Archive for the ‘Projects’ Category
Beer With Branson
Friday, January 1st, 2010My New Year’s resolution is to have a beer with Richard Branson by the end of 2010.
Check out the Web site at www.beerwithbranson.com.
And chew bubblegum
Sunday, September 27th, 2009I moved to Lansing May 16, just over four months ago. There are plenty of things I have been missing about living in Marquette, but I knew there were all sorts of things to look forward to while moving to Lansing. And though I have yet to find the best chicken nachos in Lansing, I feel that I’ve done pretty well in the last four months.
Ignite Lansing
Photo courtesy of CaptAngryPants on Flickr
Friday night I had the opportunity speak at Ignite Lansing at the Temple Building in Old Town. It was the best night of my life in two years, hands down. The night that was so great two years ago was the night of September 8, in Chicago, which was my last night outside of Michigan before finishing up my Hometown Invasion Tour.
Think about this, 450 people packed into an old run down club, but the club is now full of production lights, a stage, and the most innovative, creative, and progressive people in Lansing. They all gathered on Friday night to hear ideas, share ideas, give encouragement, and take place in what I thought was the greatest event I’ve ever participated in.
My topic was titled, “How to kick ass and chew bubblegum”. The line was made popular in a 1988 alien thrille movie titled They Live, and then further popularized in the video game Duke Nukem 3d. Basically, all I mean by this is life is about doing.
If you want to do a squirrel blog, go take photos and post them online starting tomorrow. If you want to drink a Guinness in seven continents in seven days, find out who their marketing director is today and I’m sure there is a beer-loving scientist stationed in Antarctica.
Just do it. Make it happen.
That’s no different to how I submitted a topic for Ignite. It was on a whim, I knew nothing about the event. Turns out that it all came together and worked out pretty well.
To have 450 people gathered in a room in that context is what’s going to move this city forward. Every town in the country should be having events like this.
For some guy who’s new to town it was a pretty good way to accomplish some things I have long strived for. Now, hopefully my talk was good enough that they’ll let me speak again, because I just came up with my next one. But I can’t spill the beans yet, so you’ll have to be patient.
Photo courtesy of slaytercreative on Flickr
Photo courtesy of slaytercreative on Flickr
Lansing Breakfast Club
It all started on a whim. A couple of e-mails were shared with Julie, and then Lansing Breakfast Club (the unofficial and unenforced rules, the twitter feed) was started. We had six people the first time and ten weeks later we had 43 people at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. I don’t know what other people think, but that blows my mind.
For some reason I never found the social life I had long desired before moving to Lansing. Since my trip finished it was hard to get established, but it all came together back here in Lansing.
Now nearly 100 different people have showed up, over 200 breakfasts have been served, and low and behold we even got some news coverage from the State News as well…
It just goes along to back up my point that life is about doing. Start a club, start a project, call some friends, and amazing things will happen.
And having my second cousin call me from Oregon to say that he heard me on NPR this morning isn’t so bad either. It was for a piece on the Upper Peninsula that was recorded a few weeks ago. All in all, this was a good weekend.
Hometown Invasion Tour stats
Friday, July 31st, 2009
These were compiled oh so long ago and never really got posted anywhere. So here you go, a list of statistics from my Hometown Invasion Tour. What a year it was. If you think of any other stats you’d like to know, just ask.
Oh… and if you don’t know what this is all about… From Sep 8, 2006 to Sep 17, 2007 my friend Rice (the first squirrel to go to all 50 states) and I traveled 29,403 miles as we made our way to all 50 states in the nation staying in over 100 U.S. households.
Traveling Stats
29,403 miles of driving*
$3,294.54 of gas
1251 gallons of gas
599 miles longest drive
141 gas stations
~30 days driving time
23.5 miles per gallon
$2.634 average cost per gallon
$3.39 most expensive gas
$2.07 cheapest gas
3 round trip plane rides
1 car ferry
Host Stats
320 hosts
294 strangers
113 households
104 towns
130 beds
3 dorms
3 trailers
1 pool house
1 record store
21 couches
11 air mattresses
9 sleeper sofas
4 campers
1 water bed
Content Stats
11,334 photos
2364 photos posted
410+ blog entries
235 nominated hosts
137 town profiles
Press Stats
30+ newspaper articles
12 radio stations
9 television stations
3 magazine features
1 national TV talk show
*There were probably another few thousand miles or more of additional driving where I was the passenger
Bugsy is blogging, Again - The return of my personal blog
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009Bugsy Rocker first started back in 2001. I bought the domain name bugsyrocker.com in 2002. Since then it has seen at least three major redesigns (check out the web archive bugsyrocker.com, though some of it is embarrassing).
Throughout college I had a pretty extensive blog of my personal thoughts and happenings in life. After that my blogging was all about the adventures I had on my 50-state tour. And in the last year all of my blogging has been about the Upper Peninsula.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had a personal blog and it’s time to bring it back. Quite often I have thoughts about my profession or educational background (advertising, sociology, web development, photographer, etc). Other times I find myself with opinions about hockey, snowboarding, travel, and more.
With all of my projects and the growing number of people following whatever it is I do, it just made sense to give everyone a way to follow what I’m up to, what’s going on behind my projects and in my head or what I’m going to be up to next. If nothing else it’s a bit of therapy for me to get my thoughts out there.
So it begins. I hope you enjoy.
2500+ Daily Fruit entries
Saturday, April 18th, 2009I first launched Daily Fruit on October 8th, 2001. It was always on my BugsyRocker.com domain name, and then as I traveled the country it was on the Hometown Invasion Tour website. And after a crazy year I had to take a short break of it.
Well in 2008 I brought it back, with a brand new domain name that it will have for a very long time, fruuit.com.
On April 5th, 2009 I’m happy to say that I wrote my 2500th Daily Fruit entry. It has come a long ways in nearly eight years.
I’m taking some pride in this. It has been a lot of fun and has given me a way to look back at a lot of memories. If I do it for another seven years I’ll hit 5,000 entries.
Some of my favorite entries…
- April 18, 2009 - it’s not that i don’t like ketchup, it’s just that by putting it on it’s one more step between deliciousness and my mouth.
- September 8, 2006 - the cows are lining up for recess.
- June 12, 2008 - if i ever meet someone who’s missing both their thumbs i’ll measure their nose and tell them, if you had thumbs they would be this long.
- January 25, 2009 - holy cow, this is the finest spoon i’ve ever used, the width, the concaveness, the strength, it just fits my mouth to perfection, i must find a secret place to keep it.
- October 22, 2006 - parkinson eucalyptus episcopalian.
- July 16, 2005 - that’s a really strong bow you’ve got.
- February 5, 2009 - beef face.
And if you’re still a little confused about what exactly Daily Fruit is after reading this entries, you can start with the about page. And yes, some of it is just corny, even though it’s one of my least favorite vegetables.