March 2014
My wife took this photo of my two youngest kids playing on our new back porch.
My wife took this photo of my two youngest kids playing on our new back porch.
It's all sports
Jason Kottke sees liking something publicly as a sort of spectator sport.
Coffee, like almost everything else these days, is a sport. Everyone has a favorite team (or coffee making method or political affiliation or design style or TV drama or rapper or comic book), discusses techniques and relives great moments with other likeminded fans, and argues with fans of other teams. The proliferation and diversification of media over the past 35 years created thousands of new sports and billions of new teams. These people turned hard-to-find nail polish into a sport. These people support Apple in their battle against Microsoft and Samsung. This guy scouts fashion phenoms on city streets. Finding the best bowl of ramen in NYC is a sport. Design is a sport. Even hating sports is a sport; people compete for the funniest “what time is the sportsball match today? har har people who like sports are dumb jocks” joke on Twitter. Let people have their sports, I say. Liking coffee can’t be any worse than liking the Yankees, can it?
I'm moving to a new house
I’ve lived in the same apartment since January 2009. That’s the longest I’ve lived in one place in my life (almost). Leaving is bitter-sweet. It has been home to the best years of my life. Gabi was pregnant with my first child when we moved in, and we are moving out with three children (who are in desperate need of more room to run). Goodbye house. Goodbye Parkcrest.
I’ll have to say goodbye to this view…
Quiet please
Noise canceling headphones, quite car interiors, silent retreats–there is a big move toward quality, high-end quiet. Silence has always been valuable, but increasingly, people are showing that they are willing to pay for it. Chloe Schama discusses in the New Republic why silence is becoming a luxury product.
Unwanted noise is perhaps the most irksome form of sensory assault. A bothersome sight? Close your eyes or turn the other way—eyesores are, generally, immobile. An annoying taste? Spit it out. (Why was it in your mouth?) Sound, on the other hand, is ambient, elusive, enveloping. Even the softest drone can echo cacophonously if it worms itself into your head.
Ghost ships
How long will it take for drone cargo ships to set sail and start crossing the high seas?
Military drones already fly frequent missions and civilian operations using unmanned aircraft are coming. Driverless cars are clocking up thousands of test miles. So why not let remote-controlled ships set sail without a crew? Indeed, the maritime industry has started to think about what would be required to launch a latter-day Marie Céleste.
Cats with jetpacks
What weapons of war do you need to defend your territory? Consider the following from the Guardian:
You’re a 16th century German prince plotting to crush a peasant rebellion, or perhaps you’re leading an army against the Ottoman Empire or settling a score with a rival nobleman. What’s a guy looking for a tactical edge to do?
The answer, of course, is rocket cats.
A first Android first
I’m sure there are other examples, but adding Handwriting for Android into Evernote is the first time I’ve seen a major mobile feature, from a mainstream software developer, introduced on Android before iOS. I’m sure the feature will come to iOS soon, and I will probably try it once–for the novelty–and then never use it again. I have a hard time reading my handwriting on paper, much less on a touch screen.
The web of relationship advice
David McCandless and Kathryn Ariel Kay made a word-cloud of the most repeated relationship advice from across 25 popular relationship guides for the website, Information is Beautiful.
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](http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/good-relationtips-most-commonly-given-relationship-advice/)
Becoming Geek
John Siracusa’s post, The Road to Geekdom brings up some interesting points about geek culture:
Geekdom is not a club; it’s a destination, open to anyone who wants to put in the time and effort to travel there. And if someone lacks the opportunity to get there, we geeks should help in any way we can.
John spoke in-depth about this article on a few recent podcasts:
Embedding Getty
There’s been a lot of excitement on the web today about Getty Images allowing visitors to embed their photos across the web.
With people increasingly turning to imagery to communicate and tell their stories online, the embed capability opens up Getty Images’ award-winning imagery for seamless sharing. Through the embed tool, individuals can draw on Getty Images’ latest news, sports, celebrity, music and fashion coverage; immense digital photo archive; and rich conceptual images to illustrate their unique passions, ideas and interests. This innovation opens one of the largest, deepest and most comprehensive image collections in the world for easy sharing, thereby making the world an even more visual place.