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About

Hello, I’m Dustin. I enjoy making things for a living—mostly visuals—and brevity.

If I were to expound on that however, I would say that I’m a video editor and producer based in Chicago. I enjoy pondering big ideas, probably to a fault, but that’s part of the idea of this site here. I’m trying to give some of these ideas a home and get them out in the world, maybe someone else likes to ponder these things too. Anyway, that’s out of my head now.

Here’s what I’m up to now.

CONTACT

If you’d like to contact me about anything, you can use this form, or schedule a brief, private voice or video call with me at the link below. I also check twitter about once a week.

You can subscribe to this blog via rss or get a once-a-week newsletter on Saturday mornings with everything new.

Schedule some time with me.

BLOGROLL

Here’s some other interesting people publishing online.

  • Star Wipe - A podcast on youtube with Jeff Greenberg and Michael Kammes. Their self-summary is pretty good: “The semi-regular commentary about the /r/Editors subreddit”

  • Macsparky - David Sparks—self-proclaimed “internet rascal”—is a tech enthusiast who I know from his Mac Power Users podcast. He has several other publications online about getting the most from technology. I just like his overall demeanor and how he approaches integrating technology into our lives.

  • Javier Mercedes - Friendly YouTuber with a background in audio production I believe. Top notch training on Adobe video tools.

  • Paul Murphy - If he hasn’t worked at Adobe in his career he should. Anything he has to say on any topic I consider to be absolute correct way to do things. Looking back through his library makes me want to download it all so I’m sure to never be without access to it.

I think of a blogroll like a personal introduction. But online, so I usually don’t personally know anyone at these links. Anyways, here’s my past blogroll links.

TOOLS

I love seeing how people work, so I thought I’d share some of my tools and processes.

Publishing

  • Blot.im — Lovely little tool to make files in Dropbox into a blog.
  • iWriter Pro — My cross-platform text editor. Very curious about iA Writer, but can’t justify the price right now.
  • Sublime Text– My desktop editor of choice for in depth editing.
  • Backblaze - Backup your computer without thinking about it. (Get a free month of backup with that link!)

Focus

  • Bitbar — Shows various bits of data in the menu bar. (Apparently called xbar now)
  • Quitter — Manages windows and apps I’m not currently using.
  • Alfred — Feels weird using a computer without it. (Read more)
  • Workflowy — Almost an understatement to say my life is in Workflowy.
  • Poolsuite FM — Almost too strong on the silicon valley bro vibes, but it is a fun app, and it’s a pretty no frills way to get some background music on.

Time Tracking

  • RescueTime — Still gets the job done to provide a good overview of how I’m using my computer. Also feeds data to Beeminder, see below.
  • Toggl — Pretty much mandatory for client work, and I love that it shows my current task in the menu bar. (Read more)
  • Beeminder — Long term goal tracking and monetary motivator.

News

  • Feedbin — 100% worth the small cost for a calm place to read the internet.
  • Readwise - paired with Feedbin, this is my read-it-later tool. I’m using their beta Reader app, and it feels a little overkill, but they do make highlighting and resurfacing those highlights easy and useful.
  • Libby — Read digital library content like magazines and ebooks. Mainly for the magazines. (Read more)
  • text only NPR — Only mentioning it here because their text only website and hourly news updates are really what I want the news to be if its not video.

Hardware