[update 2011-01-18 @ 16:07:40: We're up!]
Before Christ was a corporal, Dan Benjamin was already a bit of a hero to me.
Since the early aughts–long before his insanely great 5by5.tv podcast network–Dan’s Hivelogic Enkoder was saving us millions of spam messages. His thoughtful tutorials on OS X (including unmissable advice on doing sane installs of MySQL and Rails, among others) are among the best on the web. His CSS has been widely stolen and reused without acknowledgment by thieves as diverse as other people and me. And his polymath posts on everything from Buddhism to The Paleo Diet to how to record a “Double-ender” have shown a charming combination of curiosity and empathy that, amongst numerous other reasons, clearly makes Dan a better human than me.
A propos of nothing, Dan’s also the guy who conducted one of (mp3) the three best interviews with me in which it’s been my good fortune to participate.1
Today, I’m honored to say that Dan and I are starting a thing together.
If it suits you, drop by 5by5.tv/live in about 35 minutes–at Noon Eastern/9am Pacific–to find out what we’re up to. I think it might be good. I’ll just say I’m as excited about this as I’ve been about any new project I’ve started in the past year or so.
Anyway. You can judge for yourself. Whether you can tolerate me or otherwise, definitely do not miss the work Dan’s doing at 5by5. Because it really is outstanding and very polished stuff.
As for our thing? My own goal, to paraphrase a bit from that interview with Dan, is to help you get excited, get better–and then?–Back to Work.
More soon. Thanks.
Favorite interviews. Just for the sake of completion, my all-time favorite interview was conducted by Colin Marshall for The Marketplace of Ideas (mp3); Dan’s “The Pipeline” eppy with me was a close second; and David and Katie’s recent nerderrific interview on my Mac workflow (mp3) on Mac Power Users has turned out to be a lot of peoples’ favorite thing I’ve done in years (love LOVE David’s stuff). ↩
And...we're up
Back to Work | Ep.#1: Alligator in the Bathroom
Download MP3 of "'Back to Work,' Ep. 1"
In the inaugural episode of Back to Work, Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin discuss why they’re doing this show, getting back to work instead of buying berets, the lizard brain, and compare the Shadow of the Mouse to San Francisco, and eventually get to some practical tips for removing friction.
It's a start.
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Episode Links
- Welcome to BrettTerpstra.com, home of Brett Terpstra and his nerdery
- carlhuda/janus – GitHub
- practically efficient — technology, workflows, life
- MacSparky – Blog
- The Brooks Review
- And now it’s all this
- Dan Rodney’s List of Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcuts & Keystrokes
- 43f Podcast: John Gruber & Merlin Mann’s Blogging Panel at SxSW | 43 Folders
- waffle software · ThisService
- One Thing Well
- html2text: THE ASCIINATOR (aka html2txt)
- The Conversation #27: Missionless Statements – 5by5
”"Back to Work" - Merlin's New Thing with Dan Benjamin at 5by5.tv” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 18, 2011. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"