Jason Cosper

Category: General

  • Nice Day For A Vote

    Last night’s rain gave way to beautiful, puffy clouds and a vibrant blue sky. The mood at my local polling place was great and everyone seemed excited to make their opinions heard. Even the people who had to file a provisional ballot didn’t complain at the extra hoops they needed to jump thru.

    If you haven’t voted yet, I hope that you will. I also hope that you’ll encourage your friends and family to get out there too. Today’s going to be a big day — and I don’t know about you, but I’d rather help make history than sit on the sidelines.

  • Tacos For Obama

    I like Obama for a lot of reasons — but when it really comes down to it, I’ll always be for a candidate who has a firm pro taco stance.

  • Can’t Stop The Hustle

    Inspired by what Merlin is doing with 43 Folders, I’m taking a step back from what I set out to do with Preshrunk. Yeah, I know that I just relaunched it. No, I’m not talking about walking away from it.  It feels too good to be back to just up and stop again.

    What I’ve realized tho is that the internet doesn’t need yet another daily t-shirt blog — it needs a better t-shirt blog. Spitting back every press release and sale notice that drops into my inbox doesn’t make for compelling content. The reason people show up and read Preshrunk is because they actually care about finding wonderful tees. What’s more, people actually trust my taste.

    I know. It befuddles me too. But they seriously do. At least that’s what the feedback coming in says.

    When it comes down to it, the last thing I should be doing is running something I’m only kinda feeling. Or trying too hard to make sure people have fresh content to read when they check their feeds or hit the site. When I’m up against a self-imposed deadline, I end up putting out stuff that’s not up to par. You guys seriously have no idea how hard I’ve had to fight myself to not go back and rewrite entire entries when I read them in the morning. When you realize that you’ve turned out more than one post in the past month that reads like bad Geekologie copy — which isn’t really that great to begin with — it’s time to examine what you’re doing.

    So if you don’t see new shit up on Preshrunk daily, please know that I’m just trying to make things better rather than fall into a routine. As they say, it’s all about quality over quantity. Six months off won’t happen again tho, honest. Maybe a few days at worst. Expect a good excuse from me if that happens tho, alright?

  • Bring The Ruckus

    The game has changed a lot since I launched Preshrunk in late 2004.  According to Andy at Hide Your Arms, there’s over 150 t-shirt blogs out there now — and I’ll be damned if I can actually find more than a handful that are actually readable and worth following.  Granted, there are a few “good blogs” out there — but the amount of coverage for poorly designed tees and really weak write-ups is pretty fucking dismaying.

    Anyhow, I recently found myself coming to a crossroads of sorts.  It was sparked by a bunch of mail from old, dedicated readers wondering where I’d gone.  Questioning if I’d ever come back.  Asking if I’d consider selling the site (with some pretty decent offers, I might add) or taking folks on as contributors to help get things going again.

    So I found myself asking a very simple, but poignant question.  Do I add more noise to the genre of blogging that I helped start, or do I pack it in?  The money I’d get from cashing out would allow me to fund another project I’ve been working on instead of bootstrapping it — so that was a bit tempting.

    Besides, six months without an update normally means a blog is “dead” in internet time.  And regular readers will no doubt recall that I’ve staged so many comebacks at Preshrunk that it borders on ridiculous.  But I still couldn’t leave my baby just sitting by the side of the road.  Nor could I leave it in the care of someone I didn’t know.  Kinda control freak of me, I know — but that’s always sort of been my way.

    Despite my apparent disinterest tho, I never stopped thinking about Preshrunk.  It was honestly a matter of time (and my poor allocation of it) more than anything.  I have what amounts to half a moleskine of site ideas that I’ve sketched out and jotted down on the train.  Most of them are actually implementable, too.  New weekly features!  New sites!  New ways to fold in social features that don’t involve lazily adding “Digg This” buttons!

    And they’re actually all coming.  Well, that’s the plan at least…  Right now, I’m concerned with getting content on the site and convincing people to come back more than anything.  The bells and whistles can wait until later.

    Speaking of bells and whistles, there’s a new theme up at Preshrunk now, but it’s not really expected to be permanent.  In fact, if you know a solid, affordable WordPress designer, send them my way, won’t you?  Some of the aforementioned ideas need something a bit more robust before they’re deployed.

    Even if you don’t know a theme designer tho, it’d be nice if you can show some support.  Read the blog.  Add the Twitter feed.  Spread the word.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to remind these kids where they came from…

  • Go Team Venture!

    When I realized my brand new Guild of Calamitous Intent tee from AstroBase Go! had a decent sized hole where one shouldn’t be, I decided to mail them about it. Fabric imperfections happen from time to time — especially on American Apparel tees.  After a little back and forth with Venture Bros. series creator Jackson Publick — mostly to send photographic evidence that the hole existed — I ended up getting this reply:

    We’re happy to send you a replacement shirt which contains only the necessary number of holes to qualify as a shirt.

    Hah!  Good one!  Well played, Mr. Publick…

  • Drama Llama

    I really wish Boing Boing would say something about what is going on with erasing every mention of Violet Blue from their site.  Blog feuds — if that’s what this even is — are fucking retarded and I seriously thought the team over there was better than that.

    I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Violet a few years ago and I’ve hung out with Cory, Xeni and Mark a number of times.  From what I know, they’re all pretty reasonable folks.  So if there’s a beef, please squash it.  And put the posts mentioning Violet back or at least explain what’s going on.  Your readers would really appreciate it.

    Update: Boing Boing has addressed what is going on.

  • It’s Oh So Quiet

    There’s somebody who I care about and love a lot — and I haven’t been giving her the attention she deserves both on this blog and in other aspects of my life.

    That person’s name is Sarah.

    See?  When was the last time I brought her up?  It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

    Shame on me.

    You know, when a relationship is fresh and new and you’re just crazy happy to even be in love?  You want to sing that shit from the rooftops because it feels so good.  That feeling of happiness doesn’t go away — but it does end up becoming something comfortable.  It becomes so comfortable in fact, that you start taking the fact that you even have it at all for granted.  The frequency of fawning blog posts drops and cameo appearances in your Flickr feed gradually slow to a near standstill as well.

    Well, maybe not your Flicrk feed or blog.  But that’s what’s happened with mine.

    So why did that happen?  It’s not like she’s gone somewhere.  Hell, save for a few really rough patches where I’ve been a complete jackass, she’s been in my life all this time.  And I haven’t stopped loving her or caring about her.  In fact, my love for her grows every day.  She’s a massive influence on my life and the decisions I make.  This is something she’s aware of, but most of you have no idea about what’s going on at all.

    As public a person as I am, I’ve been finding that I’m growing this tendency to want to keep parts of my life private.  Mostly because the relationship I have with Sarah is just that — a private one.  Then again, I could just be making excuses.

    Still, I started out talking about her every chance I could get with glowing bits of praise and adoration.  And the more I think about it, the more I realize that I never should have stopped doing that.  She still lights up my insides with an intensity that is unrivaled — and the world deserves to know that.

    So everyone, say hi to Sarah again.  You’ll be seeing a lot more of her around these parts.

  • Movin’ On Your Left

    One of the nice things about living in North Hollywood is that I’m less than a mile’s walk from the Red Line station.  Because of this, I’ve been taking the subway into work every morning.  There’s actually a few benefits to this:

    • I get a nice walk at the start and end of my work day.  And I’ll still continue to call it nice until Summer hits and the Valley gets over 100° F at 9 AM.
    • Work pays for my metro pass.  Well, they reimburse me for it whenever I get them the receipt.  Still, the fact that they’re willing to pick up any of its cost is really nice of them.
    • I find that I’m way less stressed when I don’t have to sit in traffic.  Listening to a podcast or some music is way more chill when you don’t have to wonder why the guy in the other lane is drifting over for the nth time.

    I do have one gigantic pet peeve tho — people who stand still on the left side of the escalator.  Now I know that moving stairs are still a novelty to some, but most regular commuters know that the right is for standers and the left is for the folks who like beating those smug stair climbers out of the station.

    I know it’s pompous for me to assume that Los Angeles is listening — especially when I have access to my site’s metrics and I know that my traffic falls well short of the city’s population — but please quit being part of the problem, left-standers.  And for God’s sake, kindly get out of the way when someone says “excuse me”.  I really hate getting pushy, but I swear that I will if I have to.

  • Introducing LAWPUG

    Since a lot of my day job involves dealing with WordPress issues — which are mostly caused by 3rd party plugins or sites not being ready for the Digg effect — I’ve become really passionate about WordPress as a platform. Now I’m not to the point of being a hardcore zealot just yet, but I find myself getting closer and closer as each day passes. ;)

    Inspired by Joe Crawford‘s BOF at the last BarCampLA, I’ve decided to start a group for Los Angeles based WordPress users. The idea is to meet monthly for a meal and have a small, semi-structured talk (or Q&A) to get other folks who are passionate about WordPress to come together and exchange ideas.

    The first one is going to be a little more relaxed tho. We’re meeting for a nice Sunday brunch at the Los Angeles Farmers Market near Starbucks and Lotteria in the southwest corner (3rd & Fairfax) on April 6th at 12:00 PM.  We’ll use this meeting a chance to get to know the other people in the community before we start diving into the fun technical stuff at future meetings. All the important event info should be up over on Upcoming, so please try to add yourself there so we can know how many tables to try to grab.

    I’m really looking forward to getting this jump started and seeing some new (and old) faces from the LA tech community. Please feel free to spread the word if you’re interested in helping get this subset of the larger community going and drop me a line if you have any questions.

  • Time To Get Away

    Sunset at McWay Falls

    I realize how funny it is to be complaining about needing a vacation — especially since things have been so quiet around here the past couple months — but I feel like I need to get away for a bit. When things get silent here, it’s because I’m in head down, super concentration mode.

    I’ve got more than two weeks of vacation banked up at work and I’m itching to take my first real break in over eight years.  No conventions, conferences or unconferences.  No networking events or parties.  Just me and someplace quiet where I can go for a week and reset myself.

    The question is, where do I go?  Anyone have any ideas?

    Sunset at McWay Falls by kaiyen.