12frogs

Does it matter if you set out to do a project thinking you’ll probably do it badly?

JS — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:19:25 +0000

“…increasing numbers of people crave some justification to be alone and think about their shit for at least one month of their lives, because society in the modern (i.e., capitalistic) era demands a lot of fucking attention just to survive, and you can easily let your entire life slip away without pondering the (generally unproductive in the economic sense, but intellectually rewarding albeit probably depressing) questions of why we’re even here to begin with, what the purpose of life is, and so on. So yeah, writing any kind of novel is a tiny revolution, and that alone is a reason for hope”

Where’s my iMoleskine?

JS — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:41:45 +0000

Before rumours of the Apple tablet hit fever pitch, I kept wondering who needs a tablet? Now that the iPad has been announced, I’m still wondering. I suspect tablets are a solution looking for a problem. This isn’t necessarily bad; I think you could’ve said the same thing about iPods. Slashdot thought they were lame, back in the day.

In three to five years, we’re probably going to say who needs a laptop? (Or a desktop… I’m pretty sure they still make them, but I haven’t owned one in years.)

I don’t think tablets will be good for specialized input or manipulation. Heavy-duty writers will still want physical keyboards; screens will be too small for visual power users with DSLRs or hi-def videos to see what is really going on in their images in post-processing.

Tablets and tablet-sized hardware (Kindle, Netbooks) are devices for media consumption. It is easy to imagine watching a tv show on a tablet, playing games, accessing magazine subscriptions, news streams, or following the flow of activity of all the people you are connected to online on a tablet. Derek Powazek hoped the iPad would be the device that created an environment such that “publishers like me might finally be able to sell something digital that people would actually buy.”

I can’t help it, I’m just not all that interested in a media consumption device.

Not to say it couldn’t change how we consume media — it might — and I do think it has revolutionary potential when it comes to education. Decent screen reading with full color/motion display coupled with smart note-taking overlays could be the end of textbooks. Tablets could be a boon to self-paced learners and enthusiasts — imagine a field guide that helps you identify birds by song, or can tell you the name of the flower you are looking at, or guide you back to the trail if you get lost. (The “as good as a book” reading experience on digital device for 100+ pages of text still isn’t here yet, but maybe that shouldn’t be the holy grail for these devices.)

Not that the iPad could do these things today, it can’t. I agree with Powazek’s assessment: “it’s a stumble in the right direction.”

I want a device that isn’t just about media consumption, but media curation and creation. The iPad is partway there. Add a camera, maybe a microphone, make lengthier text input easy, run multiple apps at once — lifestreaming really takes off. It’s a diary you can seletively unlock and share.

The tablet could be the 21st century notebook. It’s snapping a picture and quickly drawing notes on it, sharing that idea, and refining it. It’s never losing another napkin sketch. It’s a moleskine with infinite pages and search. That’s what I want.

I have always loved snow

JS — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:21:04 +0000

It’s snowing here in Boston right now

Linchpin light

JS — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:50:30 +0000

I finished reading Seth Godin’s new book Linchpin this weekend, and woke up thinking about it this morning.

There are quite a few diagrams in the book, so maybe that is why I came up with this as a way to describe what it’s about:

I want to write more about the book, but I want to do some rereading first, some giving it time to settle. I twittered a few quotes as I was reading that I’ll share again:

“Art changes posture and posture changes innocent bystanders.”

“lizard brain is the reason you’re afraid, the reason you don’t do all the art you can, the reason you don’t ship when you can”

“art is the act of navigating without a map”

It’s worth spending time reading this book, and worth even more putting the ideas in it into daily practice. As Seth reminds us, “real artists ship”.

lonesome animals

JS — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 03:29:36 +0000

“We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say – and to feel – ‘Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.’”
– John Steinbeck

via boars and fury, who got it from blink, and it’s gone

ghosts in my machine

JS — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 01:40:13 +0000

I’ve seen too much
I know too much
I hurt too much
I feel too much
I dread too much
I dream too much
I’m caught up by the ghosts in my machine

I missed Annie Lennox’s last studio album in back in 2007, but I’m really liking Songs Of Mass Destruction. It came out a couple of years ago, but I just found “Ghosts In My Machine” and the other tracks on the album this weekend, on lala. Despite preferring to get music only as bits, I didn’t click with the service the first time around. I’m enjoying it now, because:

listening to an entire song I’m interested in is so much better than a short clip (the 30 second snippets happen after you’ve played it once)
the browsing is better than iTunes, and surprisingly faster
playing a whole album is possible with one click

I like the pricing model, too: 10 cents for web-only listening, then usually 99 cents to download an mp3, with credit for web payment if you did that. Most of my songs weren’t DRMed, so I moved them to lala too, letting me play my music anywhere, even on someone else’s computer. It’s no wonder Apple bought them. I hope they don’t fuck it up.

I’ve been enjoying dreck I don’t really need to buy (remember Hall & Oates?) as well as poking around and discovering new to me things. There’s a visible activity stream in lala, so anyone who wants to could see specifics about the dreck I listen to. Repeatedly. The activity stream makes plain I have obsessive quirks, as I can listen dozen of times in a day — ok fine, in a hour or so — to the same one or two songs.

Anyone else using lala? Do you have any recommendations to make?

Left to my own devices, I wind up listening to a woman who appeared with an orange crewcut and black leather eye mask on the folded paper cover of a cassette I bought twenty five years ago. And I like it.

I am not immune to the year in review meme

JS — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:34:52 +0000

books

Of the thirty-odd books I read in 2009, well over half were short story collections. So it isn’t surprising most of my favorite books turned out to be story collections: Demons in the Spring and Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir by Joe Meno, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson, and Elephants in our Bedroom by Michael Czyzniejewski. The Great Paper Caper (“…mystery, crime, alibis, paper planes, a forest, and a bear who wanted to win”) rounds out my list of favorite books.

photography

My standard walk around lens is the Canon 50mm, but I got to know the lensbaby better, as I took it to some of my favorite photo spots in Salem and Rockport. I also decided on my next lens (the Canon 10-20mm wide angle) because I had so much fun when I rented one during my summer vacation.

I also experimented with creating new types of images. I spent some time taking abstract photos, which I’ve enjoyed. I created more diptychs, and played around with composites. (My contribution to Utata’s last big project was a series of composites.)

geeky

Things I started using this year that I really like:

MindNode is the first mind-mapping software I’ve ever liked — so I actually use it
Superfast and easy to use mockup creation tool Balsamiq
MAMP, which lets me run WordPress locally
I never thought I’d find a use for email-to-blog hosted platform like posterous, but it turns out I love it — I’m using it for a visual bookmarking blog.
Gruml is a Google Reader app for Mac users, and how I’m reading feeds these days. NetNewsWire started syncing with Google, which made me start using it, which led to me using this client instead. The sync really is good, and the sharing features are built in, though I confess I don’t use them very often. I’m still a save it on delicious person at heart, I guess.
Ommwriter showed me I have room for more than one minimalist, distraction-blocking text editor in my life (WriteRoom is the other, and TextMate is my workhorse.)

blogging ideas

Some folks like to say blogging is dead, now that everyone is on twitter (everyone being people who aren’t geeks — but still not my wife) or using facebook (everyone bitches about it, but never leaves) instead. I don’t think so. Plenty of folks have much to contribute on blogs, here’s just a slice of what has stayed with me this year:

Sasha Dichter writes about nonprofits, storytelling, what’s wrong with focusing on overhead ratios and other thought-provoking ideas about changing the world.

Tim O’Reilly’s ideas about working on stuff that matters is something I keep coming back to. It is and isn’t about nonprofits, too.

Bud Caddell’s how to be happy in business venn diagram made the rounds, deservedly so. I know I want to figure out how to spend even more energy in the overlap of what I do well, what I want to do, and what I can be paid to do — don’t you?

what about you?

What did you do? What did you pay attention to?

These fine websites update more often than I do

JS — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 03:22:12 +0000

Some blogs I’ve subscribed to recently:

Erin Fitzgerald’s Rarely Likable “a litblog for dilettantes” has linkbucket posts that are actually interesting and not just bloggy filler.
At I Have Become Accustomed To Rejection, writer Roxane Gay blogs about her work not getting accepted to places she sends it, but also about creepy dolls and wanting to ride a dog, and posts snapshot too, and it is really enough to make you wonder why she needs a rejection blog.
Frank Chimero has a blog: “Writing and ephemera related to the process of creative work. A blog about the creative act, not the artifact.”
Jack Cheng’s tumblr Notes to Self
Julien Smith’s blog in over your head. He’s the co-author (with Chris Brogan) of Trust Agents.
The Hey, Hot Shot! Blog says “it’s the best thing going for emerging photographers” and for folks going for the gallery world art thing, that’s probably true. I see things I otherwise wouldn’t that I often want to see more of there.
If I weren’t enjoying Casey A. Gollan: Notes + Links so much, I’d be bitterly envious of it.

communing with books

JS — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:17:05 +0000

“Your brain instinctively and naturally attempts to build something given whatever world it’s currently in. In a bookstore, with effort, I can shed the somethings of my everyday and find the nothing that I don’t know I’m looking for. (And that rules)”

what the hell, calendar?

JS — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:52:49 +0000

“I am at a loss. I don’t know where this week has gone. But it’s gone. I think we met, but very, very briefly. I think I liked it but am fairly certain the feeling was not mutual.”