Yesterday, my wife and I attended the funeral of a 8 year-old girl who recently lost her battle to brain cancer.
During the service, a nurse practitioner from St. Jude read this quote:
Children with cancer are like candles in the wind who accept the possibility that they are in danger of being extinguished by a gust of wind from nowhere. Yet, as they flicker and dance to remain alive, their brilliance challenges the darkness and dazzles those of us who watch their light.
Shawn Blanc:
My analog watches are my reminder that utility exists apart from an internet connection and usefulness doesn’t require the latest software.
This poem by Stephen Crane came to mind:
A man said to the universe: ‘Sir, I exist!’
‘However,’ replied the universe,
‘The fact has not created in me
a sense of obligation.’
On last week’s CMD+Space, Myke interviewed John Roderick, lead singer for The Long Winters and cohost of Roderick on the Line.
The majority of the interview covers the John’s method for creating albums, but when he’s asked what he likes to be known for, John talks about wanting to shift back to being someone who creates, not just someone who comments.
Around two minutes into the episode, he remarks:
I’ve been writing this sort of commentary on the world and what I was formerly known for — and what I prefer to do — is make primary source material. You know, if you’re making a song, or if you’re writing a story, that is source material. It’s primary. It’s the thing that did not exist before. You’re not commenting. Presumably, your song is not commenting on some earlier song, or if it is, it’s doing it in an inventive way. It isn’t this chattering sort of criticism and culture digestion that is so much of I guess what we call content — Internet content, which is just like, “Oh, this just came out and now I’m talking about it and now I’m talking about this other guy who was talking about it.”
Matt Alexander:
Take a step back and enjoy some time off. Forget consumerism — this coming from someone who, oddly enough, owns an e-commerce store — and embrace time with friends and family. Dare to dream big for the coming year and then actively work to fulfill that vision. It’ll be far more rewarding than reflecting solely upon the immediacy of problems you face today. You won’t remember those in years to come.
Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism came out during my senior year of high school.
As many youth, my transition to college wasn’t necessarily a smooth one, and many of the tracks on this album spoke to me. As a result, I wore out the original CD I purchased and just about burned in the title to the screen of my iPod.
I’m not alone; many friends my age view Transatlanticism as a sort of coming-of-age work. As Death Cab fans and haters alike know, Ben Gibbard’s subject matters don’t stray far from love and/or pain. Just take the bridge from Expo ‘86:
Matt Alexander, on the muting ability of certain social media platforms and apps:
On the surface, it sounds perfectly acceptable. You grow tired of a certain topic or the exhaustive sharing habits of certain friends, and, without going all the way to remove them from your day-to-day experience, you simply quiet the portions of noise that bother you the most.
In a world of highly-curated opinions, deeply polarizing and heavily-politicized views, and rampant tribalism in the consumer sphere, however, the ability to simply remove certain opinions that are not adherent with your own is irrefutably dangerous.
Peter Cohen, writing about leaving his podcast, Angry Mac Bastards:
But a while ago I realized something: AMB had stopped being fun for me to do. It had begun to feel like work. Like drudgery. I’d just lost my energy doing the show, and I was tired of hearing myself yell. I figured if I was tired of hearing myself yell, others probably were too. And that seemed like as good a reason as any to step away from the mic.
Tomorrow, I get in my car to drive to Little Rock, Arkansas 1 to fly to San Francisco.
Last time I was in San Francisco was for last year’s Macworld. At the end of that trip, I wrote:
I’ve struggled with questions concerning online friendships in the past. This week, I learned that people I know from the Internet are real people and — more importantly — that our friendships are real, even though we don’t see each other most of the time.
I’ve cleared my Instapaper queue and I don’t have any unread books on my Kindle.
My inboxes are all at zero and there’s nothing left to mark as read.
I’ve laid out an iPhoto book of my vacation photos and am caught up on The Office. I even pre-ordered the 2013 AP Stylebook.
I’m bored. So very bored.
The Internet is usually a firehose of articles, links and images, but in the Apple-centric corner of the Internet things are a little slower than normal.
Tim Stevens, opening his Google Glass review at Engadget:
Smartphones are amazing things, but for those who have become addicted to messaging instant gratification, they are a bit unwieldy. This annoyance gets even worse as these devices grow larger and larger. Well, certainly one approach would be to relax a little and stop feeling so compelled to check for Facebook notifications every 30 seconds. Those fully immersed in the information age, however, will be more inclined to fix the physical inconveniences presented by the problem. A heads-up display seems like a natural fit, and thus we have Google Glass.
On the day I started OneThirtySeven, Stephen Hackett wrote one of the most touching articles in memory. Reflecting upon his parenthood, his son, and the struggles he and his wife have both faced, he wrote a letter addressed to his children and published it, importantly, on his technology-centric weblog.
For some, I suspect the notion of posting such an intimate, personal, and revealing piece of prose on such a public and well-read forum would be daunting. Perhaps even ill-fitting. Stephen shared the deepest of his fears — as he has done innumerable times both before and after this specific day — and he offered himself up for your collective thoughts.