Monthly Archives: February 2012

It’s about people.

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I am writing this post on my brand new 24″ widescreen external monitor — it’s a TV, doubling as a GIANT computer screen, and it’s awesome. Last night I watched the Oscars on it, in all their boring glory–when did they stop being fun? (Answer: when Hugh Jackman was not hosting them every year after 2009.)

I’m amused to say it was my absolute worst showing ever, though: 9/24! I did make all my picks as the opening theme was starting, though, and I saw a grand total of two nominated films this year — The Help and Moneyball. The former had its problems, of course, but I cannot deny Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis’ amazing performances (although that standing ovation for Spencer seemed … slightly misplaced?). But nothing for Moneyball? Nothing? That hurts. I know, a sports film, a business film even–but Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the crazy passion and anger and dreams, that rugged determination–I thought he was fantastic. At least he was nominated.

If you have yet to see the film and you have any interest in baseball, read the book first. Michael Lewis is a master of making boring events into teeth-grinding page-turning ones (including the MLB draft, which is basically just a bunch of GMs phoning each other into the wee hours; not exactly made for novelization). And then watch the film, and revel in Chris Pratt’s adorable portrayal of Scott Hatteberg. I’d like to have coffee with the real Hatty, I think, if I could.

On a different note: today the brilliant Maria Popova posted a great little list of insights called How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love. It sounds a little self-helpy, I know, but trust me: interesting, candid, and worth it. Among my favourite affirmations are the following two:

First, from Robert Krulwich’s commencement address (full text):

If you can… fall in love, with the work, with people you work with, with your dreams and their dreams.

And from The Holstee Manifesto, which you’ve probably seen a hundred times before:

Life is about the people you meet, and the things you create with them.

Emphasis is often made on going out and finding your inspiration and focusing on you and allowing yourself to do what you need to do–but I think there needs to be more of a reminder that it’s the people you surround yourself with that have the most effect. Since I started at my current job five months ago (!) all I’ve been thinking about is how much everyone around me knows, and how interesting the stories they have must be. I’d almost just like to take everybody out to lunch individually, one by one, and let them talk. (Maybe I will!)

Surround yourself with interesting people. It’s a surefire way to make you do more, all the time.

February Mix

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For some reason I’ve been saving a lot of draft posts lately, half-writing stuff and then promising myself I’ll come back to them, like the only purpose of this blog is to incubate Deep Thinking and Refined Writing and for everything else I think about sharing to just be ignored.

This is obviously dumb, so hopefully some of those draft posts and partially-formed thoughts will actually get posted here soon. Self-editing is not a particularly helpful trait sometimes.

So here, instead, is a totally un-thought-out collection of tunes I’ve been listening to a lot lately. Most of them are pretty new, and they were just the first few I thought of sharing, so also completely incongruous. Whatever.

Tracklist (in no particular order):

First Aid Kit – “The Lion’s Roar” (The Lion’s Roar, 2012) — hat tip, Matt
LCD Soundsystem – “Disco Infiltrator” (LCD Soundsystem, 2005)
The Weather Station – “Came So Easy” (All of It Was Mine, 2011)
Sam Amidon – “Rain and Snow” (I See the Sign, 2011)
The Weakerthans – “(Manifest)” (Left & Leaving, 2000)
Phoenix – “Lisztomania” (Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, 2009)
Field Music – “A House is Not A Home” (Tones of Town, 2007)

Download the .zip here!

(Edit: Seems like a few people are having trouble downloading from that link for some reason. If it doesn’t work, try copying the file location and pasting it into your browser. If that doesn’t work, leave a comment and we’ll get it sorted!)

Writing this just reminded me that Field Music’s latest record, Plumb, just came out THIS WEEK! Holy cow. The AV Club has favourable things to say about it, but Paste isn’t sure. I, on the other hand, have had the leaked zip on my computer for about two weeks and have felt slightly too guilty to listen to it, but I think a record store excursion is on the list for the rest of this weekend. I will probably love it.

Also, here’s the latest in adorable office dog photos (Shadow was dressed up for Valentine’s Day):

Potpourri

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Holy cats, it’s already February! I know it’s been a while. Life happens … playing with puppies at the office happens.

I’ve been doing fun things, though. I went to DevTO the other day for the first time and met some awesome folks, learned some cool stuff, won some swag … It is really fun to talk to other people in your field, especially because getting excited about JavaScript or CSS3 doesn’t make their eyes glaze over. I like being able to introduce myself as a developer and talk to other like-minded folks about what neat stuff they’re building. Note to everyone: there are a lot of cool things getting dreamt up and designed and built in Toronto right now. A lot.

Here I am with some of my new friends: Justin from KRFTWRK and Jasmine, courtesy DevTO and Create Studio.

I also got invited to speak at Humber College a few weeks ago to the students who are currently in the program from which I graduated last year. It was a lot of fun, and I think it went really well; I just talked pretty casually about how I survived the madness of that program (it is insane) and what happened after, and got to show them some work I’m really proud of from the app I worked on when I started at my current job.

I also made a short slide deck using the HTML5/JavaScript deck.js, which is totally fun and awesome (note: another really good deck, which I didn’t find out about until after I had made this one, is impress.js). If you want to have a look through the slides, you can check them out here! Content is a bit sparse, but there’s a little list of HTML5 resources on there if you’re interested. You’ll need a pretty modern browser to see it at its fullest; I suggest Google Chrome. Of course, it’ll still work in older ones, just not as prettily.

On an unrelated note, someone found my blog today by searching the following:
which dinosaur can curl up into a ball?
I don’t know if anything will surpass this.

And finally … if you haven’t heard of this band, what are you waiting for?!

(This one is so weird, but the song is SO GOOD)