“things I've learned”
59 posts under this tag.
I need a father who’s a role model, not some horny geek boy who’s gonna spray his shorts whenever I bring a girlfriend home from school.
Alan Ball, American BeautyIMDB
They say that as you grow old you should stop idealizing your parents. Grow out of seeing them as mighty heroes and realize they’re flawed human beings like everyone. And it’s true. And it’s good advice. But it’s a pretty big world out there. And it has its heroes. And there must be at least some of them who have kids. There are.
If I have always within me this silly joy that cares little for justifications. If welded to me is this naive faith in people, in reason, in conversation, in love, in truth—in human possibilities. If I’ve never lacked wonder. If I’m so unfettered I’ve always lived in the future. If I believe in me. If I never look back. If I dare.
It’s because of my parents. I’m thankful. Tonight. Tomorrow.
What was meant to happen, happened. I ended up participating in my own infodesign calendar challenge (where, of course, I’m one of the judges—my mom and a friend being the other two). Rather, I was one of the judges. The challenge’s doing a lot of soul-searching right now, looking for new judges, and even wondering whether it would be better to call itself a cooperation instead of a competition. (Thoughts?)
I started the challenge because while I thought designing a better calendar was a fascinating problem, I had no idea whatsoever of how to attack it. Then a magical thing happened with other people’s submissions: no big idea came, but a myriad minor improvements suggested themselves. So I started building mockups and tweaking them a little here, a little there, to prove minor points to myself. The tweaking got out of control, ate more and more of my time, and suddenly biggish, elegant ideas started coming up.
So I spent the past 5, 6 days drawing calendars over and over (and over). It was part escapism from my grandfather dying in the room below mine, but it was also unbelievable fun designing something and then have it be extruded into atoms by my clunky but trusty HP—how concrete and intricate, how physical!EEM I felt like a miniature artisan or a clockworker. And it really is wonderful to work in a simple problem you can easily explain to people.
This down here is the current outcome (there’s a Spanish version here). Click on it for detailed instructions (if you need’em), descriptions and critique. It’s the end result of a lot of incremental improvements I’ve painstakingly tried to document in this Flickr set—funny it now looks so glaringly obvious.
What do you think? I’ve fiddled with it for several days now and have returned to it again and again. My tired eyes see no clear way of improving it—how about yours? (Here, btw, is the (Excel 2007) source file—yours to fiddle with and build upon.)
(btw2: I did all my prototypes in my beta-testing version of Excel 2007ELZR. Thought it would be a good chance to take it for a spin and see what the much-vaunted interface improvements amounted too. Turns out they’re rightly vaunted. It’s as good as they told you and then a little better. It’s just so much easier, so much more pleasurable to use the program when so many options are so neatly displayed. The live previews I thought so little of in the videos turn out to be surprisingly helpful. Goodbye toolbar clutter, welcome ribbon. It’s a revolution worth Vista’s failed one.)
I tried to cram myself with Stephen Wolfram trivia (there’s all you might want at his website) before seeing him live at the 2006 Summer Startup School but I wish I had read this brief correspondence he had with Feynman. I would have been in still more awe (which might had been counterproductive, I might no have had the courage to approach him and make a fool of myself).
Ayn Rand’sWP, ELZR Atlas ShruggedAM is on the wishlist. I’ve read a sketch of the plot and as soon as I get my hands on it, it’ll be the first book I read. It was a tortuous decision though. I tend to anguish over negative criticism and she’s a woman with her fair share of it. People talk jadedly about “growing out of Rand’s idealism.” They compare her with Herman Hesse, good for rebel-without-a-cause teenagers but pity the adult that still believes them. And so on.
The thing is her radical capitalism and love for America are exactly where I am at.
Excuse’s user testing went so well I decided to improve it. The original strip had color but it was somehow so distracting that black and white looked better. Then I found about the burn tool in a Photoshop tutorial I chanced on. What a difference it made! There’s a lot more focus! Much better outlines. (No doubt about it, learning Photoshop would be one of the best investments of my time…)
I think the changes are for the better. And so, it’s time for phase 2 of the plan: the metacomic. Print the comic on hard paper and carry it in your pocket, tote, whatever. Next time you’re bored in the subway, bus, wherever, show it to your right-hand neighbor (in the absence of a right-hand neighbor, feel free to substitute your left-hand one). Let it be your excuse. Report on what happened. :)
Of late (and not a minute too late, some will say), I’ve been studying tact. Here are two nice anecdotes I’ve stumbled on.
Charles Schwab was passing through one of his steel mills one day at noon when he came across some of his employees smoking. Immediately above their heads was a sign that said “No Smoking.” Did Schwab point to the sign and say, “Can’t you read?” Oh, no not Schwab. He walked over to the men, handed each one a cigar, and said, “I’ll appreciate it, boys, if you will smoke these on the outside.” They knew that he knew that they had broken a rule—and they admired him because he said nothing about it and gave them a little present and made them feel important. Couldn’t keep from loving a man like that, could you?
Dale Carnegie, How To Win Friends And Influence PeopleAM
While he was prime minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill once hosted a posh state dinner, attended by dignitaries from around the world. At one point, he was taken aside by the head butler, who quietly informed him that Lady So-and-so had been observed stealing a silver salt-shaker and placing it in her purse. “How do you suggest this matter be handled?” asked the butler.
“Leave it to me,” replied Churchill. The prime minister then made his way across the room, pausing along the way to pick up the matching pepper shaker from the dinner table. He stepped up to Lady So-and-so, took her by the arm, and guided her out of earshot of the other guests. Then he pulled the pepper shaker from his pocket and showed it to the woman. “My dear lady,” he said in a guilty-sounding voice, “I think we’ve been seen! Perhaps we’d better both put them back!”
Winston Churchill (You can find more anecdotes from him here and here. I can’t, for the life of me, find again that article where I read this anecdote first. After hours and hours of frustration, I found this version, which I think is the one that best approaches the one that originally captivated me, in this bizarre religious tract.)
Do you know more?
Techguru Esther DysonWP, EDGE (who, I just learned, is Freeman DysonWP’s daughter) on freedom under communist Russia (and why it was, bizarrely, like bestiality), online smut, intellectual property (long live intellectual process!), failure, and changing the world in a 1996 interview with Virginia Postrel for Reason mag.
I’ve been staring at this strip all day, pasted it on my wall, read all the strips from its parent webcomic (xkcd) —and still it dazzles me. It has got to be among the best I’ve ever read. Quirky, sexy, naive, upbeat—makes me happy every time.
Oh boy, I really love this strip. I’m going to be pasting it everywhere… :)
Dreams comes close after it; Pong, Donald Knuth, M.C. Hammer Slide, Words that end in gry, and Moral Relativity are also keepers; and both Escher Bracelet and Sudoku are almost single-panel-ly perfect in their simplicity.
Lo! I am weary of my wisdom,
like the bee that hath gathered too much honey;
I need hands outstretched to take it.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra EEM
I kept this pile of sketches in an envelope in a file cabinet and came across them while moving. I decided to reproduce the series here in this homemade book for several reasons. One, why not? The drawings were lonely and bored, and doing little good stuffed in darkness and kept from view. They are inconsequential doodles, but I’ve learned late in life that whatever marginal value they have can only be gathered by being shared. Two, the exercise of drawing photos is a good one to try and to disseminate. And Three, maybe others in the audience can tell me what these images mean. What don’t I see? Four, and most importantly, I really enjoyed these and maybe others would enjoy seeing them too. I hope so.
(↑ One of Kelly’s sketches ↑)
|
RSS
email
