New Thing 247, New Thing Every Day: Try Wagyu Bresaola

From Wikipedia...

Bresaola is air-dried, salted beef that has been aged two or three months until it becomes hard and turns a dark red, almost purple colour. It is made from top round, and is lean and tender, with a sweet, musty smell. Wikipedia

I got it at Barred Owl Butcher Shop. You should definitely go there.

New Thing 246, New Thing Every Day: Write a Fan-Tweet

It is absolutely true that I have never written a fan letter and I probably never will. Never sent an e-mail. Never tweeted. Nothing. Until tonight. Preparing for tonight's New Thing, I gave it an inordinate amount of thought because it will likely be literally the only fan message I will ever send. Finally, I chose Denzel Washington. Yest, it actually surprised me, but I decided he is a person who has given me a great deal over the course of my life, and he is absolutely somewhere near the top of the list of people I would want to respond to me.

Here is what I tweeted:

@DenzelWN Never fan-tweeted. Loved you since Carbon Copy, when I was 11. Thank you for 35 years of touching heart and mind. God bless.

New Thing 245, New Thing Every Day: Start Creating a 501c3

For years, I have thought about creating my own non-profit organization that I can use to house the various events and projects I create to support the community. Most of what I do involves an event, so I wanted to do something related to that, but with a name that did not totally tie me down to that format for service. I came up with Bash Fund, and secured the URL, BashFund.com. I am also initiating the paperwork with Missouri and the IRS and I hope to have it in place by the end of the year. I'll let keep you posted..

New Thing 244, New Thing Every Day: Start New Podcast How I Built This with Guy Raz

For those who may not know what a podcast is, it is most often an audio broadcast over the Internet, generally listened to over one's phone or iPod, often featuring a long-form interview or some other story format. Yes, there are also video blogs, and there are also other formats, but this is a decent description for the majority.

I listen to a lot of podcasts -- it is most often what I listen to in the car, instead of the radio, and when I am getting ready in the morning. My friend Anne Churchill also istens to a lot of podcasts and we were comparing notes the other day; she suggested "How I Built This with Guy Raz" and I am so glad she did. So far, I have listened to the first one, about the creation of Instagram, and it was fun and informative. There are another 50 episodes about cool companies and their founders, and I am pretty excited about listening to them.

Thanks, Anne!

Here are the other podcasts currently on my iPhone.

• You Must Remember This -- the golden age of Hollywood
• The Pitch -- startups pitch investors
• Startup -- the stories of new companies
• Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman -- tech and startups, by the founder of LinkedIn
• Boss Files with Poppy Harlow -- interviews with business leaders, with a particular focus on women
• The West Wing Weekly -- breakdown of every episode the The West Wing
• Politico's Nerdcast -- political journalist discussion
• Slate's Political Gabfest -- political journalist discussion
• Katie Couric -- general interviews
• The Axe Files with David Axelrod -- political interviews
• Here's the Thing with Alec Baldwin -- general interviews
• NPR Politics -- political journalist discussion
• Fresh Ar -- the NPR radio show in podcast form
• This Week in Startups -- Jason Calacanis's podcast about the startup world
• Industry Standard w/Barry Katz -- interviews with media executives and occasional artists, with probably the most prominent manager of comedians
• The /Filmcast -- movie reviews
• WTF with Marc Maron -- interviews with mostly comedians, and occasionally with others; the very first podcast I ever heard

New Thing 243, New Thing Every Day: Experience a Burst Water Main

[Note: This is yesterday's New Thing, and I am not posting it until today because Leigh and I went our of town for the evening and I did not have my computer.]

Leigh and I woke yesterday to no water at all and a bunch of guys doing work directly in front of our house. At one point, there was a massive hole in the blacktop next to our driveway -- dug with back hoe -- and no water. So I went and picked up some gallons of fresh water from Schnuck's (for flushing and brushing) and it really was not so big a deal because we were getting ready to head out of town. We decided to just hit the road, check into our hotel a little early, and do our showering there. Thankfully, the hole was filled when we got back, so the only real issue is that the guys tore up our front yard a little. We have water, so we can live with that.

New Thing 242, New Thing Every Day: Start Learnng to Code

I have wanted to learn to code for a long time. Several years ago, I tried to find a good place online where I could start learning for free, but I did not have any luck. Today, there are so many options. Today, I took my first coding lesson at CodeAcademy,com, in JavaScript. I have such a long way to go -- like learning any other language, and this does not come easily to me -- but I am going to start pushing forward. I think we are in a world where absolutely everyone should learn how to code.

New Thing 241, New Thing Every Day: Order Dinner from La Terraza Mexicana Grill

I am on a very serious hunt for the best home-delivery tamales in town. I have tried a few different places and tonight I ordered from La Terraza Mexicana Grill. They were very good, but tamales seem to be basically the same pretty much anywhere. The search continues.