Strictly Personal

Dumb.

The photos in the story just pops. The contrasting colors, the almost-black & white foreground contrasts beautifully with the striped color background. Hidden messages seep out in all of organized chaos.

Story - direct link to photo.

Shopping for tennis shoes is like visiting some kind of oddball hell. Where every shoe is white and either ugly or close to ugly. Sneakers in general tend to be on the uglier side of things. Male sneaker designers design shoes that have all kinds of fantastical bells and whistles. There are bubbles in the soles to make you jump higher or whatever. All kinds of vents, you know,to give your feet some air. Then there are the ridiculous lines that run all over the place of a sneaker which have no cohesion, no balance, nothing that speaks simplicity. Sneaker designers are trying to appeal to the 5 year old boys within adult males where little boys imaginations were sparked by silly details on toys.

Tennis shoes are even more ugly. It is all about white because, you know, it says tennis. Tennis balls safely moved from white to yellow and yet the shoes find it difficult to make that transition.

After doing an extensive search, the only tennis shoes I could find that matched quality and style ended being a dud. I keep sliding off the base of the shoe. It is bulky and incredibly uncomfortable.I tried a couple of other shoes at a store, they felt like crap. What a mess!

Ever since I hooked up my Network printer, I have been in love with wireless printing. Sitting in the living room and hearing your printer print in the office is an incredible feeling. I have grown up in an era of fingers-crossed printing where you hope everything works, that all the wires are plugged, all the drivers installed and that there is enough ink. Having it so simple now is easy to get used but still carries a certain magic.

So, asking for a iPhone printing feature is liking for a car with awesome rims. I don’t need it but it sure would be nice. I guess one of those obstacles is the amount of drivers one would need to install for all of the wireless printers out there.

Then there is the question whether one needs it in the first place. I print electronic receipts, especially from sites that don’t send you an email. To do lists and Photo-related apps could also use a print feature. You could always send it to your computer and then print from there but that feels like a waste of time. (Here is clever tip that uses email to create a network-like print option from an iPhone.)

P.S. If you don’t print photos at home, get a laserjet. I never have to worry about ink, not for another year at least.

World peace excretions as I like to call them.

I won’t need a laptop if the iPhone works with a bluetooth keyboard or even with a keyboard with a iPod dock built in. I know somebody has to be working on this, especially now that there is all kinds of excitement for the iPhone SDK.

BTW, I am getting a iPhone 3G when my Blackberry dies.

Inquiring minds: Do you really need it?

Me: Yes, yes, yes. Please believe me.

Here is how it stands, I either get a laptop or an iPhone so I can work on the road. My G5 is getting old so I rather spend money on a new desktop instead of a laptop as desktops are generally better for editing and last so many more years.  An iPhone with a keyboard will not let me edit but I can write which is the biggest reason why I need a mobile device. See, doesn’t that make perfect sense?

Inquiring minds: You going to write  on that small screen?

Me: Yes, yes, yes. Why don’t you believe me?

One of my favorite quotes are the lines from Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man.

Old Lodge Skins, the wise Indian who wants to die looks up into the clouds and says:

Come out and fight! It is a good day to die! Thank You for making me a Human Being! Thank You for helpin’ me to become a warrior! Thank You for my victories, and for my defeats! Thank You for my vision, and the blindness in which I saw further! You make all things and direct them in their ways, O Grandfather. And now You have decided the Human Beings will soon walk a road that leads nowhere. I am gonna die now, unless death wants to fight. And I ask You for the last time to grant me my old power to make things happen.

The video.

Especially resonant is the thanks for becoming a warrior. This has something I have learned slowly and steadily. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I have learned to fight but that I have learned to be courageous to do what I want to do.

I love quiet music, a child of classical music, a sister of film music, a distant cousin of elevator music. I am not into loud “listen to me” music. The only thing they get me to do is shake my booty which I find myself rarely doing. But when driving or in need for some nourishment, I turn to my quiet music.

With quiet music, I mean Philip Glass, not Mozart (who I also love) which is classical. I like something that is taking a risk with form but is trying to keep the other elements of music intact like harmony and melody.

When I listen to this kind of music, I seem to become a storyteller telling stories I never knew existed. Not fantasies like Lord of the Rings but stories about people I have never met, and for whatever reason I suddenly seem to understand. I get them, I know they fit in the scheme of things. I understand them better than they understand themselves.

I especially love when quiet music has an element of suspense. It could be the most boring drive but when a quiet suspenseful song on my mix cd starts to unravel, the hairs on my arms stand up. A physical sensationthat makes me revel in the mystery of myself, my body. Unlike say dancing where I am aware of what causes the sensation and what is to be had.

There is not a bigger supply of creativity for me than this kind of music: quiet, unassuming, giving.