Hi! I'm Nate. This is one of those blogs that get updated quite sporatically and with no particular theme.
But Jeff Atwood told me in a YouTube video to Embrace the Suck and Do It In Public. And then Austin Kleon told me in a book to Show Your Work. Oh, then Casey Neistat taught me that "perfection erases humanity." And then Tom Sachs did that Space Program thing, and I was reminded of an insight that I had a long time ago.
I was turning in a magazine assigment in elementary or middle school. My professional graphic-designer dad had helped me desktop-publish a decent National Geographic parody about mushrooms. I was proud of the work we had done. And I was about to scoff (silently, internally) at the work of a fellow student, when I realized that the reason mine looked so good was because of all the help I had from my dad. The content was all mine, and the National Geographic cover was my idea. But the well-done presentation of which I was proud, was all him. This other student had done all the work himself.
I realized that if I had tried to do the magazine myself, even if I had gotten the National Geographic cover looking good, I would have run out of steam before I finished the magazine. I imagined a 3rd grader's crayon-rendered magazine. If it had a beginning, middle, and end, it would be superior to my "excellent" beginning.
And so, I make an imperfect website.
The last few days I’ve come home from work just exhausted, even though I’ve hardly accomplished anything. I’m spending much too much time surfing the web. And yet I’m working on my dream project. What’s the problem? I’ll tell you what the problem is: dealing with other people’s designs and code.
Yesterday was Sunday. It was my second time teaching Sunday school (Job). Libby and I both spoke in Sacrament meeting. My mom came to hear us speak and to help wrangle Dottie.
Well, Hi, Y’all – It’s August, 2010 and earlier today I took delivery of this Alienware m11x laptop computer.
I have never been a big journal keeper. (Is that the same thing as a Journalist?) However, during my Mission I kept a journal at least a little more than I do now. I also wrote many, many letters. I’ve really enjoyed reading them; lots of things that I have totally forgotten. And not just mundane things – well, okay, they’re quite mundane, but they’re also interesting (at least to me).
I love shopping for gadgets. Sometimes I do it just for fun. I used to look at ads in the back of Macworld magazine and pick out components and peripherals for an imaginary computer system. Well – recently I purchased an Alienware m11x “gaming ultraportable” computer. It has an eleven-point-six-inch screen and a gigabyte of what we used to call video RAM.
One night I came upstairs to the kitchen. On the counter was a box that said it contained a toner cartridge – a toner cartridge for a laser printer. We didn’t have a laser printer; we had an Apple Image Writer II which is a dot-matrix printer that takes ribbons. It was very late at night so I didn’t want to wake up my dad just to bug him about a new computer for the millionth time. Reconnaissance was the only option.
My first business foray was trying to sell pagers (you know, “beepers”?). My first job was selling pagers to mall shoppers from a kiosk styled to look like some kind of contemporary covered wagon.
So – the iPad has been announced. It will be available soon. The apps that come with it plus the iWork apps are almost enough to justify the purchase. Two or three years from now there will be thousands of apps available – apps that do just about everything. So my question is, why would anyone still want a full-blown PC?
I don’t know how old I was – but I was no more than six – probably closer to four. My parents came home and told me that they had rented a movie. They had a big, blue, padded case with them. I imagine that I said something like, “Coool!”
ArsTechnica posts confirmation of an Apple event on Wednesday, 27 January, 2010.
In fifth grade students helped serve lunch in the cafeteria. I was excited to get out of class – even if it meant dishing up 600 sloppy joes.
I read Neal Stephenson’s Anathem about a year ago. It must have been the time of year or something, but I’ve been thinking about it recently. To avoid simply re-reading it I’ve been finding some of the interviews with Neal Stephenson floating around the Intertubes. I don’t know if Mr. Stephenson has done more interviews &c. surrounding this book – but there were a lot to be found. One was a video of a question and answer session he did at Google.
I think you ought to know that I’m feeling very depressed. I’ve felt this coming on for a week or two. I thought that I was fed up or bored with work. But today I was looking at what I have to do and it’s not so boring. There’s enough to do and it’s fairly interesting problems that I’m expected to solve.