Yesterday, Aaron Sorkin was the commencement speaker at Syracuse University (his alma mater and mine!). Today, I made a desktop background based on one of the lines from the speech that I think is worth reading every day:

You already know what I know: to get where you’re going, you have to be good, and to be good where you’re going, you have to be damned good. Every once in a while, you’ll succeed. Most of the time you’ll fail, and most of the time the circumstances will be well beyond your control.

Download the background here.

All right, so I’m probably not the guy to be writing photoshop tutorials because it’s like losing an arm-wrestling match every time I open the program, but here we are. I’m about to give you step-by-step instructions for turning this:

into this:

Sick, huh?

1. So, we start with our image in Photoshop. (Duh? Bear with me, I’m new to this…)

Next, we’re going to want to duplicate that layer so we have two copies of the image. Go to your layers panel on the righthand side, right click, and select “Duplicate Layer.”

Click OK on the dialogue box that pops open and you end up with this:

3. Select the new layer (in my case, it’s Layer 1 Copy), and then go to the menu bar and click on “Image.” Scroll down to “Adjustments” and then “Black & White” in the next menu that pops out. That drains all the color from your top layer.

(To make sure it’s just the top layer, click on the little “eye” next to Layer 1 Copy in the layers window, and it will disappear, revealing your full-color original image in the first layer.)
So now we have this:

4. Now, you’re gonna start bringing out those little bits of color you’re looking for. Again, make sure Layer 1 Copy is selected, and then grab your eraser tool. Start getting rid of the black and white layer over the areas you want to be in color.

5. Carefully erase over the entire area you want to be color, et voila! You’re done! Add a drop shadow to make it a little bit sexy, and here you are:

Seven o’clock in the morning is too early for beer. Well, for drinking beer, at least. But when my alarm went off at that hour yesterday morning, I got out of bed, beer on my mind. I had an appointment to spend the morning with Matt Spitz, co-founder — along with his wife, Lauri — of the Moustache Brewing Co.

We’d be brewing Moustache’s porter, one of the signature styles the brewery will serve up once everything was licensed and running. But they don’t have licenses yet, or, for that matter, a brewery. But that’s about to change.

Brewing, for now, takes place at Matt’s parents’ home on the South Shore of Long Island. There, the couple has built a brewing setup from scratch, gradually expanding into more nooks and crannies as the process becomes more sophisticated.

“This is the brewery,” Matt explained as he ushered me into a small room in the basement cramped with jugs of fermenting beer, tubes and buckets and measuring tools, and bags of different grains and malts and other ingredients. There were posters on the wall and a white “NO LITTERING OR DUMPING” sign, and behind all of the brewing materials, shelves held baseball mitts, board games, trophies, and other remnants of Matt’s childhood. As a kid, this had been his bedroom.

Now it was filled with the instruments used by someone who cares deeply about making beer. What started as a hobby in 2005 — the couple was unimpressed with having to travel into New York City to find what they call “interesting” beers on tap — has grown into a professional endeavor. They started asking a brewmaster friend questions about making their own beer, and it’s gotten bigger and better since. “It didn’t start off like this,” he said, pointing to his setup. “This is real brewing.”

We began setting up in the back yard, rinsing barrels and heating the water that would eventually extract the flavors of the mashed grains to create the Moustache porter. That’s when Matt took me to the basement, where he measured out each of the ingredients precisely — by weight, when it came to a batch this large, not by measuring cup the way you do when baking in the kitchen. He pulled the select grains from a cabinet, consulting his phone for the recipe. All of Moustache’s recipes are kept on a website designed to help homebrewers stay organized. There’s an app for that, too, but it’s not as helpful as the website.

He explained what he was doing every step of the way, and at this point, he held out a bag of caramel malt. “You should always try your ingredients first.” I took a few of the tiny morsels and crunched them in my mouth. “Now just let them sit on your tongue for a minute and let the enzymes from your saliva draw out the taste. I did, and it was sweet.

I watched Matt work through getting the entire batch ready until I had to leave around mid-morning. He was precise and patient, stopping to scrub a bucket here, fidget with a valve there. He wasn’t dabbling. He’s serious about his beer. He’s a craftsman, and he’s looking to share his passion with anyone who will listen — or drink.

A few days ago, the aspirations of the Moustache Brewing Co. announced themselves as serious, too. A Kickstarter campaign to fund the licensing process (which can take up to six months) and a new brewing location was launched. The couple hopes to raise $25,000 to get off the ground. It’s a lofty goal, but after just four days, they had crossed the $7,000 mark.

Progress is great, but they can’t relax just yet. Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing proposition. If the entire goal is not met within their own set time of one month, the brewery doesn’t receive anything and the donors aren’t actually charged for their contributions.

By the time the Kickstarter campaign is over, the porter will have just about finished fermenting and conditioning, and I’ll be able to have a pint. Hopefully, we’ll be raising our glasses to a successful fundraising campaign, to the birth of a new microbrewery, to friends whose hobby has become a craft.

It’s beer, and even early in the morning, it’s fun. But it’s serious business, too.

A Hastily-Written Open Letter To Chris Jones, who is shutting down his blog because people are morons.

Dear Chris:

For fuck’s sake. Some people don’t get it.

The stuff you put out there made you human. “Holy shit, Chris Jones keeps score, too? Chris Jones is disappointed when his stuff doesn’t win an award? I thought that was just me… I thought these prissy ‘professional’ (said as obnoxiously as I can) writers just had everything handed to them.”

I read your writing and I see Patrick Roy in net. He made it look easy. He was brilliant. And he was on an entirely separate planet from me.

I read your tweets and your blog posts and I see my next door freakin’ neighbor. I see a dude I work with. I see someone who’s playing the same game as me, except he’s figured out things I haven’t yet.

The stuff you put out there made you human. It made you inspiring, it made you accessible. Because unlike trying to figure out how the hell I get to whatever planet Patrick Roy is from, I can see that the struggles you go through are the same struggles I go through. I see that by pushing through them — and sometimes it’s the push that has as much an affect on the writing as it is the breaking through — I can get there too.

People on the internet will always attack things. Those attacks will hurt. And having not been in your shoes and not been attacked the way you’ve been, I can’t say whether or not I think shutting down your blog is the right move. I certainly don’t begrudge you if you don’t want to put up with it anymore.

But I can tell you this: to those of us who get what you’re trying to do, the blog was an incredible source of inspiration and gave us perspective we don’t get because too many people are beaten down by The Assholes On The Internet and now refuse to share it.

Somehow, you bridged the gap between planets. You showed us you’re human, and that the rest of us, who are also human, can get there too.

Fuck The Assholes On The Internet. What you did was awesome.

Awesome.

Pete

Last night, at a hockey game, my father leaned over to me and asked if I was on Twitter.

He knows I’m on Twitter. Er, at least, I’ve told him before. But social media to him is like reading tarot cards to me: it just doesn’t show up in my world. Tell the truth, I’m actually a little impressed he got the name right. So I wasn’t surprised by the question.

I tried to describe why I enjoy Twitter so much to a man who doesn’t own a cell phone while we were watching a hockey game.

I told him that, earlier in the week, before coming home to visit, I had sat in at an ad agency, filling in for a copywriter who had gone on vacation. The agency had called me because I had struck up a relationship with one of the partners on Twitter.

On Thursday, after my three days of playing copywriter, I had a phone call with a strategist at an agency in the City. I had the ear of someone who plays major league baseball, and he wanted to help me find a job. How did I land the phone call?

We knew each other on Twitter, of course.

Two tangible, concrete examples of how Twitter was working for me, right there, explained at a hockey game.

At one point during the game, Dad looked at the out-of-town scoreboard, which showed updates from all the other games in the league. One read: “Checkers 3, Griffins 2.”

“Who the heck are the Checkers?” he asked.

Well, I happened to know, even though they were a new minor league team that hadn’t been around for more than a few years and I hadn’t followed minor league hockey for longer than that. About a year ago, after attending another minor league hockey game, I wrote about an experience I had as a kid. We were down standing by the glass watching the teams warm up, and a goalie from the visiting Hershey Bears broke his stick. He skated over to the glass where we were standing, pointed to me, and handed the shattered stick to someone on the bench. They tossed the stick my way, and an honorary Hershey Bears fan was born.

Seventeen or so years later, I was reminded of that moment again. I left the hockey game that night and went home to write about it. Then I thought I’d try to find the goalie who had made my night (my life!), and send it to him. Just a little token of my appreciation for a small gesture he’d probably not thought twice about.

Thank God for the Internet. I started looking for his stats, seeing where he had played after Hershey, and where he might be coaching today. It was inconclusive, so I moved to Wikipedia. The trail went cold after he started coaching a team called the Charlotte Checkers, a team that eventually became the minor league affiliate of the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes.

I followed the head of the Hurricane’s PR on Twitter, so I sent him a message asking if he’d ever heard of the man I was looking for. He hadn’t, but he’d make some phone calls to see what he could find.

Enter Mike Lappan, head of PR for the Checkers. A few Twitter conversations later, he passed my piece along to the goaltender I was trying to reach. I got an email back a few days later from Scott LaGrand, thanking me for thinking of him, and promising that he was going to show the story to his kids, a story about their dad they’d appreciate.

A long way around the block to say that the Checkers, this newish team that my father didn’t know existed, had already played a small role in my life. Because of Twitter.

As I was telling my stories, a message popped up on my phone. A photo I had taken earlier in the game had been chosen as the Amerks’ “Fan Photo of the Game!” and would I come down to the guest services desk to collect my prize. I handed the phone to dad.

“See? Twitter!”

He urged me to go find out what I’d won, but it was the third period of a tied game. I hesitated. Over the next few minutes, after the Amerks had retweeted my photo, a few responses came in. The first came from Mike Lappan.

The next came from Tom Chiarella, a writer for Esquire, one of my favorites and a Rochester native: “nice shot Pete!”

Well, fine, then, I’d go pick up my prize. It was a nice little package, the highlight of which was a signed Thomas Vanek poster. Vanek, if you’re unfamiliar, plays hockey for the Buffalo Sabres, a team beloved by two of my cousins (the young daughters of the aunt and uncle who took me to see the Hershey Bears). They’re going to enjoy that Thomas Vanek poster.

Because of Twitter.

About two weeks ago, Kelsey and I took a trip into Brooklyn. We got to see Jason and Bethany, and we got to sample the brilliance that is The Chocolate Room.

But the trip was made for one purpose, and one purpose only:

We wanted to buy glasses.

But not just any glasses. We wanted to buy Warby Parker glasses (Kelsey’s looking to replace her current specs, and I’d like a pair of sunglasses to complement the Sinclairs I already wear — pictured above). They offer an at-home trial where they’ll send you *five* pairs so you can see what they look like and how they feel, and Kelsey had already tried hers, but we wanted to check out one of their showroom locations in person.

So we hopped on the Long Island Rail Road (anybody know why that’s two words in their name?) and hiked into Williamsburg. On the way, I tweeted:

Before we had gotten off the subway, they responded:

How cool is that? How cool would you feel if you were their customer? I can tell you: you’d feel like a million bucks.

It’s not the first time this has happened. In December (already on the hunt for their sunglasses), they posted this response to one of my questions:

So the sunglasses are new enough that they don’t have a home try-on program set up yet, but it’s cool because I can just return them if I don’t like them. Works pretty well for me, but sounds expensive for them. I like when a company is willing to sacrifice to make sure I’m satisfied.

Then there’s this: in addition to offering crazy-awesome glasses and outstanding customer support, they donate a pair of glasses to someone in need every time they sell a pair.

And the whole thing costs a fraction of what it would if I went to a place in the mall.

I’m sold.

In fact, I’m so sold, I want to work there. I don’t have much to offer their customer service department (except to say keep it up!), and they certainly don’t want me designing frames for them.

But they’re looking for writers, and I have a few ideas I think they’d like.

So, if you’re reading this and you work at Warby Parker, give me a call or hit me up on Twitter. I’d love to chat.

(585) 703-4560 or @peteshelly

This now hangs above my desk.

I should start with a few notes about Dave Bidini, if you’re unfamiliar:
Dave Bidini was in a Canadian rock band. They were so good that the first words on Live From Here, a live album from my favorite Canadian rock band, starts with this song dedication: “This is for the Rheostatics – we are all richer for having seen them tonight”.

Dave Bidini is also a writer. A top-notch one. I’m setting out on a quest to read anything he’s written. He’s that good.
I just started “Home And Away,” his most recent book, about the Homeless World Cup.

This past holiday season was a stressful one. I was back working at Apple, staying on Long Island instead of going home, working early on the day after Thanksgiving and late the day before Christmas. Long hours, and lots of them. It was tiring. But that’s retail, right?

When I wasn’t working, I was watching Netflix or surfing the internet; there wasn’t energy to do anything else. It was right around this time that I started reading Dave Bidini’s regular columns in the National Post (might have been around the time he began writing a regular column there…). I’ve read a few of his books, listened to his band, and, last fall, saw him read from Home And Away at a soccer bar in Brooklyn — the invitation to which, after a back-and-forth on Twitter, came directly from the man himself. But the columns were different. Now, he was dropping little nuggets weekly. I didn’t have to wait for a book to be published or make the investment in multiple chapters. These were quick, short columns, little appetizers to be enjoyed in bite-sized pieces.

After a particularly long close on a Friday night and a sore wake-up on a Saturday morning in the midst of holiday craziness, I stumbled across a link Dave had posted of his most recent offering, a piece on his hat.

I liked it.

I liked it a lot.

I shared it on Twitter and a little while later he wrote back:

I got bummed out. I wasn’t writing that day. It hadn’t even occurred to me. I was tired and sore and the hours had been long. I was taking a break from writing.

I didn’t want to write.

But when Dave Bidini remembers from a few short conversations that you’re a writer, things change. Excuses disappear.

When Dave Bidini asks if you’re writing today, dammit, you drop whatever the hell you’re doing and you start to write.

At least, I did.

And I snapped back to the realization that, whatever happens, you gotta keep writing. Same way a shark has to keep swimming, you just gotta. I dropped everything and tried to write, but I didn’t have anything. Nothing happening in my life was worth documenting at that moment. So I turned my attention to a project I’d been pushing into a drawer for about a year. The project is called Bitters, and today I invite you to read a preview:

If you don’t know, Phoster is an iPad app that helps you create bold, stylized posters without having an ounce of actual artistic talent, which is great, because I fit the bill there. So here’s my first attempt:

Hey everybody: an update on my father!

He returned home today (minus a gallbladder) and is in for a decently long recovery period, but he’s feeling a little bit better every day. Thanks for the thoughts, the well-wishes, the prayers, the vibes, and all the comments of the past few days. I can’t tell you how appreciative I am to have such supportive friends/family out there. Thanks, everybody.