Create something
A good book, and I mean a really, really good book, does something to you. It changes you, makes you drop everything and read. Nothing matters, only knowing what’s on the next page. Consequently as you begin to close on the ending, that wonderful feeling of being totally under the spell of the book begins to shift. It grows darker, and a far more grim mood sets in.
When I look at a movie, play a game or watch a TV show, I’m looking into the mind of the person who created it. It’s not my vision, but theirs. A book is a journey shared with the reader and the writer.
I love these two quotes (really the whole piece) written by my friend. A lot of what motivates me is to create things that pulls people into an experience, instead of just having them complete a task.
Humans are emotional by nature, and we can grow attached to objects just as easily as we do everything else. I’ll always remember the first time I started using the iPhone and I went to set an alarm, and saw the spinning dial in action. I instantly fell in love with it—how imaginative, and brilliant it was. It was so simple, and so much fun to not only spin it to set the time you wanted, but to flick it real fast and watch it slow to a stop, just like you’d imagine a physical dial to act.
As silly as it might seem, I’ve had people write some fantastic emails to me about how one of my apps has “changed their life”. I’ll never trade that feeling of crafting something that people enjoy using for any other job in the world. I imagine that’s exactly how writers must feel with the characters, places, and stories they create.
Create something. Change the world. Make a dent in the universe. That’s pretty much what guides my life.
Source: intentionaltypos.wordpress.com
Design For Purpose | TightWind
So when considering creating something new, don’t think about it as what it literally does. Think about what it will accomplish for people. Make this your project’s defining thesis, its reason for existing. And once you’ve settled on what that purpose is, design ruthlessly for it. Don’t compromise it.
Yes. This. A million times this.
Source: minimalmac
Fantastic book on user interface design. #mymondaynight (Taken with instagram)
Quite possibly one of the most amazing shuttle related films I’ve ever watched.
The view of Earth as the booster is tumbling back down is just incredible.
Source: kottke.org
Windows 8 For Non-Tech people
I thought that people would have this exact problem the second I saw Windows 8 demoed.
And this is exactly why Microsoft still doesn’t get it.
Best part of the entire video is the last 10 seconds.
Being part of the active use of it is also very important to me. I wouldn’t be satisfied just to quietly craft a beautiful object. I love that part of it. There’s an entirely different part where I feel like I’m in partnership with musicians. Between the two of us, we’re both creating the sound that we want.
Brilliant short film. I love people that not only create things, but use their creations. This is so important to me as a software developer. I do not want to simply ship code. I am a user, too. If something doesn’t look right to me, or doesn’t work well enough, then what will strangers think of it?
My 27th Year
Today I turn 27 (at 10pm tonight, to be precise). This past year has been incredible. When I turned 26, I set many goals for myself. I was (at the time) still applying for business school, and was getting to be fairly heavy for my height, and just didn’t really feel like I was going anywhere too fast. So, I set a goal to lose weight, become a vegetarian, run a half-marathon before I turned 27, and begin to really figure out what my passion was.
I’m proud and excited to say that those goals were all met. I’ve lost weight, I ran my first half-marathon ever, and I’ve lost about 15 pounds since then. School has been incredible. Although I rant and rave against it sometimes (like when they have “mandatory” events that seem like a waste of time), I love being there and knowing all the people I know today. My business (Capparsa) is picking up, and I’m so excited to see where it goes this next year.
Since last year was such a success, I want to lay out some goals for my 27th year. Here they are:
- Run a full marathon before I turn 28
- Lose about 10 more pounds (to reach my high school weight!)
- Create a game for the iPhone or iPad
- Create & publish the TimeTagCloud update that I’ve been wanting to do for the past two years
- Finish an app I’ve been working on for over a year now by May
- Grow my business enough to be able to hire developers full time
It’s amazing just how much I’ve changed in this past year. If I had to identify one thing that changed that caused a lot of my growing success in business, it’s that I changed the focus of my work. When I started my first business out of college, the goal was simple: I’m going to make a lot of money. Or at least, it seemed simple enough. But little did I realize that’s a hollow, terrible goal to pursue.
When all you want from a business is to exit with a lot of money, there’s very little drive to really put your heart and soul into it. Everything you do is just trying to shortcut your way to get someone to notice you and write you a check. The thing is…that’ll never happen.
It took me about three years to finally learn that there’s no shortcut to the top. When I started my company, I thought to myself: I’m already CEO. I’ll never have to work for someone else or ladder climb. But I was wrong. There’s always a ladder to climb—You just change which one. My company was now the nobody in a world of millions of small businesses, all fighting for their spot in the world.
This past year I realized that I had a serious and intense passion for software design. It’s so much more to me than just playing around on the computer. It’s thinking about how people interact with your creation, and creating joy from something working exactly right. It’s the intersection of art and technology. I get to take a blank white screen and turn it into literally anything I want. Once I found out what drives me is the reward of having people enjoy my work, and use it in their daily lives, my whole life turned around.
I started working more and more hours not because I knew it would get me more money, but because I just loved doing it. And the funniest thing happened: The universe figured it out, and started sending more and more projects my way. I’d like to think that it’s because the universe was waiting for me to learn a lesson, but I know that it’s most likely because when my passion drives what i do, it shows. I started responding to emails that I normally would have ignored, and I started being much more excited to pursue opportunities, because it meant doing more work that I love.
This passion grows more and more every day…which is why I’m so excited for this next year. I’m doing everything for myself, because I want to, not because I feel like I have to. It’s an incredible feeling.
Bring it on, 27.
When I send an email to someone with a Hotmail address, I feel like I am sending an email to 1999. I have to resist the urge to tip them off about things like smartphones and the oncoming decline of Ricky Martin’s career.
Source: thepoptimist
5 year old responds to logos
Incredibly insightful. I don’t think you can get more honest opinions of logos than this!
My life as an iOS & Mac Developer, Entrepreneur, Business School (MBA) Student and Tech Enthusiast. P.S. I'm a vegetarian. (becoming a vegan)
