December 2011
8 posts
David Foster Wallace's Word Lists →
“The late-David Foster Wallace was incredibly fond of collecting words he found to be noteworthy, either by scribbling on the pages of the books he was currently reading, circling specific words in his personal dictionary, or compiling standalone vocabulary lists.” – List of Notes
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Driving, in Bay Area
We come here twice a year, and each time my body breaks down, somewhere between the third and forth day, from all the driving. Everything is just so far apart. Getting a bottle of organic milk back in Brooklyn is a matter of a few blocks. Here, we get in a car and drive for half an hour to the nearest Whole Foods. My shoulder and upper back are sore and stiff.
We drive around and sometimes...
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Traveling, Soon
We try to visit our family in San Jose, CA twice a year. We used to stay with my grandma or aunt, but a year ago we decided to get a hotel room for the three of us. My son isn’t a great sleeper, and whoever we stay with is going to get waken up at night. There’s also the practical matter of where he should sleep. He can’t sleep in the same bed – he’d kick and scratch us. He...
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3 > 34
My son will turn three in about a week. I will turn 34 in 4 months. Most of the time I find myself behaving no more mature than he is capable of. There are things I’m clearly more advanced than he is: I can tie my own shoes, not shit in my pants, and reach things above 4 feet without a chair. I also have much better tastes in music and movies.
My emotional maturity is closer to his than...
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“Knowing about a tool is one thing. Having the guts to use it in a way that...”
– Seth Godin, Tools vs Insight
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Oink vs Stamped: Two Approaches to Free Trial →
Two interesting and well-designed first time user experience.
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(Let Me) Give You The Money
The Brooklyn Comics Festival took place this past Saturday in Williamsburg. I was there, had fun, and bought a few nice prints and a couple of books.
My major purchase was an original sketch by Seth, one of my favorite comic artists. I had trouble paying the seller. I didn’t have that much cash, but he took PayPal. So I fired up the PayPal iPhone app, tried paying him several times, and...
November 2011
7 posts
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Whining About Donations
I’d like an app that lets me manage my donations:
Show me what I’ve donated so far this year, and how it compares to my goal.
Show me a breakdown of who I’ve donated to, and how much.
It’d be neat if it shows me where my friends are donating to, and how much people around me are donating (thus encouraging me to give more).
Why? Because I want to donate, but I forget to....
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Sad Faces
I love food, and I like to dine out occasionally. When I find a good restaurant, I try to go back often and support their business. And it saddens me when I have to break up with a restaurant: either because my taste changes, or the restaurant loses its luster in food or service.
Sometimes my taste takes me to a different direction from where the restaurant wants to go (or where it’s...
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On Food
About six years ago, I went through a period of constant fatigue. It came over gradually, and I noticed it because I was feeling tired everyday and nothing helped. I was worried and a bit scared. I went to the doctor’s but there was nothing wrong with my blood test.
I was living in Hoboken at the time. Iridesco, the design studio Danny and I started, was in its third year and we were...
My wife recently commented on how slow our iMac is, and I said to her, “What do you expect? It’s an old machine.”
Old? This computer has been with us for not even three years, and we barely use it. But it’s been crawling like a snail, as if all that web surfing and emailing have worn down the hardware. I hear the Intel Core Duo making creaking noises.
Maybe it’s...
September 2011
1 post
July 2011
9 posts
“Google is working on self-driving cars, and they seem to work. People are so bad...”
– Marc Andreessen - NYTimes.com
“There certainly isn’t a shortage of offers. You wouldn’t believe how...”
– Dirk Nowitzki, in a SPIEGEL interview. It’s hard not to like him, yes?
“Dear Sir, I am Mr. Prince Hamlet, rightful heir to the throne of Denmark. I...”
– McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Sweet Opportunity in the State of Denmark!
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What I learned Today: Coffee
And this whole time I thought I know something about coffee – just because I frequent a few hip spots in the city and buy single origin beans from small roasters. Teresa from Dallis Bros Coffee came into our office today and straightened us out.
Some things I learned today:
The roasters matter, but roasters can’t make magic out of ass beans. Good beans come from good farms, and Dallis is...
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The Story of Amanda Hocking
Just read a NY Times Magazine profile on Amanda Hocking, author of the popular Trylle Trilogy book series – which I will not read, but might have to bring my children to see in the theatre one day.
Amanda’s story is similar to those of many authors – she wrote several books, kept submitting, and kept on getting rejected over the course of seven years (she completed her first novel when she was...
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“I like creativity. I like to cook. And most of all, I like to be free. With the...”
– Ferran Adriá, on why he’s closing down El Bulli – and replacing with El Bulli Foundation, a gastronomic think tank of sort, in this NY Times video with Mark Bittman. Also: a fascinating article about El Bulli’s staff meals and “simple meals”. Also good: Food for Thought,...
June 2011
23 posts
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“They call this Operation Iraqi Freedom, but where is our freedom?”
– Asked Imtiyas Sheriff, one of more than seventy-thousand ”third-country nationals” serving on US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Many of them recount having been robbed of wages, injured without compensation, subjected to sexual assault, and held in conditions resembling indentured...
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“To Dan Kois: You got your metaphor wrong. “Meek’s Cutoff” is...”
– Johnny from El Paso
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“Some gods have all the luck. When the hero of Thor plummets to Earth, from a far...”
– Anthony Lane, the New Yorker.
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May 2011
6 posts
