Quotes

No one cares about what you think, unless you do what you think. No one cares what you do, unless you think about what you do. No one ever really cares what you say.

When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in others.

If you are a sexy, cool charismatic brand, you will have a fairly easy life on social media – people would want to hear from you and be associated with you. They will create fan page for you on facebook, they will talk with their friends about you and share stuff about you on Twitter. They will probably take part if you ask them to submit something etc. If you are not one of these brands, you will have to work much harder to earn your social capital. I’m not saying it’s not possible but you will probably have to invest more. More time and money to help you be more fun, interesting, funny or useful. And you should also find those who love you and nurture the relationship you have with them.

If you’re an asshole kind of brand, you’re pretty much fucked.

Instead of exploring the benefits of flexible web design, we rely on a little white lie: “minimum screen resolution.” These three words contain a powerful magic, under the cover of which we churn out fixed-width layout after fixed-width layout, perhaps revisiting a design every few years to “bump up” the width once it’s judged safe enough to do so. “Minimum screen resolution” lets us design for a contrived subset of users who see our design as god and Photoshop intended. These users always browse with a maximized 1024×768 window, and are never running, say, an OLPC laptop, or looking at the web with a monitor that’s more than four years old.

Guardian Open Platform is a chasmic leap into the future. It is a work of simplistic beauty that I’m sure will have a dramatic impact in the news market. The Guardian is already a market leader in the online space but Open Platform is revolutionary. It makes all of their major competitors look timid. Governments should be doing this. Governments will be doing it. The question is how long will it take us to catch up.

Art bollocks has become institutionalised, normalised and is now practically the default way of writing about art and culture for seasoned journalists and a-level students alike. Like Orwell’s Newspeak, art bollocks is variously used in a knowing way, as an in-joke, a private language, a posture, or maybe out of fear – to maintain some questionable status among equally questionable peers.

For the record, I Cursor Miner have predicted many of the trends in music and culture over the past decade. I predicted the rise of the synthpop/electroclash stuff. I predicted the move towards lower tempos of dubstep, I predicted neo-rave and acid revival. I predicted the fantasy/glam/costumed up 70s bands that we seem to be seeing now. I predicted everyone making more stickers. I predicted the return of aviator shades, beards and hats. I predicted the credit crunch. I predicted the move away from quantisation that I think is ‘wonky’. I predicted helicopters. In fact I know exactly whats going on but do the masses listen and herald my albums as the workings of an inspired prophet? Do they shit. OK, so now I’m going to set it down in timestamped bits and bytes 10 things you’re going to hear about soon, so that I can blog here again in a few years and say HA.

Time is the most perishable good in the world, and it is not replenishable. You can’t earn an extra hour to use on a busy day. Nonetheless, we usually have a vague feeling that there is plenty of…

Music’s metadata could once be ignored. The way we valued music in the 1980s and the 1990s is part of a world that no longer exists: when music’s economic value has to be reassessed, the way we reassess the music as a whole changes as well. The way we value music might be increasingly moving to metadata.

I don’t want to “explore the interface”. I want to get in, do my shit and get out again. If you think forcing users to explore the interface is such a good idea, try ripping the labels off all the cans of food in your cupboard. A couple of meals of cat-food, chilli and peaches should demonstrate exactly how “fun” this is.

1. Stop buying stuff you don't need 2. Pay off all your credit cards 3. Get rid of all the stuff that doesn't fit in your house/apartment (storage lockers, etc.) 4. Get rid of all the stuff that doesn't fit on the first floor of your house (attic, garage, etc.) 5. Get rid of all the stuff that doesn't fit in one room of your house 6. Get rid of all the stuff that doesn't fit in a suitcase 7. Get rid of all the stuff that doesn't fit in a backpack 8. Get rid of the backpack

SEO is using deodorant instead of washing. SEO is masking bad coffee with sugar. SEO is cramming instead of studying. SEO is using pain killers instead of going to the dentist. SEO is taking weight loss pills instead of exercising. SEO is a comb-over. SEO is Scientology. SEO is Paris Hilton. SEO is the Zune. SEO is the morning-after pill. SEO is astroturf. SEO is not the real thing. SEO is cutting corners. SEO is not the solution. SEO is bullshit.

I knew giving the album away for free would be a good idea, but still, I’m pretty much unknown, and here are 500 people willing to take a punt. Why the hell should they, even if it does cost nothing? What the experiment proved to me is that there’s a significant amount of passionate music fans congregating around these so-called illegal download sites who are actually willing to take a chance on new music.

If you can identify what are the valid criticisms of your code or your ideas or your writing, and who are the trolls, and which are the other people just being temporarily stupid obtuse geniuses-in-waiting, you can parlay all that valid feedback and move from fool to slightly less fool in quick time.

Freelancers are unlike normal people and will automatically know where the printer is. Though, of course, your computer won’t be networked to it. It will take IT three days to attach you to a printer named after a celebrity.

The importance of comprehending context – circumstances and conditions that surround a place, thing, or event – within the mobile environment cannot be overstated. Your content is of little value to users if it ignores the context in which it is viewed, manipulated, and processed.

If you’ve got a list of 20 things you should be doing, pick the most important one or two and then just let go of the rest. You will never upload your music to every one of these sites. You will never contact every person. You will never enter every contest. Just take the one or two things that would make the biggest difference in your career, do those one or two, then stop. Turn your attention to the next one or two most important.

I didn’t RTFA, but I for one welcome our new, naked Natalie Portman and grits overlords, to which CmdrTaco replied, “you must be new here.” He’s a Twitter sock-puppet, but so am I, you insensitive clod! In Soviet Russia, the only way to be sure is for orbit to nuke you with a beowulf cluster (yes, it runs Linux!). ??? Profit!

I am trying to condense Slashdot down to a fine extract. Anyone else want to see if they can perfect it?

Mix tapes mark the moment of consumer culture in which listeners attained control over what they heard, in what order and at what cost. It liberated us from music stores and radios in the same way radios and recordings liberated generations earlier from the need to be present at the performance of live music.

Kids are time-rich and cash-poor and have an infinite supply of ingenuity and impecuniousness to apply to the job of getting music for free.

I killed a man. No, too modest. On every continent and in all countries, across centuries, worlds and dimensions, in times of war and times of peace, my trail of dead is one frag short of endless.

Don’t let thinking get in the way of building – build, then think.

It’s a widely accepted axiom of business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year. Yet quietly, under the radar, some entrepreneurs have rejected the pressure of endless growth to focus on more satisfying business goals. Goals like being great at what they do… creating a great place to work… providing great customer service… making great contributions to their communities and finding great ways to lead their lives.

“Hulk. Smash!” Yes. Hulk. Smash. Yes. Smash. Big Hulk smash. Smash cars. Buildings. Army tanks. Hulk not just smash. Hulk also go rarrr! Then smash again. Smash important, obviously. Smash Hulk’s USP. What Hulk smash most? Hulk smash all hope of interesting time in cinema. Hulk take all effort of cinema, effort getting babysitter, effort finding parking, and Hulk put great green fist right through it. Hulk crush all hopes of entertainment. Hulk in boring film.

There are some architects and developers who really get climate change, but most don’t or choose not to. As a result we get a lot of greenwash, such as green gadgets and microtechnology stuck on to buildings, rather than a proper approach to sustainable design.