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  • in Humor
  • 2 min read

Are you reading NextDraft? If not, you should be.

Are you reading NextDraft?

If you’re not, you should be. Dave Pell curates the top 10 news items of the day, just for you, delivered straight to your inbox. Yup, it’s delivered via email, quite old school. Mr. Pell spends each morning for 3-4 hours browsing the web (no RSS reader for him!) and puts together the best stories to share and adds his own unique commentary to each of them. Some of the stories may have two or three different links each and give you a new perspective on what is going on in the world around you.

The MailChimp blog recently featured a story on NextDraft, discussing how Mr. Pell finds his sources links, reviews what he should include in each day’s edition, and shares that he hasn’t made a dollar from NextDraft.

That humanity comes through in the newsletter, in that the very same human who chooses and writes about that daily content also answers for it. “I do think one of the things about email that people respond to, and that makes it different from a blog, is that because it comes from my personal email address and lands in your inbox, there’s something a little more intimate about it,” he says. “If somebody wants to say something about my newsletter, they just hit ‘reply,’ it comes to me, and I’ll respond to them. It’s a little bit of a closer connection than just having a website.”

NextDraft features news from the serious, with stories shared about the recent election, coverage of the Newtown shootings, as well as pop culture, such as the video below, featuring a timeline of all the pop culture references in Quentin Tarantino’s films. The best part isn’t just getting the most interesting news from around the web, but also getting Dave Pell’s unique commentary on each story.

I highly recommend you subscribe to the email newsletter or download the new iOS app to get your daily dose of the best curated news on the web. And don’t forget to follow Dave Pell on Twitter, too.

Pathfinder MMO on Kickstarter

Slaying the Dragon

Photo by fireflythegreat under a CC-BY 2.0 license

Just before Christmas, I visited my local gaming store with the intent of buying the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set to play with the kids over the holiday break. It was time to step up from RPGKids, which I started with the kids a year or two ago. I’m a terrible Dungeon Master and lack creativity, so one of the things I was excited about in buying a set was that I’d be able to buy modules to help create the adventures for the kids.

Phantasy Hobbies was out of the D&D red box and the owner asked me if I had heard of Pathfinder, which is a continuation of the AD&D 3.5 rules after Wizards of the Coast had moved on to 4.0 rules. Pathfinder had bought the license to the 3.5 ruleset and created an ecosystem to let the 3.5 rules live on. I went home that night and read up on Pathfinder and found the Pathfinder Beginner Box, with a limited and easier to use ruleset, would work perfectly to play with the little ones. The next day I returned to my local gaming store and bought the Beginner Box. One of the best features of Pathfinder is how much content they make available via PDF, both free and paid. I was able to pick up a module that continues the first adventure in the Beginner Box, among other things.

This morning I came across on Twitter a link to the Pathfinder MMO, which is being bootstrapped on Kickstarter. Today’s the last day and they’re 90% of the way to their goal. Set to launch in about two years, the Pathfinder MMO is built on the Unity engine and will be available for both Windows and Mac. The last thing I need is another MMO in my life, but even at the $35 level which gets you the game, the addons are worth it. They’ve thrown in the PDF of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, and the Guide to the River Kingdoms sourcebook, which is worth about $25 by itself.

If you’re into roleplaying, help support ’em – it’s a good cause.

  • in Football
  • 2 min read

Get Smart About Football

When NFL Network first launched, they once had a segment with Jim Fassell, the former head coach of the New York Giants. In the segment, he shows a standard offensive formation, with two tight ends, two wide receivers, a fullback and running back. He then shows the defensive formation and explains what each offensive player is supposed to do based on how the defense lines up. If a defensive cornerback plays a shallow zone (say in a standard Tampa 2 offense) the wide receiver goes long. But if a linebacker is playing man coverage on the tight end, then the wide receiver switches and runs a different route. He went through about a dozen different permutations and I came away with a new respect for the intelligence required by the players. (Unfortunately I was unable to find a clip online). We have a tendency to think about athletes, especially football players, as “dumb jocks”, but when you break down plays like Coach Fassell did in this example, it highlights how smart they have to be – and how quickly they need to react.

If you want to improve your football intelligence, you need to be reading Chris B. Brown. He has a special ability to write about football, its different concepts, and the history and evolution of play calling in an easy to understand manner. Mr. Brown writes about both college and profesional football on his blog at SmartFootball.com. He also links from there to his longer form pieces he writes for ESPN’s Grantland.

Additionally, he has written a book, suprisingly called, The Essential Smart Football. Available at Amazon, the Kindle edition is only $2.99, and I highly recommend it. Each chapter is dedicated to a concept, and here are just a few examples:

  • The 3-3-5 Defense: A Story of Innovation (and Desperation)
  • How Rex Ryan created the new look New England Patriots offense
  • Dick Lebeau, Dom Capers, and the Evolution of Defense
  • Football and Decision Making
  • The Constraint Theory of Offense
  • Gary Kubiak, Alex Gibbs, and the Greatest Run Play in Modern Football

Each chapter is easily digestible, and the book is easy to pick up and set down. Mr. Brown writes in an easy to understand way, and even football fans who don’t know the difference between the I-formation and trip rights can pick this up and learn something.

It’s a $3 well spent and his blog and writing on Grantland is something I come back to again and again.

  • in music
  • 2 min read

Amazon Introduces AutoRip

CD collection

Amazon made a splash this morning by announcing that they are now offering MP3s of albums you buy on CD – for free. But the even bigger surprise was that if you had purchased a CD from them going back to 1998(!), and it’s one of the 50,000 albums in their catalog that features AutoRip, they automatically added that album to your Amazon Cloud Player.

It was quite a pleasant surprise to wake up to find about 30 albums added to my Cloud Player, especially the Pearl Jam Twenty soundtrack, which features a number of different artists, which I could never seem to get ripped properly with the right artist names.

Amazon has three videos up on the AutoRip page, including an overview, how to, and a video about Cloud Player.

I don’t know how much (or if) they’re paying the labels for this service, but I love it. I still like my shiny discs, especially from my core favorite artists, and this is a great service to provide (even if it a shrinking business). I buy most of new music on vinyl these days, and since I started collecting vinyl a few years, almost every vinyl album has come with an MP3 download card.

Now I can’t wait for the day I buy a book and can get the ebook…

Via Lifehacker

[https://rd.io/i/QAAKPkxN3w]

A Stormtrooper on Vacation

Dumplings stuffed with rice. Mmmm, dumplings.

My youngest son turns 7 at the end of this week. After starting a new job in early 2012 that had a lot of travel, I “borrowed” one of his Lego Stormtrooper Minifigs who needed a vacation from the daily grind of the Empire. He travels around with me and I’ve captured his adventures on his own Tumblr.

My wife tells me Jack giggles when he sees the updates, which makes it all worth it. Feel free to follow along.

  • in Radio
  • 1 min read

I Heard it on the Radio

[https://rd.io/i/QAAKK1ydOg]

I didn’t grow up in Minneapolis and missed out on the iconic radio station, WLOL. Jon Hunt reminisces about what made radio, and WLOL, great growing up for him as a kid.

I share Mr. Hunt’s enthusiasm for radio. I remember as a kid in the 80s having my boombox reading for the nightly top 10 with my finger poised over the record button so I could get a new song onto a mixtape. Later, in the 90s, living in Minneapolis, I re-discovered my love of radio listening to Rev105, which I wrote about almost 10 years ago.

I feel lucky that we have 89.3 The Current, but Mr. Hunt as right – even they don’t take the chances radio took back in the day.

  • in music
  • 3 min read

Favorite Albums of 2012

Polica - Give You the Ghost

With 2012 here and gone, I wanted to share my favorite albums of 2012. These aren’t necessarily the “best” albums of 2012, but these were the ones I enjoyed immensely over the past year. Almost every single one I bought on vinyl and streamed on Rdio. I tried to condense the list to a top 10, but I just couldn’t do it. I’m not going to do a major review of each one – there are plenty of sites out there from Paste to Pitchfork that can give you more information on the artists and albums below.

  • UntitledJapandroids – Celebration Rock – Released on one of my favorite labels, Polyvinyl, Japandroids rock the house and don’t stop the whole album. As I trained for some 5k races this summer, I listened to this over and over again.
  • Bob Mould – Silver Age – Bob Mould returns to early 90’s form with a rocking album reminiscent of his early solo work and with Sugar. (And the two Sugar re-issues are awesome!) The best concert I saw this year, with Bob playing Sugar’s Copper Blue in its entirety followed by songs from Silver Age and songs from his whole career.
  • Divine Fits – A Thing Called Divine Fits – This supergroup with members from Spoon and Wolf Parade nailed it.
  • Father John Misty – Fear Fun – I loved this album and my wife hated it as I made her listen to it non-stop on a drive to Milwaukee. Haunting, with beautiful lyrics.
  • Metric – Synthetica – Metric follows-up their 2009 smash album Fantasies with a return that is slightly darker.
  • RNDM – Acts – Another “supergroup”, featuring Joseph Arthur and Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament. Jeff Ament challenged Joseph Arthur to write some up tempo songs, and they delivered.
  • Poliça – Give You the Ghost – This Minneapolis band (almost a local supergroup) exploded on to the scene in Minneapolis in 2011 and quickly built a national following. The formal release date for the album was Valentine’s Day 2012, but they dropped it digitally in December 2011. Channy’s vocals, combined with the only use of autotune I’ve ever liked, are a breath of fresh air. The beats by two drummers are unique and this is probably my album of the year.
  • A.C. Newman – Shut Down the Streets – The frontman for the New Pornographers releases another solo record – if you’re a fan of his solo or New Pornographers work, you’ll love it. Nothing new, but it works.
  • The Shins - Port of MorrowThe Shins – Port of Morrow – Even with an all new band backing James Mercer up, the sound is the same. Again, like A.C. Newman above, nothing new but it works.
  • P.O.S. – We Don’t Even Live Here – The Minneapolis rapper explodes on his latest album. There wasn’t a better hip-hop record released last year. Here is to hoping his upcoming kidney transplant goes well – you can help here.
  • JD McPherson – Signs and Signifiers – I love rockabilly and JD McPherson resurrects a lost art form.
  • Django Django – Django Django – The one album I can’t describe – but I know what I like.
  • Ladyhawke – Anxiety – Another album I listened to while running and one of my favorites to chill to on a long plane ride.
  • Stagnant Pools – Temporary Room – Another Polyvinyl release, this duo of brothers out of Indiana have a throwback sound in the vein of Joy Division or The Jesus and Mary Chain.
  • in music
  • 1 min read

Vinyl Will Never Die

Via Reddit, music sales (by type) over the last 30 years. Spoiler alert: vinyl never dies!

vinyl