Check this off the list: I was on Kevin Kelly's ‘Cool Tools Show and Tell’! Kevin and I first met a zillion years ago at FOO Camp, for those who remember that and have been in touch over the years. This was a fun chat even as I had to limit myself to just four or five 'cool tools' — but I found some curious things that I've been making great use of over the last couple of years. Super fun chat!
[00:00:00] Kevin Kelly: Welcome to another episode of the cool tool show and tell our special guests. This week is Julian Bleecker. Julian, would you like to introduce yourself to our audience?
[00:00:16] Julian Bleecker: Sure. Uh, my name is Julian Bleecker. I founded new future laboratory. Consider myself a product designer and engineer.
[00:00:23] Kevin Kelly: And we’re welcome for a return visit to cool tools.
[00:00:28] Yes. And, um, thank you for volunteering. Um, so Julian, um, what’s a cool tool that you want to share these days?
[00:00:38] Julian Bleecker: Yeah, well, the, the first one that I have, um, it’s pretty nerdy. Uh, it’s a, it’s a radio. It’s, uh, it’s called the Baofeng 5RM.
[00:00:50] Kevin Kelly: And you’re holding up what is about the size of an old style transistor radio.
[00:00:55] Julian Bleecker: Yeah, exactly. About the size of an old, with a, with a, um, nine key kind of keyboard. Um, it’s got a, it’s got a lovely blue kind of, um, uh, this LCD display. It has a large antenna
[00:01:07] Kevin Kelly: too.
[00:01:08] Julian Bleecker: Yeah, nice large antenna. The beautiful thing about this radio is, well, first of all, it’s, it’s software defined radio. So it’s got a lot of flexibility in terms of the frequencies that you can listen in on.
[00:01:22] So it’s covers a lot of bands. I remember when I grew up, if you wanted to, uh. A scanner, you had to get a crystal for every frequency, and you have to open up the back and put the crystal. And so you get like, 10 channels, maybe, but this 1, you know, in principle, all channels, of course, there are restrictions based on different countries,
[00:01:41] Kevin Kelly: right?
[00:01:41] But when you think of it, it’s 10, so that all channels, you’re talking like. The AM FM, the traditional ones, but also like short wave and short wave,
[00:01:53] Julian Bleecker: like municipal services, um, whether, uh, all those kinds of things. And it’s got, like, for example, this button, um, this is an orange button on the side, which, um, you can just, you can hit, and then you just have a regular.
[00:02:07] AM FM radio, which is kind of neat. Um, and then it also has the ability to program in, you know, if you’re, if you’re like an aviation nerd, like I am, you can listen to air traffic control and that kind of thing. But the thing I think is really what makes it a really not just a neat thing to have around, but also very practical.
[00:02:23] I feel like every home should have 1 just for those emergency situations. Um, just have it on the charger in the garage or something. So you can grab and go because it’s also a transceiver. So, if there are ever situations where you need to talk to someone, um, you can, you can also do that. Oh, okay.
[00:02:41] Kevin Kelly: So. So you’re saying that like on the ham radio frequencies, you can actually have a conversation.
[00:02:50] There’s a built in microphone and you’re transmitting as well.
[00:02:54] Julian Bleecker: That’s right. That’s right. Wow. You know, of course you need to have, you need to be licensed, but I figured in emergency situations,
[00:03:00] Kevin Kelly: sure.
[00:03:01] Julian Bleecker: You’re going to need a way to communicate if you’re in a situation. Right. The license
[00:03:05] Kevin Kelly: is more on the honor system, right?
[00:03:08] Julian Bleecker: That’s right. That’s right.
[00:03:09] Kevin Kelly: Because. How can they tell if you have a license or not? Um, and you’re also, I guess there are frequencies for emergencies. FEMA must have frequencies or w where, where do they come from?
[00:03:24] Julian Bleecker: Yeah, so when you, when you, when you go down the rabbit hole for these things, then there are entire communities and kind of like people putting together PDFs of different frequencies, um, that are relevant that you would want to have programmed in and kind of shortcut to get to.
[00:03:38] So really is one of those kinds of tools that I think is, you know, it should be part of your go back, you know, here in California, we want to have go back. Right. Um, yeah. And the other big Remarkable thing about it is because it’s software defined radio, it’s really cheap. It’s like 30 or 40 bucks, depending on which model you get, they’ve got a whole line of models on it.
[00:03:58] So then it just becomes, I mean, you know, for me, it’s like a no brainer.
[00:04:02] Kevin Kelly: Right. And, um, are there, um, different brands or models or, um, you know, uh, makes for, for these that are better than the others?
[00:04:18] Julian Bleecker: Um, there are, this is, this, I went with this one because there was the most kind of chatter about it in different Reddit forums And what
[00:04:25] Kevin Kelly: is the one that you, that you have, you’re, you’re talking about?
[00:04:28] It’s,
[00:04:28] Julian Bleecker: it’s the Baofeng, spelled, uh, B A O F E N G.
[00:04:33] Kevin Kelly: Okay.
[00:04:34] Julian Bleecker: And it’s the model 5RM, 5Romeo mic.
[00:04:38] Kevin Kelly: Okay. The Baofeng 5RM multiband ham, so they call it a ham radio.
[00:04:45] Julian Bleecker: Yeah. It’s got a USB C so that you can, you can, um, uh, there’s some software you can get to actually help with the programming of it so you’re not just sitting there punching keys.
[00:04:56] It’s got a, it’s got an emergency light, you know, on the front so you can flash a beacon. Okay. Um. And, uh, it comes with a charger, you know, charging stand. It’s really quite neat. So it has
[00:05:06] Kevin Kelly: a built in rechargeable battery inside it, with a
[00:05:08] Julian Bleecker: Uh, yeah, it’s, it’s removable, so you can actually, you can pop it out if you have a second one to be able to put in there.
[00:05:14] Kevin Kelly: Uh huh.
[00:05:14] Julian Bleecker: Super cool.
[00:05:16] Kevin Kelly: Yeah.
[00:05:17] Julian Bleecker: Super sick.
[00:05:17] Kevin Kelly: You’re right. I think this does seem like it’s something that should be a basic, like a fire extinguisher or a go bag or whatever.
[00:05:25] Julian Bleecker: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:05:26] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:05:27] Julian Bleecker: Here in California, it’s also you want your crowbar.
[00:05:32] Kevin Kelly: It’s also, say that again, it’s what?
[00:05:35] Julian Bleecker: As in California, you also want a crowbar nearby.
[00:05:38] Kevin Kelly: Why is that?
[00:05:39] Julian Bleecker: Well, for the earthquake, because when you’re building ships a little bit, you have to crowbar your way out of it. Yeah,
[00:05:44] Kevin Kelly: I know that. I don’t know. I do have a crowbar in my, uh, in my truck. Um, so, um, the, have you listened on some of the emergency channels? Like with, when there isn’t a kind of, you know, You know, statewide emergency, whatever, um, what have you learned or what have you picked up from, from, from this on a non emergency basis?
[00:06:09] Julian Bleecker: Yeah, I mean, you just kind of hear like municipal chatter about things. Um, some of the, some of the, uh, some of the public services use a particular kind of. Frequency hopping that helps the, the bad guys not really track what they’re doing. So sometimes it can get a little bit complicated, but, you know, I think just listening to, you know, for me, it’s kind of, there’s an ASMR quality to air traffic control and I live near LAX.
[00:06:32] I could pick it up anywhere in LA, but I just like listening to the fellows, just kind of navigate their way into LAX and, um, you know, just, I don’t know. There’s something just very soothing about it in a way.
[00:06:44] Kevin Kelly: Uh,
[00:06:44] Julian Bleecker: very professional, very efficient, kind of light little background chatter when I’m sitting in the studio, so nerdy.
[00:06:52] Cool.
[00:06:53] Kevin Kelly: Um, does it have like a Bluetooth or a headphone jack?
[00:07:00] Julian Bleecker: Uh, that’s a, that’s a really good question. Um, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have Bluetooth. And, you know, I remember hearing someone in one of the forums talking about like a headset. Um, but I actually don’t see a jack on this particular model, but there, there are lots of different models.
[00:07:15] I just kind of got a middle tier one that I knew kind of covered what, what I, what I needed. Right. Um, yeah.
[00:07:24] Kevin Kelly: Okay. Um, yeah, I mean, um, it’s not necessary, but I was just curious. Well, this, yeah. So the BaoFeng obviously made in China, um, looks pretty cool. Um, That’s a great, cool tool. So Julian, thank you for that.
[00:07:42] Julian Bleecker: Yeah, of course.
[00:07:43] Kevin Kelly: What’s another, um, cool tool for you?
[00:07:46] Julian Bleecker: Yeah. So I do a lot of my own kind of manufacturing of the sorts of products that I, I sell or develop. Um, one that I, I’m just a big fan of playing cards, cards. As, as, as a platform for kind of either making your own game or as a, as an ideation tool. Um, and I’ve done, I’ve done a bunch of them over the years.
[00:08:11] So this was like one of the first ones I did. As you can see, it’s like in a little homemade case. These are a little like ideation cards, very similar to if you know, the artist Brian, you know, did oblique strategies, these cards. So in that same vein, you know, not quite the same, but I found a great place is probably like 10 years ago.
[00:08:28] So they’ve been around for a while called make playing cards dot com. Um, and so maybe I’ll share a screen now. And
[00:08:36] Kevin Kelly: yeah, so you’re showing a website with, um, different cards, uh, blank cards. And then there on the right side, there’s a long list of different. Possible card sizes that you can get in both imperial and metric.
[00:08:55] Um, and then, uh, it looks like you can have different, um, styles of horizontal or business cards or, I mean, there’s, yeah, there’s an incredible variety of card, card stocks.
[00:09:11] Julian Bleecker: Yeah, that’s right. So, so this, this place is, it’s a little bit baroque as a website goes. So there’s a lot going on. Um, there’s, as you described, lots of different sizes and varieties of these cards.
[00:09:23] The, the, the, the great thing about these is that they’re, they’re blank. They’re ready for customization. So on either side,
[00:09:31] Kevin Kelly: both on the front and the back.
[00:09:33] Julian Bleecker: On on either side. So so that opens up all these opportunities to make your own deck deck of cards. Sometimes you get the sense from the site that some of them are focused on sort of 2 things.
[00:09:45] Like, so people who might be board gamers, you know, who make their own board games for role playing games and that kind of thing. And then people who want to do. Novelty cards for, let’s say, um, you know, like, uh, that they would have at every table at a wedding, you know, with pictures of the bride and groom or the family, that kind of thing.
[00:10:03] But the variety is endless because these are can be entirely customized. And as you said, I mean, the sizing kind of runs. From, let’s see, this is like one and a quarter inch by one and three quarters inches, all the way up to five inches by seven inches. So quite large for, for a play card, almost like a magician’s, you know, they’ve got those vanity cards.
[00:10:24] So these have been like an absolutely great way for me to make these kinds of, these kinds of decks. And I’ve done a number over the years, like, you know, they all, they’ll also do the boxes. So you can make very quite, quite a nice, durable boxes that will fit the cards. This is another one I did. So you can see it’s like it comes shrink wrapped.
[00:10:43] They give you a template to do all the packaging design. So you get the, you know, all the text on the different sizes, even even stuff on on the bottom. You can pick the colors. So this 1, I just did a little got a little more complicated. So actually have more.
[00:10:57] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, you’re holding up a packaged box of cards that have a top and bottom slipped up and with printing on all, on every side, including the inside.
[00:11:10] So that’s pretty cool.
[00:11:11] Julian Bleecker: Yeah.
[00:11:12] Kevin Kelly: Yeah.
[00:11:13] Julian Bleecker: The quality, so I’ll show you just some of these cards from from this particular deck. Um, so this is just, this is 1 of the playing cards, a particular, a particular stock that felt right. It felt about, like, what I expect a playing card to be right. So it’s just like a regular deck of cards.
[00:11:30] Um, the. The print quality is really, really good, you know, to my discerning eye. And you can also, it’s, it’ll probably be impossible to see, but you can also get different kinds of textures. So some playing cards, they refer to them, you know, with these kinds of, this is a Vegas style card. So it’s got a different, so it, it, it.
[00:11:49] When you, when you throw it out, it kind of like almost like an airfoil land on that green felt and just slide just a little bit. So they really get into the details of it and they give you all that ability to pick, you know, the particular texture you want. Do you want it laminated? Do you want it matte?
[00:12:03] Do you want a glossy? Um, and there. Yeah, of course, depending on the quality of the quantity, they are surprisingly inexpensive. Okay. Uh, so give
[00:12:14] Kevin Kelly: me an example of, uh, of just the cost in your own experience, I’m just approximately.
[00:12:20] Julian Bleecker: Yeah, so I usually order them in batches of, uh, of a thousand. So a thousand of those boxes that I just showed you, they end up being about like between nine and 12 per box.
[00:12:30] Kevin Kelly: Okay.
[00:12:31] Julian Bleecker: So if you’re, you know, I mean, if you’re, if you’re doing something that is a considered project, where you’re thinking as a, you know, maybe as a small design operator. You know, I think that you’re, you’re, you’re in a pretty reasonable territory there. If you can,
[00:12:45] Kevin Kelly: and that box is how many cards in the boxes?
[00:12:48] We have some comparison,
[00:12:49] Julian Bleecker: uh, this, this box
[00:12:51] Kevin Kelly: goes for 12 bucks. What would, how many cards would that be?
[00:12:54] Julian Bleecker: Uh, this one I think is maybe about 96 cards. Okay. I want to say. So for
[00:12:59] Kevin Kelly: a hundred cards and then you’re 12 bucks. All right. So like if you were had a smaller deck, it might be proportionally less.
[00:13:06] Julian Bleecker: Yeah, for sure.
[00:13:07] For sure. I just ended up doing these kind of, kind of large decks. Like this is, this one was, was much smaller. I think this was just maybe like. Four or five bucks, um, to get, to get a, you know, a deck of
[00:13:18] Kevin Kelly: and, and how is the, the, the software for inputting it or what do you input? Do you design things like on an in design program and then export as a PDF or do they have their own software for, um, placing these like, like, I guess some people might want the same thing printed on the back and other people might want.
[00:13:44] Something different printed on it. So, so you’d have all these weird combinations of, you know, five of this and 10 of this, but on this five, on the other side, it has to be these things. This is that complicated or easy?
[00:13:58] Julian Bleecker: It’s, I would say it requires, um, Diligence. It’s not, I mean, it’s something that I think, uh, pretty much, you know, anyone who is, is even thinking about doing this could accomplish.
[00:14:09] There’s, there’s a drag and drop kind of interface it, um, because I get into, I get myself into a little bit of trouble because I get carried away and I, and I want lots of cards. So I end up spending. A lot of time kind of, you know, just being very considered about how I organize even name the files. So I know what goes where make sure I’m not duplicating things, but for for a typical deck, you know, basically, they have a drag and drop interface.
[00:14:31] You say, I want this on the front for, you know, for this set of cards and then you, you kind of drag and drop the, um, uh, the, the other side, the. I, the tooling I use, so I use Adobe and design sort of like kind of wedded to them, uh, for better or worse, um, to do all the design and layout. I do, I’ll use Photoshop for doing the image maker.
[00:14:54] Kevin Kelly: Okay. Um, the
[00:14:55] Julian Bleecker: one thing I should add, which is, which is a remarkable that they, that they do it considering that they’re, you know, you sort of imagine like a faceless factory in, in, in China or something, but they really. This particular last deck, I mean, they were, they were high attention to detail, so they noticed things that I hadn’t noticed, which I.
[00:15:14] That is exceptional for a small operator like me, who’s just kind of like two o’clock in the morning, you’re bleary eyed, it’s like, I think I’m done. And they say like, yeah, I think this is just not quite on center. You’re right. You’re right. Let me go back and fix that. So I appreciate that.
[00:15:27] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. Well, thank you for that.
[00:15:31] It’s a great, it’s a great. Uh, option for people to make either, as you said, your own, um, board game or the sort of prompt cards or, or even as a gift for somebody, um, at an event. So great idea. And again, just to kind of put things in context, um, have you tried using other sources other than them, and this is the best, or is this kind of like, um, The one everybody uses and there really isn’t a second choice.
[00:16:05] Julian Bleecker: I, I’m sure there are other choices, you know, like when I, I, the first one I did, Honestly, it was like 12 years ago and they, it just worked out. You know, it, there was, there was no snappoos. There was nothing where I’m kind of like, ah, next time I’m going to try someone else, the price was right. The turnaround was, was very good.
[00:16:22] There were no logistics hassles, bringing stuff in. Sometimes, you know, you’re getting quite a lot
[00:16:26] Kevin Kelly: of
[00:16:27] Julian Bleecker: stuff. If you’re doing a thousand, the, the box quality, especially I was just like blown away at having had. You know, product company. I’ve done box design packaging design. I was like, this is great. This is, this is exceeding my expectations.
[00:16:40] Um, so I’ve never done anything else. I’ve tried move, but they’re not really made for doing playing cards.
[00:16:45] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, I use a place that I’ve done online business cards forever, and, um, that’s also been worked out really great. Although business cards don’t seem to be as fashionable.
[00:17:01] Julian Bleecker: I
[00:17:03] Kevin Kelly: still hand mine out.
[00:17:04] Julian Bleecker: Yeah,
[00:17:05] Kevin Kelly: because they’re nice.
[00:17:06] Bright yellow. Um, okay, Julian. That’s great. Okay. So let’s talk about your, um, 3rd tool that you want to share. Thank you.
[00:17:14] Julian Bleecker: Yeah, so my third one, it’s, it’s something called Sendy. Okay, so this is the Sendy website. It’s a it looks like a typical kind of software as a service kind of website. It’s got an image on the right hand side that it sort of gives you a sense of what your dashboard might look like.
[00:17:34] And then it says in bold send note newsletters. 100 times cheaper, so that caught my attention when I heard about this.
[00:17:43] Kevin Kelly: So this is, this is something for people who have like a mailing list, a newsletter mailing list or something. Like, what, maybe a replacement for MailChimp or something like that?
[00:17:53] Julian Bleecker: Exactly.
[00:17:54] Kevin Kelly: Exactly.
[00:17:54] Julian Bleecker: Now I’ve been, I’ve been a, um, I’ve been a MailChimp user. I’ve been ActiveCampaign. I’ve been OmniSend. I’ve tried all the big ones, uh, and for various, you know, for both Neo4j Laboratory and my company, Amada. And, um, I, you know, I don’t know, maybe because I’m just like a small operator, it always seemed like four or 5, 000 a year to send out a newsletter.
[00:18:20] It seems a little bit dear. That feels like I’m too small for what their target customer is, which might be like a, you know, much larger retail operation. So, you know, when I had to, when I, you know, renewing was coming up, um, I, I said, there’s gotta be an alter either. There’s gonna be an alternative or I’m just not going to send out any email, which I don’t think would necessarily be such a bad thing nowadays.
[00:18:43] But I came across this Sendy. Uh, I can’t remember exactly where I heard about it. Maybe I think I was just Googling around for like alternatives. I was literally thinking about building my own stack, uh, you know, software stack to do it. And some people who have newsletters have like, you know, kind of guides on this.
[00:18:58] And somehow I came across, across Sendy. Now it’s a, um, it’s a, It’s a, it’s an interface that sits on top of, uh, Amazon, um, Amazon’s emailing service. They call it SES. So it’s just on top of that. So you still, you still got the stacks going on because, uh, no one’s really running on the Unix machine anymore.
[00:19:21] But the, the advantage is that it’s got a, it’s got a, enough of a, uh, of a, of a. You know, nice user experience that it’s not like you’re just sitting at a command prompt trying to send an email. So you can, you can create lists, you can create, um, you can do segments, you can do most of the rudimentary stuff that people like me who just, you know, a list of 30, 000 people.
[00:19:45] And, and I don’t really do anything all that complicated. I’m not doing a lot of re re remarketing or that kind of thing. The fact that it is so much cheaper is really what brought me. How
[00:19:56] Kevin Kelly: cheaper, how much cheaper is it? Yeah.
[00:19:58] Julian Bleecker: So I used to spend about 325 a month for, uh, for that list using active campaign.
[00:20:04] They were great. I had no real major problems with them. With this, it’s about 12 a month and I get about 50, 000 email sends. I think it resets every day or something like that. So basically, I mean, It’s, it’s, it’s practically free compared to what I was paying.
[00:20:23] Kevin Kelly: And, um, is it open source or, um, so I’m just curious, why is it so free?
[00:20:31] I I’m actually sometimes leery of things that are too cheap because it means that they’re not going to stick around or that they’re going to gouge you later. So, so, yeah. Um, What’s the situation here?
[00:20:44] Julian Bleecker: Yeah, so, so, so far, so good. So I’ve, I’ve been running it for about 3 or 4 months now. Yeah, I did a lot of, uh, kind of investigation into it.
[00:20:53] They’ve been around. It’s been around for quite some time. I think there is a, is a, um. Is a hosted version. So in other words, they, they’ll host it for you. And there’s also a version where you can get a license. I think it’s literally, it’s like 60 bucks. So it’s like old school software. It’s PHP. Um, they’re, they’re on version 6.
[00:21:15] 1. 1. It says on the website at this point. So, you know, it’s there and it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s working. The tricky bit is, so it’s not just. It’s not just you click it and you’re all set is that, um, there’s, there’s a bit of a, there’s a bit of a kind of procedure, you know, set of procedures you need to go through that does require a bit of computer literacy.
[00:21:38] Let me put it that way. So you need to be comfortable with, um, uh, I would say like, uh, maybe. Two or three star level of complexity where one star is kind of like, no, just, just drag and drop. And five star is like, Oh, I got to boot up a Amazon instance of EWS and whatever it is. So this was, it required that.
[00:21:59] But so here’s the thing. There was a guy who did a medium post actually had the links in place. He did a medium post where he’s like, I’m going to go through this in such a level of detail, including like all the things that. You know, if you’re going through someone’s list of readme instructions that you, that you wish they had written about, like, if this happens, then do this.
[00:22:21] And he said, uh, you should be able to get this done. And that’s
[00:22:25] Kevin Kelly: just to install it, but the actual day to day use of it. Is doesn’t require that level. No,
[00:22:33] Julian Bleecker: it’s, I want to do a camp. I did a campaign this morning, new campaign, cool. Put in your email, either as HTML or plain text, pick the list, test it, make sure you’ve got an unsubscribed late.
[00:22:45] You know, it’s, it’s very much like a typical MailChimp or other thing. It should, it’s important to point out. It, there’s no, there’s no super sophisticated kind of remarketing stuff that some people might expect if they’ve got a very active shop and someone Abandons cart. You want to send them a note that stuff isn’t built in, but you can build that stuff, um, either through kind of Zapier integrations or, uh, they haven’t, they have an API, they publish the API.
[00:23:13] So if you want to program stuff to make it do other things, here’s the API.
[00:23:18] Kevin Kelly: Okay. Sendy,
[00:23:20] Julian Bleecker: Sendy. co yeah. It’s
[00:23:22] Kevin Kelly: Sendy. co for your mail list management needs.
[00:23:27] Julian Bleecker: Yeah,
[00:23:29] Kevin Kelly: we had children, but we did move off of it onto something else recently, and I don’t know what it is, but maybe off
[00:23:36] Julian Bleecker: of MailChimp or
[00:23:38] Kevin Kelly: we moved off of MailChimp onto something else, but I don’t know what I don’t remember what it was that we moved on to.
[00:23:46] Julian Bleecker: Yeah, I’d be I’d be curious. I mean, I think that there are a lot of people who are kind of like, maybe. You know, in the, in the low to middle tier in terms of their community and community building and community management, uh, Kai, uh, uh, Kai Brock from dense discovery, he does a remarkable job of publishing his information about how he does his email.
[00:24:06] List and all that kind of stuff. So I think there are a lot of operators that kind of are tier, you know, just, yeah, we don’t need the heavy guns, you know, the right, right, right. 4, 500 a month fee.
[00:24:18] Kevin Kelly: Okay. Well, that’s a great, that’s a great tip. So, um, send it. So Julian, what’s, what’s your 4th tool?
[00:24:26] Julian Bleecker: Okay, so my my fourth tool falls into the same category.
[00:24:29] I’m doing a lot of a lot of kind of infrastructure tools. Um, and that is astro. So this is a very vibrant purple website,
[00:24:40] Kevin Kelly: right? With no visuals whatsoever. Just text.
[00:24:44] Julian Bleecker: Just text, you know, you’re not going to
[00:24:46] Kevin Kelly: see anything if you can’t see it.
[00:24:47] Julian Bleecker: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. So, um, that whole email thing we just talked about, like, this is part of like a meta project of mine to try to get off as, as many stacks as possible.
[00:24:59] So being a kind of like engineer product guy, I’m used to building things on my own. I like, you know, finding good tools that I can begin to cobble together my own, you know, home or whatever on the, on the internet. And I was really, look, I had so many Squarespace sites, it was ridiculous. And they’re not cheap.
[00:25:17] It’s 200 bucks a pop. And also there’s not a lot of, for me, there’s not a lot of control. Like I want to hot rod my website. I want to install and play with different kinds of new, um, you know, features and modes. And so I couldn’t do it on things like Squarespace. Right. They just didn’t allow that. They, and they actually, you know, there was a lot of, there was a lot of complaining in the forums about what they were doing and, and this kind of thing, you know, it’s the usual sort of stuff.
[00:25:41] At some point, some company gets too big to, uh, really, you know, I don’t know, care and focus on the, the interesting good things. Right. So, so, so
[00:25:50] Kevin Kelly: Astro is a, is a substitute for Foursquare. But um, Isn’t also Shopify, um, is in that same domain?
[00:26:01] Julian Bleecker: Yeah, Shopify is in that same domain. So, you know, they’ve got obviously the e commerce part, but they, you can also build your, you know, your web website that might have whatever images or text or that kind of thing.
[00:26:11] Um, and I really wanted to kind of get back to my roots and kind of build that stuff from scratch, my first website, not growing about it. Give them our age, HTML wrote it, you know, just kind of sat there with the editor. And I wanted to get back to some of that vibe, um, which I think had gotten lost when a lot of things are built on other things, whether it’s workflow or, so I found Astro cause I came across someone’s website and I just, I, I didn’t think I know because the website was beautiful.
[00:26:33] Yeah. Well designed that kind of thing. I said, would you build this on? Um, and he pointed me to Astro and I was just like, Oh my God, I’ve missed a whole world of activity. And what does
[00:26:41] Kevin Kelly: Astro give you that. You know, just coding an HTML might not give you or
[00:26:48] Julian Bleecker: a little bit more discipline in terms of managing the content.
[00:26:51] Kevin Kelly: Okay,
[00:26:51] Julian Bleecker: um, so it’s got, it doesn’t, doesn’t require a database like my sequel or whatever. Um, essentially the database is implied by the content you create. So every piece of content has its own metadata in it. It’s a format called MDX. So it’s a markdown, a variation on markdown. Um, And for each file, you essentially define the schema of the content in it.
[00:27:13] It’s so. Breeing so I can, you know, so I’ve got on my website, I’ve got a blog, I’ve got events, I’ve got exhibitions that I’ve done projects and each one of those has its own sort of description of what the content is. And so, you know, once you build up a framework, Astro has baseline frameworks for blogging and that kind of stuff, right?
[00:27:34] Once you get into it, you’re just right. You just back to the basics of like blogging, you know, or promoting your events or that kind of thing.
[00:27:41] Kevin Kelly: Right. I know, I know that. Um, Matt Mulliway at WordPress has been, you know, preaching WordPress as the solution for all these things. And there has the advantage, of course, is that you’re in this larger ecosystem where it is a decentralized version of things where you do own your, Did, did that appeal to you?
[00:28:07] Julian Bleecker: I tried it, you know, Kevin, I tried, I tried, I mean, I earnestly, like I did, I did a year trying it. And there was just something about the tooling that I found confusing and Baroque. Now, um, it could be that, you know, You know, it’s one of those things like, I don’t understand how the kids think about design nowadays, you know, where I’m just like showing my age, but it’s like, I really wanted to get close to the metal.
[00:28:29] And even when I wanted to do something like, um, I wanted to add a font that I had a license for that they didn’t offer. Now I know that the, you know, and I had the font in, in, you know, with two formats. So I knew it should be supported by browsers, but I could do it and I just couldn’t get it to work. And the support forms were not.
[00:28:47] Not helpful, nor was there kind of, let me reach out to actually human. So it just felt like one of those things where it’s like, you know what? I think I need to build my own hot rod.
[00:28:58] Kevin Kelly: Okay. So this is for people who are wanting to build their own, their own, they want to be very close, they should say to the metal, that’s right.
[00:29:05] That’s right.
[00:29:06] Julian Bleecker: Yeah.
[00:29:07] Kevin Kelly: Totally
[00:29:07] Julian Bleecker: free you. And if you, um, the other thing is the hosting. So they, it’s because it’s a static website. In other words, it doesn’t, it’s basically back to HTML, but you know, very well managed, you can host it on things like Netlify net Netlify. Netlify. N E T L I F Y. Yeah. Um, and any of the other places, including, you could host it on GitHub.
[00:29:29] Yeah. GitHub account.
[00:29:30] Kevin Kelly: So
[00:29:31] Julian Bleecker: that’s cool.
[00:29:32] Kevin Kelly: So, the last time, my, my last, uh, design upgrade to my website, the guy who was working on it, cause I don’t have the coding skills, was trying to talk me into going with Ghost.
[00:29:43] Julian Bleecker: Yes. Ghost. Yes.
[00:29:44] Kevin Kelly: And he was very big on Ghost. Yeah. And so, what was your thinking about that? Yeah.
[00:29:50] Yeah.
[00:29:50] Julian Bleecker: I did, I did try ghost. Matter of fact, I was one of the Kickstarter backers must’ve been ages ago when they first launched the idea of doing ghosts. So, um, love it. Love the spirit, love the values of it. You know, it was one of those things. And I think it’s, is the thing was the, I wanted to have a particular layout.
[00:30:09] I wanted to have text over an image. And I said, how can I do text over image? And it was like, we don’t quite support that. It’s not part of the template. And so that was the thing that just kind of broke it, you know? And. I, I just really wasn’t willing to compromise, I guess, but I thought that was a basic thing now I can do that and way more because if I can learn the CSS to do it, for example, um, I can, I can make it happen.
[00:30:33] I mean, I’ve, I’ve started doing some like really crazy things, nothing that I would use, but mostly just things. And it’s like, okay, this really does the kind of flexibility that I feel like I want.
[00:30:42] Kevin Kelly: Yeah, you can. Go back to the early web and do one of those crazy websites that
[00:30:47] Julian Bleecker: like Jody. org. Remember those guys, like just that kind of stuff.
[00:30:54] Kevin Kelly: Now you can do it. Um, well, okay. That’s so, so Astro for these kind of, um, very, um, fundamental web building tools. Um, well, that’s really great. So, so, um, Uh, and you said it’s free after it’s free, right?
[00:31:14] Julian Bleecker: It’s open source software. Open source. It’s totally
[00:31:16] Kevin Kelly: free. Um, so thank you, Julian, for those. So, so we have a few more minutes.
[00:31:21] Tell us about what you’re passionate about these days.
[00:31:27] Julian Bleecker: Yeah. Um, well, so we’re talking about cool tools. And the, the thing I’m most passionate about now, I think is probably the coolest tool and that’s the human imagination. I think it even preceded the fire. And so my passion project is effectively in a bunch of different ways to remind ourselves that we have this, uh, evolutionary advantage to be able to imagine the world other than the way it is at this particular moment.
[00:31:57] And so reminding ourselves of that, like, this is my. Passion to find the way to draw people into that conversation and remembering what was the world like when you were eight when it wasn’t the Tonka truck that was fun. It was a box that it came in
[00:32:13] Kevin Kelly: when you could
[00:32:13] Julian Bleecker: build entire worlds just out of, you know, a ball of string and a stick and a couple of friends and some wood and go in the woods and and just build an entire world just in a little box.
[00:32:24] Pond that you find there. So I think this is, this is really what motivates me nowadays. This is what gets me up. This is what Mike, um, you know, I sort of organize my community around this topic and you really begin to find that it’s such a resonant theme. It almost feels like we’ve forgotten about it in a way, like, or we’ve taken it for granted or maybe even worse.
[00:32:47] We’ve settled into living into someone else’s imagination of what the world Should or could be, um, you know, whether that’s, uh, you know, the more expansive, um, imaginers who say, the future is Mars. Like, okay, well, maybe, maybe that’s your idea. Maybe that’s your idea. Maybe I’ve got a different sort of imaginary, different dream of the kind of world that I want to be a part of and exist in.
[00:33:09] Kevin Kelly: So what have you found helps people? What are some of the techniques or tips or tools or strategies that you have found to help people? People do that.
[00:33:20] Julian Bleecker: Yeah. So this, this is where like, you know, the cards that we were talking about and design fiction, you know, like finding the, finding very much playful, so not antagonistic things, but more playful ways of, you know, you find people when you ask them, for example, uh, did a workshop in Sweden last week and, you know, filled with like, you know, executives from like Erickson and from the Swedish.
[00:33:43] agencies who are doing AI and that kind of thing. When you ask them to imagine into the future and say, you cannot, um, tell me what you see. You have to, you have to show me what you found as if you went there, you know, as if you were in the world and you woke up, what do you see on the bedside table? Like draw it, describe it.
[00:34:02] And you bring back almost this like, Primary school art sensibility to it, um, you know, finding the way to help people feel the world as, as material objects. And I think that’s where my kind of engineering kind of nerdiness and my kind of product design nerdiness comes in. I don’t know. I don’t know if you were, if you, I was a Star Trek fan when I was a kid, the old, the old Star Trek, I almost.
[00:34:26] Could have dispensed with the show. If I just had the kit that they had, if I had a tricorder, a communicator, phaser, and maybe a console, you know, with some blinking lights, I could have built entire worlds with that. I could have imagined the world that was sort of scripted out for us and told, yeah, the show is fun, especially fun to watch now, because it’s, it’s, uh, it’s, you know, I got this little campy angle to it.
[00:34:49] Yeah. Um, And obviously there was some resonance because it’s still going on, it’s still continuing that show.
[00:34:55] Kevin Kelly: Have you played around with trying to actually make very, very fast prototype cardboard things, whatever it is, of the different things, even if they don’t look exactly, but maybe for the right shape and, you know, Occupied the same volume.
[00:35:13] I mean, I’m just wondering if that making them physical in some way or other, not just describing the physical thing, but having some ability to, you know, make a placeholder, whether that helps the imagination at all.
[00:35:31] Julian Bleecker: It absolutely does. I mean, I think, you know, we’re, we’re kind of, you know, tangible beings.
[00:35:35] We have these, these manipulators that like to touch and that kind of thing. And we have this wonderful sense making apparatus where we see things. And if we see them off the page, they obtain a different resonance. When I, I used to work at, um, at Nokia at this advanced design team. And part of the, one of the resources we have was a model making facilities.
[00:35:54] We have master model makers who could make physical things with articulations, different materials, and that kind of stuff. And. If you had an idea for something and you could get time with a model maker to make the thing, even if it was quite an abstract idea, if it, once it took form, you could put it on a table and people would double take and they’d be like, Ooh, yeah.
[00:36:14] Okay. I see what you’re talking about. You know, they see it and they feel it. And that the key there, I think what happens is not just the tangibility, but opening up the conversation when someone says, or even just, you know, when we do design fiction, things like, wait, what is that? And as soon as they say, wait, what is that?
[00:36:31] Right. Now you can enter into that discussion and you can be, that’s why I think we’re world start. You start talking about it and imagining into it in a tangible way.
[00:36:39] Kevin Kelly: So I was just wondering if there was like incredibly rapid prototyping where you could take the fastest 3D printing machine that would make something that was very flimsy, you know, it was like no infill at all, whatever.
[00:36:52] And, um, it’s like, I want the fastest one. Speed is all I care about. So you printed it in five or 10 minutes and you have. Some, some, um, yeah, again, rudimentary object that could stir people’s imagination.
[00:37:13] Julian Bleecker: Yeah. So, um, haven’t, haven’t done. 3D and in that form, but well, I will say, you know, um, Hitchcock’s MacGuffin, the idea of the MacGuffin is, uh, an object that no one knows what it is, but nevertheless, it’s the thing that everyone wants.
[00:37:30] So it’s like the Maltese Falcon, like, no one knew what that was, but it’s just the thing that everyone was chasing after whatever reason, but that’s the, the drama isn’t so much the object itself, but that people want it. So what are other ways in which you can kind of bring that sense of engagement? So, um, one of the things that we’ll do is we’ll take a, a form, an archetype, we refer to them, that is familiar to everyone.
[00:37:53] Um, the one that I like is the, is like the product advertisement. So it’s the thing that you might see in a printed catalog or in a newspaper on the side of a bus. And we’ll begin to represent the thing in that, in that fashion. Now, the. The tricky part for people who are maybe, you know, less sort of less adept at, um, you know, making the 3D form or drawing it or that kind of thing is, is that part that gets stuck in that part.
[00:38:16] It’s like, no, but you can tell the story about this object in other ways. I mean, just look at a lot of advertisements for things that are not, you know, like, uh, Apple product, for example, it’s just, it’s just a suggestion of the world that could, that this thing would provide for you. It could just be a smiling face looking down at something that’s obviously in their hand.
[00:38:35] Um, the other way that other, some other product designers who I’ve worked with, they’ve been using their, their rap form of rapid is to use something like mid journey. So they’ll very quickly and can’t a form. That is, can be quite evocative and then bring their own experience and expertise to refine it, maybe draw it out of the background and put it on a white background or add a little bit of coloring and shading.
[00:38:58] But then you have something you can say, okay, here’s the product, here’s the name, here’s the description, here’s the price. And once you get all those pieces together, and people are like, wait, is this real? What is, what is this thing? I think I saw it the other day. And again, it’s that little bit of cognitive shift where all of a sudden you’ve, you feel like you’ve popped into another quantum state.
[00:39:18] You know, you just like moved over in the world into something that you didn’t know before. And then your mind opens up sort of like that eight year old sees the box and it’s like, Oh my gosh, this is the perfect home for my, you know, whatever, and they start building it out.
[00:39:32] Kevin Kelly: Yeah. No mid journey is actually very good at that kind of.
[00:39:36] Um, if you give it the prompt of a product shot, it’ll make a beautiful product shot. Um, yeah,
[00:39:42] Julian Bleecker: that can be very helpful. Yeah.
[00:39:44] Kevin Kelly: Um, what I’d love to see is some, um, way to go from a mid journey to a 3D printed object really fast.
[00:39:50] Julian Bleecker: That’s good. That’s coming along. The people are working on that. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:39:54] Kevin Kelly: Right.
[00:39:54] So that would be really fantastic. Yeah. Um. All right, Julian, this is really great. Thank you for taking time with us. Of course,
[00:40:03] Julian Bleecker: my pleasure. Always nice talking to you.
[00:40:05] Kevin Kelly: I love your, your tools. That emergency radio is, it’s going to be something I need to get. So thank you for, um, joining us today.
[00:40:15] Julian Bleecker: My pleasure, Kevin.
[00:40:16] Kevin Kelly: Great. We are glad that you are enjoying this issue of The Cool Tools Show Tell. I just want to remind you that we also have some other coolish material on our YouTube channel here. So please subscribe, comment, and like. This show and tell is also available in an audible podcast form. If you just wanted to listen to us, you can subscribe to the podcast wherever you subscribe to other podcasts.
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