daily drawings

when I started my job at mophie, one of the first suggestions I made to my boss was to implement 'daily drawings', which meant that everyone had to draw at least one picture each day. I didn't think it would consume too much time, and I thought it would help our work in a number of ways. The work we were doing was extremely creative, in the sense that we were building a lot of almost-tangible things out of thin air. We were producing not only artwork and code but the laws of a community and a new economy. Because of the relatively high pressure and seemingly huge consequences of getting it right, I thought it would be great to spend time each day doing work that was essentially zero-pressure. Working on our doodling and looking at our coworkers' could also stimulate some new ideas for visual designs or data structures.

Our work was heavily reliant on prototyping, then progressively adjusting and enhancing. Having the courage to create something at your top speed and show it to people immediately was something I knew would be important for me to work on. Reflection had its place in our work as well, but I think it would have been easier to reflect on our designs if we had more alternatives in mind to compare them with. Best of five is sometimes a different thing than best of two. There were a few things I did to try to get myself working at top speed, but I wasn't really able to do so most of the time. Often I felt that I wasn't getting the type of help from my coworkers that I needed. For example, when I suggested daily drawings, my boss agreed to let me do it. But he never told anyone else to try it, and he never reminded me about it. He did get me a coloring book, but there's a big difference between coloring and drawing. Several of the other employees were drawing things almost every day as part of their work, but I thought it wouldn't be too much to ask to have each one draw something on paper and hand it in every day. One day my boss did indulge my request to go to the art store and get markers, pens, colored pencils, crayons, and some reasonably nice ones at that. They made their way into use at the design table, and I used them to mark up some books so the other guys could find the important stuff (a lot of computer books have just one important line per page). I did drawings from time to time but never close to every day.

A lot of the drawings I do are just abstract scribbling, so it's not difficult or involved stuff. I should start daily drawings. Feel free to join me.

I am stupefied by how dead Brooklyn and Manhattan seem at night. I realize that thousands are sleeping within earshot of just about anywhere you go, but I would expect to see more life regardless, and I would love it if the daytime and evening culture were still available in small doses during the wee hours. Why shouldn't I be able to go buy a book and a muffin at 2:30 am? If we could provide that stuff for those who want it without causing nuisance to those who don't, I bet these two boroughs would spawn a nifty handful of all-night cafes.

Dampening noises is a tricky endeavor wherein a lot of things work well but few things work really well. I suspect that the invention of some kind of active panels might be the breakthrough we need. There are a lot of social norms that would change if we didn't have to worry about waking people up as much. There are also a lot of ways the economy would change if we could treat the night more like the day or evening.

Another invention I expect to deeply impact New York City late next decade is some product that absorbs sweat and keeps it off your clothes, no matter what you're wearing or how much you're sweating. I don't know if it will be an ultra-absorbent fabric or a battery-powered vaporizer or a bacteria that turns the sweat into oxygen, or a hybrid of all three. But I see a huge gain to be had in enabling more people to make practical use of their skills in running and cycling, and for more of the year, and in freeing people to exert themselves without needing to arrange logistics for a shower.

does anyone deserve anything?

it definitely makes sense to give people things, to think of them as tied to actions, even to feel entitled, for plenty of practical reasons. but nothing is tied to anything, it's merely a figure of speech meant to inspire trust. but even if you do trust someone and believe that they should trust you, that doesn't change the liklihood that you will sometimes disagree about what is best for them. and while you can get a lot of mileage by securing the trust of others, there must be some cases where your interest trumps theirs. who deserves anything then? at these points people make up excuses about somebody else being more deserving of some other reward that may not even be logically related to the situation.

we all act principally out of self-interest, it seems, at this point in our evolution. it can be very hard for a person to accurately judge the differences in personal satisfaction and stimulation that are liable to result from their actions and inactions. but they will sometimes be capable of influencing themselves by listening to predictions of how other people will behave in the form of arguments. most political argument is about behavior, but argument is behavior, I think that's what makes it so inherently dubious and we all prefer to listen to ourselves. Is that what Rawls said?

well despite how hard it can be to listen to someone without internally interrupting, correcting, or reinterpreting some of what they say, we are sometimes able to do it and genuinely change our own minds about how to become happier through sincere changes in our behavior. they are still motivated by selfishness. but they often carry great benefits to huge numbers of people, some of whom are able to pay it forward or pay it back. perhaps one reason the film 'pay it forward' seemed as plausible as it did was because people are familiar with the desire to stay in someone's good favor after they have just given you a gift and insisted that you not immediately reciprocate. often that feeling is expressed by the desire to give something to someone else, something they'll truly appreciate. why do people feel guilty upon receipt of such a gift? why do they feel bad when we really meant for them to feel good? it is because of the misunderstanding of this word 'deserve'.

Surveillance tools are becoming stronger and harder to compromise. We have a lot of reasons to expect that they will play an increasing role in law enforcement.


For that reason, we have an imperative to repair our code of laws in a somewhat timely way so that we don't suddenly imprison all of our society's most valuable rebellious minds. Not all of our laws are ideal - that should be clear. The ones that mess with our melting pot in the wrong ways will do us a lot of damage if we don't get humble about reforming them before the police state is realized.

will iphone please let me

• use a bluetooth keyboard?


• play music through airport express?


• choose when I get reminders about events?

the law is more complex because its biased.

getting better tunes

I have been aware for a long time that there was a lot of great music being produced that I simply wasn't hearing. Some of the best music that I have heard, I have few ways to find. I like asking friends for tips but I also wanted a way to get things my friends didn't know about. The internet isn't always a good place for that because you have to type an address or a search query before you get anything; you can't just get something for nothing, or without having a lead to it already.

Lately some sites have been doing a much better job at making that possible. Last.fm is a great way to find music and share what you've found. And Garageband.com has created something for facebook and itunes called iLike that lets you download tracks by less-known bands that resemble the stuff you listen to. After you figure out which ones are good, and begin listening to them, last.fm will compare them to your other bands and start recommending them to other people who have your taste. Then in the coming months, your recommendations will reflect their selections, giving you the benefit of their exposure to new music that you haven't reached.

Decentralized brains like this can become tremendously powerful without much effort on any one person's part, and most people already go to the effort of playing music on their computer, choosing some tracks and skipping others. Install last.fm's software and it will invisibly track your playlist and upload it to your profile, essentially sharing your wisdom with everyone else who's looking for good music. The cool thing is that neural networks like this can make judgments about songs without any clear rationale or any single criterion. This allows them to draw the line between good and great more accurately than most other means of evaluation.

Once I identify an artist I'm interested in, I download everything of theirs I can find to discover the few gems. For years I have used Acquisition to do this, and been impressed by the several special features it uses to trim busywork out of the process. I purchased a family license back when I was in college, and shared it with several people (the few who had macs, back before everyone did). When I recently upgraded to version 2, my license was unexpectedly voided, and I was pretty annoyed that I had not been warned. But after using the unlicensed software for a few weeks now, I am planning to pay for another license because this program is an important part of my quest to become a dj and help make my friends better djs. I'll explain why I like it soon.