The feed reader is the fast food joint of the reading experience, but I want the farmer’s market, the slow-cooked greens, the home-baked bread. I don’t want to feed, I want to eat, with all the attendant history that word evokes—the flavor, the company, the time.
Mandy Brown masterfully articulates how feed reading and unread counts have turned reading into a rushed chore, rather than something to savour and enjoy.
HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility! -
If you haven’t had the chance to listen to Merlin Mann and John Gruber’s 60 minute talk from SxSW, you’re missing out on one of the best pro-creativity, anti-social media-y talks of the year. Filled with all sorts of inspirational goodness (like not actually having anything to do with its title), I highly recommend it for all creative types out there — whether you publish a weblog or not.
I’ll leave you with a single tidbit:
“If everything is what you want to do, then you’re not really doing a thing. How do you know that you’ve reached the right person if you tried to reach everybody?”
And of course, it automatically sounds 142% more intelligent coming from the mouth of Gruber.
You know there’s something absolutely crazy going on when a puny link on my modest weblog leads to an all-out dieting competition between Viddler’s technology evangelist and a squash-playing Canadian musician.
Kyle claims to have found iPhone OS 3.0′s best new feature. I tend to agree with him.
The Current State of the Camcorder Industry
John Rust writes a provoking piece on the removal of FireWire 400 from every single piece of new Mac hardware — from Mini to Pro — and what it means for the the MiniDV “standard”:
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to reality. Recording HD video on a little Flip camera isn’t an alternative to a real camera. A DSLR is meant for photos, not jello-like video that can only be recorded in little 5-minute segments of QuickTime video. Why does the “industry standard” have long lists of incompatibilities that will be updated “as more is known”? And who honestly needs to bother with the differences between hard drives and SD cards? They both do the same thing.
John argues that MiniDV tapes were the medium that bridged the prosumer video gap for years, and should remain the predominant standard. After a decade of owning a tape-based camcorder, and 90 days of owning a Nikon D90 (which records HD video on SD cards), I can firmly disagree with him.
Flash memory has revolutionized the way I shoot video.
Scoff at it all you want, but it’s the comparable to the difference between film and digital. Recording on tape takes work to set up, work to shoot, and work to import. So much so, that you need complete and total preparation along with a whole post-processing workflow just to make a simple 60 second clip. And as unimportant as that may seem, it limits experimentation. Which limits creativity. Which is worse than any jello-cam footage, I can assure you.
With flash memory, I can press a single button and I’m recording — and there’s a 0% chance that I’m going to be taping over something. I can actually browse through my separate clips with thumbnails on the camera. I can import HD footage within seconds, drastically reducing the realtime import limitations of MiniDV, and the video actually imports as separate, distinct clips. Amazing!
I’ve filmed more in the last 90 days with the D90 than in the last decade with my MiniDV-based camcorder. The best camera is the one you always have with you, and is not a pain to operate. Experimentation and creativity can spark something so emotionally captivating that pro cameras can only hope to capture.
It seems like there is a gap in the camcorder industry right now. We have high-end cameras coming out that take advantage of flash and hard drive based memory storage. And we have low-end, ultraportable, Flip-style camcorders that bring HD video to the masses. But what about the advanced amateur? John is right, there really is no optimal solution at the moment.
But it’s coming. Like the transition from floppies to CD-ROMs and from film to digital, it will take time, but a better solution is on the way.
Just like Apple’s vision of a non-linear editor with iMovie ’08 that ruffled so many people’s feathers when first announced, transitions — especially in creative spaces — aren’t easy. Nor are they embraced with loving affection. The first implementation may be flawed, the second, clunky, but over time, it will evolve. And it will make all of us more productive, less frustrated, and more creative.
In the words of Seth Godin, “You don’t have to like change to take advantage of it.”
Should we stick to what we’re comfortable with, or choose to embrace the future with open arms?
Confessions: The Internet and My Ego Disorder -
“The truth is that in the real world I am just like everybody else. The riders of public transit, my fellow patrons in the coffee shops, every pedestrian I pass—I am fundamentally no less anonymous and nameless than they are. In the real world nobody is asking for my opinion; I am not the keynote speaker; I am not even a good author. In fact, I am nothing that anybody else really wants to be. Hence I flee from reality. Oh sweet Internet domain, come stroke my fragile ego with your soothing readership stats!”
Yikes. Something tells me there’s a little bit of this in each of us that we need to get rid of.
(Via Pat)
From my Facebook Wall -
so.
funny story.
we were going over camera RAW in my photography class today. and since we have computers with us in the class room and i was slightly bored ((it was so nice outside and so i didnt want to be in class)) i decided to look up “camera RAW” on google images.
no joke. your picture was like the third down. it was you taking a SP [self portrait] in a mirror..not that there arent like hundreds of those but yeah.
i started laughing out loud in class.
just thought you should know
Of course, the picture she’s referring to is courtesy of my RAW vs. JPEG post written awhile back. From a simple weblog to a Liberty University classroom. Like that.
Google: perpetually connecting.
Five Blogs You Probably Aren’t Reading but Should Be
In no particular order:
And one blog that you should already be reading, but just in case…
I used to be a camera settings geek and then I met Bil Zelman –
If I had to give advice to anyone at all, it might be to know your tools inside and out, but not let them get in the way. I can go from a 125th to a 30th and from f2.8 to 5.6 while walking backwards and holding conversation without missing a beat. Add too much more to that equation and I’m paying more attention to my gear than to my subject — not a good thing.
That, and take lots and lots of pictures.
This post has been collecting dust in my ‘to read’ folder for ages (so it’s a little older) but I highly recommend it for all of the photo bugs out there. Zelman’s photos remind me of the days when I didn’t care about camera settings and rules of photography and such. We so often try to Photoshop coolness into our rather bland photos, or come up with techniques like HDR to give our photos a different look. When really, all of that’s just an excuse for poor composition to begin with.
He has such an inside-out understanding of his camera that he’s naturally able to capture even the most sporadic, candid moments creatively. Me? I can’t even change the settings on my camera without glancing at the LCD.
Hopefully, that’s about to change.
The Myth of Talent
I have a problem with Talent.
It began one night while flipping through my photography portfolio with a friend: “You’re so talented with a camera. Whenever you take a photo, it just … works.”
Just works? What? Do you realize how much work I put into those shots? I can only wish that as soon as a camera was bestowed upon me — bam! — photographic masterpieces emerged. It’s easy for people to look at my 500+ photos on Flickr, and think that all of my pictures walk off the camera that way.
They have no idea of the thousands upon thousands of ‘lens cap photos’ I took, trying to understand exactly how ISO affects shutter speed. Or the hours upon hours of Lynda.com seminars I watched, trying to comprehend why Photoshop behaves the way it does. Or even all the times I came home from a shoot, only to find that all the shots that looked great on a 3″ screen were really out of focus.
I wish that it was as simple as creative people waking up each morning and waving their magical paintbrushes around to create works of art. But it doesn’t work that way.
People use talent as a crutch — an excuse: “I couldn’t possibly do such and such because I’m nowhere near as talented as so and so.” Sure, it’s easy to believe that it’s not your fault you aren’t good at something, simply because you weren’t granted that ‘talent’ at birth.
It simply wasn’t meant to be, right? You just don’t have that eye for composition, that ear for music, that voice for speaking, or that touch for writing. Blame your parents or God or whatever — but most definitely, it’s not your fault that you’re not out creating masterpieces.
Let me tell you: that’s a lie. I’ve never believed that. Anyone can be the best at what they do regardless of whether they’re talented or not. Talent isn’t some magic formula that makes everything work. It’s not something that is either bestowed upon you or not, ultimately deciding your fate.
There are a lot of unsuccessful, talented people in the world, and there are just as many successful, untalented ones. Yet we say that the successful people are talented because we want to believe that some sort of luck-of-the-draw talent got them to where they are.
We couldn’t be more wrong.
Becoming good at something takes a lot more than just talent. It takes hard work — pure, unbiased, hard work. Pressing on, day after day. Pulling your hair out in frustration, night after night. It’s definitely much easier to believe in luck, instead of actually having to put hard work, time, and effort into something.
That’s not to dismiss talent completely as nonexistent. Talent is very real, and I meet talented people that I admire every day. But talent isn’t magic. It doesn’t make things happen by itself. It still requires hard work; it just makes the process easier.
And it bugs me when people simply dismiss hard work as mere Talent.
Potential vs. Effort
Derek Sivers published a piece a couple years back on why ideas are simply multipliers of execution, and I believe the same to be true with talent.
Talent is potential. It is worth nothing if you don’t do anything with it. Telling me that you have talent is absolutely worthless unless you’re the kind of person that’s going to do something about it. There are those with exceptional talents that do absolutely nothing to develop their giftings, and simply remain mediocre. And then there are those with no natural talents or giftings whatsoever, that want something — really want something — and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it.
Some companies aim to hire talented people. Don’t hire talent.
Determination, persistence, passion, effort — these things are more valuable than talent alone.
Creative Work
Creativity works the same way. It’s a learned skill, not some mythical gifting that is appointed to the elite among us. It’s something anyone can tap into and develop, if they pursue it enough.
People often attribute a person’s creativeness to some sort of a genetically inherited code that allows them to bring things to life, seemingly effortlessly.
They really couldn’t be more wrong. There is no gene for creativity.
Yes, some are naturally able to tap into creativity, while others need to set aside hours at a time simply to ‘get in the zone’. But anyone can get there. Anyone. You just have to want it enough.
I wish I were one of those people that immediately had an eye for photography or an ear for music. But I’m not. I have to work at developing that eye, and honing that ear. Day after day, week after week, year after year. It’s the most antagonizing and frustrating process: doing the thing that you want to be able to love, but continually failing at it.
In the words of Merlin Mann: “Creative work only seems like a magic trick to people who don’t understand that it’s ultimately still work.”
Don’t kid yourself — creativity isn’t some hippie club of feel-gooders. It’s hard. And anything that’s hard is easy to give up on. Which is why so few actually make it to the top. And why creativity is simply excused, by many, as magic.
Maybe I wasn’t born with the eye for photography, or the ear for music, or the touch for writing. Maybe I’m not talented in any way. Maybe I wasn’t born naturally creative or gifted to any extent.
But I don’t want that to stop me.
Maybe creativity is like anything else. Maybe it can be learned. Not packaged into a neat little curriculum and taught in schools, but learned through experience, mistakes, and determination. Maybe a good eye can be developed, a good ear, honed, and the writer’s touch, perfected.
Maybe my value is determination, persistence, passion, a stubborn refusal to say “I quit”.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s more valuable than Talent.
Shawn Blanc on taking an email break -
I’m thinking we should all take a break from email for 30 days. Those we have to communicate with we could call or talk to in person. Those we don’t have to work with wouldn’t be able to infringe on our time because they don’t have our phone numbers. And we may just end up having meaningful dialog with our friends and family instead of keeping in touch by sending shallow links to funny YouTube videos.
What say ye?
While these are all flaws of email, I don’t necessarily agree that abandoning email for telephone calls is a step in the right direction. Part of the reason I love email is because I’m not always available. With phones, anyone who has my number has a direct line to me at all times. Yes, certain people deserve the right to contact me at any time, but they are few and far between.
Email, on the other hand, doesn’t require both parties being ‘available’ at any point in time. I can email you whenever and you can get back to me whenever. And the best part is that I never feel like I’m interrupting you. Or actually, maybe that’s the problem.
Of course, the irony is that people will email Shawn their thoughts on this…
