September 2009
49 posts
“I know how I should work, but I always seem to let it slip. What I should do is...”
– howiwrite - Toby Litt
African Dynamo | GOOD →
“Months later, in front of a crowd of disbelievers who had scoffed at him for behaving strangely, William lashed his machine to the top of a 16-foot tower made from blue gum tree branches. As the blades began turning in the breeze, a car light bulb in William’s hand started to glow.”
Inspiring…
“I’ve recently started using the Summarize Service built into OSX a lot. It’s...”
– Paste Interactive » Blog Archive » Using Summarize on Mac OSX to Read Faster
As useful as it sounds, I’ll probably geek out with this for the next week or so then drop it before it beds down in my workflow.
Having said that, these kinds of touches in OS X are worth celebrating.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-9-27) →
Aardvarck (91)
Zero 7 (50)
Fink (40)
Dimlite (28)
Organized Konfusion (26)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
“ideas are a dime a dozen. execution is priceless.”
– International Shark Monastery | find your inner shark
“Detective Constable Leanne Shepherd was ordered by the education watchdog Ofsted to end her private arrangement with her friend, DC Lucy Jarrett, or they would face prosecution. The Thames Valley Police detectives – who gave birth within a few months of each other – share a job at Aylesbury Police Station in Buckinghamshire. But the mothers, both 32, have now been told by Ofsted that...
“In the end, I want all of my data in one place with some machine learning in the background and the ability to analyze and visualize easily and thoroughly. We’re not quite there yet, but I’m looking forward to when we do. Information overload? No. Better-educated decisions and a completely different view of ourselves and our surroundings? Definitely.”
A Perfect Personal...
Enter the Data Geek
This won’t really help with the image you have in your head of me as a tech-obsessed geek, but I hereby declare a growing interest in tracking personal statistics.
It started this morning after my post-workout run. The training app I use on my iPod (Running Trainer Lite) doesn’t do much with data by way of analysing progress, so I went looking for alternatives. I’d prefer not...
“26: Be Patient. Life does not use a simple linear equation: effort in=results...”
– Nicholas Bate: How To Be Brilliant 1-50: 26
Nicholas, I salute you. I’m particularly fond of 5, 8, 14, 18, 22, 24. And I love the repetition of the title at the end of the idea - it gives each idea a ritualistic on mantra-esque quality. Brilliant.
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders...”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson (via pie0) (via quote-book) (via poets-corner)
“Looking back, my life seems like one long obstacle race, with me as the chief...”
– Jack Paar (via minimalmac)
“My workspace, whether it be digital (on the computer) or physical (where I’m...”
– Reader’s Setup: Grant Blakeman – Shawn Blanc
I’ve been thinking about moving apartments recently (or ‘flats’, as we call them in the UK) and about office space. While Grant Blakeman’s spaces don’t make me drool, the theory behind his setup pretty much does. Time...
“I’ve inherited the hoarding gene.”
– 4 Steps to Better Filing – FreelanceSwitch
Yep. That’s me. Thanks, mum.
Concentration
Francesca asked me about mac apps that help to kill distractions yesterday. Here’s a shortlist:
Concentrate - ”To start, create an activity (design, study, write, etc) and choose actions (shown below) to run every time you concentrate. When ready, just click “concentrate.” All your distractions will disappear and a timer will appear to help you stay focused.”
Think -...
“I caught this shocking post by Stefan (via Ilicco) over at IntoMobile about T-Mobile doubling the USA roaming cost for their UK customers.”
(via: Mobile Industry Review)
It’s currently approximately 50-75p for me to make or receive a call when I’m in the US. Come October 26th, I’ll be paying £1.20. And this happens just before I’m due to take the highest...
Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction →
Daily (distraction free) writing session? Check. Lo-fi writing app? Check. Healthy fear of realtime communications while writing? Check…
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-9-20) →
Mendelayev (23)
Dorian Concept (19)
I’m Not a Gun (19)
Kobol (17)
Elan Tamara (15)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
WatchUh oh. Dim’s at it again.
“Honor your poet, one of
Moses’ shattered commandments.”
– —Gerald Stern, Not God After All (Autumn House Press, 2004)
ursprache: lost word of god
“We realize that Bet Your Followers isn’t your typical Twitter app. We created it...”
– Bet Your Followers
Oh. Yes.
“You have to roll up your sleeves and be a stonecutter before you can become a...”
– Philip Gerard (via ninakix)
“Now Light, where it exists, can exert an action, and, in certain circumstances,...”
– William Henry Fox Talbot (via astroblemes)
Earlier this year, I conducted a time-tracking experiment. Simply put, I wrote up my actual schedule at the end of each day for a week and posted it as a Facebook note. E.g.
- Process incoming email (20) (fall back into bad email habits: mail app stays open in the background, instead of being shut down after initial check in and only opened at 2 or 3 key points during the day) - Blog/post...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-9-13) →
Mendelayev (70)
Andre Lodemann (23)
Cycom (15)
UV (11)
Pacific Heights (11)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
One year after Hurricane Ike - The Big Picture →
If you’re not already familiar with The Big Picture, what have you been wasting your internet hours on? Thisseries of images, one year on from Hurricane Ike, is particularly striking for the juxtaposition of then and now.
“Which comes first, the poems or the project? Do you write poems, and then try to...”
– Boox : Joel Brouwer : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation
I’ve been having a series of conversations related to this question recently. In the Vineyard (the international community of writers I established with Alison White) I’ve been pushing people for responses to...
“Don’t look at doing the dishes as a chore; start seeing it as daily practice. Do...”
– Doing the Dishes— Jack Cheng
Wax on, wax off…
Watch
“The work is fraught with challenges, including burnout. But every once in a...”
– Writers Giving Back: Pass the Torch | Poets & Writers
I do a fair amount of teaching, and a lot of work around placing other poets in education. Sometimes it helps to remember why.
The article posits three questions in its opening paragraph, but while it tackles “why do they do...
Takuan Soho wrote: “The mind must always be in the state of ‘flowing,’ for when it stops anywhere that means the flow is interrupted and it is this interruption that is injurious to the well-being of the mind. In the case of the swordsman, it means death. When the swordsman stands against his opponent, he is not to think of the opponent, nor of himself, nor of his enemy’s sword movements. He just...
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned about living a life it’s that you need to keep...”
– Jonathan Coulton (via meaghano via marco) (via jackcheng)
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-9-6) →
:brownstudy (24)
The Invisible (14)
Dorian Concept (12)
Prefuse 73 (10)
Elan Tamara (8)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
“‘To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’. Or send...”
– The Word Is … “Law” | Matthew Cornell - Time Management, Productivity Expert
“For years, studies have shown that people can derive significant health benefits from writing about their thoughts and feelings for 15 minutes each day. In today’s overly scheduled world, researchers from the University of Missouri tried to figure out what’s the minimum time commitment that people need to benefit from writing (pdf). They found that people were healthier after just two...
“When things are packaged into a list, we have a habit of reading one thing,...”
– 51 ways to change your life
Not sure if Jack Cheng just updated his site, but all of his posts since February 2008 just popped up in my feedreader. That’s not as bad as it sounds - he hasn’t been the most prolific blogger, and he’s got some really sound ideas (quality vs...
How I discovered my Secret Powers (an essay in... →
Looking forward to reading the rest of this as the week progresses…
