Hi Lovely Simplerista,

New York is the gorgeoustest this summer. Not too hot, not too cold, and lots of great things going on. I'm going to see Billy Joel live in concert tomorrow night, that has me quite excited. I've been listening to and playing and singing Billy's songs since I was a kid, but I've never before seen him perform live. As a pianist, it's a special treat.

In other news, I've started a two-days-a-week fasting regimen. I'm only on my second day, but I'm liking it so far.

It's interesting. I find those kinds of life style changes quite easy once I'm decided, and once I understand why I'm doing it. I've gone vegetarian for 5 months, gone without alcohol for (the same) 5 months, done 9 months of practicing yoga each morning at 4am, done a 3-week cleanse, done other periods of certain diets and exercise regimens. It's pretty easy to stick to once I'm decided. If I stop seeing the point, though, I'm gone. If it doesn't deliver the results I'm after, then I'm not going to continue. I guess it makes sense.

What's your experience?

Latest from the blog

I wrote about the fasting, including a 1-hour documentary about it that I watched before embarking on it.

I also wrote about why I recently canceled my office space, and how I've tried many many times to make the office thing work for me, unsuccessfully. It's time to stop!

And finally, here's a blog post about two of my favorite tricks for getting things done.

New features from Simplero

The Zapier integration is working, and people are starting to take advantage of it.

Swanand wrote a blog post that walks you through the details of how it all works.

Just to keep you in the loop, the main focus for us this week is our new marketing site.

For the coming two weeks we'll be focusing on the things that you need to get going with Simplero quickly and flowingly, something that's currently not terribly easy. Along with that comes redoing and cleaning up all of the training videos that we have.

Once that's done, we've set aside a week to finalize everything we need for us to officially start to have affiliates marketing Simplero to their tribes.

And all of that will be leading up to an "official" US launch of Simplero coming in the fall.

On the side, we're still working on features, but not as quickly as if we weren't doing these things that are critical to the future of Simplero.

Fun stuff from around the interwebs

I forget if I linked to John Oliver's piece on Cable Company Fuckery already, but even if I did, it's worth watching again. This stuff is really important for the future of all of our businesses. If cable companies are allowed to fuck with us, it's going to cost us all. If you haven't yet, go post our comments on the initiative here.

Speaking of, I've been plowing through all the episodes of John Oliver's new show to date, moving backwards from the most recent, and they're really really awesome. I've long been a fan of The Daily Show, but this, to my mind, beats it. There's no guest, which is great, so they can spend all the time on the fun comedic-but-true content. Well worth watching. (And yes, I'm going to try and get tickets to see it live.)

I've gotten myself a pair of wireless earphones. They're pretty pricey ($170), and the fit is not good at all, so I may end up returning them (Apple Stores have a 14-day return policy, even if you've used the product), but the concept of wireless headphones is just brilliant. I can cook while watching John Oliver or listening to an audio book without any cables getting in the way, and I can be on Skype from my computer while walking around my apartment. It's just awesome.

And a bummer that I haven't found a pair that works 100% for me. The Dr. Dre PowerBeats 2 that just came out has a great fit but a deal-breaking annoying time lag when watching video. Maybe Apple will be able to fix it now that they've bought Dr. Dre?

If you're looking to buy domain names, domai.nr looks cool.

This talk by Paul Buchheit (the guy who invented Gmail) is really good.

Have a great week.

With love,
-Calvin

PS. Going to Burning Man for the first time later this month. Are you going?