Josh Halickman

Jason Smith: Tumblr Mix Tape Exchange

jasonsmithtx:

I saw all the posts from the Tumblr Food Exchange, and figured music was more fun. At the moment I have been recieving one CD a month from a project of one of my friends. Where she selected 12 people where each given a month to send a mix tape to the 11 other people for a year of Mix Tapes. I…

I absolutely love this idea. 

Netflix Bends To Warner Bros., Won't Rent DVDs For 28 Days After They Go On Sale

I find this really interesting and almost a full reversal of what was going on in VHS. In the days of VHS rental stores would pay huge fees to get a copy of a movie about a month before it was available for sale, ever wonder why you would be charged ~$99 if you lost a video you rented.

For some reason when DVDs came out it many more people started buying movies instead of renting them. It is now obvious that the models have been reversed and the movie industry makes much more money from DVD sales then rentals, and we will now all suffer from that.

I am going to seriously reconsider my Netflix account if this trend continues.

Obama's speech to students

This is a great speech, I think everyone should read it. It even makes me want to go back to school. One of my favorite excerpts:

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

The mainstreaming of crazy

If I sound angry, then, yeah, I am. I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact.

It is things like this that really upset/scare me about the direction our country is moving. As a place that, in the last 50 to 100 years, has used  science, technology, and intellectualism to become the strongest and most powerful of nations. Now when the fate of that strength is at such great risk, is the time to be encouraging our children to work harder, and question more, and study more. Now is not the time to be shutting them off and keeping them home from school, because of petty and unfounded arguments.

I don’t think Obama has all the answers and neither does he, but he is encouraging the children of this country to question and think, and those are two things that a lot of there parents, on both sides of the argument, are not doing enough of.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

Why the Manager’s Schedule Blows Creative Productivity

hilker:

kenyatta:

In his latest essay, Paul Graham describes the difference between what he calls the maker’s schedule and the manager’s schedule. Makers–the writers, coders, designers, editors, creative types–need half or whole days to produce anything that solves complicated problems. Managers schedule out their workdays in hour-long blocks. When managers schedule makers into midday meetings, they kill creative productivity in real but not-obvious ways. Graham considers himself a maker, and describes why meetings are the enemy of creativity.

via Smarterware

i call it “finding a groove” and for me, it’s difficult to even look for a groove if i know i’m going to have to get back out of it in an hour. i’m learning to do so anyway.

I got nothing done today until 6:30 for this exact reason. It is very hard to write code with meetings all day.