Quote::pillar management | Gapingvoid

There’s no corre­la­tion bet­ween crea­ti­vity and equip­ment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada.
Actually, as the artist gets more into his thing, and as he gets more suc­cess­ful, his num­ber of tools tends to go down. He knows what works for him. Expen­ding men­tal energy on stuff was­tes time. He’s a man on a mis­sion. He’s got a dead­line. He’s got some rich client breathing down his neck. The last thing he wants is to spend 3 weeks lear­ning how to use a rou­ter drill if he doesn’t need to.
A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind.
Which is why there are so many second-rate art direc­tors with state-of-the-art Maci­notsh com­pu­ters.
via pillar management | Gapingvoid.

This post was prompted by the fact that I’m getting frustrated with the specs of my pc. The post was a good read!

QOTD::The Steve Martin Method: A Master Comedian's Advice for Becoming Famous

The Steve Martin Method
People often ask Martin about the secret to making it in the entertainment industry. His answer often disappoints. It does not involve any tricks (or, as we might call them: “hacks”). No insider path to getting an agent or special formatting to get your screenplay read. Instead, it’s all built on one simple idea:
“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
via Study Hacks » Blog Archive » The Steve Martin Method: A Master Comedian’s Advice for Becoming Famous.

rePost:: Beware of Life

Several weeks ago, three hikers also died on our nearby Mount Hood in a tragic accident.
After their deaths, there was the usual pontification about what they could have done differently. Despite the fact that they were all experienced climbers, and despite leaving for the hike when weather conditions were good, some people blamed their “risky behavior” and suggested various reforms that wouldn’t have made any difference in their case.
While I was away for my end-of-year vacation, I scanned through the comments on our newspaper’s website. “I don’t want to say they deserved to die,” one person said, before going on to explain why they deserved to die for pursuing their passion.
Fatal accidents are sad. I wish they wouldn’t happen, and I wish we could bring back the lost hikers. But I also don’t think they should have stayed home, and I don’t think they are that different from the 21,833 others who died earlier this year.
I propose that the greater risk is to play it safe all the time. Properly experienced, life is a very risky behavior.
via The Art of Non-Conformity » Beware of Life.

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Best Read::Rejecting the Normal < Anthropologically Speaking

We have become blind to a lot of these things because we are used to them, because they have become part of us. We have become used to our commuter bus drivers handing out that note to the policeman at the roadblock, to reading in the newspaper about a number of extra-judicial killings by the police, to hearing about ‘accidental discharge’. We are also used to the sound of a certain kind of hoot in heavy traffic, a hoot that signifies that an important dignitary is being ferried across in an important car, escorted by a van-full of MOPOL. Of course, the main reason the person is important is because they are a foreigner. We are so used to these things that we have become numb to them.
We must begin to rouse ourselves out of this complacency and ask questions. Are bribes openly given to or extorted by the police and extra-judiciary killings normal in a democracy? What is the government doing about them? Will any political party make them campaign issues in 2011?
via Rejecting the Normal < Anthropologically Speaking.

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rePost::Comparing the 1990s and the 2000s: What Our Movies Say About Us | /Film

I was thinking of my – what was my favorite movie of the decade? It was “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry. And I was trying to think what that film thematically says about the…aughts, and I think that the idea of the tension between reality and fantasy has gotten more pronounced in the last decade, and the ways in which – the movie is sort of like a Philip K. Dick paranoid fever-dream wedded to a screwball romance. And there’s no way it could happened, the technology wouldn’t have allowed it, and the sensibility wouldn’t have allowed it in any other decade.
via Comparing the 1990s and the 2000s: What Our Movies Say About Us | /Film.

read the whole thing its a time sink with links to such excellent lists and articles!!!!

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rePost::The Good Fight « Paulo Coelho’s Blog

The Good Fight
Published on January 3, 2010 in News. 92 Comments
In 1986, I went for the first and only time on the pilgrimage known as the Way to Santiago, an experience I described in my first book. We had just finished walking up a small hill, a village appeared on the horizon, and it was then that my guide, whom I shall call Petrus (although that was not his name), said to me:
– We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body. Many times in our lives we see our dreams shattered and our desires frustrated, but we have to continue dreaming. If we don’t, our soul dies
‘The Good Fight is the one we Fight because our heart asks it of us.The Good Fight is the one that’s fought in the name of our dreams. When we are young our dreams first explode inside us with all of their force, we are very courageous, but we haven’t yet learned how to Fight. With great effort, we learn how to Fight, but by then we no longer have the courage to go into combat. So we turn against ourselves and do battle within. We become our own worst enemy. We say that our dreams were childish, or too difficult to realize, or the result or our not having known enough about life. We kill our dreams because we are afraid to Fight the Good Fight.
“The first symptom of the process of killing our dreams is lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The Truth is, they are afraid to Fight the Good Fight…
“The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are Fighting the Good Fight.
“And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams-we have refused to Fight the Good Fight.
“When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves.
“What we sought to avoid in combat-disappointment and defeat-came upon us because of our cowardice. And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breath, and we actually seek death. It’s death that frees us from out certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of Sunday afternoons.”
in “The Pilgrimage”(1987)
via The Good Fight « Paulo Coelho’s Blog.

I’ll keep on posting this til I’m in the think of The Good Fight!

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rePost::Nick Perlas and the Missing Manual of Maria Clara

I’ve never thought of Don Quixote as a geek. This framing of Nick Perlas as the geek suitor help me make the connection. This was a nice article, read the whole thing, tis really short. The funny thing is if we use his way of thinking what would Manny Villar be? the rich suitor? Eddie Villanueva would then be the suitor that speaks of spirituality and purity? Gibo would be the intelligent talented guy who doesn’t have much charm? Erap would be the Bad Boy?
What scares me with this is that my jaded ecxperience tells me that the nice guys finish last and ; It’s either the Bad Boy or The Rich Guys who get the girl.
I’m rambling. Once you get blogging into your system, you sometimes just have too. Okay vacation mode again!!!!!!!!

Think about Nick Perlas as the quintessential geek, neither flashy nor fancy.
The geek is plain. He is ordinary. He isn’t in it for the money or the honor or whatnut. He wants to solve problems that he is presented with. He is geek and like all geeks, a woman throws him into a recursive loop.
The geek is like that reliable knight who does Maria Clara’s will, and the perfect confidant. The geek is the guy who shields her as best he could and picks her up when she falls. He stands by her when no one does. But seduction is not in the geek’s repertoire.
And Nick Perlas the candidate is as exciting as the wrapping of bond paper.
Noynoy Aquino is the Trojan horse, the least expected and unlikely suitor/hero of the story who comes riding to save the day. He isn’t evil. He comes from a good background. He is not a genius and knows he cannot surpass his own parents’ success. In fact, of the list seeking her sweet approval he is the one best-shot Maria Clara has at happiness.
(And yes, how ironic since Mr. Aquino is a bachelor).
via Nick Perlas and the Missing Manual of Maria Clara.

Best Read::Eyes – 12/22/09

Parang kinurot puso ko ng nabasa ko ito.

Beggars however—and their tribe increases by the day in various forms of disguised beggary, from caroling to slapping soapy water on your windshield—are not so easily dismissed in the heart. I’ve always thought they posed a bind, even to the mind.The best way to deal with them of course is to not look them in the eye. At the very least that’s so because eye-contact is the equivalent of the first question you ask the salesperson who knocks on your door. As everyone warns, never do that. Just say, “Sorry,” if you’re in the mood to be polite or slam the door on his face if you’re not. You ask a question and that’s his one foot in the door, which can sometimes be scarily literal.But more than that, don’t look the ragged children in the eye because if you do, you impale their fleeting forms into reality. You transform a vague and abstract presence into living tissue, into flesh and bone, into solid matter, as solid as the loud rap on your window. You look them in the eye, and suddenly, terrifyingly, movingly, you’re no longer looking at a formless mass, you are looking at a four-year-old—if he’s at all so, it’s not easy to reckon age in age-worn faces—trudging along with not much older company, a torn and worn-out T-shirt hanging over his body like a tent.But this best way of dealing with the problem is the same best way to make the problem stay. Which is the bind. I’ve always thought the only reason we’ve kept out equanimity in the face of the teeming poverty around us, some of its aspects too mind-boggling to contemplate, is that it is invisible to us. It is invisible to us because we do not see it. We do not see it because we do not look it in the eye. And because we do not look it in the eye, the poor, like beggars, or carolers on the street, cease to exist. They are just a blur, a ghost, an apparition that flits by but is swallowed in the dust and smoke when the light flashes green.By all means let us not give to carolers on the streets, or out-and-out beggars who badger us with their pain and their humiliation. Though heaven knows that isn’t always easy during Christmas, a season dedicated to discovering the existence of others. But whether we give or not, the point is to not be blind to their being there, to not make them disappear in the mind, if not in space, because they are an inconvenient truth. They will continue to be there in space, whether we see them of not: the beggars, the throwers of soapy water on windshields, the children in the streets, who while waiting for the cars to stop stand in awe before the tailoring shop near where I live, admiring the basketball uniforms that proclaim various teams. They will continue to be there, like an indictment, like an accusing finger, like a question hanging in the air demanding an answer.Like eyes that haunt. Like eyes that bind.
via Eyes – 12/22/09.

rePost::The Juggernaut Noynoy Aquino

In recent days, we’ve seen someone like Nick Perlas, who is intelligent and passionate idealistic and who also seem to be crazy enough to join the circus of the stars and get thrown out of the ring. He has neither money nor machinery and outside a small circle of people, not famous enough to be recognized. Is he a fool? Or are we the fool? Are we fools to waste such resource? Are we Fools to discard his passion and his idealism, who could be put to use solving the problems of tomorrow? Are we fools then to allow for more than 2 or 3 people to vie for the presidency?
via The Juggernaut Noynoy Aquino.
This was a longish post, I loved reading it, hope you find the time to read it for yourself.

Things To Ponder::Common Sense Atheism » On Seeking Truth

How should I be trying to find truth?
Truth is a difficult thing. Just a few centuries ago, the smartest humans alive were dead wrong about damn near everything.
They were wrong about gods. Wrong about astronomy. Wrong about disease. Wrong about heredity. Wrong about physics. Wrong about racism, sexism, nationalism, governance, and many other moral issues. Wrong about geology. Wrong about cosmology. Wrong about chemistry. Wrong about evolution. Wrong about nearly every subject imaginable.
Or so we believe. We think we are better informed than they were. Are we? Is our truth more reliable than their truth?
If we want to know the truth, we’d better have a good method for finding it. What’s the best method for finding truth? How should we be trying to find truth?1
via Common Sense Atheism » On Seeking Truth.

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