There is something wrong with teddy. Or with Ze Frank.
Creepy, but it’s mesmerizing.
# I’m posting this here for me to remember the brutality of teddy’s heart’s heart.
#Life
“Make social media about you — not your ego.”
–
Shawn Blanc, from his Social Me-Me-Media
It’s interesting to think about how we use our social networks nowadays. For those who grew up without them, it’s basically just a place to catch up, reminisce, be part of a world that once was.
But for those who grew up with them, it’s their lives. The talk about what they think about, how they feel, their wants and needs in life—any time, any place, any context, all the time. While in It’s being part of a world that still is.
That’s why it’s becoming ever more easy for our personality to extend into our online profiles. Our habits, our dreams, our speaking styles, our attitudes are all becoming easily reflected in how we interact with each other online. And that’s where we all get our context from: online. There are no body languages to interpret, no intonations to be careful about; and more often than not we get to be more and more misinterpreted, both in our words and our intent. We could be simply talking about we want to have, like a new gadget or something, and be easily called as someone egoistic.
It’s clear that a tide is turning: morality, ethics, sociology will once be reevaluated as we venture into this new public space we call our social media.
I just hope it happens soon enough. So that I may be freer to post what’s really on my mind.
“…Great design is the product of iteration, and that process does not exist in a vacuum, but in a world full of prior context and evolving lines of reason.”
– Marcus Edvalson, from his Lesson From a Plastic Cup
“I didn’t do it [writing] because I thought I would make some money or get paid to do it. Thirty-five years later, I still do it because I don’t really have a choice, because I don’t really know any other way. Writing, painting, creating –creators don’t do it because they want to make money. Creativity is not a profession, it is a gift. It was, is and always will be a very selfish act.”
– Om Malik, from his Doing that one thing.
“The pinnacle of design for me comes with ruthless simplicity. It is that point when you can reduce a product to its very essence.”
–
Om Malik, from his Why I love certain objects and services
I too, have been striving hard to get the best of what I can afford. And I hope I could do so more in the future.
All I Want for Christmas Is…A Little Space - WSJ.com »
Introverts are often urged to “fix” their personalities, to come out of their shells. But introversion is not the same as shyness, and it doesn’t need to be fixed. Shyness is fear and anxiety in social situations, introversion is just low motivation to get out and mingle. Psychologists consider introversion inborn and a “stable” trait that stays constant throughout our lifetime.
Of course, introversion and extroversion are extremes on a continuum, with most of us falling somewhere in between. But even though roughly half of Americans fall on the introverted side of the scale according to various studies, extroversion has been held in higher esteem. So when extroverts and introverts skirmish, extroverts usually come out victorious, holding the moral high ground because they “love people” and are not “stuck up” or “surly,” like those introverts, sulking in the corner.
Finally, someone understands. Introversion is only as normal as extroversion; it’s also a gift, if I say so myself. Happy holidays, introverts.
“It’s easy to want to win…I implore you to contest. Moreover, I implore you to fail—intentionally. To lose. To step into the elevator of your imagination and press down. To turn down the alley just to see if the darker shapes make better shadows. To knock yourself into a creative abyss for no other reason than suspecting there might just be something good down there, and that failing big time might just be the only way to find it.”
– Mike Chase, from his In Defense of Failure on Stemmings.
It’s time to begin, isn’t it?
I get a little bit bigger but then I’ll admit
I’m just the same as I was
Now don’t you understand
That I’m never changing who I am
“And all this because we just want to understand him. Because we are not him. We almost certainly, most of us, are not great men or women. We want to know how he rose to that rank and what we can take away that may help us do the same. And the select few who are bound for greatness will likely be no less fascinated and will want to look to him as a model or a cautionary tale. Everybody can take something from Steve.”
–
Mat Honan, from his Why We’ll Never Stop Talking About Steve Jobs
# Just don’t read the comments.
1. Experience the story.
Know what it tells you. Is it about dogma? Is it telling you to do something? Is it a celebration of human interaction? Is it just observation? Does it make sense?
2. Watch the video.
Be amazed at the use of macro photography and clever editing. Guess how much footage was needed for this production. Note the number of cuts in the sequence. Think of its flaws; its raw qualities.
3. Listen to the song.
Listen to its different instruments and how it was arranged. Research on the lyrics. Know who is behind the vocals and the instruments. Listen, earnestly.
4. Cry.
Cry at the sheer beauty of it all.
5. Be inspired.
Go and make your own.
There was a time when I was crazy with alignment guides.
I could say I’m still the same.
Waiting for a Rocket Ship to Come
One of the many reasons I went to Engineering school, specifically Electronics Engineering, is that even though it would be hard and testing for me, I know it will put me closer to that path only the bravest before me could go: and that is to push boundaries of human capability.
Decades ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin told the world that yes, we could fly to space and into the moon. They pushed the human envelope of capability. What astronomers only observed for years, what poets only romanticized for a long time, what ordinary humans only looked at at night–they stepped on that. What a feeling it must have been. What a THRILLING feeling it must have been.
I’ve always loved Architecture; ever since I was a kid I dreamed of building houses. But there is a part of me that wishes to do more, that wishes to make an impact on a lot more lives than I ever could being an architect; that wishes to be on the moon myself.
And the path to that silent, unconscious dream, I see in Engineering. Going to the moon for me is being able to create something that will be the foundation for further evolution of man as an integrated being. Going to the moon is being able to create something that could affect humanity universally. Going to the moon is being at the forefront of innovation, dreaming dreams no one has ever thought of before.
I see this clearly now, because Neil Armstrong died. I never thought of it as this before, but perhaps this is where my heart is consistently telling me to go. It was just intuition then, a fortunate change of heart from picking Architecture as my college degree, a blessed confusion: but I see clearly now.
I have a long road to take. But I guess I’ll stop living on luck and chance if I want to succeed. I’ll not wait on a rocket ship anymore. I’ll build it myself.
I hope the future me reads this, and tells me: hey there, we’re on the moon.
I play with common, everyday objects and pretend they’re spaceships like in Star Wars. Vriing. Zooooooom. Bugggshhhh.
…
This is very heart warming in all the possible ways. This is for the kid, in all of us.
Spiderman
I just watched Spiderman earlier today and I can’t seem to take off my mind the question “Could I be a better man if I had a family with me?”.
Of course, it didn’t start with that question. Most of my formative years, I have always wondered how life could have been better for me if I had both my parents with me as I grew up. I imagined a life where I wouldn’t be held accountable for my actions; where I could easily be told not to do something that is wrong or be thrust into success by motivation from two of life’s most important people.
As I grew older, I realized who we are isn’t all about how our parents raised us. While our parents are present for much of our lives, when we get older we are exposed to different kinds of people; the same people our parents either warned us not to be with or encouraged us to be like. That’s why I don’t like hearing stuff such as “ganyan ka ba pinalaki ng mga magulang mo?”. It’s probably mean to be saying this, but most of the time I would reply “ganito rin ba ang sinasabi mo sa mga anak mo?”.
But then again, I grew older. I became more responsible of myself and my actions, even thinking about how my actions affect my family. I learned how to tolerate certain kinds of people, and to stand up to those kinds who needed a punch in the face. I fell in love, repeatedly; fell out of love, repeatedly; moved on, repeatedly. I learned to accept that no matter how much experience we gain, no matter how much we think we already know about the secret formula to life… life one-ups us almost every time. I learned how hard it is to follow one’s own advice, I learned how much harder it is to be the one who has to forgive, rather than the one to be forgiven.
I could even say, that perhaps, I learned how hard it is to find your roots when you needed them the most. Most aren’t probably vocal as I am about it, but most of the time people of my age and day are probably thinking about who they really are, and how they fit in a world when they still haven’t proven anything and could still fail so much it could destroy futures.
It’s true what they say, life reveals more of its facets as you grow older. Now, even ‘little things’ from when you were still a kid such as a photograph can trigger emotional responses through the roof. You reminisce. You laugh. You cry. You get inspired. Even watching a movie can get you to pieces.
But perhaps for now, I could tell myself that who we are, who we are going to be, is because of how we made/make ourselves to be; no matter how much we get influenced, external factors could only do so much to steer us in different directions. The choice was, is and will always be ours to make.
Sigh.
For now, the question is “Could I have been a better man if I had a family with me?”. I don’t know how much more questions I will have to ask in the future but here’s to more questions about ourselves in the future.
# I miss you, mom.
“I get asked all the time by people what MacBook I would recommend to buy. It used to be an easy answer, but it got a lot more complicated today.”
–
MG Siegler, from his The Mac’s Mid-Life Crisis
This quote perfectly summarizes how I feel about the Retina Macbook Pro. It’s hard to imagine that just a few days ago, my dream Macbook was one with 8GB of RAM, 500GB or more of hard disk space and 1GB or more of video card memory. Post-WWDC, I think I may have just gotten what I dreamed about: the $2199 Macbook Pro has everything I wished for, and it got cheaper (compared to the previous-gen pricing). But when you put it beside the Retina Macbook Pro….
“I think I could live on 256GB of hard disk memory.”
Basically, when you compare the old Macbook Pro to the new Retina one, at the same price point, the thing that you have to sacrifice the most is the hard disk space. You’re looking at 256GB versus 750GB. As MG said, it used to be an easy decision which Macbook to buy. But now it’s really testing.
With the line of work I indulge myself in (engineering and creative media) it’s a no-brainer to opt for that Retina display. I wouldn’t have to squint at the screen, I don’t have to look for an HDTV to appreciate my videos, I could check even without zooming into a photo if it’s out of focus or not.
But that said, I don’t think I could easily survive on 256GB. Producing video-related work is by far the most expensive task (in terms of hard disk memory) I’ve ever encountered. I’ve only handled HD videos a few times in the past, but even five-minute projects could take up to 50GB of project files. So I thought, I could easily just connect and external hard disk and work from there.
Wrong. Doing so would negate the benefits of working on an ultra-fast SSD. Sure I could load my apps faster, etc but still, loading the media files required for a project would take some time.
Apple did a brilliant job with pricing for the trade-offs in these new machines. At the $2199 price point, you can’t upgrade your flash memory storage. For $500 dollars more you get 512GB minimum, upgradeable to 756GB. But $500 for another $256 GB? I don’t see the point. Especially when you think about the non-Retina Macbook Pro and its 750GB of memory.
Well, it was just announced, benchmarks are yet to be done, real-world usage would still be evaluated, and teardowns are still waiting to happen. Maybe a little waiting would be beneficial (especially when you take into account that first generation hardware can sometimes have defects).
Perhaps I should instead get started on how to earn that $2199 first and stop ranting about which Macbook Pro to buy (alas, the truth hurts… the pocket.).
