January 2012
1 post
December 2011
3 posts
Running To My Happy Place: 12 Habits of the "Super... →
runningtothefinish:
1. They don’t think of their fitness as work, but rather a way of life
It’s kind of like taking a shower, sure you can go without one, but you just don’t feel right the rest of the day.
2. They don’t skip workouts
They take training days as seriously as a Dr.’s appointment. Appointments and…
November 2011
3 posts
“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow,...”
– Kurt Vonnegut (via crookedindifference)
2 tags
“There is nothing sweeter than a description which flies to the thing it...”
– James Meek in an interview.
2 tags
“What is important is that you, the writer, sympathise with each expression of...”
– James Meek in an interview.
August 2011
2 posts
“Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you...”
– Ernest Hemingway - A Moveable Feast (via tumblelog)
“If you cry “Forward” you must be sure to make clear the direction in...”
– Anton Chekhov
January 2011
1 post
“A learning experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.”
– Christopher Penn
October 2010
4 posts
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man...”
– Theodore Roosevelt, as quoted by Yossi Vardi
Elegy, by Dylan Thomas
Too proud to die, broken and blind he died The darkest way, and did not turn away, A cold, kind man brave in his burning pride
On that darkest day. Oh, forever may He live lightly, at last, on the last, crossed Hill and there grow young, under the grass, in love,
Among the long flocks, and never lie lost Or still all the days of his death, though above All he longed all dark for his...
September 2010
5 posts
1 tag
1 tag
2 tags
“Disconnected remarks, chance meetings are transformed to controvertible proofs...”
– Schiller, as quoted in Stendhal’s Scarlet and Black
2 tags
“I, Lucifer, Fallen Angel, Prince of Darkness, Bringer of Light, Ruler of Hell,...”
– “I, Lucifer” - by Glen Duncan
“Woman’s fancy changeth ever;
Fool, be wise - and trust her never.”
– Francis I - as quoted in Stendhal’s Scarlet & Black
“This great evil. Where does it come from? How’d it steal into the world?...”
– “Private Witt”, The Thin Red Line (movie)
“You desire glory, You may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar...”
– LL Cool J
August 2010
1 post
“The world breaks everyone, and afterwards many are strong at the broken places....”
– “Jack”, Croupier (movie)
3 tags
A Drawn Sword
Lady Mutsuta: You glisten too brightly Sanjuro: Glisten? Lady Mutsuta: Yes. Like a drawn sword. Sanjuro: A drawn sword? Lady Mutsuta: You’re like a sword without a sheath. You cut well, but the best sword is kept in its sheath.
- Tsubaki Sanjuro (1962), directed by Akira Kurosawa.
July 2009
1 post
“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more...”
– Niccolò Machiavelli (via zehnuhr)
May 2009
3 posts
2 tags
Google Wave - a synthesis of the old Internet
Google Wave is a remarkable synthesis of existing communication streams (video, textual, 1-to-1, 1-to-many, graphics, etc) under a single meta-protocol.
When it is widely adopted, Wave will forever change how we communicate. Real-time is new, and Wave is not the first technology to flirt with it - we have FriendFeed. But Google has gone one step further to propose it as an open protocol, an open...
6 tags
Twitter & FriendFeed - Simplicity vs Complexity ?
Chapters 1 & 2 of Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science have a fascinating proposition - that “simple programs can generate complexity”. He uses several variations of a simple program (a cellular automaton) to illustrate that the generated patterns have no discernible repeated pattern. This suggests that the complexity that we see in, for example, nature may have been...
Imagine those Greek or Roman philosophers
Imagine those Greek or Roman philosophers, writing in their times. Did they ever imagine they would be quoted in the context of a century other than theirs?
Here, our scribblings could one day turn up in a search result for a term we cannot imagine.
April 2009
5 posts
The Sincere Apology
“I’m sorry if you were offended”. Not quite an apology is it ?
Sometimes a sincere apology is the only way to defuse a situation. Don’t waste time justifying the act that caused offense.
That said, let us remember that Matt Aimonetti is an excellent hacker and respected Rubyist, especially for those who know of his stellar work on Merb. Let’s get back to work...
Not from this anger
A friend, M, is on good terms with everyone and goes to great lengths to maintain that equilibrium even with difficult individuals. This is a good thing and serves him well. But why ?
I think it’s a fear of confrontation; not fear of the other person but fear of his own anger, fear of what he might do or say if he was angry. He’s afraid of losing it.
He has a good degree of...
The games we play
As a very green trainee at my first job, I asked a senior colleague, who would later become a good friend, “If the high season lasts only 3 months, what do people do during the low season ?”
He smiled wickedly, and rocking from side to side replied, “Oh, the games we play … the games we play”.
And now many years later, during a global ‘low season’,...
Feedback
Every event generates feedback. Where an event is physical, the feedback is visible or audible: e.g a broken window generates sound for bystanders; anguish for the owner.
When an event like 9/11 happens, there is human feedback: horror, sadness, anger.
But what happens when those events are inside our head: e.g thoughts. How do we obtain feedback then ?
Answer: We communicate (transfer or...
This is ...
This is an exercise in writing. Immediate, imperfect, or incomplete - as it comes, I will write it.
This is also an exercise in thinking - analysis and synthesis, equally.