Calley Nye's Blog

"I had a stick of CareFree gum, but it didn’t work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that..."

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:19:23 -0500

“I had a stick of CareFree gum, but it didn’t work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality.”

- Mitch Hedberg

Photo

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:14:08 -0400

"But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a..."

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:38:22 -0400

“But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.”

- Kahlil Gibran (if you haven’t read The Prophet yet, do it)

Also, I clean pools.

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:50:14 -0400

Also, I clean pools.

the search

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:15:20 -0400

icodeforlove:

Who can code and/or design? I’m trying to assemble an amazing group of coders/designers… With a common goal of taking over the interwebs.

Join him. He’s cool. If I could I would.

"Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become..."

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:33:29 -0400

“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.”

- Sylvia Plath

Where The Hell Have I Been?!

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:22:00 -0400

Good question, sir, good question.

~~I have been on a wonderfully illuminating journey of self-discovery.~~ No.

~~I have been pondering the meaning and direction of my life?~~ No.

I have been trying to figure my shit out. That’s better.

My last blog post I thought was the end of my WTF-am-I-doing phase, but I was wrong. I had a long way to go. I still do, but I’m through the worst of it. The biggest thing I had to do was leave LA. Jack Kerouac said it best in On The Road, “LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities…”

So I’m out. After a week on driving my packed VW Golf clear from sea to shining sea, I’m home. I’ve been home in Manchester, CT for about a month and a half. I feel 10000000 times better. The location was definitely half of it. The other half was that driving for 5 days by yourself gives you a lot of time to think and reflect. I came to some realizations.

One of them was that we all have multiple personalities. Mine are: the geeky girl that would love nothing more than a 1 TB music collection, a computer and time to herself to think and create; the social butterfly with a mind for networking and marketing, who wants to talk to and be liked by everyone; the overly-sensitive, overly-emotional girl who strives for a connection with someone other than the characters in her books; and various other evil twins that come out of hiding every now and then. A lot of times these personalities clash and the lines get crossed. I fought with myself a lot over them, but I’ve come to the realization that I am who I am. Deal with it.

Another thing I figured out was blogging. I have always loved blogging and writing, and when I forced myself to figure out my problem with it, I had a bit of trouble. But eventually I realized that I had lost sight of why I had started blogging about technology in the first place. I did it to learn more about startups and technology so I could do my own startup. Then, I got so consumed with the business of blogging, that I was letting my startup suffer for the sake of blogging. Bottom line: I made a big mess of things.

So I gave up TechNews.LA, SiliconCalley.com, and CalleyNye.com. I’d like to be able to say that it was some bold, meaningful move on my part, but I really was just too broke to renew them. Oh well. Thankfully, I had 2-year subscriptions on my startup domains, lol.

So what’s done is done. I can only move forward now. I am in CT, equidistant from Boston and NYC (expect to see me in both cities often), I have a part-time job so I can recover from my Year Of Zero Income in LA, and am using my free time to read as much as possible, write as much as possible (short stories, for now), learn as much as possible (MySQL and PHP currently), and get out and enjoy life as much as possible. My blog will reflect that, and in general, will have no purpose or aim, whatsoever.

I am currently in East Sandwich in Cape Cod, in a house on the beach, watching the waves roll in. (Fun Fact: Sandwich, MA was the first settlement of Nyes in the United States. I am getting back to my roots people!) All week I have done nothing but sit in the sun, walk on the beach, and read. It’s been quite nice.

Well, I’m glad to be writing again, and I hope you all have been well. But it’s low tide, and I am determined to find a sand dollar, so I will speak to you all later! Ta-ta!

XOXO

Calley

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest..."

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:38:01 -0400

“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was—I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that’s why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon.”

- From On The Road by Jack Kerouac.

Cat vs. Aquarium LOL

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Cat vs. Aquarium LOL

The Smoking Gun

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:23:18 -0400

The Smoking Gun:

Been reading this site for like 2 days at work. Some crazy shit! Read the search warrants for the Michael Jackson case.

Iranian Rockers Give New Meaning to Underground Music

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:53:49 -0400

Iranian Rockers Give New Meaning to Underground Music:

“Music is just something you can’t take away from people” - Hypernova

Zentact: A Must-Have Social Networking Tool

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:53:30 -0500

Zentact: A Must-Have Social Networking Tool:

Freshly launched contact-amplifying service Zentact aims to solve one of the most enduring problems almost everyone faces in using the internet. We meet people, we intend to stay in touch, but we…

Hibernation...

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:09:40 -0500

I feel like I owe all of you, who have stood by me and supported me, an explanation to my recent disappearance. I have broken the two golden rules of social media - consistency and openness. I hope to fix one of those now, and be open about what I have been going through.

Most people who know me, know that I am a really hard worker. I have been working for myself for three years now, and I have truly loved every minute of it. I have worked every day usually until very late hours, doing what I love. Most people would think that’s a dream, but like most things, it has its pitfalls.

The main problem for me is that it’s hard separate work from personal time. I couldn’t sit through a movie at my house without working, because whenever I was in my house, I felt like I was in my office. This never bothered me before, I loved it. But then I started to feel trapped by it.

I also went through a lot of changes this year. I moved across the country, away from all of my friends and family. I stopped doing the marketing work that had got me into this big social media mess, to work for TechCrunch. Shortly after that, I stopped working for TechCrunch and started TechNews.LA and working on Dashbuzz.

Don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly blessed to have been afforded those opportunities. But after the dust has settled from the craziness that was post-TechCrunch, I was left with the nagging question of “what the hell have I done?” I have been working my ass off for three years, and do I have anything to show for it? It also doesn’t help that some people seem to think I’m a stupid famewhore who sleeps around for all the things that I have worked my ass of to achieve.

As Valleywag readers would be surprised to hear, I don’t go out much and I don’t date. I have given up any chance of a love, or even social life, for my insanely annoying work habits, but yet it hasn’t done much. Now I’m broke and alone, with only the hope of the future to keep me warm at night.

The hibernation has treated me well, all things considered. I have evaluated my mistakes, my relationships with the people I care about the most, and most of all, my motivation. I have established what my goals are for 2009 and how I will achieve them. I’ve also gotten to level 60 on WoW - FTW! LOL

I’m feeling a bit better, and like I need to get back to work. So please, bear with me while I gain my bearings, and know that I really appreciate your support. I am working on several things right now (as usual) and I CAN’T WAIT to share them with you soon.

And again, thank you so much to everyone who donated to Start Me Up. It didn’t work as well I had hoped, but the support I did get meant the world to me, and I won’t let you down.

(BTW, the button is still there) ;)

XOXO

Calley

Where Are They Now?

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:04:42 -0400

Where Are They Now?

Top 10 Sarah Palin Look Alikes [PICS]

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:39:55 -0400

Top 10 Sarah Palin Look Alikes [PICS]:

Hair in a bun. Kawasaki clear-rim glasses. Fake midwestern-Alaskan accent. If you have all of these things, then you are ready to begin your career as a Sarah Palin look-alike.

Video

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:11:50 -0400

Videos from the Sigur Ros show last night. Amazing!

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:10:45 -0400

Videos from the Sigur Ros show last night. Amazing!

OK, OK Let Me Clear Something Up

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 08:26:00 -0400

I have been getting A LOT of responses about Start Me Up and it’s legal implications. A lot of people seem to be baffled by the fact that I am asking for money without giving equity. I would love to offer equity but I can’t. It’s illegal to publicly offer equity, or something like that. IANAL so I don’t know what it’s called or anything, but I know that I can’t do it.

But another thing you should understand is that I went into this, not thinking that people would give me hundreds or thousands of dollars - amounts that would deserve some amount of equity - just that they may donate $5, $10, $20….whatever. If a lot of people do it, it adds up. Those amounts are hard to give equity to, which is why I thought that early access and discounts were enough.

This is what I had pictured happening in my head. It had never crossed my mind that people would think that I am looking for angels to invest large sums of money in me, via a PayPal button. I guess it’s my fault, I could have explained it a bit better.

So, I’m sorry if there’s been any confusion. I’m still very driven to get this done and STILL need all the help I can get. Probably even more so now, considering I may need to hire a securities lawyer sooner than I thought. :P

FFFFOUND! | now in colour I have no idea why this picture makes...

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:33:54 -0400

FFFFOUND! | now in colour

I have no idea why this picture makes me so happy.

Finally! Contxts Launches SMS Business Cards

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:43:38 -0400

Finally! Contxts Launches SMS Business Cards