Season 4, Issue 5: 🗒️✍️ Guestbooks

Make sure you're connected. The writing's on the wall.

Hello, y’all. We’re trucking away over here in Good Enough land. Yet we deem it important to send over a second newsletter this month. You may consider this bonus content. You may be wishing we kept to our less-chatty word. Maybe just save your regrets and read up?

1. Do You Like Drawings?

Since we first built our Good Enough Guestbook, many have wished for one of their own. Truth be told, when we dream of our best selves at night, our best selves have made an easy-to-use printer hardware that allows you to receive drawings from others all the day long. Dreams are great, but in the meanwhile we decided to build the next best thing. That’s right, we’ve built…

Coming soon to a Pika blog near you: Guestbooks! We’ve recreated the drawing interface from the Good Enough Guestbook in Pika, and now visitors to your blog can draw you a picture. (And if they’d rather just write you a note, they can do that as well.) You can give it a try right on the Pika blog (or Barry’s blog if you prefer).

We’ve been cookin’ on this for a few weeks now and we’re very excited to get it into your hot little hands. See, this newsletter does come with benefits! If you’d like your Pika blog to have early access to this Guestbook beta, just write us a note and we’ll get you access next week.

2. Some People are Good Enough: Michael Margio

Our interview series continues with interview number two. We are interviewing people who have drawn on our Guestbook, started a blog on Pika, or made a list on Album Whale. If you’re one of them and would like to be featured in this newsletter—write us! Now let’s meet Michael Margio!

Who are you?

My name is Michael Margio. I'm a video producer based out of Orlando, FL. I've had the pleasure of working on a variety of video projects from documentaries to TV commercials to corporate testimonials. All kinds of stuff. And in my spare time, my family and I go to Disney World (we're in Orlando--why not?) And I'm a musician at heart.

As a professional video editor & cinematographer, what do you notice when you're watching movies or TV shows that most of us don't see?

The first two things that jump out to me are lighting and emotion. When I see a scene in a film, my eyes are instantly drawn to the lighting. Probably too much. I often wonder, "How did they light that?" or "That doesn't look realistic. why did they do that?" That's the cinematographer mindset at work. As an editor, I see emotion a lot in a scene. Do I really care about the people? Do I believe in them? Does the scene help me feel for this character's predicament?

Who's your favorite cartoon character and why?

Favorite cartoon character. This is a hard one. So many great characters. This is probably an odd choice, but I kind of love Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. The reason is he's a ridiculous character--a caricature of a character, in fact. Every line is over the top. Every one of his characteristics is exaggerated in all the best ways. He's easy to hate.

Thanks, Michael! You can learn more about Michael on his website!

3. Sharing Is Caring

A few links for ya!

• Symbol.wtf. No more googling for symbols.

• Spurious Correlations. Correlation ≠ causation. (symbol.wtf did not have ≠!)

• The tale of Papyrus continues. Not a huge improvement, but…

• Shel Silverstein wrote “A Boy Named Sue”!? Also, Shel Silverstein can’t sing.

Don’t forget Pika!

• Stardew Valley Impression. I’m jealous that Jason is experiencing Stardew for the first time.

• Pink Lines Mean Good Times. A lovely reflection on the little things in life.

• Time is Not Running Out. Cole reminds us that there’s still time.

• Everyday Dad Carry. Phil takes us on a transitional journey from EDC to…EDDC.

4. In Conclusion

We continue to be thankful for all the folks supporting Good Enough and our products. And we’re excited to unleash some big new things on the world soon. While this is all wonderful, we are reminded that in the world of giant companies and giant money, it’s hard for small businesses like ours to gain a foothold. This is why recently Barry wrote about our continued need for fans of our work to talk about what they enjoy. Read more to follow where Barry’s mind can lead.

To all the creators out there, we hope you are finding inspiration and motivation in this lovely spring (or southern hemisphere fall). Share your work. Share the work of others. Let’s be louder than the algorithms!