Doug Campbell

Who Copyedits the Copy Editors?

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:33:55 -0400

By Doug Campbell
Published May 10, 2012

Copy editors: so important yet too often overlooked and unthanked. Be meticulous and exacting at your job day after day, and when will you finally receive recognition? Only when a front-page headline gets botched or an error like “Department of Pubic Works” creeps into a story. Imagine, then, the pressure that must be felt by the editors of Copyediting, a bimonthly trade newsletter for copy editors. The strain of achieving perfection for an eagle-eyed audience of one’s peers must be enormous. After all, what excuse can there be for a misspelled word or misplaced apostrophe when you run a publication called Copyediting? (Full article.)

“Do and Don’t for Love” by KiokiLoved this in...

Sun, 13 May 2012 01:41:20 -0400

“Do and Don’t for Love” by Kioki
Loved this in the early ’00s. Forgot the band name, title of the song, identifying characteristics of the video. But while a search for “Japanese stop-motion baby” didn’t net any results, it somehow dislodged the name “Kioki” from the recesses of my brain. Brains!

P.S. Considering the song is a decade old, it totally holds up! Autotune? Check. Subtle R&B changes? Check. Cloyingly twee music video? Check.

P.P.S. “Cloyingly twee” as an expression is kind of cloying and twee. (A word that describes itself is called an “autological word” or “autonym.” Like “short” or “noun” or “pentasyllabic” or “autonym” thanks Wikipedia.)

Puppets! See also.

Sun, 13 May 2012 01:15:01 -0400

Puppets! See also.

New in "This is a thing?" news

Fri, 11 May 2012 11:51:46 -0400

Remember when Spore came out a few years ago and everyone was very excited? I only played it one time, but. But. I stumbled across an Internet trend of creepy, uncanny valley residing creations. Here are some of my favorites.

1. Banana

2. Grimace

3. Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants

4. Crawling Hot Dogs

5. Buzz Lightyear

6. Domokun

7. Spongebob Squarepants

8. Homer Simpson’s Head

9. Clippy the Paperclip

I had an article featured on one of the best websites on the...

Thu, 10 May 2012 17:57:35 -0400

I had an article featured on one of the best websites on the Internet today.

"When talking about Zuckerberg’s most valuable personality trait, a colleague jokingly invokes the..."

Wed, 09 May 2012 10:35:13 -0400

“When talking about Zuckerberg’s most valuable personality trait, a colleague jokingly invokes the famous Stanford marshmallow tests, in which researchers found a correlation between a young child’s ability to delay gratification—devour one treat right away, or wait and be rewarded with two—with high achievement later in life. If Zuckerberg had been one of the Stanford scientists’ subjects, the colleague jokes, Facebook would never have been created: He’d still be sitting in a room somewhere, not eating marshmallows.”

- The Maturation of the Billionaire Boy-Man, New York magazine

"Much of the web is an endless array of little bites one after the other, a Tapas restaurant from..."

Wed, 09 May 2012 10:15:00 -0400

“Much of the web is an endless array of little bites one after the other, a Tapas restaurant from hell.”

- The making of a brand-new iPad magazine that’s already sick of the Internet

#7: This sandwich.

Mon, 07 May 2012 22:19:04 -0400

#7: This sandwich.

Want to feign liver disease for a bunch of med students in...

Mon, 07 May 2012 18:30:54 -0400

Want to feign liver disease for a bunch of med students in Chapel Hill? This may be the gig for you.

Objective proof that I have the best parents.

Mon, 07 May 2012 16:21:39 -0400

Objective proof that I have the best parents.

#6: The time I got a record I wanted pretty badly. Click through...

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:29:36 -0400

#6: The time I got a record I wanted pretty badly. Click through for the full, mildly exciting Storify. (This is part of an ongoing series of things that I enjoyed/will miss about New York City now that I am moving to North Carolina after 6 months in the “Big Apple.”)

#5: Movie Premieres and Q&As with Don Hertzfeldt, Gary Hustwit, Punch Brothers

Mon, 07 May 2012 09:24:00 -0400

This is how we spent one of our first nights out in New York.

Don Hertzfeldt, of “I Am A Banana” fame, released his third film in a series. Heartfelt, intense, and for a movie about a terminal illness, hilarious. Here’s the trailer for part 1:

And I’d been waiting three years for this documentary about my favorite band to come out, and suddenly, it arrived! Glad I followed them on Twitter or I would have forgotten about it:

#4: I wrote for a cool, hyperlocal website a couple times.

Fri, 04 May 2012 19:28:44 -0400

I wrote two articles for Brokelyn.com while I lived here! Brokelyn is awesome, and even though I only went to one actual meeting, they kept me on the mailing list, and I occasionally snapped up an assignment.

I got to interview Michael Showalter about cheap gift ideas and told him how Wikipedia works. (Yes, you could go in and change something on your Wikipedia entry.) I also talked beekeeping with an extremely smart Brooklyn beekeeper.

#3: I watched two full series of Star Trek.

Thu, 03 May 2012 20:07:40 -0400

After we moved down, I was still working from Eagle, but spending entire days by myself in the apartment.

I “accomplished” something during those lonely days in my apartment: I watched every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. So here are several YouTube clips of Worf, by far the funniest character on the show.

#2: Ikea (continued)

Thu, 03 May 2012 19:49:00 -0400

#2: Ikea (continued)

#2: Figured out Ikea

Thu, 03 May 2012 19:38:11 -0400

Ikea is wonderful. Until it isn’t. We found furniture, we bought furniture, we “built” furniture, and now we have furniture.

But look: The second floor is kind of like heaven with its perfectly laid out kitchenettes and studio apartment layouts. The dining hall and first floor “marketplace” are basically purgatory with swedish meatballs and kitchen utensils. And the warehouse is a well-organized hellscape.

“We are not letting this table be a metaphor for our relationship. That’s what Ikea wants us to do!”

#1: Finding an apartment.

Thu, 03 May 2012 19:16:00 -0400

In October, Ami accepted a job offer at about 4 p.m. on a Friday. We were tasked with finding an apartment and moving all of our junk from Syracuse to Brooklyn in roughly two weeks.

We did it! At first, Ami and I followed up on a few apartment listings around Carroll Gardens (west of Park Slope, across the Gowanus. We liked all the brownstones. Very original, I know). But apartments kept getting rented out from under us! So eventually we found a place we liked at about 4 p.m. on a Wednesday, scrounged up the money for a deposit, and drove from Syracuse to Brooklyn at 5 a.m. the next morning. It worked!

Our apartment was (and as of May 3rd, still is) awesome. It’s across the street from a beautiful, giant stone church. It’s just big enough for two people. The ceilings are oddly high. And the bathroom is no nonsense. (Small.)

And an undertaker used to operate from this address. So there’s that.

Moving south.

Thu, 03 May 2012 18:24:00 -0400

Ami and I will be moving to Carrboro, North Carolina at the end of May.

“Didn’t you just move to New York City?”

Yes. But, you know what? It turns out it is very expensive here. Also, Ami has made the decision to head back to school, and we kind of love the South, and I miss seeing grass on a regular basis.

But you know what? We totally pwned NYC. We both found pretty rad jobs in our field (print media) — a field which, I might add, is dying a slow death. We found a great apartment and a neighborhood we love with two weeks’ notice. I learned how to ride the subway and became more at ease around revolving doors.

After two weeks on the job, I’m less afraid of revolving doors.
— Doug Campbell (@_dougcampbell) February 7, 2012

See?

So I thought I would spend the next month chronicling the many aspects of our Brooklyn tenure that make me proud, a little nostalgic, or just happy.

Stay tuned.

(Like, super tuned — I’m posting numbers 1 through 3 right now since it’s already May 3rd!)

A chance to get your beekeeping hobby really buzzing

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 22:31:11 -0400

Originally posted at Brokelyn, March 16, 2012.

Do beekeeping and sustainability hold a special place in your heart? Did you think Macaulay Culkin got what was coming to him at the end of My Girl? Do you look up to this guy? Big Apple Apiary is looking for 12 volunteer apprentices to tend brand new hives on a Brooklyn Navy Yard roof during the 2012 bee season, April through October or November. Applications are due March 21. “This apprenticeship isn’t for the faint of heart,” Borough Bee’s Timothy O’Neal told us. “The time commitment is a serious one, and it takes some real passion to be willing to stick your hands in a box of 80,000 stinging bugs.”

The apiary is a joint project of Brooklyn Grange Farm and O’Neal. Their goal? To become the city’s largest treatment-free apiary.

“No treatments means no contamination of the wax, no contamination of the honey, and no contamination of the bees themselves,” O’Neal said.

Proceeds from sale of the honey will go to support the program — and beekeeping ain’t cheap.

“In order to make this experience totally free for all the apprentices, we’re providing everything they’ll need to keep bees for the season — veils, hive tools, smokers, and more. The bees as well,” O’Neal said. “Beekeeping can be expensive, and that prevents a lot of people from giving it a shot. We’re taking cost out of the equation.”

Graduates of the program should have all the skills they’ll need to start an apiary of their own, O’Neal said, and — he hopes — to mentor the next generation of beekeepers.

“That’s really the main goal of this program — to share our love and knowledge of beekeeping with people who will want to share it in turn,” he said.

Potential apprentices have until March 21 to apply. The best applicants, O’Neal said, will “showcase the love of nature, food systems, or bees that we’re looking for.” For more details on the apprenticeship, and to submit your application (no resumes required, but “creative applications” are encouraged) visit Borough Bees.

March 7th Apple Event

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:03:32 -0500

One thing that isn’t speculation: I’m glad I sold my first-generation iPad on eBay this weekend, instead of next.

minimalmac:

Not trying to be flip, really, but seriously… Calm the frick down, people!

Here are the facts: Apple is holding an event on March 7th to show off the next generation iPad. The event will take place Wednesday, March 7, 2012 at 10:00 am at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Everything else is rumor, speculation, random guessing and complete B (as in “B”) S (as in “S”).