beach

beach
Originally uploaded by brandonthebuck

Why do I love Santa Barbara?

This is literally where I went to school for 2 years. My classroom is visible in this photograph.

ism.

so i've been vegan for more than 2 weeks now.

i'm bored out of my mind.

the problem is my palette is pretty limited as it is. take away 80% of pretty limited and you've got barely anything. peanut butter and jelly. quinoa. apples. repeat.

the idea behind this was two-fold: 1) lose weight, 2) test my endurance. my endurance has maintained, but is waning as i anticipate thanksgiving and a weekend in santa barbara more and more ("steak dinner at mike and louise's?" "extra turkey after-thanksgiving dinner?"). and i haven't lost weight or noticed any physical difference. and that was especially why it had to be a month: one week is a test in resisting temptation, a month was actually letting my body adjust. and i found no adjustment.

i'm thinking of calling it quits once i hit santa barbara (which will be three full weeks), simply out of saving myself from hating pesto wheat pasta and spinach. i need something new.

at least now i can make fun of vegans without remorse. and that makes it all wortwhile.

err.

sorry for the mixup in updates.

i created a podcast purely for myself because my iphone can't sync to my work computer and i may come across a song or seminar talk that i'd like to listen to on my walk home, and by updating the podcast i'll be able to download the new tracks. unfortunately when making this, i switched around the feedburner url and so those who subscribe here got a little taste in the geekness of buck: a remix and 4 different talks ranging from photovoltaics to google wave. pretty embarrassing, but it's out there.

Twitter For Sustainable Business - You're Doing It Wrong!

Causecast played a few roles in the Opportunity Green Conference held at UCLA this weekend (attendee, booth-holder, video-maker w/ EcoFabulous, and panel guest). I was only supposed to be around Saturday to shoot some interviews, but with a press pass with my name and tickets normally valued some insane amount, I snuck back in Sunday and schmoozed up some more.

Our man James spoke on the closing panel called "Market Leading Social Media," but could have been titled "Twitter Strategy." By now Twitter's reached its critical mass and though everyone's publicly sick of it for a full year, it's still in a lot of ways reaching maturity. Like a puppy with fully-grown feet, Twitter keeps stumbling as it tries to run full-gait, and conferences like these acknowledge and address that.

Everyone onstage did a great job of really emphasizing that social sites are *social* and about community, and they're only tools to build relationships on a human level. This is very trivial info, but very, very easy to forget. Should a company twitter feed be personable? Relate to product news or customer service? Be a conversation or automated? Yes, these questions are still being asked because the answer keeps depending on the context.

The problem I had with the panel, though, was that no one really took a step back to acknowledge what "Twitter" was specifically or you need to ask what you want to get out of it. In Causecast's case, we're at least 50% editorial, so we use our Twitter primarily to share editorial content: our own and spreading around the links of our network. Causecast wants to be "your one-stop shop for all things cause," and they do that by being a central source for all cause-based news. Do I want a conversation with CNN or Huffington Post? No, I want updates, at-a-glance facts and summary commentary of impact. It's really important for us when a disaster happens somewhere in the world that the average user will instinctively think, "2,000 homes have been flooded in Laos, how can I help?" and they go to Causecast to take action. If Causecast's Twitter are filled with @ replies and short prose on good leadership, it's not a reference for me as a reader or a source to necessarily trust. Our Twitter excels when we talk news and action, not asking to join our Facebook Fans 3x per day.

That said, the majority of attendees at the OG conference were not news outlets. From my understanding they were either small-business products or consultants (selling current business "green" practices). So how can a company that sells sustainable beauty supplies sell their products in 140 characters? They don't. And they shouldn't. Twitter is not a sales pitch. Twitter is a reference, and what the small business should be doing is using it as a platform to make themselves the expert in that field. Beauty supplies: link to news about studies of harmful chemicals in household products, celebrities switching and endorsing new products, etc. Be the expert.

Say you run an eco-conscious consultancy firm that retrofits businesses and buildings with green functionality. If I hire you to help with our remodeling and PR front, I want to know I'm dealing with someone who knows what they're talking about. Who keeps themselves up-to-date in all things green architecture. If I suggest insulating with straw bale based on an article my friend read in a magazine, I want you to tell me why or why not this instant, with examples of why it's obsolete or how your way gives me an additional tax benefit in this state as of last month. If you tweet about your three consultancy packages every day, you're echoing what I can already read from your site. And I especially don't want half of a conversation with someone else from last week.

I want a consultancy that tells me waterfree-urinals have a $200 rebate from California State and that they save me 6,000 gallons per year and $1,500 per unit, so it'll pay for itself with installation within 5 months per unit. Your tweet leads to CA Gov. site that was just published last week. To your site? Not necessarily. Maybe if you had a section where I could choose models or schedule times to install. But maybe as I'm researching different consultancies to choose from for our remodeling do I bring up in conversation if waterfree-urinal installations come with the package you're selling me. It's because I'm trusting your research and knowledge, not your starving for attention. Starving for attention doesn't mean you tweet the latte you just bought, but that you like to link to links and fit your name somewhere in there.

Twitter is a tool for your community, but there's many kinds of communities and you need to know what community you want. Do you have six doctors you visit, or is your dentist a different person than your optician? I know my nutritionist is looking out for me, but I don't want her to give me psychological advice. And at the end of the day, my baker's a really nice guy but I really just want him to sell me good bread.

hi, a real human interface

Hi from Multitouch Barcelona on Vimeo.

Reminds me of the opposite of "Thomas Est Amoureux" and directed by Michel Gondry.

vegan.

(from not martha)

My roommate's gone for a month and my brother and sister-in-law will be coming to California sometime before the end of the year, so I need to lose weight. And I've chosen to do it by going vegan for the month of November (minus Thanksgiving dinner).

In high school, I used to make fun of my friend Devon because he went vegan, which even vegetarianism was pretty unheard-of in Santa Barbara. Lately I've made fun of my co-worker Harmonie for being raw-vegan, and I'm as red-blooded of a carnivore as it gets (my iron and red blood cell count are the same as someone on steroids). I had never had a salad until three years ago and don't like most veggie dishes, so this'll be a challenge. I won't be minute in going through the ingredients, but if I think I crossed the line, I'll post it here.

I expect to be eating a lot of quinoa and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

etchings

it looks like the new trend in luxury design are jewelery re-interpretations of abstract thoughts.

first
in the 90's we had dna portraiture

(via DNA11)

second
circles that chart out the color spectrums of films
(i'll post the picture when i find it, i'm sure Wired magazine published it)

third
bracelets with etchings based on the weather and moon patterns for one year

(via Designboom)

and fourth
couches based on brainwaves

(via Wired)


now if only i could get my hands on whatever 3D modeling software everyone's using, i'll build my own market of creating custom busts of the average of everyone's appearance over a 50yr span: melding together youth, age, thick and thin to define what "you" truly look like.