following “&.”

My url is http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=27809677@N04&q=fat so my flickr user number thingy is 27809677@N04.

flickr search by camera used

3. In the other open up a picture you took with the camera you want to search for. Click on the “additional info” for this picture. You’ll see the link to the camera you used in this photo. Click that.

flickr search photos by camera

flickr search photos by camera

4. Put together a simple URL using your flickr account number thingy (from the first tab) and the camera URL (from the second tab) like so:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=+&w=YOURFLICKRACCOUNTNUMBER&cm=YOURCAMERAURL

Here’s mine, for example, searching by the Canon 5D MK III:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=+&w=27809677%40N04&cm=canon/eos_5d_mark_iii/

Good luck and happy hunting.

The Best People Possess

The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”

Ernest Hemingway

Chris Johnson on the Big Change

The big change in my life, going from someone who was struggling to pay bills to where I am now, which is having a lot of fun working on a seven figure business with amazing people, was that I decided everybody that encounters me ever is going to benefit more than I benefit.

I don’t always achieve it; I try real hard. But it guides your interactions with people and things become obvious.”

Chris Johnson