People and Blogs: Brad Barrish

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

Before I get into this, I want to thank you for inviting me to be part of this special series you do. I look forward to reading them as soon as they are posted. I've missed a few, but I am working my way back through those. They are the source of many open browser tabs, just as I hope this one will be for others.

Ok, is this where I assert my nerd cred? I grew up in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. My interests were music, comic books, skateboarding and computers, none of which were cool to many people then. Despite it all, I had a pretty good childhood with close friends and supportive parents who loved me. I went to computer camp and learned BASIC programming on an Apple IIe when I was young. Our first home computer was a Franklin Ace 1200. It had a dial-up modem, allowing me to begin exploring BBSes. At some point, my dad bought an IBM PS/1. It was our first computer with a GUI (Windows), but more importantly, Prodigy and, later, AOL.

I’m a Very Internet Person with an insatiable appetite and irrational excitement for cool, weird and fascinating web stuff. I've somehow maintained a certain level of excitement and optimism about the web. I can still recall the excitement I felt when a friend showed up to my apartment with NCSA Mosaic on a floppy. I get an unreasonable thrill from discovering web stuff, which I hoard, tag and share with others.

I took a minimal number of credits at the University of Kansas. They were just enough to make me eligible to work at KJHK, KU’s college radio station, one of the best in the country. When I wasn’t in class, at the station or seeing shows at The Bottleneck, I immersed myself in music and computers. I worked in a recording studio, worked as a College Marketing Rep for Sony Music, started a record label, built websites and created interactive things for the web. I most notably built an early interactive music player in Macromedia Director for the KU student newspaper's website.

Lawrence, Kansas was one of the first places in the U.S. to have broadband cable modems, which, of course, I had. I used all that crazy bandwidth to load web pages faster, listen to music on IUMA and communicate with strangers on CU-SeeMe. Some of those strangers would later become friends, co-conspirators and co-workers. Keep in mind this was in the mid-1990s!

One of the first interactive agencies in LA hired the leading developers of CU-SeeMe away from Cornell. Along with a handful of developers, they worked to commercialize the technology. I flew to LA and convinced the founder to hire me as a product manager and cover my moving expenses. That was during the first dot.com boom (and bust). I've lived in LA ever since, working in tech, save for a slight detour or two. Over the last decade, I’ve worked at the intersection of consumer hardware and software, most notably at Sonos and Oura. I’m especially interested in how humans interact with technology and integrate it into daily life.

I live with my wife, eleven-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son, in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles. I’ve been enjoying my first real career break since May last year. I've been spending time with family, writing, reading, playing, and making new friends, both online and in real life. I’m currently coaching, running workshops for small teams and consulting.

What's the story behind your blog?

I started blogging on bradbarrish.com in 2001 on MoveableType. I also started a separate music blog called Jeans And A T-Shirt in 2002. It had a decent following and I met tons of people because of it. I started publishing on whatevernevermind.com (a reference to a Nirvana lyric) in 2004. If memory serves, that’s when I started using WordPress. I enjoyed writing on Tumblr during its heyday, but when they sold it to Yahoo, I exported my posts and returned to my domain(s). I’ve continued to publish with varying frequency there ever since.

I’ve never thought about the story behind my blog until now, so what follows is a lightly edited stream-of-consciousness answer. For some reason, I still believe there is something magical about being able to create something on the web that connects with other people. It’s been exciting to see a renewed interest in personal publishing. All these cool and weird minimalist CMSes are amazing! Seeing people building thoughtful, sustainable products, services and platforms for the long haul is inspiring. I’m here for it!

I basically just write about and link to anything interesting to me. I’ve learned over and over that if something is interesting to me, there are probably at least a few other people that will be into it too. Publishing stuff online is, in many ways, a signal or beacon that lets other people know you’re into a thing and says, ‘Hey! Me too! Let’s hang out.’

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

RSS is at the heart of my exploration and inspiration. I have thousands of websites and newsletters that come into Feedbin. I love Feedbin and have been using it for many years. I’m constantly pruning feeds, adding new sites and unsubscribing. When I have more time, I’ll skim the main stream, which includes everything I subscribe to. When I have less time, I have a list of about 50 essential sites I skim. Feedbin also allows me to create saved searches that crawl all my feeds and surface posts with specific words or phrases. This is especially handy for tracking something specific, which I almost always do.

I use Golden Hill Software’s lovely Unread app with Feedbin on macOS and iOS. I save lots of links in Raindrop, where I keep all my bookmarks. I also queue up articles in Reader, for highlighting and annotating. Reading gets me thinking. Thinking leads to writing, so I can clarify my thinking. Sometimes, it turns into a blog post. But more often, I’ll write a few sentences with a link on my microblog.

I’ve solicited feedback from people on posts, but most of them sit in an unpublished state. Editing them to integrate the input becomes a thing that I procrastinate. My interest often shifts or I'll read it so many times that I don't like it anymore. I know this is a thing in talking to other people who write. I have enough self-awareness to know that, generally speaking, the more I noodle on a post, the less likely it is to see the light of day. I open Obsidian, create a new document and write until I get everything I have to say is on the screen. I’ll do my best not to edit myself in this phase. Once I get everything in the document, I’ll lightly edit it to tighten things up. Then it's a simple copy/paste into WordPress’ crappy editor, give it a once-over and smash the publish button.

I use a few tools to write posts. Loose ideas get captured in Drafts. I can go from idea to Drafts quickly on my phone and I like its simple interface. The loose ideas I capture in Drafts make their way into Obsidian (shoutout Steph), where I process and write almost everything (including these answers). I’ve used a bunch of other similar apps, but I like how Obsidian works. It's reasonably priced, has an active developer community, and, by all accounts, a sustainable business model. I pay for Grammarly Premium and mostly like it. I keep it disabled while writing and turn it on when editing. I do feel like there might be something better, and I am actually editing the answers with Hemingway.

While doing all this writing and editing, I listen to instrumental music or fire up Endel. Full disclosure: I made a modest investment when Endel was getting started.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

My ideal creative environment is a small structure with floor-to-ceiling windows, surrounded by nature to which I can teleport. I have a big monitor (at least 4K) connected to an Apple laptop (notifications disabled), on a sturdy desk with an obligatory Aeron Chair. A blazing-fast wireless Internet connection is a must. I'll have all the delicious coffee and fresh food I need. And, of course, a Sonos system for listening to music. Oh, and there’s not another human for miles.

Physical space absolutely influences my creativity, but it can also distract me.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

Most of my domains are registered with Namecheap, which I’ve happily used since 2011. I currently use Wordpress.com to host my main personal blog, which utilizes Automattic’s Sten theme. I plan to migrate to a self-hosted Ghost instance using the Zap theme I’ve already set up on an Ubuntu server hosted by Vultr. My microblog is hosted on Micro.blog and uses the Marfa theme. I plan to consolidate everything onto Ghost, which I have unsuccessfully attempted once. Now that Matt Haughey’s has shared some notes on the process, I'll give it another whirl soon.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

I would approach things, more or less, the same way I approached it at the dawn of the web, and largely still do. That is to say, I would start writing about anything that was remotely interesting to me without much thought given to the audience. You are your audience, if that makes sense. I would link to and follow others who I admire. And for people I’m especially fond of, I would reach out to them in a non-creepy way (do I even need to say that?) to say hello and express my admiration directly, especially if they are lesser known. Who knows? Your note might be the thing that keeps them going for another day, week or month. Most people don’t do this, by the way. Generosity stands out, especially when it’s not done publicly as some performative act. You might even make some new friends.

Like any Very Internet Person, I have too many domains. And while I’ve often considered having my main site be something other than my name, I’ve used my real name and identity almost everywhere online. I have to admit to being a little envious of people with recognizable pseudonyms or alts, but it all seems like too much work to maintain. I have enough trouble maintaining things. Besides, there’s something freeing (for me) and disarming (for others) about moving fluidly between URL and IRL. Starting a conversation with, “Hey, I’m Brad” is easier.

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

In short, not a lot. My domain registration, bradbarrish.com, costs me about $16/year on Namecheap. It’s hosted on Wordpress.com’s least expensive Starter plan, which costs me $3.25/month (billed every two years at $78). It’s an incredible bargain if you don’t have the time or desire to host your domain and are not bothered by its unpleasant backend. Micro.blog hosts my microblog. I pay for their basic tier, which costs me $5/month and is billed monthly.

As I mentioned above, I intend to switch to the Ghost instance I set up with Vultr. It's basically a dev server at the moment and costs me around $3/month. I'm looking forward to having everything on a single, minimalist CMS that I don’t have to futz with often.

I’ve never had any intention or desire to generate money from my blog. That said, I use affiliate links whenever possible, which generate maybe a few hundred dollars in a good year.

It’s lovely that people make a living online from their blog or other creations. I’m proud to financially support bloggers, artists, musicians, journalists, podcasters, indie developers, etc. I’ve probably been paying Kottke the longest of any single blogger. I want to live in a world where people can make a living doing things they love. The more niche and nerdy, the better. Financially supporting people with a few bucks is the simplest way to bring that world about.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

There are SO many worth checking out. Before I get to a list, I highly recommend checking out blogroll.org and Gossip’s Web for some remarkable discoveries. Here’s a mix of a few steady essentials and some new discoveries — my vote for who you should interview has Asterisks next to them.

• Rachel Kwon (Read the P&B interview with Rachel)
• Arts & Letters Daily
• One Useful Thing
• Alexey Guzey *
• Interconnected
• Mark Ghuneim
• Sari Azout *
• Harper Reed
• Ribbonfarm *
• Om Malik
• Taylor.town (Upcoming P&B guest)
• Don’t Worry About The Vase *
• Peter Rukavina (Read the P&B interview with Peter)
• Chris Hannah
• Sean Bonner *
• Winnie Lim (Read the P&B interview with Winnie)

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

Final question indeed! Where do I even begin?! Ok, I’m literally setting a timer to answer this one. Let’s see… (scrolls through hundreds of open tabs) I love Elliot Cost’s work a lot, especially Special Fish. I think I learned of Elliot through his work on The Creative Independent, which was co-founded (I think?) by Yancey Strickler, who turned me on to Time Wharp’s Spiro World, which I listen to many times per week. I’m excited about The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet being released on Metalabel (Yancey’s latest thing). John Bengtsson designs pretty things. I recently learned about Lauren Lee McCarthy and have been diving into her work thanks to an interview she did with Peter Bauman. I could watch Etienne Jacob’s animations all day. Kevin Kelly and Craig Mod put together a booklet that documents the Walk and Talk, which is lovely. Touch grass. My friend Brian encourages people to touch grass while listening to beautiful music. I may have sent more people to Milan’s amazing Things you’re allowed to do post more than anything else online. I read everything Derek Sivers writes at least once, but often more than once. I love his Tech Independence post for obvious reasons. Jake Rush made me laugh recently. I like what’s happening at the html review. I just finished listening to John MacFarlane’s appearance on the How I Built This podcast, which I really loved. I was fortunate enough to work at Sonos when John was CEO. He was a unique and, in many ways, gifted leader. Sari Azout is doing something quite special with Sublime, but it’s still early. Paul Graham has written so many great essays, but I recently re-read Putting Ideas Into Words and it feels like an especially appropriate thing to share here. I helped put together a little thing with riotgoools to get people introduced to RSS in the VIP channel on Farcaster. Even though The Red Hand Files doesn’t have an RSS feed, I’m happy to visit. I’m quite excited about Neverpost. The timer went off, so that’s where I will stop.

If you’re interested in exploring the possibility of working together, check out bradbarrish.me and set up some time with me.