You snooze, you lose.
May 31, 2011 Leave a comment
This is quite brilliant. What’s the cost of not getting out of bed? (via Notcot)
The Beastie Boys. Giving a little bit of hope to old, white men everywhere.
May 12, 2011 1 Comment
Fantastic in every way.
Gelatin Bouncing. A great video. And, coincidentally, my new nom de plume.
May 9, 2011 3 Comments
So it’s been quite a while since I posted anything. I’ve been ducking and diving, bobbing and weaving, rolling with the punches and generally bending in the breeze.
Anyway, here’s a video of what bouncing gelatin looks like in really slow motion. Really slow, like a winter’s day in Oamaru slow. Really slow, like me returning your call slow. Really slow, like 6200 fps slow.
It’s amazing. (Courtesy of Modernist Cuisine and NotCot)
Flattr – It’s like digital busking
February 26, 2011 Leave a comment
I really like the idea of Flattr.
It’s a micropayment system that allows you to make a small donation in appreciation of content you value. You set up a monthly amount to donate and at the end of the month that amount is divided between all the things you flattered.
There are three things I particularly like about this:
- ‘Like’ doesn’t distinguish. We need differing degrees of ‘like’. Just today I clicked ‘like’ on a mildly-amusing comment made by a friend in response to someone else’s even-less-mildy-amusing Facebook status update. But I also clicked ‘like’ on one of this wonderful series of articles by Nathan Rabin for AV Club. My first ‘like’ was for something completely inconsequential. My second was for a piece that gave me a great of pleasure, taught me something new about a band I thought I already knew well, and was clearly the result of a great deal of work and a lifetime’s enthusiasm. They don’t qualify for the same kind of ‘like’. And Flattr acknowledges this.
- I also like the image of digital busking, because that is sort of what blogging feels like. You write something, throw it out there, and see if someone passing by likes it. If they do they can throw a little something in your hat. It’s encouragement, but, importantly, it’s encouragement that might buy you a beer.
- I also really like the community of it. To be flattered, you have to be a flatterer. You have to be giving money in order to receive it. There is, by and large, something nicely collegial about the blogging community. But this adds another supportive dimension to it.
There’s a video that explains it in more detail here.
Irina Werning – Back to the Future
February 26, 2011 Leave a comment
I was sent this by my friend Artie the other day. It’s simple, and brilliant. Re-enacting photographs as accurately as possible, as Irina puts it, ‘inviting people to go back to their future’.
What can you do that’s of any consequence?
February 22, 2011 5 Comments
I grew up in Napier, the town that in 1931 suffered a devastating earthquake. It was, and hopefully will forever remain, New Zealand’s deadliest natural disaster.
The earthquake defined Napier – February 3rd, 1931 became its most infamous day, and the necessary rebuilding made Napier world famous for its Art Deco architecture. (It always struck me as cruelly ironic that a city that fell to the ground became famous for its buildings.)
I remember reading the story of a survivor, recorded, as I remember it, in a newspaper supplement commemorating an anniversary of the earthquake. I was in my early teens when I read it, about the age she had been when the earthquake struck. She described the terror of seeing buildings fall, the loneliness of standing in a school field wondering, the guilt of being alive.
But what she remembered most were friends, now 50 odd years dead, but old enough then to have been looking forward. She talked about friends who wanted to be builders, to enter the church, to be married, to sail, to keep books. Friends who wanted to see Paris, see a musical, see the All Blacks play. Her sadness, she said, was that it was those plans that were lost.
Like most people I’ve spent today feeling pretty helpless. You want to help, but seriously, what can you do? I’d give blood but the Blood Service says they have enough of that. I’ve given money, and I guess there can’t ever be enough of that. But at a practical level you can’t help but feel like you’re not doing, not giving, anything of consequence.
So I’m thinking about what a Napier earthquake survivor said. So much was lost in 1931, but it was the lost opportunity that still pained her 50 years later.
And that’s what you can give. Give a commitment to doing something big, to not losing your opportunity. What’s the one thing you know you desperately want to do? If you’re honest, you know what it is. Everyone does. On a summer Sunday afternoon, just before you drift into an unplanned nap, what’s the last thing you think of? The place you want to go, the song you want to write, the job you know you should be doing, the race you should have run? You know what it is. So do that.
Please send money. Please give blood when it’s needed. Please make beds available. But please do something with your life. That’s something of consequence you can do.
Where the Foursquare users at?
February 4, 2011 1 Comment
I really want to like Foursquare. But if I’m honest I don’t. It’s not really a problem with Foursquare. It’s a problem with Foursquare enthusiasts.
I tried Foursquare for a couple of months, used it to find a place to have lunch, became the Mayor of somewhere inconsequential, and then just kind of lost interest. I’m sure it’s a great idea, it just it didn’t deliver much to me at the time.
And then Foursquare enthusiasts started to get a little bit annoying. At a distance they’re cluttering up my timeline with irrelevant check-ins. In person they’re telling me how they can’t believe that they’ve checked into Melba 43 times in the last three days and they’re still not the mayor, or that “the most amazing thing happened the other day and, like, I was in O’Connell St, and a friend checked-in, and she was, like, in High St, and we were, like, maybe fifty feet away from each other and if it weren’t for Foursquare…… we’d never have known”. I’m sure they’re nice folk, those Foursquare users, just a bit zealoty.
Which is why I got quite excited about this – wheretheladies.at. It’s an app that let’s you find out where ‘the ladies’ are at, based on Foursquare check-ins at venues close to you (the App uses a complex, lady-gauging algorithm, that can determine the number of those check-ins that belong to ladies). This is great, not because I’m interested in an app that lets me find places where I know lots of ladies will be, but because surely there’s an opportunity for variation on the app that allows me to avoid places where lots of people who really like Foursquare are.
Because that’s a use for Foursquare I could get enthusiastic about.
The Bermuda Triangle of Productivity
January 30, 2011 1 Comment
So perfect, so painfully true. From the tumblr of Fuchsia Macaree (via notcot).
He returns. In a glorious blazer.
January 12, 2011 1 Comment
It’s been a couple of months. And like countless other people, I’ve resolved that this year I’ll blog more (or at least more regularly).
And at least as importantly for me, I’ve also resolved to return to dressing like a grown-up (partly inspired by my new favourite blogs/tumblrs, Mostexerent and Cooper Frederickson.)
So in keeping with my earlier pledge to spend money on things made properly, I had Ronald at RJB Design run me up this rather fetching blazer (to which I have done an awful disservice with my amateur photography). Single-breasted and peak-lapelled (finished with a very pleasing pick stitch), it also sports a slightly narrower sleeve and a ticket pocket. But I think I’m most fond of the buttons, emblazoned with the New Zealand coat of arms, my heart worn on my sleeve.
Somewhere, Rick Astley smiles.
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