Paul P's Treehouse

Closing the Gap to Create Great Stuff

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Mon, 26 May 2008 18:22:14 -0700

A really good bit of advice from super accomplished radio personality and storyteller Ira Glass:

"There's a gap, that the first couple of years you're making stuff, it's not that great... But your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is still a disappointment to you, that it's sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that point. They quit... Everybody goes through that... You gotta know that's totally normal, and the most important possible thing you can do, is do a lot of work, a huge volume of work."

This is all made even cooler by the fact that I got passed this little clip by Ira himself, via Twitter. He's got no idea who I am, but the fact that he's sharing stuff like this freely, whenever he thinks of it, is very, very cool.

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Brilliant

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:34:01 -0700

McDonald's Happy Meal Ad

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My Year in Cities

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:23:18 -0700

I'm following Kristin's lead this year, (and of course always following Jason's), with my year in cities:

New York, NY*
Grand Rapids, MI*
Columbus, OH*
Cleveland, OH*
Salt Lake City, UT
Beaver Creek, CO
Los Angeles, CA
Nadi, Fiji
Waya, Fiji
San Francisco, CA*
Ormond Beach, FL
Orlando, FL
Las Vegas, NV
Reston, VA*
Columbia, MD
El Paso, TX
Amarillo, TX
Tucson, AZ*
Bisbee, AZ

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Punched Before Eating

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:36:49 -0700

Punched Before Eating -- SNL Digital Short -- Andy Samberg

via Daring Fireball, which is awesome.

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Fin

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 09:16:30 -0700

Fin, originally uploaded by SmoovvP.

This is Kelly, minutes after completing her dissertation defense at ASU on September 27, 2007.

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Puerile

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 09:49:30 -0700

Darth calls the Emperor

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Google: the Citation Index

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:17:42 -0700

I just finished reading Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control", and throughout I was amazed that it felt progressive and bold today, 14 years after it was first published. A passage near the end includes a little bit of a non-sequitur that discusses the then new concept of electronic, hyperlinked citation indexing, and in his description, Kelly basically describes the fundamental insight that makes Google work, four years before the twins launched their search engine. This guy was on top of things in '94.

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An Idea for the Twitter Team

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:37:14 -0700

Twitter should track airport codes (e.g. SFO, JFK, etc.) to allow mutual followers to see when they're in the same city as one another. It'd be a lightweight Dopplr (which should be a feature, not a product, imho).

Use case: I land in San Francisco and twitter, "In San Francisco for a couple of days. Who wants beer? SFO" At the Twitter website, "SFO" will automatically be linked to a page that dynamically pulls a list of my friends who are also near SFO. The list would include people who have home cities near SFO and people who are in San Francisco that week and have twittered in a message with "SFO".

That would be super freakin' handy. And airport codes are perfect! They're unique, very short, ubiquitous, referenced everywhere, and provide the right level of location granularity for this sort of coordination.

Bonus points: let me send a message to Twitter that says "who SFO" and get a message back with names of friends currently in the area. More bonus points: let me send a message to Twitter that says "where SFO" to change my location without sending a message to my friends.

I think I just passed along a freakin' stellar idea, and would love to see the Twitter guys do it and get richer for my brilliance. ;-)

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Like American Gladiator for Ninjas

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 11:56:44 -0700

Ninja Warrior (Sasuke) Makoto Nagano

I love it. (via Kottke; glad he's back)

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Judging a facebook by its cover:

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 11:20:39 -0700

These three photos were published with the New York Times article "Who Founded Facebook?" Which of these guys looks like a software developer to you?

Aaron Greenspan, who created houseSYSTEM before Zuckerberg's Facebook, who's a little jealous, but moving on to new software projects.
Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and flip-flop wearing, I'm-worth-more-than-that Silicon Valley hotshot.
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, two very tie-conscious young men suing Zuckerberg saying Facebook was their idea first.

There is just NO WAY the Winklevoss brothers are software developers. They look like they're participating in a casting call for an update to American Psycho.

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