rockin' the block!
We had our neighborhood block party on Sunday night. Closed off Mori Pl, put out a ton of great food (man, our neighbors can all cook like champs) and rocked. Total blast.
Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventure!
Pretty much the best advice I've come across in a long time.
From HDT Bakers Farm: My Good Genius seemed to say, — Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day, — farther and wider, — and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night over-take thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may hems be played. Grow wild according to thy nature, like those sedges and brakes, which will never become English hay. Let the thunder rumble; what if it threaten ruin to farmer's crops? that is not its errand to thee. Take shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get a living by thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not. Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.
From HDT Bakers Farm: My Good Genius seemed to say, — Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day, — farther and wider, — and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night over-take thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may hems be played. Grow wild according to thy nature, like those sedges and brakes, which will never become English hay. Let the thunder rumble; what if it threaten ruin to farmer's crops? that is not its errand to thee. Take shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get a living by thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not. Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.
50-mile loop
I went out on a group ride with the JSTS yesterday. Really digging the runmeter app on my iphone. The climbs up around Chapel Hill and Highlands were really something on this ride! More detail on the route is here.
Started: Sep 19, 2010 8:03:12 AM
Ride Time: 2:59:41
Stopped Time: 35:28
Distance: 50.65 miles
Average: 16.91 miles/h
Fastest Speed: 27.76 miles/h
Climb: 961 feet
Calories: 3374
Ride Time: 2:59:41
Stopped Time: 35:28
Distance: 50.65 miles
Average: 16.91 miles/h
Fastest Speed: 27.76 miles/h
Climb: 961 feet
Calories: 3374
Rihanna has nothing on this. Imagine if modern R&B didn't suck and sounded like this instead:
(download)
I think I'd probably crap my pants if I heard a pop/R&B song of this complexity and quality on the radio today. I just heard this for the first time this AM and it makes me sad to think about where R&B has ended up when there was a point in time that it sounded like this. Not just the performance quality but the song structure is just amazing.
cool iphone app for cycling
I downloaded Runmeter today before going out to do a short ride. I really like that it gives you a mile by mile avg. speed. This particular ride looks a little weird b/c I went out to ride intervals so the speed varies widely depending where I was in the intervals.
Still, very cool. Check out the gmap of it here.
Jim Willis
graph/charts and powerpoint/Keynote designer needed ASAP.
[updated: found someone, thanks for all the leads/referrals! ]
Anyone looking to do some design work on wicked-short deadline? We (http://www.passionato.com) were using several freelancers on elance.com with some success but we've swamped our current pool of designers with web-related work and need someone to help us out with some graphs/charts and powerpoint templates. we need drafts of about 6 graphs/charts back by tomorrow. final not due until mid-week next week. pls send this around to anyone you think might be interested and have them get in touch w/ me at sjwillis@willisbros.net Thanks!
Jim
Mindfulness-based meditation class in Freehold, NJ this Fall
Kelly and I have taken this course and we can't say enough positive things about it. Ken's a great instructor and, well, there is probably no better way to not miss out on your life than to learn how to be mindful! (if you're not familiar with the UMass MBSR program, here's some info. Flyer for Freehold class is below).
(download)
Heard from yourself in a while?
I've read this passage dozens of times but it's only in my busyness over the past few days that it's occurred to me to replace "desperately to the post office" with "desperately to the web browser" and "greatest number of letters" with "greatest number of RSS feeds."
But anyway, what's also great about this passage is that it comes from a lecture that Thoreau gave during one of the very few appearances that he ever made in New Jersey (Perth Amboy, 1856). Eventually this lecture was published as "Life Without Principle" in The Atlantic Monthly.
Anyway, reading this passage and replacing "news" with "blogs" and generally thinking about what I've got in my Google Reader at any particular moment can really help refine importance and priority.
Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary conversation. Surface meets surface. When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.
I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.
We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial,—considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry. The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition. You are often tempted to ask, why such stress is laid on a particular experience which you have had,—that, after twenty-five years, you should meet Hobbins, Registrar of Deeds, again on the sidewalk. Have you not budged an inch, then? Such is the daily news. Its facts appear to float in the atmosphere, insignificant as the sporules of fungi, and impinge on some neglected thallus, or surface of our minds, which affords a basis for them, and hence a parasitic growth. We should wash ourselves clean of such news. Of what consequence, though our planet explode, if there is no character involved in the explosion? In health we have not the least curiosity about such events. We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up.
thoughts on Klotkin's Urban Legends: Why Suburbs, Not Dense Cities, are the Future
If you're interested in community and social capital go and read this piece from Joel Klotkin over here.
OK. So it's interesting, right?
A few thoughts. First w/r/t:
But grandiose theorists, with their focus on footloose elites and telecommuting technogeniuses, have no practical answers for the real problems that plague places like Mumbai, let alone Cairo, Jakarta, Manila, Nairobi, or any other 21st-century megacity: rampant crime, crushing poverty, choking pollution. It's time for a completely different approach, one that abandons the long-held assumption that scale and growth go hand in hand.
I think this is a great point but a tiny bit confusing. For example, while I'm a far cry from a grandiose theorist i do spend a lot of time and energy tackling the problem of how automobile-centric neighborhoods reduce the number (and value) of relationships between neighbors. So while I try to implement solutions that encourage walking and biking through Red Bank I don't at all expect my solutions to be applicable to favelas. To argue that the today's digital nomads, telecommuting to jobs from remote locations aren't a practical response to some of the challenges and opportunities that we face in the US in 2010 simply because they are not solving the scale and growth problems of Mumbai doesn't make sense.
Which leads us to Klotkin's thesis:
The goal of urban planners should not be to fulfill their own grandiose visions of megacities on a hill, but to meet the needs of the people living in them, particularly those people suffering from overcrowding, environmental misery, and social inequality.
Another great point but I think it confuses a few different issues here. Sure, one of the goals of urban planning should be to alleviate the suffering that is created by how and where some people live. But another goal should be to help people flourish where they live, too. It reminds me of the current split in psychology: historically, psychologists have worked on alleviating illness and depression but a recent trend towards "positive psychology" concerns itself less with alleviating illness and instead focusses instead on moving the fairly happy person's needle a few notches closer to the very happy (or flourishing) end of the scale. Both of these efforts are needed.
So, absolutely, urban planners should find ways to alleviate suffering, but they should also spend some time finding ways to take communities that are not suffering and help them to flourish.
This diversity of efforts is necessary and helps more than if we just had one or the other. Perhaps it would be better restated as one of the goals of urban planners should be. . .
Which leads us to:
The most advantaged city of the future could well turn out to be a much smaller one.
To which I say, hell yes! Think Providence, RI for example which may be just about the most advantaged city in the US for a whole lot of reasons but its scale is definitely one of its best attributes. Or even a place as small as Red Bank. Dense enough to have mass transit, a walkable downtown and neighbors who know you. Completely the opposite of NYC where everyone's anonymous but also completely the opposite of many suburbs where people stare out from the window of their heinously large mock-Tuscan Villas and wonder about the strangers next door.
Anyway, I came across Klotkin's piece randomly through a link on instapaper this AM and was really glad to have had the opportunity to read it.
A few things stick out about apple’s announcements yesterday.
The lala.com acquisition gave Apple two things: a novel way to monetize streaming music from the cloud and an interesting structure for an online music-appreciation community. My money was on Apple building up the cloud streaming infrastructure into a digital locker for iTunes but instead they choose to take the general structure of lala’s community model and throw it into itunes and call it Ping.
Ping builds upon lala’s “following” model where I can follow the listening (really, purchasing) habits of people and be followed such that I can learn about new music and provide guidance to others. That’s great if I really dig Thievery Corporation and want to be turned on to Nicola Costa’s latest album but I think classical and jazz listeners are different.
I’m interested in cloud streaming and community as they relate to the classical and jazz listening communities. I believe classical and jazz communities are different than the pop community that is being cultivated via Ping. At the most basic level, what differentiates classical and jazz listeners from pop music listeners is that the “collector” mentality dominates in classical and jazz. This has a slew of repercussions that I should like to explore at some point down the road.
What was especially interesting to me yesterday regarding the future of digital music was Apple’s discussion about video and their new TV appliance. When talking about video, Jobs mentioned that people don’t want to know about “syncing” or being hassled with managing the storage of videos. That sounds a lot like streaming from the cloud if you ask me and I wonder why in the first half of the presentation “buying downloads” and “syncing” and “managing downloads” were perfectly acceptable when talking about audio but by the time we got to apple tv and talking about shows and movies Apple changes its tune w/r/t buying downloads and syncing and now “rentals” are the only way to go.
I think there are a few things going on here. Apple has a good thing going with its iTMS and selling downloads. I don’t think they have figured out how to monetize streaming from the cloud and digital lockers yet and since they don’t have any viable competition to their store that’s offering streaming/lockers they are not in any rush to roll the dice on streaming. Not that there isn’t money to be made on streaming and digital lockers, I'm just guessing that it’s going to be less predictable than the margin on 99cent tracks. Secondly, I don’t think apple has the deals with the labels yet to do digital lockers. My guess is that many of the labels want to get into the CDN business and rather than have a bunch of different companies offering their content via digital lockers, the labels themselves will want to get into the digital locker business. Or at least delivering their content to a third party digital locker.
In transitioning from the CD to digital downloads the labels really got hammered. As we move from downloads to streaming-from-the-cloud, I think the labels are going to be much more cautious in not letting a guy in black turtleneck define the future of their industry for them.
Ping builds upon lala’s “following” model where I can follow the listening (really, purchasing) habits of people and be followed such that I can learn about new music and provide guidance to others. That’s great if I really dig Thievery Corporation and want to be turned on to Nicola Costa’s latest album but I think classical and jazz listeners are different.
I’m interested in cloud streaming and community as they relate to the classical and jazz listening communities. I believe classical and jazz communities are different than the pop community that is being cultivated via Ping. At the most basic level, what differentiates classical and jazz listeners from pop music listeners is that the “collector” mentality dominates in classical and jazz. This has a slew of repercussions that I should like to explore at some point down the road.
What was especially interesting to me yesterday regarding the future of digital music was Apple’s discussion about video and their new TV appliance. When talking about video, Jobs mentioned that people don’t want to know about “syncing” or being hassled with managing the storage of videos. That sounds a lot like streaming from the cloud if you ask me and I wonder why in the first half of the presentation “buying downloads” and “syncing” and “managing downloads” were perfectly acceptable when talking about audio but by the time we got to apple tv and talking about shows and movies Apple changes its tune w/r/t buying downloads and syncing and now “rentals” are the only way to go.
I think there are a few things going on here. Apple has a good thing going with its iTMS and selling downloads. I don’t think they have figured out how to monetize streaming from the cloud and digital lockers yet and since they don’t have any viable competition to their store that’s offering streaming/lockers they are not in any rush to roll the dice on streaming. Not that there isn’t money to be made on streaming and digital lockers, I'm just guessing that it’s going to be less predictable than the margin on 99cent tracks. Secondly, I don’t think apple has the deals with the labels yet to do digital lockers. My guess is that many of the labels want to get into the CDN business and rather than have a bunch of different companies offering their content via digital lockers, the labels themselves will want to get into the digital locker business. Or at least delivering their content to a third party digital locker.
In transitioning from the CD to digital downloads the labels really got hammered. As we move from downloads to streaming-from-the-cloud, I think the labels are going to be much more cautious in not letting a guy in black turtleneck define the future of their industry for them.
