Ian On The Red Dot

We have become blind to progress:

Louis CK being interview by Conan – ‘Everything is so amazing and nobody is happy.’

Why are you so terribly disappointing?

What happened to my bonus? What happened to my job? What happened to my country? Why can’t it all go the way it’s supposed to go? You mean having a kid won’t solve my marriage problems? Why don’t these drugs make me feel better? Where’s that goddamn waiter with my salad? Have you seen the stupid weather today? Is this really all there is?

Maybe this, then, is the ultimate upshot of our endless, self-wrought swirl of sour disappointment, of never having our impossible needs fully met, of constantly being thwarted in our desire to have the world revolve around our exact set of specifications and desires.

Our disappointment begins to curdle, to turn back on itself, poison the heart, turn us nasty and low. It shifts from merely being a national mood or general temperament, into a way of being. A wiring, deep and harmful and permanent. It’s all very disappointing, really.

This is a story of how a wife dealt with a husband who said he stopped loving her:

It’s a story about hearing your husband say “I don’t love you anymore” and deciding not to believe him.

Although it may sound ridiculous to say “Don’t take it personally” when your husband tells you he no longer loves you, sometimes that’s exactly what you have to do.

Instead of issuing ultimatums, yelling, crying or begging, I presented him with options. I created a summer of fun for our family and welcomed him to share in it, or not — it was up to him. If he chose not to come along, we would miss him, but we would be just fine, thank you very much. And we were.

And, yeah, you can bet I wanted to sit him down and persuade him to stay. To love me. To fight for what we’ve created. You can bet I wanted to.

But I didn’t.

I barbecued. Made lemonade. Set the table for four. Loved him from afar.

Why did I start this blog?

I’ve been pondering this question for some time ever since I read these posts by Juzzywuzzy and Ridz.

I first bought this domain to be part of a gift to my gf. I wanted to encourage her to showcase her work here. You can see the flower arrangements that she has been doing over there.

I started the blog initially as a way to share my thoughts with my gf as well as fulfill the need to write. As the months passed, the blog evolved and I started paying more interest in the happenings of the local blogosphere.

Things over the last few months have created a deep sense of dissatisfaction within me with regards to the direction of my professional life. On one hand I’m totally enjoying my job, I’ve met a whole bunch of interesting people and became closer to some very smart people who I’m learning a lot from. On the other hand, I’m just staying the course with no real vision of a destination. I have many pet projects that I do on the side which will never see the light of day because I’m too much of a tinkerer and not much of an artist (because real artists ship).

This is an advice I have to take with regards to my projects:

“You guys have been working on this stuff for months now, another couple weeks isn’t going to make that much of a difference. You may as well get it over with. Just make it as good as you can. You better get back to work!”

My blogging is a reflection of my life (or lack of one) – its existence and content is damning evidence
of how much I’ve become part of a problem that I loathe.

Politics, celebrity gossip, business headlines, tech punditry, odd news, and user-generated content.

These are the chew toys that have made me sad and tired and cynical.

Each, in its own way, contributes to the imperative that we constantly expand our portfolio of shallow but strongly-held opinions about nearly everything. Then we’re supposed to post something about it. Somewhere.

I want to be better.

So, yes. I am cutting way back on trips to the steam table of half-finished, half-useful, half-ideas that I both make and consume. And, with respect, I encourage you to consider doing the same; especially if that all-you-can-eat buffet of snark and streaming produces (or encourages) anything short of your “A” game.

What makes you feel less bored soon makes you into an addict. What makes you feel less vulnerable can easily turn you into a dick. And the things that are meant to make you feel more connected today often turn out to be insubstantial time sinks — empty, programmatic encouragements to groom and refine your personality while sitting alone at a screen.

What worries me are the consequences of a diet comprised mostly of fake-connectedness, makebelieve insight, and unedited first drafts of everything. I think it’s making us small. I know that whenever I become aware of it, I realize how small it can make me. So, I’ve come to despise it.

With this diet metaphor in mind, I want to, if you like, start eating better. But, I also want to start growing a tastier tomato — regardless of how easy it is to pick, package, ship, or vend. The tomato is the story, my friend.

This is blogging advice I want to keep daily:

Find your obsession. Every day, explain it to one person you respect. Edit everything, skip shortcuts, and try not to be a dick. Get better.

I do have a few interests albeit general ones. I like to read and I like to learn. I’m embarrass to say ‘I love to read and I love to learn’ because ‘love’ involves a whole new level of effort, discipline and diligence that I currently do not practice.

I want to change that. I want to start loving reading again. Start loving to learn again. Stop skimming through a lot of materials but focus on fewer – to remember and more importantly to understand.

To not just indulge in an activity but to master a craft.

I also want to remove the clutter in my life – both physical and online. As part of that effort, I’ve been throwing away stuff that I keep ‘just in case’. I’ve also been throwing away random gifts from random people – stuff that I kept because I thought it would be impolite to throw.

I want to grow. Hell, I need to grow.

I hope this blog changes to be a reflection of that.

I think once I complete the move to my new home (and I sincerely hope it becomes a home instead of just a house/place to put stuff), I’m going to restock my supply of notebooks.

I want something like this.

I’m not writing it down to remember it later. I’m writing it down to remember it now.

Which is why if you really bother to learn from history, observe what’s happening now and actually think, you might have a good chance gleaming some inspired insight regarding where human society is heading and more importantly what new shit is worth doing to make you lots of money.

Or you could save the world by inventing psychohistory.

Borrowing two pictures from Patlaw:

The question is then, what will we soon be doing?

Updated:

Some old links:

Public and Permanent

One of my favorite business model suggestions for entrepreneurs is, find an old UNIX command that hasn’t yet been implemented on the web, and fix that. talk and finger became ICQ, LISTSERV became Yahoo! Groups, ls became (the original) Yahoo!, find and grep became Google, rn became Bloglines, pine became Gmail, mount is becoming S3, and bash is becoming Yahoo! Pipes. I didn’t get until tonight that Twitter is wall for the web. I love that.

A slightly related way of thinking about how to choose web projects is to take something that everyone does with their friends and make it public and permanent. (Permanent as in permalinked.) Examples:

* Blogger, 1999. Blog posts = public email messages. Instead of “Dear Bob, Check out this movie.” it’s “Dear People I May or May Not Know Who Are Interested in Film Noir, Check out this movie and if you like it, maybe we can be friends.”
* Twitter, 2006. Twitter = public IM. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that one of the people responsible for Blogger is also responsible for Twitter.
* Flickr, 2004. Flickr = public photo sharing. Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake said in a recent interview: “When we started the company, there were dozens of other photosharing companies such as Shutterfly, but on those sites there was no such thing as a public photograph — it didn’t even exist as a concept — so the idea of something ‘public’ changed the whole idea of Flickr.”
* YouTube, 2005. YouTube = public home videos. Bob Saget was onto something.

The awesome online curator Jason Kottke has put together a post covering some of the best moments in Olympics history here. I was never one to follow the Olympics. I don’t even remember ever watching an opening ceremony in its entirety. However, this year, for some reason, things were different as I waited eagerly to see Liu Xiang’s race and followed Michael Phelps historic campaign, Federer’s quest for redemption and Dara Torres‘ participation in the Olympics.

The gymnastic performances and diving events also got my attention. From Kottke’s post, four awesome routines from the past.

I’ll say this. I hate the new University Hall in NUS. I think it was a waste of money. Ok. Now that is out of the way, let’s talk about one aspect of building a university campus – the sidewalks. How do you plan the sidewalks? Apparently, you don’t.

Apparently, this is how the Campus of Michigan State University got their sidewalks:

The original campus did not contain many sidewalks at all; the designers instead opted to pave desire lines after they appeared in the grass.

A desire line:

A desire line is a path developed by erosion caused by animal or human footfall. The path usually represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. The width and amount of erosion of the line represents the amount of demand. Desire lines were used in early transportation planning, prior to the advent of computerized models.

Check out the photos of desire lines on Flickr.

This is the ultimate weapon against camwhores. Sure, the motivation for this device is more cheem than being used as weapon against camwhoring but still….

People’s great trust in their photographic reproductions of reality was what motivated me to develop the *Image Fulgurator*. A camera can be used as a personal memory tool, since people do not doubt the veracity of their own photographs. Hence, photos can reproduce the reality of an individual environment or public space. At sacred or popular locations, or those having a political connotation, an intervention with the Fulgurator can be particularly effective. Especially objects with a special aura or great symbolic power are good targets for this kind of manipulation. In other words, with the Fulgurator it is possible to have a lasting effect on those kinds of individual moments and events that become accessible to the masses only because they are preserved photographically.

Awesome twitter message announcing the discovery of water in the form of ice on Mars. The Phoenix Mars Mission site is here and the the press release about the discovery is here.

It seems strange that our generation doesn’t seem as excited (I’m guilty too of the lack of interest, but no MORE) about what our fellow human beings are trying to discover and learn from Mars as compared to the generation that witnessed the space race and man going to the moon (yes, i do believe it happened).

Mars … here we come!!!!

The cynic in me says – Mars … here we come!!!! to rape you just like we did with Earth…. Hope the last inhabitants left us some goodies….