David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start & Design for Hackers.
What’s the fastest and easiest way to manipulate the characteristics of your brush in Photoshop?
This will save you tons of time when using the brush tool.
You may have noticed that I now have Google Adsense ads on my site, and, of course, I have an Amazon Associates account. Of course, the objective of this blog is not to make money. There are certainly more efficient ways to do so. I want to organize my thoughts, share them with others, exchange thoughts with others, contribute to adding semantic value to the web, and hopefully have my thoughts read again many years from now.
That said, I worry myself sometimes when I make decisions that may not provide the best and most honest content possible, in order to have the opportunity to chip a couple cents out of my hosting costs. The main place this may happen, is that when I am talking about a movie that isn’t available on DVD yet, I link to IMDB, which I consider to be the best resource on movies, however, if the movie is out on DVD, I link to that item on Amazon, through my associates account.
I promise, this is as greedy as I will get. Now if I overnight happen to become an expert on real estate (“real estate” probably being a pretty high-paying AdWord string), then you know I’ve lost it.
I hope you find my remarks on books, music, technology and whatever other artifacts that may be linked to on Amazon as relevant and interesting as my comments on anything else. As a critic of Affluenza, I couldn’t, in good conscience, push products I didn’t feel were useful. I also hope that the contents of the Google ads are relevant and unintrusive.
Last week, AIA Omaha presented Amory Lovins, one of the authors of Natural Capitalism, who spoke about the concept of Natural Capitalism (the entire book is available online at the Natural Capitalism website).
Natural Capitalism recognizes that there are four types of capital in a functioning economy.
“Capitalism, as practiced, is a financially profitable, nonsustainable aberration in human development. What might be called “industrial capitalism” does not fully conform to its own accounting principles. It liquidates its capital and calls it income. It neglects to assign any value to the largest stocks of capital it employs—the natural resources and living systems, as well as the social and cultural systems that are the basis of human capital.”
Amory also explains that in the first Industrial Revolution, there was a surplus of resources and a shortage of people, and that in the next Industrial Revolution, there is a surplus of people and a shortage of resources.
I have not read the book yet, but I imagine it presents even more working models of Natural Capitalism than even Amory’s lecture did. One good example was Interface Flooring (yes the same Interface Flooring that I created my first carpet tile sample rug from). When you think about it, you don’t want to own carpet. You just want to use it for awhile. Apparently Interface is now providing flooring services. They’ve developed carpets that can be re-manufactured with no waste. They install the carpet, come back every few months and replace the worn tiles (carpet doesn’t wear evenly, of course), and re-manufacture those tiles. The result is much less impact on the environment, and its even more economically efficient.
Amory Lovins also has a house in Old Snowmass, Colorado that has no mechanical (heating) system. Oh, and he farms bananas in that house, and his energy costs are negative…with technology that is 15 years old.
He is a brilliant speaker, and is clearly brilliant in general and I look forward to learning more about his ideas. I will keep you posted.
One of my readers has pointed out to me a Chess game that shows you what it’s thinking. Check it out.
With one eye glued to your TV tonight, glue your other eye to this well-designed interactive map illustrating party distribution for the 2004 election. There are also graphics illustrating past elections, and the progression of approval ratings throughout the campaign. The graphic when you click on “electoral votes” above the map communicates very well.
Friday night I saw Alexander Payne‘s newest masterpiece, Sideways in which the lonely, divorced Miles (Paul Giamatti) takes his soon to be wed friend, Jack (Thomas Haden Church), on a week-long bachelor party of sorts through California’s wine country.
In preparation for dressing up as Holden Caulfield for Halloween (I actually went as Pedro from Napoleon Dyanmite), I have been re-reading JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, and I noticed an analogous relationship between at least a portion of Catcher and Alexander Payne’s movies (most notably, Election, About Schmidt, and Sideways). In Sideways, there is a scene where Maya (Virginia Madsen) explains to Miles that she likes wine because it is living, and is different every day. The day that you open it, it tastes different than it would be on any other day. Also, in Catcher, there is a part where Holden, while walking to the Museum of Natural History ponders:
“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you’d be so much older or anything. It wouldn’t be that, exactly. You’d just be different, that’s all. You’d have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you’d have a new partner. Or you’d have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you’d heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you’d just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you’d be different in some way–I can’t explain what I mean.”
This alone seems like a rather weak link, but then I remembered, didn’t Mr. McAllister (Matthew Broderick) get a job at the Musuem of Natural History after he moved from Omaha? There is also a scene in About Schmidt where Warren (Jack Nicholson) visits The Great River Platte Road Archway Monument, and views exhibits similar to those described in Catcher. Perhaps even Warren’s deceased wive’s Hummel figures serve as this static artifact that contrasts with the constant change in the lives of the characters surrounding it.
I’m sure this concept of people being in a constant state of flux, contrasted by something unchanging is a literary theme that originates from before Salinger, but It made me wonder.
What do you think?
This month’s Wired includes a CD full of music with Creative Commons licenses. You can download the tracks for free, share them all you want, and even sample music to create your own tracks, which you can then share and even (for most of the tracks), sell.
Artists on the CD include Beastie Boys, Chuck D, The Rapture, and I was please to see the greatest band on the planet, Spoon in the mix.
Remember Scott? Renee investigated Scott a little further than I did, and discovered Scott’s blog. There are some great discussions on there about general etiquette. One particular post about the Caller ID Debate is thought and comment provoking.
I think prescriptive, laundry list, advice like this can be dangerous, however. It sort of reminds me of reading an article on “How to Get Laid” in “Maxim” or “Playboy”: -furrow your brow and try to look sensitive – act like you are listening -say “I understand” alot. The thing is that the advice Scott gives are things a considerate person would do, and following the advice (unless you memorize alot of advice) won’t necessarily make you a considerate person.
But, it all is built upon a logical framework of considerateness, and if one were to read enough of this advice, they may pick up on this logic and apply it to new situations. It seems Scott may be aware of this, though. In his “Caller ID Debate” post, he points out the offending action, and then explains why it is inconsiderate, thus assisting the reader in developing a logical framework of considerateness.
I’ve found a great new use for the old carpet tile samples my Architecture firm gets. I taped together some matching samples to make a rug for my pad.
You may have noticed that I haven’t posted for awhile. Don’t worry, I’m not a blog abandoner, I have been investing my blogging time in transferring my blog from blogger to Movable Type, and it has been a much more involved process than I had anticipated. If you’ve been considering making the move, I suggest that if you are in fact going to do it, do it as soon as possible.