May 2013
5 posts
When people from Bellville say they're from Cape...
I love this site.
mothercitymazing:
Thanks PuellainAfrica
How Apple Accidentally Revolutionized Health Care →
I like this article. But then there’s this part:
It used to be said that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. That could still be applicable, but the opposite is true for doctors and Apple. Physicians love their iPhones and iPads.
That made me go,
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April 2013
12 posts
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“Remember that you are a leader not to the degree that you are an expert, but to...”
– James Shelley
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The pain when children fly the nest →
What I wonder about is why we love our children so asymmetrically, so entirely, knowing that the very best we can hope for is that they will feel about us as we feel about our own parents: that slightly aggrieved mixture of affection, pity, tolerance and forgiveness, with a final soupcon - if we live long enough - of sorrow for our falling away, stumbling and shattered, from the vigour that...
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“The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter...”
– Neil Postman
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Here she comes
My favorite moment from Game of Thrones S03E04. It just doesn’t get more badass than this. It’s the moment you realize that she’s been in control the entire time, and is about to inflict some serious pain.
“Talk to the people around you (in classes, at conferences, at bars). Be kind to...”
– Cap Watkins
“You can drug yourself digitally with almost any pursuit, and at the end find...”
– Geoff Livingston
“Remember that the next time you take to the Internet to let off a little steam....”
– Jay Fanelli
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“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done...”
– Peter Drucker
March 2013
12 posts
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Learning to live a better story →
In which I revisit a post I wrote 3 years ago, before we moved back to South Africa:
But I also know that there is no right answer, and that whatever story we tell with our lives has very little to do with our actual location, and everything to do with our attitude and worldview. So today we celebrate 3 years back in South Africa. And we’re thankful for the story we have here and now.
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Tay-Sachs →
Gut-wrenching story, good advice from a mom who lost her baby to a terminal illness:
But you don’t know what’s going to happen to your children, so you better enjoy them now. They could drown in a pool or get leukemia or shoot themselves in the head when they’re 30. People don’t want to hear that. But don’t look at me and put that sympathy on me, because you don’t know when chaos will hit you....
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The irrelevance of most news
Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death:
As Thoreau implied, telegraphy made relevance irrelevant. The abundant flow of information had very little or nothing to do with those to whom it was addressed; that is, with any social or intellectual context in which their lives were embedded. Coleridge’s famous line about water everywhere without a drop to drink may serve as a metaphor of a...
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“I can’t help but dream about a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but...”
– Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984); French philosopher, social theorist, historian of ideas, and literary critic.
I came across this great quote as part of my research for the Product Management book I’m writing. It was one of those rare moments of satisfaction where I was able to drop this...
“Words, when considered as a design element, play a crucial role in shaping our...”
– Highlighted by Rian van der Merwe in A Pocket Guide to The craft of words by The Standardistas
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“Parenting is more about patching up skinned knees than keeping them from...”
– Mike Monteiro knocks it out of the park.
February 2013
13 posts
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The Great Discontent: Adam Lisagor →
Adam Lisagor on what makes Vine great:
Vine has introduced the concept of rudimentary in-camera editing to elicit emotional response. It’s awesome because without Vine, most people are not going to shoot two clips at one time and put them together, even though there are thousands of apps in the app store that will let them do that. Going back to the kids experimenting with video cameras,...
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Play by your own rules →
While we were busy playing tug-of-war over check-ins, someone else found a path to the goal with less friction.
There’s so much to learn from this article about the Foursquare/Gowalla war, and how Instagram stepped into the gap at the right time.
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“With the development of the press, it has now come to pass that so soon as any...”
– Leo Tolstoy, Tolstoy on Shakespeare
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Book update #1
As I mentioned before, I’ll increasingly use this site as an outlet for talking about the Product Management book I’m writing. Fair warning.
Yesterday, 13 pages into the book, was the first time I got really really scared about the project. Up to that point, writing was difficult but doable. I was able to focus on a topic, struggle through it, and get a first draft onto the page.
...
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Flickr Is Back, Letting Us Go Home Again →
Hehe:
Facebook is a continuing nightmare of privacy disasters. It’s the bathroom door that resists all efforts at locking, swinging open again and again while you’re trying to poop.
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The Invisible Research →
Jessica Collier:
Writing a dissertation teaches you how to write a dissertation: how to survey a field, explore and comprehend its facets efficiently, ask the right questions, plan and execute an immense project, research with a keen and careful eye, and write without writer’s block. Perhaps most importantly, writing a dissertation is like doing daily exhaust sets; the process tones your...
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Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Amazon.com) →
Robin Sloan, making me miss San Francisco:
San Francisco is a good place for walks if your legs are strong. The city is a tiny square punctuated by steep hills and bounded on three sides by water, and as a result, there are surprise vistas everywhere. You’ll be walking along, minding your own business with a fistful of printouts, and suddenly the ground will fall away and you’ll see straight...
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The Pastry Box Project →
Sara Wachter-Boettcher:
You see, the truth about the web is that there’s no inherent *there* there. The only substance it has is the substance we give it—which means that if we’re not *substantial people*—people who’ve read far and wide, thought long and hard, and discovered what it is that matters—then the web work we’re capable of will always be shallow.
January 2013
23 posts
As a first-time Product Manager with no design...
Answer by Rian van der Merwe:First, it’s important to note that you will never learn everything about UI/UX design in mobile - none of us ever will. A UX designer’s most important characteristic is empathy for users. It’s a study of human behavior. And anyone who tells you they have that all figured out is sorely mistaken… But on to the question about the best resources....
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The Art of Being Still →
As I’m starting on writing a book, I expect I’ll increasingly use this site as an outlet for thoughts (read “complaints”) about how hard writing its. Like this piece:
Most writers today have jobs or families or responsibilities, and most often, all three. We don’t have time to sit in the woods for a few hours every day, staring at the leaves, pondering life’s mysteries...
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“For surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to...”
– My Life’s Sentences
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