Tag Archives: David Brazeal

“Best community sports site”

Posted on by

RepublicTigerSports.com is the brainchild of David Brazeal, a long time friend and former co-worker. You won’t find a better community sports site. It features “live game broadcasts, highlights and audio interviews, photos, stats, scores and summaries.”

David gets some help with photos when he’s doing live play-by-play but he does all the content and sells all the advertising. It is a very successful website but a huge undertaking for one person.

David and I recently had a text conversation during which he shared how he was using ChatGPT to help manage content on the site. He recently did a post called “Shout Outs for Seniors”:

“I collected nominations in a form. Fed the exported form data to ChatGPT, spent about 15 minutes and it created the HTML bookmarks at the top of the page linking to each nominee, the H4 headline tags, etc. Rather than having to do all that by hand.

I’ve got the writing prompts honed in on Claude (rather than ChatGPT) so it writes pretty close to my style. For baseball games I have started just looking at my box score and recording a voice memo recapping what happens. I upload the audio to Dropbox, ChatGPT watches that folder and transcribes it. I feed the transcription to Claude and get a rough draft of my game recap. If I have quotes, I feed it my quotes and tell it to use them verbatim. Make a few tweaks when I’m finished and it’s ready.

The voice cloning really creeped me out when you first mentioned it, but I am paying for an ElevenLabs account. I’m not using my voice yet, because it’s not good enough. But I have tinkered with the API and will probably be adding a “listen to this” audio player to every article at some point in the future. I’ve got it working, but haven’t put it in place and haven’t calculated what it would cost.

Ideally I would be able to append each story with 2 seconds of text in the API: This audio version sponsored by Central Bank.Followed by the article.

The bottom line is AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude are making it possible to accomplish tasks that once required hours David doesn’t have as a one-man operation. And the athletes and their families are the big winners.

Funny and fast

Posted on by
Reply

Barb and I were in DC in 2009 and during a cab ride back to our hotel, we struck up a conversation with the driver and asked about celebrities-he-has-driven. His list included: Telly Savalas, Senator James Lugar and the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

I came across this old post tonight and found this an amusing group of names and shared it with my friend David. Our chat thread (from earlier this evening):

My point here is that genuinely funny people like David are funny fast. They’re quick. And, yes, I realize you have no idea who Telly Savalas is or Carnac the Magnificent.

David Brazeal

Posted on by
Reply

A plague is upon us and I have hunkered down (a word one gets to use so infrequently). I’ve been using the time at home to call/text old friends, like David Brazeal. David almost certainly the most amusing person I know. Perhaps droll would be a better word for David. From just one short iMessage exchange:

The biggest hardship right now is that all my usual hypochondria, normally spread out over my entire body, is not centered in my chest and lung area.

This has also been good for me to discover which businesses still have my email address from a purchase I made 7 years ago. I am fully informed of the COVID-19 response plans of every business with which I have interacted since about 2010.

I have seriously neglected my hunting and gathering skills for 50 years.

David’s bon mots have shown up in my post often enough to deserve their own tag.

Interviews

Posted on by
Reply

This is a little housekeeping post. A list of people with whom I have done interviews. A search by name should take you to these. This link will pull them all up.

RepublicTigerSports.com

Posted on by

During the early days of what we then called the “World Wide Web,” there was a mood of “digital entrepreneurism.” Anybody with a minimum of technical skills could create a website. Later, when blogs became a thing, it got even easier. You could start your own newspaper or magazine or — when the bandwidth got better and the tools easier — audio and video. Anyone could create their own “content” and do so for fun or profit. That was the dream and a few made it a reality.

One of those was my friend David Brazeal. David grew up in Republic, Missouri, a small town just outside of Springfield in the southwest corner of the state. He earned a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and then reported news at a radio station in Jefferson City, MO.

That’s where I met him and then worked with him at Learfield Communications. David started in the newsroom but migrated to some of Learfield’s early, digital businesses. He was very good at what he did but eventually grew restless and longed to strike out on his own. His idea was to create a website that covered high school sports in his hometown.

With his wife’s blessing, he quit his very good job at a very good company and started RepublicTigerSports.com in 2009. David has defied the odds and made his “micro-site” a critical and financial success. I think it’s safe to say he covers high schools sports in Republic better than any traditional media outlook could or would. The town does not have a radio or TV station but does have a weekly newspaper.

I don’t think I could begin to describe the breadth and depth of the content on his site. If you are even remotely interested in what he’s doing, spend 10 or 15 minutes on the website. If you’re still interested, you might enjoy listening to the interview below. Runs about 35 minutes.

Would a bot ask you to show it your underpants?

Posted on by

Since retiring, I’m occasionally asked if I’d consider working part-time. Uh, no. But this afternoon I thought of a job that I might find interesting. If such a job exists. If some company/business/service was doing one of those “is it human or is it a bot?” things, that might be fun. Sort of a half-assed Turing Test kind of thing? But I’d want total freedom in my responses.

Q: You’re in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and see a…
Me: Did you think Ernest Borgnine was better in Airwolf or Escape from New York?

Yeah, I think I might do that for an hour a day. My friend David Brazeal had a similar gig for a while. He was the human behind the Barrel Bob Twitter account for the Missouri Department of Transportation. I think he lost the account when the suits couldn’t handle his insanely humorous tweets.

Hanging out with Dave. And Dave.

Posted on by

This is the first Google Hangout I’ve actually enjoyed. Previous efforts were about learning the tools (I still need to work on that). This was a chance to shoot the shit with a couple of guys I find interesting and funny. I picked the radio topic just to get us started.

Had no idea it would run 45 minutes but that’s okay because we don’t expect anyone to actually watch this. David Brazeal left a perfectly good job to follow his passion. Dave Morris has been self-employed for years.

Soldier of Fortune Tour: David Brazeal

Posted on by

SOF-tour1

I’ve started dropping pins on my Soldier of Fortune Tour map. I drove down to Springfield, MO yesterday to have lunch with David Brazeal. We worked together for many years and he’s self-employed now so he was generous with his time. We talked for 3 hours. As much as I enjoy digital communication, there is no substitute for sitting across a table from a friend. Looking forward to doing more of this.

Juice, stroke, Klout!

Posted on by
1

Interesting article in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times (I think I used the last of my 20 free accesses for the month). It’s about the growing importance (?) of online influence.

“If you have a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account, you are already being judged — or will be soon. Companies with names like Klout, PeerIndex and Twitter Grader are in the process of scoring millions, eventually billions, of people on their level of influence — or in the lingo, rating “influencers.” Yet the companies are not simply looking at the number of followers or friends you’ve amassed. Rather, they are beginning to measure influence in more nuanced ways, and posting their judgments — in the form of a score — online.”

Yes, I check my Klout score from time to time but it’s never gotten above 40. 39 as of a few minutes ago. But 40 suggests “a strong, but niche, following.” Niche being the operative word. And the average Klout score is in the high teens, so…

“After analyzing 22 million tweets last year, researchers at Hewlett-Packard found that it’s not enough to attract Twitter followers — you must inspire those followers to take action. In other words, influence is about engagement and motivation, not just racking up legions of followers.”

Is there any sort of analogue to this in the world of traditional advertising? Do we even care about the influence of someone hearing our radio ad?

“Industry professionals say it’s also important to focus your digital presence on one or two areas of interest. Don’t be a generalist. Most importantly: be passionate, knowledgeable and trustworthy.”

Half the fun of checking your Klout score is comparing your score to your friends and acquaintances.

My pal David Brazeal is off on his own now and needs as much Klout as he can get. He’s something of an expert on “weather, lightening & tornados.” Jonathan Brownfield should be higher given his access to beautiful, large-breasted young women.

My plan is to stand outside Hooters and wait for a bad storm.

Time travel companion wanted

Posted on by
1

The following listing recently appeared on the Springfield, MO Craigslist:

“I have a functioning time machine (i know it sounds unbelievable, but I assure you it works) that I need a 2nd person to operate with me. I’m looking for someone who is adventurous and reliable. Preferable a male; or a female that can do heavy lifting. I am leaving on January 20, 2011 , in the morning and plan to return February 3,2011. I am going to June 1983 to handle some business.

If you are serious about time travel and are reliable, then please contact me. You do not have to pay anything, but you would have to provide someone to watch my cat for the time we are gone. The only qualifications needed are that you are reliable and that the circumference of your head is no more than 64cm.

We will be leaving from Springfield,Mo. Let me know if you want to go with me.”

My friend David Brazeal responded:

I stumbled upon your advertisement on Craigslist on the afternoon of January 20, 2011 — too late to join you on your excursion into the past.

Fortunately, having dabbled in time manipulation myself in the late 1830s, I was able to travel to January 17th, one day after you posted your listing, from which time I am responding.

I am both reliable and adventurous, and well-acquainted with 1983, having spent that summer as an intern in the State Department’s Office of Botswanan Affairs. In addition, I have an elderly aunt who loves cats.

Regarding your qualification that my head be less than 64cm in diameter, I assure you that, although my head is slightly too large for a standard time travel headpiece, I have crafted an adapter from a 1960s Oster beauty-salon hair dryer and the innards of a PlayStation 3 controller.

Please let me know as soon as possible whether you still require a companion for your trip. If you have filled the position, I need to return to January 20 to take some brownies out of the oven.

One more thing…

David is leaving our company (after 17 years) in a month or so, to strike out on his own (uh, should I rephrase that? Fuck it). The post above is just one more example of what I mean when I describe someone as “too funny for their job.”