[Updated, Tuesday July 13, 2010]
About “Last One Out…”:
I’ve named this project “Last One Out” for the simple reason that I seem to always be on the trailing edge of innovation when it comes to technology. Odd part is, its not because I’m not aware of these happenings. I’m pretty good at seeing the next new thing coming down the pipe, and watching it grow in scope, scale, and use among “tech” and “mainstream” folks alike. Personally, I’m just cautious about adopting *another* means of sucking my productivity away, because as you’ll see, I’m easily distracted! “Last One Out…” is essentially a central resource and compilation of the many projects and blogs I now contribute to.
Some History: “My life is a living Internet History Museum!”
As if you wanted to know… I first registered the domain, “irieman.com“, way back in 1996, for like, $45. And thus began an epic digital journey in parallel to the history of the Internet. At first a “personal site” just to say I had one, it allowed me to practice and hone my coding and server administration skills. A trip through the wayback machine reveals some interesting trends while reflecting my own varied interests…
Quick to jump on the internet bandwagon, I was an avid surfer of the web and liked to share my spoils and interests with the teeming masses. “Irieman.com/links” was the perfect way to share what websites I thought were entertaining, thought provoking, unique, or just plain weird! In short, my own public facing, online bookmarking system, available for the world to enjoy. You know- like del.icio.us, only about 10 years ahead.
For a long time I fancied myself an aspiring photographer. “Irieman.com/photo” became my online gallery and portfolio. But it was also an excuse to seek out, visit, and link to modeling and individual models’ websites. Additionally, it was also a great way to get pretty girls’ permission to host their images on my website when at the time, there were not 20 thousand sites where models could post images themselves. Although this project has gone by the wayside, I still keep in touch with many of those models today. A win-win situation!
During the majority of my college years I was (among other things) a DJ and Station Manager for my campus radio station. Upon graduation, I immediately got a job in commercial radio, which, in case you’re wondering, is totally unlike college radio! Still feeling the itch to be creative on my own terms, I created my own “internet radio show” before anyone knew what the hell I was talking about. I would record a 2-hour show of uncleared, independent and commercial music onto Sony MiniDiscs in my living room, convert them to Real Audio format, and upload them onto my server! I would then spend numerous hours a week reaching out to fans and industry peeps enticing them it would be worth the long, pre-broadband download. This was about 5 years before RSS and podcasting! “Irieman.com/radio” linked the audio files and the episode listing of my shows, “STATIC RADIO” and “HEAVY INTERNET RADIO”, as well as a listing of many other online radio stations I enjoyed. Yep, a full wave ahead of Shoutcast and iTunes! (Who knew?!)
Because of my radio show I would receive lots of CDs and promotional materials from unsigned and independent bands from around the world. Yet, only a fraction of them had a website. I noticed that while many of my own friends were in bands, none had the time, money, skill, or desire to manage and maintain their own websites, yet they all could agree that “this internet thing will be all the rage someday!”. Smelling yet another ground-breaking opportunity, I began leasing out chunks of my server space, bandwidth, time, and skills, and hosted a small network of local band websites. I upgraded to a more robust hosting company with the intent of schlepping these same local bands’ hats and t-shirts while taking a small percentage for my time. Pretty cool eh? Then Garageband.com, Reverbnation and finally MySpace and CafePress came along and pulled *that* rug from under me! Damn you Internet!!
Tired of hiding from the RIAA and spending long nights promoting everyone else but me, one day I jettisoned my radio shows and hosting services, and decided that what the world really needs, is a music-based (finger quote) “podcast” (end finger quote)- of my own music. Based on my lifetime of music and studio experience, and the fact that I can write songs in my sleep, the production part was easy. I sat down and taught myself the ins and outs of the technical side of podcasting, which wasn’t that hard to figure out, but required one of those “blog” thingies to push out something called and RSS feed. (several years later, try explaining RSS to *anyone*!) At that time the easy way out was to grab an account at Blogger.com, while housing all the content on my server and let them do the heavy lifting.
After a few years of perfecting the backend side of podcasting and even helping a few friends get in the game, I got itchy for a change (again) and migrated into the world of video podcasts. It was then that I conceived, created, produced, edited, and managed “Motorkult TV”- a long-format show about the Southern California car culture. After even more sleepless nights and almost getting my pants sued off me by a similarly named clothing company, the show was re-branded as “Behind The Vroom“, shrunk to 5-10 minute snippets, and was my foray into HD video production and editing. And boy, that’s a lot of work for a little ‘ol iMac! The show as well as all other non revenue generating projects, are currently “on hiatus”- which is Internet-speak for “who’s got the time for that?!”
So, in all irony, since its inception, while irieman.com has allowed me to be an active participant in the growth of the Internet, in the end, it has morphed, melded, and migrated into nothing more than… a pesky fileserver!? But, essentially, all the while, irieman.com has been my de facto personal blog, before anyone even used the word blog!
Now on it’s umpteenth iteration, what better use than to suck it up and admit that the best use of my website and cool URL is just that- my own personal blog! Of course it doesn’t stop there. I already have few ideas of where things are headed next! Stay tuned!! 