August 05, 2015

Start Small, Finish Small

♫ I have a small fiefdom of broken and unfinished projects. I am the emperor of failed ideas. ♫

I suffer from a relatively well known disease—many of you may know of it or have experienced it first hand—that corrupts the creative mind. I have a heartfelt desire to make something. I begin hopefully, I have a vague awareness of what this might be, but no idea, at all, how I am going to craft it, or even where I may find something similar to “surprise adopt.”[1] The truth is I don’t want to build just any something, rather an ambitious something. If you’re nervously nodding your head in solidarity as you read this, then you realize what’s coming next: I have never built anything, let alone a something.

The dreams that fill my tiny mind are as uplifting to the spirit as they are corrosive to discipline. Despite rational and methodical planning, I can’t seem to finish “simple” tasks without tagging on a bunch of adventurous nice-to-haves. Next thing I know, the optics around an afternoon’s project have become as unwieldy as passing a bill through Congress. Blaming the firehose of inspiration (i.e., the Internet) is in order. However, it would be unbecoming of a distinguished gentle-person-majigy, like myself, to blame others[2] for my character flaws…

The answer to my problem is self-evident: I need to aim lower… much lower.

My aim shouldn’t be so low that it stops me from doing anything, but just inside my [buzzword] Zone of Proximal Development [/buzzword]. History has demonstrated that—I’ll speak for myself here, so don’t panic—I simply cannot build upon something that hasn’t had time to coagulate from an etherial idea into a gelatinous thing. A writer doesn’t finish their blockbuster trilogy before the first chapter of their terrible cerebral-noir-western-My Little Pony mashup is complete. (Don’t look at me with that face.)

Therefore, I, the flaming eye that controls this tiny piece of the web, vow that from here forward my goals will be set just one degree below my current horizon. Moreover, I will continue this pattern, inch by inch, until I have something. Anything.

And it all starts with this crumby blog post.

♫ Start small and finish small to finish at all. ♫

  1. That’s the politically correct way to say “steal” these days, correct? ↩︎

  2. Clearly, it’s my parents fault. A few more hugs during my childhood and I might have become a doctor, or some other form of respectable human being. Instead, I waste my time on the internet. Thanks, Dad. (Jokes aside, I love my parents, truly and I wish I could footnote a footnote.) ↩︎

How to Beat a Claw Machine Every Time

I can't believe I read the entire piece and seriously began to take the suggestions to heart. 8 year old me, is still sore about losing my allowance to these infernal machines.[1]

  1. I couldn't help thinking up a SEO-bozo byline: "Or, how I learned to be a 21st century person, face my fears and become the hero I always knew I could be." ↩︎

Chronos Watch Caseback

I enjoy mechanical watches and have an interest in the Apple Watch, which leads to a first world dilemma of mine: I can't possibly bring myself to wear both. While Chronos presents a clever solution, I don't think this can replicate the technological advances we are seeing in ‘wearables’ at the moment. Notifications are important, but acting on them and having other contextual data baked in (beyond buzzes and flashing lights) leave add-on devices like this well behind where the puck is moving.

Unfortunately, my non-problem survives another day.

(H/T Wrist Watch Review)

Change Trays

An interesting history to an innocuous piece of daily life in Japan: the humble karuton (change tray).

Pretty much everywhere I posed [the question about the origins of the change tray], I got responses like, “Ehh, nandarō!?” (“Gee, what are they called?”). Or, “Shojikina tokoro, kangaeta koto wa nai.” (“To be honest, I’ve never given them any thought.”) People seem to pay into the trays every day, yet never pay them a second thought.

Google Photos and Bar Snacks

Prosaic gold all the way down:

Flickr has taken some controversial twists and turns over the years (the last turn seems to have been into a ditch). They introduced a free, one terabyte tier a few years ago. It serves gross ads, and offers no first-party syncing, or downloading, off the service. The pro account now offers unlimited photo uploads at $24.95 a year. That’s a great value – if Yahoo hadn’t defecated on Flickr, set it on fire, and tried to put out the fire with urine-soaked novelty T-shirts that say, “We Hate You” in purple Optima.

A Guide to the Regional Ramen of Japan

An insanely detailed and informative look at regional ramen variations, which serves as another reason why Japan is so alluring to “western” foodies. I'm going to need a minute to catch my breath after eyeballing a few of these.

What is this Place?

This is the weblog of the strangely disembodied TRST. Here it attempts to write somewhat intelligibly on, well, anything really. Overall, it may be less than enticing.

Places of Note