Continuing from our point where we left off here, a follow-up about all the tattoos I have up until this point.

To continue from where we left off, first, this is what I actually look like now. I feel slightly weird posting this, but you know what, fuck modesty, you can handle it.

It’s a pretty big difference from where I started off, as you can see, but still a lot of ground to cover. At the point where I am, by the way, one stops thinking about having “5 tattoos” or whatever, and starts thinking in hours. It’s just what you do. So I have about 30 hours of work.

It’s interesting to look at that photo, because it shows a lot of work, but when I look at myself what I actually see is a lot of empty space. For example, the whole back side of my body is pretty much uncovered, with the exception of the first few tattoos I got. Also, the work is only by three artists, so as good as they are, I feel like I still have a lot of artists to meet and get work by. Basically, getting tattoos is kind of like a quest that never ends.

Anyway, a few years after I got my little demon and angel tattoos (story/photo pending on that second one), I ended up going to Safwan for something I had seen him do pretty well: a Japanese-style koi, going up a waterfall. Not sure if this was before or after 2003, but it’s possible that I may have been inspired by Keith Alexander and his huge backpiece (discussed in the previous post). It’s certainly possible. I liked the idea of one going up a waterfall and we worked around that. Since then we’ve discussed putting way more Japanese stuff around it, including a tree where the sakura (cherry blossoms) are falling from, and a tiger on the rocks that would make it a of more complete piece, all around the leg. But right now it’s just the fish, water, rocks, and sakura.

    

Now before we continue, let’s have a chat about “inspiration.”

In case you didn’t know, people steal tattoos all the time. It’s one of the reasons I never put my tattoos online before this. People all over the web go looking for inspiration for their next tattoo, sometimes having an idea of what they want, but other times, not so much. They find something they like, by a good artist, and go get a cheap copy at a bad studio. One girl I know (hundreds of photos of her are on the web) once saw an EXACT COPY of her tattoo on some other girl on the streets of Toronto. So yeah, it’s bad.

Anyway, if you’re a random visitor and you’re interested in tattoo work, please go to a good artist and ask him to draw something for you based on your recommendations. If he says he doesn’t do that, walk away, and go to someone who does. So if you’re a random web visitor looking for inspiration, please don’t copy any tattoos you see online, including mine. Thanks.

Now back to our regular scheduled program.

Now that I think about it, this koi was only one of two pieces I got that actually took more than one session. This is because I was really in love with black and grey work for a while after this. Anyway, this took three, for a total of about 9-10 hours.

Pretty interesting; I’m reading about it now, and it says here that cherry blossoms are an “omen of good fortune and is also an emblem of love, affection and represents spring. Cherry blossoms are an enduring metaphor for the fleeting nature of life, and as such are frequently depicted in art.”

I didn’t know that at the time, but I did know that the carp in Japanese tattoo tends to represent the difficult struggle that it is to swim upstream in the spring, when the ice melts. I definitely remember thinking a lot back then about the struggle to become great, and the hard work involved. Koi are also considered good luck charms and seen as symbols of masculinity (in a non-sexual way). Better than that, if the koi makes it to the top of the mountain as it swims upstream (an incredibly difficult task), it is rewarded for all its hard work by being transformed into a dragon. Not too shabby for the little guy, huh?

Filed by Julien at 7:23 pm under random
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I have a bunch of tattoos, but I’ve never really chatted about them or put them up online. But I’m getting a bunch of work over the next 6 months, so I figured, what the hell. After all, even if you see me in person, it’s rare that you get to see the work I’ve had done, so it’d be cool to get a peek, especially considering I have about 30 hours of work total, but most of it is under clothing.

Part of the idea for these comes from Keith Alexander, an early piercer from New York City who passed away in a biking accident a few years ago. His well-known process of documenting the koi backpiece he got is here and is worth reading. He also got some work from Dan Dimattia, a Belgian tattoo artist I consider a friend, which you can see here.

The first tattoos I got were around 10 years ago, and they were small by comparison to my current work, but still big for most people– about 2.5 hours of work each. They were done by Safwan, owner of a studio called Imago in Montreal, in February if I remember correctly. I was around nineteen and hadn’t been tattooed yet; for some reason, I waited until after I was legal to do all the rebellious stuff people usually do as teenagers.

At the time, I was pretty enamored by a dude called Tony Ciavarro who tattooed in Massachusetts. I remember Googling over and over again for work by him, thinking it was had a great sense of humor, which really appealed to me. The stuff was really cartoonish and graffiti-inspired (what they call New School), and the bright colours really hit me, too. I was broke though, so I couldn’t travel, and I had to save up for this session like crazy. I think that’s why I went with Safwan then, though all the work I got later was a totally different style than what we first did.

Anyway, I found a drawing I liked of a bunch of little demons going up someone’s back from a book I had, brought them to him, and I was like “This seems cool.” I already knew then that I wanted a lot of tattoo work, and I hung around with people that had hundreds of hours of work (two piercers, Pierre and Azl, come to mind), so it wasn’t a big deal for me to get tattooed; I’d been waiting a long time.

After two hours of work on my upper back, the result was this (yes it’s a bad photo, I’ll take more).

Now, I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal; in a sense, it isn’t. This is a tattoo I barely think about. I don’t see it, and neither does almost anyone else, almost like it doesn’t exist. But I have it, and it’s a representation of me from that age.

People ask me all the time what will happen “when I change my mind” about the tattoos I have, or when “I don’t like them anymore” or “I’m old,” and presumably, wrinkly. The reality is that, when you get tattoos, you love the shit out of them for a while, and then, you stop noticing. You still like them (assuming they’re nice work) but you aren’t in love anymore. They’re just there.

In a way, though, that’s the thing; you no longer look at the artwork, but if you’re anything like me, you think: “Damn, I like the way this looks on me,” because they’re a part of who you are. They add to something you’re (hopefully) already proud of: yourself. They’re a part of your accomplishments, part of a life well-lived where you took part in things you were proud of.

But when you do think about them, it’s a good feeling. Like while I’m writing this, I think about the times I had fondly and remember the stories around them and how I felt back then: the places I went, the people I knew and was close to, etc.

That’s when you think, “Yep, those were good times.” You have a reminder, like a photograph, but you carry it wherever you go.

Filed by Julien at 3:15 pm under random
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The army’s formation is like water.

The water’s formation avoids the high and rushes to the low.

So an army’s formation avoids the strong and rushes to the weak.

Water’s formation adapts to the ground when flowing.

So then an army’s formation adapts to the enemy to achieve victory.

Therefore, an army does not have constant force, or have constant formation.

Those who are able to adapt and change in accord with the enemy and achieve victory are called divine.

Therefore, of the five elements, none a constant victor, of the four seasons, none has constant position;

the sun has short and long spans, and the moon waxes and wanes.

Filed by Julien at 4:02 pm under random
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So, probably wrapping up the talk we’ve been having about ecosystems (1, 2), we bring it back to what we were chatting about a few weeks ago about why bloggers are short-changing themselves out of influence by giving up blogging for Twitter.

Making the decision

One of the main things you have to decide on when figuring out where to put your effort and energies is not only what ecosystems you’ll be including into your business model, but which you’ll be excluding.

So say you’re going to spend a ton of time in Twitter, remember you won’t be getting random Google traffic. You’ll get random followers from other people referencing you, but those refs will disappear very quickly under a deluge of more tweets. In contrast, links to your blog may not see many visitors, but Google still counts them and they help your blog forever.

I guess this is the biggest reason for:

- working on multiple platforms, and
- having a home base (like a blog)

The home base has to exist and be active, because you’re starting from scratch otherwise. New people may be following you, but the attention they can spend on you diminishes as they follow more and more people, reducing the influence you have on any one person (thanks to Mitch Joel for pointing this out to me) eventually down to close-to-zero.

So the best thing to figure out is what each platform is best for, and working it to the hilt, but no further, minimizing waste.

The Ultimate Goal

As always the purpose of this is to leverage all of this for maximum impact with minimum effort. So my main intent in figuring this out is to see what the best use is for each site/network, and to use it only for that.

The most important result of this will be less time wasted online, and more chance to enjoy life outside of the web (which I’m working hard on right now). I use time in buses and cabs to use Twitter from my iPhone, for example, because it’s “in-between time” in which other people are working at the goal for you (ie, the driver is driving the bus to get you somewhere, instead of you driving), so it’s like making double-use of that time.

We do so much more online than we used to, and it’s so easy to let it take over your life. A lot of you seeing this probably feel you’re wasting a lot of the time you spend online too, so hopefully this conversation will help you figure it out.

Filed by Julien at 4:28 pm under random
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Dunno that this is worthy of a blog post, but I figured I’d get in on it anyway.

Chris is being harassed by a bunch of guys right now because they’re saying that the blog post he wrote on his Dadomatic blog changed the way they see him. I’m not here to criticize that; they can think what they want and trust whomever they like.

That said, if they find themselves mistrusting a dude who’s been giving them solid gold (for FREE) for basically 2 years straight because of one post, that’s utterly insane. There isn’t a single person in the world that would stand up to the scrutiny they’re placing him under.

It’s weird because a lot of people I know from the web are amongst the most giving people I know, and yet, these armchair philosophers at the heart of the credibility debate don’t really go out and add much themselves aside from their alarmist “policing”.

In real life we forgive people for stuff all the time. Our perceptions are malleable and drift towards the easy-going, but online it’s somehow the opposite. We’re quick to criticize and it’s hard to make us forget, with people’s reputations being seriously damaged in the process. We then defend what we’ve said to keep internally consistent when we would normally apologize. It’s ridiculous. How is that helping anyone?

It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and criticize, but hard to go out and make things happen. If you’re used to the first, maybe go out and try to do the second. It’s more rewarding and you may sleep better. Don’t be a hater. Just sayin.

Filed by Julien at 4:02 pm under random
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I’ve given some more thought to the subject of a previous post about starting companies inside ecosystems. Turns out there’s another side to this, and it’s pretty obvious: Building the ecosystem that can support others.

Let’s say you start a site that’s a currency converter (to continue the example from the previous post). You have no choice but to go up against XE.com. But if you do it inside the iPhone App engine, you only have to compete with others who are in the space (I chose this one). You won’t make a billion dollars, but you might make a million if you get enough good reviews and marketshare.

But let’s say you’re the opposite. You have a massive budget and you’re going to start a huge site. Instead of going it alone, you decide to become a host (ie, allow yourself to have “parasites” like iPhone or Facebook does), and you’ll have tons of little apps making sure they’re the best. But also, they’re all doing their best to keep you alive.

Look at it another way. Dude with the currency converter app has all his marbles inside iTunes; he’s going to do everything possible to make sure iTunes stays the top person in the space… or he loses marketshare and dollars.

So iTunes has built an ecosystem in which THOUSANDS of companies are invested. If the host dies, the parasite dies too. So the parasites do their best to keep it alive at all cost, protecting the host.

I realized this while looking at the Stanza app on my iPhone, realizing that I could never go back to a device that wouldn’t let me read books. By making the app great, Stanza has invested in the iPhone, helping both of them survive.

Isn’t that better than going into the wilderness all by yourself?

Filed by Julien at 2:41 pm under random
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No matter what’s going on in your life, this video should make you feel better.

Filed by Julien at 1:13 pm under random
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My corner breakfast place has two bathrooms. Both were identical, and neither used to have signs. Last week, they put these up.

At first it’s clear, right? “Oh, this one is female and that one is… hey wait a minute.” Exactly.

There was a brief moment of zen (or something) when I saw this. It’s almost less about genders and more like “Which do you associate yourself with?”

So, which do you associate yourself with?

Filed by Julien at 3:29 pm under random
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Lots of people who want to start businesses seem to want to become billion dollar ones and, hey, that’s understandable. Huge is sexy. But what about something else, something which I think is a big deal but not talked about that often. Starting a business inside another business. Think Facebook apps.

This isn’t the way to a billion dollar business, but it does work and can probably get you out of a day job. If you’re good at it, taking advantage of existing infrastructures with massive traffic (Facebook, iTunes, eBay, etc.) is the way to ensure maximum visibility. Because these sites will be popular until pretty much the end of time (or for our purposes, long enough), you’ll never run out of users as long as you understand the trends.

Let’s take an example. I don’t know this for sure, but I bet you there’s whole businesses out there on eBay that make their profit off holiday goodies like Easter chocolate, Christmas cookies, etc. etc. They know the increased searches that people make, and they know that people are searching all over eBay for deals anyway, so the eyeballs just take care of themselves. They just need to focus on copywriting, price-level competition, etc.

We could say the same thing for iPhone apps. HUGE market. Doesn’t building a currency-exchange application sound easier than building a separate website for the same process and competing with XE.com? Not only that, but the iPhone app market is new, so it’s easier to compete.

In a way, this is what Mahalo does too. They capture random search engine visitors through creating as many pages about popular topics as possible, and making them more authoritative then many others. By grabbing onto topics just as they become popular, they ensure a decent amount of traffic for each page, making sure it’s easier to make each page profitable, and hopefully sending that traffic along to other pages on the site through good .

Likewise, Alltop. There’s traffic coming in from a lot of places but Guy himself has said that a lot of it comes from his Twitter page. Good for him! He’s figured out a way to take advantage of existing traffic streams and make them work for him.

Anyway, I’m sure there’s a ton of ways to do this. There’s so much existing infrastructure everywhere that leveraging any of them can probably create a small home business for someone. Got an idea? Feel free to share.

Filed by Julien at 4:30 pm under random
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You have met your match. Expect the next 4/8 years to be filled with Obama conspiracy movies from the right, just like the left have their 9/11 truth and Federal Reserve movies. The following are expected to become popular. Just remember you heard it here first.

- Obama is not a US citizen
- Obama will take away citizens’ right to firearms
- Obama is a secret muslim
- etc.

Filed by Julien at 2:25 pm under political
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