I thought it might be time to compile all the failed projects I’ve worked on with this website and roll them into a future disaster called “Quilla’s Sunken Treasures.” Since I’m getting in on the NFT craze, you can be confident that it will soon no longer be a thing. However, you have a rare opportunity to shell out your hard-earned funds for a piece of mediocre history.
All the NFTs on Quilla’s Sunken Treasures are unique artifacts of dreams that uneventfully fizzled. For current projects that will someday make this list, see my apparel line at Quilla’s Niche Market and derivative NFTs from the design process at Quilla’s Niche Market Derivatives.
Here are the preliminary categories of NFTs I’ve minted. Please take a look and give a few some likes so I can drum up interest in my inadequacy:
Blog: The original quilla.info website, purchased because I could not afford .com, was adorned with a Q logo that now looks like a pedophilia-obsessed panic cult symbol – I swear I have nothing to do with that organization, but I thought of the quill being mightier than the sword and took off running with the name Quilla, which I found out is also the name of a Canadian singer. (Check out her website – she actually sprung for .com!) NFTs from the blog are crappy graphics I used for early posts in 2013, often featuring non-accessible red and green juxtaposition to ensure discomfort to any viewer. Also of note are early stabs at image maps, which tend to be useless when links and plugins become outdated. But they do make for large, low-resolution graphics that made my heart soar with pride for nearly 11 minutes.
Quillacast: This was the original audio arm of Quilla Communications and an excuse to buy a Yeti microphone that I promptly lost for several years and then re-found. I’ve grouped some dysfunctional audio snippets here for lack of a better category. My claim to fame was going to be interviewing people from the Mars One project, which has since gone bankrupt. Then I made a demo for the Human Brain Project while trying to apply for a job with them – needless to say, they were blown away by the underwater vocal quality and extensive use of thumping background noise.
Stemagora: After the roaring (non-traditional) success of one audio project, I moved to the next, where I wanted people to collaborate to produce interesting scientific content for a podcast that I struggled to explain. NFTs for this gem of an undertaking include promotional graphics that were sent to my handful of paid Facebook followers in India, a local English-speaking organization and to some lady who was obsessed with the Voynich Manuscript on Twitter. The final outcome was one poorly edited audio episode about saturation diving, which I offered to the former Secretary General of the Council of Europe and his spouse as a Christmas gift, to which he replied with a resounding silence. I also successfully failed to create a partnership with the Human Frontier Science Program, while generating swathes of poor quality graphics and letters than can now be yours.
Jawbreaker: Since I couldn’t get anyone to contribute to Stemagora, I decided to launch a science communication contest to garner content. Despite exercising my usual marketing prowess, I closed the contest on June 15, 2015 with one submission by a science communicator in the UK. I couldn’t even give her the grand prize because I couldn’t afford it so I surreptitiously crowned myself the winner and gave Amanda H. second place. NFTs from this adventure include promotional graphics and some of my attempts at legal jargon in forms.
Saint Vicky: Perhaps the greatest Quilla enterprise to date was the simultaneous online and print publishing of Saint Vicky in 2017. As I write this, the book has sold a whopping 13 paperback copies and several of those are to the author. The online version was only read by paid beta readers, who provided some of the following feedback:
It’s not a story that I would personally recommend. – Jack D.
Some readers have trouble with names, I have to keep a note sheet when I read to write down all of these names. So you can guess that when I started reading this I had a very hard time. – Mohammad H.
NFTs from Saint Vicky include cover art, chapter headings and graphics from the online version.
Miscellaneous: Since my potential to create useless data is unrivaled, I’ll continue to add new NFTs as I come across them on an old computer whose sticky keys are coated with substantial deposits of dried orange juice. I’ve also attempted to interest Dave Schwimmer in commissioning a screenplay, written a rejected TV pilot and employed several freelancers to write bilingual stories about pizza. Not to mention my proposal to two food biotechnology companies to ferment lake weeds into butter.