Month: February 2022
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Just get a beater
Beater car, phone to live more adventurously and recklessly.
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Clutch.
99/1– 99% minor annoyances but 1% clutch — this is worth it.
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Anti Screens
Best car has no screen.
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Why aren’t we allowed to touch?
Touching is wisdom and learning.
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HOW TO EXTRACT MORE MEANING FROM YOUR PHOTOS
Lately I’ve been shooting a lot– and uploading a lot of photos. In this torrent and stream of images, I have been trying to extract deeper meaning, significance, and memory from the photos. But how does one do this? Some thoughts:
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YOUR PASSION VS WHAT YOU DO.
When you go to a party and someone asks you, ‘So what do you do?’ What is the best way to answer? Just tell them what your passion is, not your boring day job.
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SMALL THUMBNAIL, THEN LARGER
When reviewing your photos, see them as small thumbnails (contact sheet), and *then* when a certain photo intrigues you from a small thumbnail, *THEN* make it larger and full-screen it.
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iPad as a Photo Device, Not a Productivity or Laptop Replacement
Or in other words, don’t get the keyboard or pencil for iPad.
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Labor Saving Things?
The best car is a self driving one to reduce labor?
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CAPTURING THE MOMENT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CAPTURING THE FOCUS
Better capture an out of focus/blurry photo of the ‘decisive moment’ than to try to capture the perfect focus and technical settings, and miss it.
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STOIC INDEPENDENCE
The good thing about stoicism — You don’t expect anything from anyone else; true independence.
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OWN IT ALL.
If you don’t own it, it owns you. Also, as much as I love TESLA, less control and ownership. You are still tied to the TESLA supercharger network (centralized). Also the over the air updates — you cannot hack or modify it. If you cannot modify, edit, fix, or service your own car or things…
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EMAIL OVER SOCIAL MEDIA
HUUUUGE epiphany: Don’t use GMAIL, create your own self-hosted email instead. Register your own website domain, and get your free (self hosted) email service. 1000x more control and freedom, and less ‘nudging’ and addiction than having Gmail or a second-party hosted email. Also — don’t use social media, or even social media messaging apps. Figure…
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ADDICTION?
Good vs ‘bad’ addictions?
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SNAP FOCUS
Just pre-focus your camera (or RICOH GR III/II) to 1 meter, and just shoot all photos from that pre-focused position. In Ricoh camera, it is called ‘snap’ mode. Perhaps the future of photography is more ‘snap-shotty‘? Consider “SNAP-CHAT” — just called ‘SNAP’.
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SLIDES: PHOTO VISION ONLINE WORKSHOP (2022, PDF)
DOWNLOAD PDF SLIDES HERE > — — PODCAST audio recording
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Myopia
Blur and out of focus good for Creativity.
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Nobody Can Force You to Do Something Against Your Own Will
Thus when you acquiesce to someone else’s will, it is a signal of your personal lack of willpower. Thus never get angry or upset at others, only yourself.
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Anti boring design
Either make people insanely love it, or hate it — no in-between. In praise of new BMW design, and anti Tesla standard (boring) design. In praise of Cybertruck, anti Porsche 911 (boring). Classic and timeless design is boring. Raw and radically new is better. Drama is good. In praise of Tesla Model X Falcon doors…
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HOW STUBBORN?
The degree of how stubborn you are about certain things is the true measure about what you believe in (and what you don’t believe in, or what you don’t care for much).
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Either Love or Hate, No “Meh”
Best to polarize.
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Creative Vision Notes
Touch Rough surfaces disfluency geometry Intimacy disclarity ‘Horror vacuui’ Creative reformatting Liminal Randomness is good Nourish yourself creatively Turn off your LCD screen No creative fascism Kaizen — 3% principle (Virgil abloh) Is it dynamic or not? Your creative vision is always in flux Continuum Minimum viable blog post
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Experimental Ethics
All ethics are subjective— make ethics your luxury and experiment with new ethics.
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Better Bad than Nothing
Better to make ”bad” photos or ”bad” art than no art.
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Epigenetics
Gene expression through training.
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MINIMUM VIABLE CLOTHING (MVC)
No shirt, minimalist shoes, just shorts. The best armor is your natural skin. Take your shirt and top off if the weather is good, and sunny. Get a good tan— the new luxury and sign of elite.
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Lessons I’ve Learned From My Son
Don’t stay indoors Touch things to understand and explore them. Don’t worry too much about hygiene Take lots of naps Be brave and bold Don’t wear shoes Be stubborn Lead Dance, smile, move Prefer to stand and walk and move Pursue your curiosities Touch things, buttons, haptic things and feedback Tanner is better. Love nature,…
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FOCUS IS OVERRATED.
Better to capture the moment and have it blurred or out of focus than to miss it.
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JUST DISABLE IT.
If there’s an option to enable or disable something, a good heuristic is to disable it. If it can be “disabled”, it probably isn’t necessary / essential (just nice to have).
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EXTRA.
Always a little bit of extra is good — extra buffer before getting to the airport, giving extra services, even consider the Japanese art of sake-pouring — they intentionally overfill it to show extra grace and extra sake— makes us feel good.
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Why I Don’t Like Suggestions or Recommendations From AI or Machine Learning Algorithms.
It makes me more generic like the masses and subtly “nudges” me in ways I don’t like. Thus just disable it.
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Apple Keynote is Insanely Great
Also for mobile iphone. Steve Jobs would be proud. Start with a black canvas. Great minimalist black theme— Keynote as superior to making ”books” in terms of making information.
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Specificity in Photography
To make more beautiful and “better” photos, shoot more specifically. For example, get insanely close, macro mode, focus on the details.
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Techno Zen
What i seek is zen and focus from my technology, not more ”productivity” or ”efficiency”.
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THE WILL TO PRODUCTIVITY
Why be productive, and towards what ends? The desire to extract more out of existence and life?
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Use and abuse your phone
No screen protectors. No case.
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MAXIMIZE YOUR DATA OUTPUT.
When it is good to vlog, or use voice dictate: Podcast
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FOOD IS YOUR (NATURAL) STEROID.
The more cholesterol, the better: Podcast
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How to simplify your iPhone
Limit your Home Screen, delete at least 1 app a day. Minimum viable iphone with apps and features. Turn off all notifications besides phone call and FaceTime. Protect your mindspace.
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The best life is outdoors
One’s personal joy and happiness is proportional to the time they spend outdoors (outside of the house). Can be walking around your local neighborhood, at the local grocery store or Costco/Walmart, at the mall, hiking and nature etc.
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THE BEST STRAP IS NO STRAP.
If you don’t need a strap just choose not to use it.
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Happiness and Climate
Is our happiness and climate inter-connected? Some thoughts: NorCal vs SoCal My thought: NorCal people typically less ‘happy’ than people from SoCal. I would say the average Bay Area person (even successful), would be only a 5.5/10 happiness, and the average SoCal person is more bored-blase (maybe an average 6.5/10 happiness). NorCal folks are focused…
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THE FEWER KEYSTROKES, THE BETTER.
A general computing and general idea– The fewer keystrokes you gotta do to achieve your desired result, the better. Or in other words, make your Mac as simple as possible.
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REDUCE.
When in doubt, reduce. Reduce the interface, reduce your things, reduce the size of your home, reduce your possessions, reduce the size of your car, reduce the size of your designs, etc. For example I find it bizarre — why is it that every new generation of iPhone, they are getting *BIGGER*, *THICKER* and heavier?…
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How to Simplify Your Mac
Creative reformatting — perhaps every once a year (at least), reformat your Mac, iPhone, iPad, devices, life, etc. Some thoughts:
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Human Photosynthesis
Or why sunlight is good:
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Kid Ethics
Play with your kid how you wish your parents would have played with you as a kid.
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Not “Quality”, but Properties
No such thing as “high” quality. Each material and thing simply has different qualities and features/properties. Thus, think about the properties of something instead.
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BOGO LIFESTYLE
Kill two birds with one stone. I like walking, and being with Seneca, and also working out. Carrying him around the block with my arms—good arm workout and good time spent with Seneca.
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Bitcoin or Nothing
When people talk about crypto, they mean to talk about Bitcoin.
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Car as Your Third Home
Buy a car you can imagine living out of?
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YOU CAN DISCOVER BEAUTY IN THE SMALLEST OF THINGS
The great thing about photography — even the smallest little thing can become a leitmotif (Henri Cartier-Bresson). Also the Publilus Syrus quote: Even the smallest hair casts its own shadow.