Oct. 27 2009

merlin:

frakintosh:

The mental sausage* of modern storytelling

OR

How we do

@micahsaul made my brain work overtime on this.

*mental sausage is a term that was probably coined by Merlin Mann and I only assume that its okay that I use it here?

Not that you need my permission, but you are absolutely okay to use it anywhere. Honored. Thanks.

I realize that “using paper” should (intellectually) have zero effect on how I think about something, but I find exactly the opposite to be true.

Typing on a keyboard vs. using a pen on paper vs. talking to others or out-loud to myself deliver such wildly different results — and wildly different angles, approaches, insights, connections, synthesis vs. analysis, etc. — that I can’t even imagine trying to work on any project you really care about without iterating between the three.

Tool debates are fun and funny, but the truth is everything and nothing work equally well depending on how much you understand and care about what you’re making. I often don’t realize just how much I care about or understand something until I notice a piece of paper trying to tell me so.

See also: hammers and tree houses.

agreed.  it sucks that i have such crappy handwriting.  product of my grandfathers being doctors?  or just cursive being too slow?

Nov. 21 2008

What if your blog had a Christmas card?

Let’s get real for a minute.

Yes, we live in a digital world and hardly engage in interpersonal communication unless we absolutely have to. Instead, we push pixels at each other. With that said, how interesting would it be to visualize every single person behind making this digital transmission possible? It still takes people, right?

I’d need Marco and David in it, everyone else whom they work with, everyone from the server company that hosts Tumblr, the people from the factories who created the computer I’m using, everyone at the ISP I’m using right now, everyone from Google’s Chrome dev team (the browser I’m using), etc, etc, etc.

I’d imagine the photo, or at least the amount of people in it, would be quite large. Never forget that.