Quote

INTERVIEWER

What kind of paper do you use, what kind of pen and ink?

CRUMB

Well, I use the old Strathmore vellum surface paper, which is the best paper you can get in the Western world for ink line drawing. It has a good, hard surface. I have it mailed from the New York Central Art Supply in New York. For a while I was using this old Strathmore paper from fifty years ago that some guy sent me, it had bad comic art on one side, hacked-out comic work from 1959, 1960, but the paper is superior to anything you can get now. It just holds the ink better. I ran out of that and now I use this new stuff that’s not quite as good.

“I felt a sense of relief at his unshaven face and scruffy clothes. I have rarely seen a more disreputable bunch.”

– Ed Hillary (the Everest guy) about Eric Shipton (another great mountaineer and explorer), as reported in the fantastic 2-part history of Everest written by Ed Webster (Alpinist issues 26-27).

“They don’t appear to enjoy what they’re doing. […] One does not ride, one trains.”

– Bike Snob, about road cyclists and triathletes.

“I am known for the legendary length of my blog posts and e-mails. This stems from the engineer’s mindset of exploring every possible nook and cranny of an argument to make sure one has not overlooked anything.”

– http://blog.tabini.ca/2011/04/writing-less-to-write-more/

From “Secrets of a Mind-Gamer”, a fascinating article on a normal guy who becomes a memory champion:

In his 1869 book Hereditary Genius Sir Francis Galton argued that a person could improve at mental and physical activities until he hit a wall, which “he cannot by any education or exertion overpass.” In other words, the best we can do is simply the best we can do. But Ericsson and his colleagues have found over and over again that with the right kind of effort, that’s rarely the case. They believe that Galton’s wall often has much less to do with our innate limits than with what we consider an acceptable level of performance. They’ve found that top achievers typically follow the same general pattern. They develop strategies for keeping out of the autonomous stage by doing three things: focusing on their technique, staying goal-oriented and getting immediate feedback on their performance […] To improve, we have to be constantly pushing ourselves beyond where we think our limits lie and then pay attention to how and why we fail.

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“In 2007, when he was at the State Department, Jared Cohen wrote with tragic wrongheadedness that “the Internet is a place where Iranian youth can … say anything they want as they operate free from the grips of the police-state apparatus.” Thanks to the exciting new technology, many of those freely texting Iranian youths are in prison or dead. Cohen himself now works for Google as the director of “Google Ideas.”

150 friends (Dunbar’s number)

I have deleted my Facebook account a long time ago and I can confirm that I can live very happily with no Facebook around.

This article by Robin Dunbar (did you know about “Dunbar’s number” ?) is very interesting however. It does say that Facebook can be a positive thing. But it also says:

Yes, you can “friend” 500, 1,000, even 5,000 people with your Facebook page, but all save the core 150 are mere voyeurs looking into your daily life.

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In this previous post I linked to an article that upset me.

It tells a story about these incredibly smart kids that waste their time and energy (and considerable amounts of brain, apparently) to build yet another ‘social’ things; Internet services that basically allow the user to shut their minds, do fuck-all (apart from taking a picture maybe), and in return be “famous” (in the Facebook sense).

Is this really the way the Internet is developing? Towards a weapon of brain annihilation?

“DailyBooth appeals to people who want even less friction than Twitter: Here, you don’t need to think of something witty or informative to say in 140 characters or fewer. All you have to do is take a picture of yourself.”

– The Viral Me (via Instapaper)

Somehow (twitter maybe ?) I’ve found the transcript of an interview to Bob Dylan which appeared on Playboy in 1966.

So¹, I don’t know if Bob Dylan was totally out of his mind or if he was just playing crazy, but this 1966 interview is brilliant stuff.

For example, the interviewer asks if he’s selling out:

What can I say? I’d like to see one of these so-called fans. I’d like to have him blindfolded and brought to me. It’s like going out to the desert and screaming and then having little kids throw their sandbox at you. I’m only 24.

“It moves along at a vigorously restless pace, with the energy of a Labrador retriever off the leash, racing up to each person it encounters, pawing and sniffing and barking at every fragrant thing, plunging into icy waters only to dash off again, invigorated.”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/books/review/Browning-t.html

An interesting piece was published a few days ago on the official google blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/future-of-search.html

Let me quote two passages:

It would be much nicer if we had a device with great connectivity that could do searches without interruption. One far-fetched idea: how about a wearable device that does searches in the background based on the words it picks up from conversations, and then flashes relevant facts?

So what’s our straightforward definition of the ideal search engine? Your best friend with instant access to all the world’s facts and a photographic memory of everything you’ve seen and know.

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Yesterday I was browsing Merlin Mann’s 43folders , and I’ve stumbled upon his definition of geek:

I think Getting Things Done appeals to geeks for a lot of reasons. Overgeneralizing for effect:

• geeks are often disorganized or have a twisted skein of attention-deficit issues

• geeks love assessing, classifying, and defining the objects in their world
• geeks crave actionable items and roll their eyes at “mission statements” and lofty management patois
• geeks like things that work with technology-agnostic and lofi tools
• geeks like frameworks but tend to ignore rules
• geeks are unusually open to change (if it can be demonstrated to work better than what they’re currently using)
• geeks like fixing things on their own terms
• geeks have too many projects and lots and lots of stuff

Well, GTD does not appeal to me (even though I have already written a short note about it), but all of the above points…. man, that’s me !