Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

The Ultimate Vader

Fun fact I hadn’t heard before:

“There were two major candidates for the role of Big Van Vader, who was going to be the monster foreign heel, one being White and the other being Jim Hellwig. Hellwig signed with Titan Sports and of course became The Ultimate Warrior just before the decision as to which one of the two was supposed to be Vader, although the original Vader drawings called for a large muscular man built more along with likes of Hellwig.” — The Wrestling Observer Yearbook ’93: The Year of Major Beginnings and Major Endings (Wrestling Observer Newsletter 1) by Dave Meltzer

There are a bunch of these Wrestling Observer Yearbooks on Kindle Unlimited. No brained if you’re a wrestling fan. Each is organized by topic and then the articles are curated by topic in chronological order. It’s great. Just tons of small details about my favorite periods in wrestling.

The Vader and Ultimate Warrior fact above is an example.

Another is that, yes, I had read that Sid and Arn Anderson got in a fight with scissor stabbings. But the chapter in The Wrestling Observer is where I first heard the specific type of scissors: round tipped safety scissors instead of the sharp tipped kind. The latter probably would’ve lead to someone dying.

What’s the tenuous creativity lesson I should pull from here? Not sure other than that it’s fun to read old magazines.

And don’t run with scissors (even if they’re round tipped).

Neville Medhora and Noah Kagan: old school web

Noah is doing the rounds on podcasts for his book launch and was on Neville’s show. Always fun to listen to close friends talk because of how good the chemistry is.

Especially with the idea of “doing the rounds” in the first place. That implies you’ll hear some of the same stories across a few different podcasts. Repeat the narratives that work.

With close friends, you know they probably won’t be sticking to the usual questions.

Anyway, Neville mentioned that he’s been quietly posting to his blog again. That inspired me to open up WordPress in bed right before sleeping. (Really just delaying my sleep actually.) And to quietly write this post.

I was journaling then realized I should start shifting my daily writing habit more toward public writing. Add to and tend the garden here.

Noah’s company makes millions promoting software. But he sticks to a few relatively basic tools like spreadsheets instead of an array of the latest startup tools.

Oh yeah, his book. I just started it and I’m pretty sure the one takeaway I’ll have is “Now, not How.”

I know your inner negotiator may be saying, “That sounds great, but MY idea needs more time.” Stop! Power comes when you automatically implement NOW, Not How in everything you do. So no more negotiating with yourself. You’re just a doer. Say it to yourself: NOW, Not How.

A reason I think it’ll be good to make writing my daily content is that, well, I can do it from start to finish from my phone. I can take an idea and write a post Now (not How do I script this, how do I represent this in visuals, how do I make this fit in a minute….)

Short form vertical video made it easier to be consistent with video because you can shoot it with your phone. You just have to find a topic and format that works that’s an easy lift.

“Just.”

The short form format I chose takes a bit more work. (Not implying it’s elevated or better, it just takes a bit more in editing.) Recently I’m often using a few different apps. Figma and Descript and Screenflow. Even for a short I’ll frequently end up opening all 3 at some point.

Even more recently I’ve been using a Vision Pro. POV sharing seems to be a way that might work for me to live the holy-grail-of-consistency “Document, Don’t Create” life. POV over the shoulder stuff documenting the process of creating… something each week. Using web apps. Could be interesting!

Descript editing in the Vision Pro and Safari might be a good video idea. We’ll see.

Otherwise, I’d like to increase the amount of writing I post. If anything, as mentioned in my previous post, I can just share a few thoughts about a podcast I listened to that day. As long as I remember, I’ll aim for a post a day.

Sometimes in the middle of the night in my bed.

Things to practice (that we sometimes forget)

“Free to Focus” by Michael Hyatt:

If you fall victim to this limiting belief, replace it with this liberating truth: Productivity is a skill I can develop.

There are some skills we know take some practice to build up. There’s a clear progression or some indication you’ve learned something new. You’re learning to program and now you’re able to build something that would’ve seemed impossible a few months ago.

Productivity sometimes seems god-given or, if not, we can be less patient with the timeline required. The time saving hack should be working right away. I should be able to do my 4 pomodoros then take the long break in exactly 2 hours as prescribed.

Focus takes practice. And practice takes time.

Steve Jobs didn’t like the Mac vs. PC ads (on paper)

From “Insanely Simple” by Ken Segall:

You’d think that such a brilliant advertising idea would have been green-lighted from the start. In truth, the campaign had shaky beginnings, as Steve rejected many of Chiat’s scripts over the course of several meetings. Refusing to give up on their idea, the Chiat team decided that the best thing to do was to go out and shoot some real ads using the proposed actors. They spent an intense weekend doing just that and shared the ads with Steve on Monday. Seeing them on the screen instead of on paper, he loved them.

Imagine ‘Iron Man’ without the suit or ‘Avatar’ without Pandora’s breathtaking visuals. It’s like Harry Potter waving a twig instead of a wand – the magic just isn’t there.

In “Getting Real”, DHH and Jason Fried write about the importance of coded prototypes.

Don’t worry about the size of your headline font in week one. You don’t need to nail that perfect shade of green in week two. You don’t need to move that “submit” button three pixels to the right in week three. Just get the stuff on the page for now. Then use it. Make sure it works. Later on you can adjust and perfect it.

Details reveal themselves as you use what you’re building. You’ll see what needs more attention.

You’ll feel what’s missing. You’ll know which potholes to pave over because you’ll keep hitting them. That’s when you need to pay attention, not sooner.

It’s about making it real, tangible, something that pops off the screen and grabs you.

Sometimes you need a New Zealand landscape.

Sometimes Justin Long and John Hodgman will do. (Or whoever the prototype versions of them were.)

I want to start blogging again

I want to start blogging again after listening to a couple podcast episodes

As much as I want to publish a Short every day, there does end up being a lot of mental friction before hitting publish. Maybe in some way I think if I get too many videos with low viewership in a row then the algorithm will begin to hate me. I have no idea if it’s true or not. But it’s not like there are people really commenting mean things, it’s just hearing—using a David Perell phrase here—the crickets of indifference.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and want to at least turn some of that into… something? If I can grab one quote from one podcast every single day and write a few thoughts on it then that could add up over the course of years. If anything that’s at least an easy newsletter digest. Hopefully some patterns or principles or frameworks or something can begin to emerge from it.

It also would be a fun way to get back to how I started making things on the internet.

I had a blog on WordPress 20 years ago—geez—and as far as I can tell it looks like it was version 1.2. The earliest posts I can find were about Troy, the Friends finale, Van Helsing, and prom.

At the time there were a lot more blogs similar to what Daring Fireball and Kottke keep alive. Multiple posts per day and some posts simply a single link and a sentence. (Today they’ve also added their podcasts and newsletters.)

Here’s a screenshot from the 2005 version of my blog (which makes me nostalgic for the annual tradition of redesigning a personal blog). I was just a college student. Bill Simmons was just the Sport’s Guy.

Anyway, every day I’ll aim to link to a podcast episode I listened to with a quote and a couple thoughts. And then I’ll see where it goes from there.

I guess the next three posts can be quotes from the podcasts that got me back to blogging.

(Also I need to change the domain and everything back to Active Recall.)

Tool: Feedback (even if you’re on the game design Mt. Rushmore)

Check out the full notes for “Super Mario” by Jeff Ryan

Miyamoto wanted Mario to control more like Ryu eventually would: 

Miyamoto wanted up on the directional pad to be the jump control, freeing A and B for actions. No, no, others said, jumping is too important to not be given its own button. His coworkers wore him down, and Miyamoto eventually agreed to make A the constant jump button, with B for fireballs when tapped, and running when held. By “losing” the argument, Miyamoto showed he would let the better idea win, even if it lost the daimyo a bit of face. Ironically, this commitment to quality gained him unparalleled face.

Eventually, of course, Street Fighter would influence Super Smash Bros. Then it would all come full circle with Ryu appearing in Super Smash Bros. 

But I mostly shoehorned the Street Fighter thing in here. The real lesson is to listen to teammates. It turned out fine. Maybe it actually didn’t matter and there’s some universe where Mario jumps when you press up on the directional pad.

Getting back into shoehorning fighting games in here… we’ve certainly seen the inverse: Hit Box controllers allow people to play fighting games with just buttons and no joystick. The directional controls are just mapped to the buttons. And it’s not just a gimmick. Some pros exclusively use a Hit Box.

Now to find a mod of Super Mario Bros. with up as jump…