A couple days ago, Kathy Sierra put up a post at her blog Creating Passionate Users where she invited her readers to introduce themselves. Most of her questions were pretty standard, but she stuck one in the middle that made me think: “One thing you’re passionate about (qualifier: must be something you are always trying […]
Category: people
The irreversibility of life
I mentioned in my last post that one reason why rapid prototyping would work for life is that “very little in life is irreversible”. Some people might disagree with that assumption. For example, I just moved all the way across the country, leaving behind friends and family, which is a fairly drastic move. But, as […]
Rapid prototyping of life
As I mentioned in the last post, I spent a few hours talking with my coworker and her friend after seeing a show together on Friday evening. Her friend is also a software developer, and is, like me, a big fan of rapid prototyping (as I mention in my reviews of books like Experimentation Matters […]
Thoughts on manipulation
After finishing the Dale Carnegie a couple days ago, I started reading the Cialdini. I have somewhat mixed feelings about these books. These techniques take advantage of all sorts of triggers that have been implanted into us by society. And in the large scale, such triggers are what have enabled human society to exponentially advance. […]
Self branding
I was walking down the street on my way back to the hotel this evening, and saw a guy wearing a Cubs t-shirt. I instantly felt a bit of kinship with him. I’ve commented on the way sports provides an instant community before, but it was a little bit bizarre, honestly. Maybe it was because […]
Rules and people
I’m feeling kind of braindead after dealing with logistics for two or three weeks straight, but I’ve got tonight off from socializing so let’s see if I can cobble together an actual post. This is mostly built off of a conversation I had with a friend recently where we were discussing different management styles. I […]
Rules as thinking substitutes
[ed. note: I’ve been mulling this post over for a while (I wrote about half of it last week), and it hasn’t quite come together yet (probably because it’s more like two or three posts), but I figure the only way to get it done is to just post it.] This line of thought was […]
Douglas Hofstadter at Stanford
Douglas Hofstadter, of Godel Escher Bach fame, gave a lecture at Stanford this evening. I happened to hear about it, and convinced DocBug to go with me (which worked out great when I didn’t allow enough time for traffic because he was able to save me a seat despite a standing-room-only crowd). Hofstadter’s a great […]
Social butterfly
It’s one of those perfect storm social weekends for me. I’m hanging out with an out-of-town friend tomorrow afternoon, and then I’m invited to three parties tomorrow evening, with three completely different social groups. And it got me thinking about my social network. I don’t tend to consider myself a very social person. I’m not […]
Incomplete realities
Responding to my End Times theory, Brian commented “Can we show that one reality is better than another? I hope so!” I’ve been struggling on and off with this question of what makes one reality “better” than another for at least six years. In that rant (itself a follow-up to these thoughts on morality), I […]
