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Previously on Phil’s Newsletter: We started fixing my awful calendar habits and started a new naming scheme for these newsletters.
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Quick Hits
Working on a pretty big project right now with the usual suspects. I did not expect to run an online TV show this year but here we are. Stay tuned to the OpenCV blog for the info when it drops.
This week’s guest on OpenCV Weekly Webinar was Gerard Espona, an AI developer working on the OpenCV AI Kit plugin for Unity. Watch it on YouTube.
We’ve been watching AEW Dynamite together every Wednesday on my Discord server, and if you’re a friend or well-wisher who hasn’t gotten into pro wrestling but are interested in it, please drop by! We love educating people on the One True Sport.
Dear Newsletter, My Calendar Is A Goddamn Mess (Part II)
After years of using a Field Notes to keep track of my tasks and projects last year I decided to make a go of using a calendar every day and keeping it up and organized. You can find the beginning of that process in Volume 2 Issue 1.
One of the biggest changes to my workflow has been using Calendly, an automated scheduling app. Setting up meetings with multiple people, multiple times per week, will never be easy because people are so… people-y. For someone like me who has time management and executive function issues it takes a LOT of the strain out of managing a full-time work calendar where a client or friend might need some of your time semi-randomly.
Calendly helps grease those wheels by hooking up to your calendar system, letting you set your availability per day, and even add additional padding time before or after meetings so you aren’t stick ass-to-elbows with calls with no time to strategize between them. Amusingly there has been some push-back as Calendly has gotten more popular, with some people feeling the ‘pick a time on my calendar’ ask to be unfriendly. To this I say: I dunno about you, folks, but I am not here to make friends, I am here to make my clients money.
You can book a 30-minute meeting with me at any time by way of calendly.com/philnelson
The above isn’t sponsored content at all, but hey Calendly, if you want to sponsor the newsletter get at me.
The Music Section, John Prine (1971)
Lately I have been playing the hell out of the first John Prine record, 1971’s John Prine. Prine is one of those artists I never heard until pretty recently, and only then thanks to my brother Chuck.
Biographically John Prine one of those guys from the 70s that rock critics tried to put the unkindly mantle of “the next Bob Dylan” on. Like everyone else, that crown slipped off, and thankfully he stands on his own. You can hear a bit why someone might think this, due to his nasally twang and stripped-down production, but Prine doesn’t lean on the poetic and mysterious language you’ll find in your average Robert Zimmerman track and the way he goes about songwriting is very different overall.
John Prine (both the 1971 record and the guy) tells straightforward roots-music-style stories about simply being alive, disappointed, stuck, and worried but with a Guthrie-like wit, understanding, and charm. There’s that Dylan comparison again, but I’d say John very much reminds me more of Arlo than of Woody.
John Prine also a great-sounding record, that doesn’t do anything more than it needs to on the production side but will stay with you long after the runtime. Favorites on this album for me are Illegal Smile (smoke weed every day), Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore (politicians are liars and suck), Sam Stone (America treats veterans like shit), and Angel From Montgomery (life is a morass we’re all trapped in) which I’ll quote some lyrics from below:
There's flies in the kitchen, I can hear 'em there buzzin
And I ain't done nothing since I woke up today
How the hell can a person go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening and have nothing to say
Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go
You can listen to the whole thing on YouTube or Apple Music and you should.
A Question About The Archives
One thing that this newsletter has affected, pretty negatively, is how often I’ve been posting on my blog at extrafuture.com. I still think personal blogs, and self-hosted content in general, are what the internet is FOR and I have not been keeping up my end of the bargain. One of the things I’m considering here is removing the newsletter archives from Substack and moving them to my blog for the very small amount of search engine mojo it will accrue over time (which means less and less every day…) but also to flesh out the story of my shitty life on the stupid internet in a way that I control more directly. Maybe we’ll keep 1-week exclusivity on the Substack, and then re-post to the blog to double-up the exposure.
What do you think?
— Phil Nelson
Wizard Tower Gamma, South of Market, San Francisco, California, United States of America, Earth
02.09.2022