This week on East Meets West, Nick and I had another fun hour talking about new rules in the Senate, our recent string of underemployment, and the ridiculous political treatment of refugees by governments.
I always have fun talking to Nick, and even though we’re both nowhere near our possible career potential at the moment, we both keep our heads held high and hopes are at peak values right now.
This week, we had Natalie Poirier on Ottawhat. She did a 6-week hike all alone across Ontario in support of angioma research, and she raised money under the name “The Brain Venture”. It was a really cool story hearing what she put herself through for the cause, and all the interesting things we don’t really think about going home to sleep in a warm bed every night.
I really like these chats with people who’ve got way out of their way to do things that are really important to them, especially when those people have extremely positive results.
We haven’t had many people go and check out our Brew Donkey contest in recent weeks, so if you head to ottawhatpodcast.com/brewdonkey, you’ll have a very good chance of winning a free brewery tour ticket (with a $90 value!).
It only makes sense that exactly three years (to the day) after doing my very first video on YouTube, I would cross the threshold of actually earning real money from Google. Let me tell you the story.
For a little over a year, starting on July 4, 2011, I had been writing on my blog (which still exists to this day). December 1st, 2012, I made my first YouTube video, a Google+ Hangout live chat with my good friend, Carolyn Higman. You can go watch it, the quality of the video is relatively embarrassing, and a lot has changed since then.
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| The first time I exposed my face to the world, three years ago to the day. |
As a point of comparison, here is the latest episode of Future Chat, recorded this past weekend:
Over the years, a lot has changed. But one thing that hasn’t changed is that I still love teaching, helping, writing, and learning about technology. Here’s a brief timeline of my milestones on the internet.
July 4, 2011 – I start Living In The Future, my blog, on my birthday. I published the first post the following day.
December 1, 2012 – My first Google+ Hangout on Air.
January 14, 2013 – I agree to begin work with Sons of Pluto, a band with my friends. Work includes recording their practices, shows, building their website, making promo videos, and running their social media accounts. Those guys are now working on an EP!
February 7, 2014 – The first Future Tech Chat takes place. This is the spiritual successor to the first Hangout on Air from 2012, and the podcast continues on a weekly basis to this day under the more general “Future Chat“.
March 27, 2014 – I make the first Attrell Update video. My sister and I go on to exchange videos on a weekly (or almost weekly) basis until December of 2014.
May 20, 2014 – The first episode of Ottawhat is released, after Keegan, Amaan and I decide we should start an Ottawa-themed podcast about people.
December 14-16, 2014 – East Meets West and Feedback debut, also marking the formal launch of UnwindMedia.com, a media network that is the home of my Internet-related work so far.
November 5, 2015 – Ottawhat News, a satirical look at events around Ottawa, has it’s first viral post. In just a few days, over 65,000 people read about Peter Hayes and the Bier Markt.
December 1, 2015 (Today) – In an inevitability of time, math, and fortune, Unwind Media finally passes the threshold for being paid real money for ads on the sites I run. It is now just a matter of time now until a cheque from Google arrives. It’s not a lot of money, but it feels extremely good to hit that threshold.
I really love making things, and being creative. I’ve been doing it for over 4 years and I’m more excited now than I ever have been. I’m looking really hard for a job right now, and the stuff I do on the side is the only thing keeping me sane at the moment, as it’s one creative outlet I have amidst filling out applications and writing cover letters.
Mike and I joined up again for another fun episode, despite that fact that Nick was once again unable to join us.
I talked about the results of my one year plus experiment with personal hygiene. Tune in to hear what I did, and how things turned out.
This week on the podcast, we caught up with Chris Bailey. He was on the show before, talking about his Year of Productivity and how he was writing a book. Now, he’s done the book and talked with us about the process and how productivity has changed his life. Chris is always a fun guest!
Future Chat this week was a fun chat between Mike and I about genetically modified foods, the Tesla recall, and a recent experiment on self-control with kids and raisins.
We also got into a good discussion of online forums in the aftershow. Given the recent changes to Google+, we questioned the validity of wild-west type forums where moderators can stake their claims to certain topics, to the exclusion of others, even in a democratic forum. The aftershow starts at 1:01:41, and though we start from a Google+ angle, the discussion is interesting even if you don’t give a crap about G+.
In a really great series of events in the last couple of months, we got to interview the mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson, on Ottawhat this week. It was a really great time and I’m so glad we got the chance to do that. Hopefully it will lead to even bigger and better things for the podcast!
Go enter this week’s Brew Donkey contest once you’ve listened to the show: ottawhatpodcast.com/brewdonkey.
This week on Future Chat, we discussed the food industry in some detail, some interesting data on how to change the mind of an anti-vaxxer, and more interesting energy projects going on around the world.
Future Chat is a ton of fun and if you haven’t listened in a while (or ever), I would strongly encourage you to give it a chance. This weekly podcast is a real passion project of Mike, Nick and I, and we really have a lot of fun with it. It’s a niche show, but we obviously think it’s worth listening to. If you enjoy it, we’d really love to hear from you via Twitter @_FutureChatFM or by way of an iTunes review.
This week on Ottawhat, we talked a fair bit about soccer, the sport I love most in the world. Our local soccer team is in the championship of the NASL (North American Soccer League) this Sunday against New York, after an amazing fall run where they only lost once in 20 games!
Future Chat is a really fun part of each week for me. Sometimes, we’ve ended up kind of regurgitating the news and not really getting too in-depth in discussion. That didn’t happen this week.
We ended up having really great conversations about the future of science in Canada (something we talked about a LOT last summer in our government funding of science episode). Then we talked in depth about the new BlackBerry phone, and some interesting points about tradeoffs you make in choosing BlackBerry and the likelihood of its success in Canada. Then we talked about a few stories relating to different renewable and non-renewable energy around the world, in Morocca, Kenya and China.
Perhaps my favourite part of the whole show though, was at the very end. Mike tried to figure out Snapchat when he first got it, but since the conceit of the app is lost on those who weren’t in the their teens when it was released, he was having trouble. We explain how the app works, and I really hope if you haven’t given it a try, that you will consider checking it out. If you do have Snapchat, go ahead and add me (sciencerob), Mike (ma_yyc) and Nick (nwamaddox), and we’ll surely all have a great time! The Snapchat discussion starts around 1:34:15, I highly encourage you to listen. It’s fun and informative.
