I tried slacklining last fall – similar idea, but between trees in the park – and wasn’t very good at it. I woke up the next morning with calves that were literally on fire and lost half my bedding before I could stomp it out. So on that end I definitely respect and admire and sit in awe of the people above. With that said, I have no desire to try it. Not for fear of heights or falling, but because it looks cold and wet with bare feet and as far as sports that require cliffs and fog go, I’d have a pretty full list of things that I’d rather be doing.

Still. Stay awesome, you highlining lovers out there.

…and this is why they’re $8K.

Via

So. Good.

To dissect it further would be to distract you from it itself, so I’ll leave for the moment. Watch.

via

Also: how to hire employees that will work for you, not just for your money.

I came across this and sat dumbfounded. I thought back to all these things I’ve been searching for over the years and realize this is the subtle clicking of pieces, the thing that’s been on the tip of my brain and needed just a gentle nudge to get rolling: operate not on what but on why.

And it’s true (though not in the neuropsychological sense – his brain map is a little bit off) – we have these other divisions for it: classical and romantic schools of thought. That one controls the concrete and the other abstract. Logic v. intuition. What and why.

Because ‘why’ isn’t really a thing. It’s just a reason for a thing, and even then, just as often not because it’s a precursor; a filter for bad ideas, for things that have silly answers to itself: why?

It’s also the answer I’ve been searching for with regards to a specific subsection of the market I call curated brands. Best Made Company stands out, but there are endless examples. They aren’t a company that makes and sells axes. They’re a company that believes people should be well equipped for adventuring. That’s why they also sell all of these other, often unrelated things. They don’t exist to sell axes, they just happen to sell axes.

So I think this is a piece that slots into my artisan question – how can I, as a person, feasibly do these things? It’s “unheard of” (which, as I’m learning, isn’t true :: it’s far more common than we think) to be such a generalist. Every startup advice book I read repeats the mantra of focusing on the one thing you’re truly good at but I wonder – what if that one thing is curation? What if, and I ask this about myself specifically, my passion is in the act of curating and the store aspect isn’t actually the point? Best Made, by those definitions, should only sell axes. That is the core one good thing they’re good at. But I suspect that if they only sold axes they would be fulfilling the ‘what’ and not the ‘why’ which would result in a lesser business because the people who follow them aren’t interested in axes, they’re interested in adventuring.

There’s something of a paradox there, and it’s very interesting. Maybe not a paradox… a tipping point. There’s a graph with a curve that says doing the one thing you’re good at is a good thing – it’s focus – if and until you can generate more support by selling a belief or passion instead of a product.

But there is a self loop inside there: that one focused thing should also be inspired by a belief or passion instead of simply shipping for money.

My new conclusion, from the above two paragraphs, might be something like this:

All business ventures should be driven by a belief or passion and the number of types of goods sold should be inversely proportional to the amount of internal work required.

So that allows you to sell one awesome idea – let’s say… an app you’re developing internally – and really focus on it. Or curate, since while it’s work in itself, it’s still supplied by external manufacturers and therefor less internal worry. It’s a spectrum. Best Made falls in the middle: smaller selection, but they also make a lot of things in-house. Same with Apple. So the scale of the company is independent of the spectrum’s scale and location. It’s a 2D spectrum, then, really. Okay, so maybe it looks like this:

Size v. scale is an interesting subtle difference. I’m not sure I’m using them quite right here, but up is bigger (often richer) companies and down is smaller, more indie companies.

You can place people as you like: Apple v. Dell, Ferrari v. Ford, Best Made, Instagram, Facebook, Red Lobster.

In the end: sell your passion, not your product. In successful companies, that’ll be one in the same, but remember the order for marketing.

“One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.”

I’ve been writing to myself a lot on this topic lately. It’s one of frustration and strife in my new freshly graduated world. But also: hope. I’m not afraid at all.

There’s two things that come to mind when I look back upon myself. One. Two. They sum up nicely: knowing that life is finite, how do I choose to spend each hour?

I’m not sure industrial design is my answer. It’s awesome, yes, and I love it with incomparable passion, but I’m also attracted so deeply to the artisan ideals. Wabi-sabi. I want to make things for people. Sometimes there are things that are supposed to reach a lot of people – this is where industrial design is used – but sometimes I just want to make one of something for someone and know that they’re using it and probably will continue to as long as I know them. If they stop, of course, I will never live it down. Just jokes. But seriously. One knife. One chair. Maybe a handful of lamps or guitars. I want to make things for people. That, in whatever form it takes, seems to be the resounding root of my self worth and ‘success’ in life.

As best as I know right now. I mean, the older types would argue I haven’t even begun my life yet.

And now, to begin.

It was on Steam sale so I had to pick it up. I paid the extra dollar and a half for the soundtrack, which turns out to be one of my favorite parts.

There’s a divide in this review, and I wish it weren’t true, but I have to throw it out there: I bitterly hate this game. I absolutely love this game.

So, Dustforce is in the same impossibruuu rage quit style as Super Meat Boy and N+ before it and like those games, I am utterly terrible at it. I just, I can’t. I get frustrated by my own lack of ability to do what I want and eventually have to stop because I’m physically seething. It’s not pretty.

And then, when I’m listening to the soundtrack in my car and it’s so perfect and peaceful it lures me back in; it makes it seem like the game is easy and that if I went back right I would be better at it or something. It’s a trap. That’s how it gets to you.

Then you can see why I’m so torn. I love everything about this – the style is great, the gameplay is (when you can do it) silky smooth and there are those moments where you feel truly awesome chaining backflips and wall jumps and attacks together in perfect harmony. The soundtrack, as I’ve mentioned, is spot on with reminiscing chiptune and environment ambiance. The ‘plot’ is simple: you’re a superpowered janitor and things are dirty. Go to it. That’s entirely sufficient. The levels are unlockable as your progress and you slowly build up the keys even if you’re rubbish at it like me, so you can keep going despite mediocre scores across the board. All four characters are playable from the start and are essentially the same save for appearance.

Here’s one of the world records:

Which is just sickening. They make it look so easy.

That is a cool feature though, at the end of each level there’s a scoreboard comparing the times and scores of everyone who’s ever played that level. Crushingly, I’m always near the bottom. On one level I am literally second last. In the world. Ouch.

No, but it’s a great game and I can’t recommend it enough to the types of people who enjoyed the masochism that was Super Meat Boy. Just because I’m terrible doesn’t mean it’s a terrible game by any means.

As we know, Portal 2 is awesome. It’s been a little over a year since it’s release and next week Valve is laying down the community driven map system with editor and I have to say, the UI looks slick. I was worried – there’s a lot of complexity in a test chamber and 3D editor interfaces are generally sort of terrible at intuition. My fears have been quelled, replaced by sheer excitement for the release. May 8th. Ask Siri to mark your calendars.

In other gaming news, a trailer that caught my attention:

A trailer of enigma no doubt. But gah! That’s in game footage. They wrote the graphics engine because they didn’t like any of the existing ones. It’s first person puzzle single player co-op (whatever that is). The teaser art (also in game footage) looks like this. You can find that trailer song here. They’re writing a blog and making notes about all of the development. This is the sentence structure of Brennan Letkeman swooning. Consider me a fan of this indie studio and all that they’ve done so far. Even if the game release itself is utter rubbish, that trailer is something to be proud of.

So good, you guys. So good.

via

So. Cool.

I do think it’d almost be better without the bird chirp soundtrack though, because the visual metaphor is so strong by itself. The absence of sound would allow you to add your own but also contemplate that what you’re seeing isn’t a mere illusion trying to fool you; it’s that your brain is so easily manipulated.

What would be awesome is this sort of thing in like, 2cm square glass pieces that drizzle down like rain falling against the glass. I would totally use that for all the exterior windows in my house. Perpetual sunny rain, with perpetual shadows falling across the walls opposite.

Via Vimeo’s frontpage

The video, first off, is fantastic. Product and everything else aside, it’s great. Clear, simple message. Story. Compelling enough to make you sit through over three minutes (which I would consider the average attention span cutoff).

The product, that is, the site / service leaves me somewhat dumbfounded. I won’t say disappointed yet because other than the three minute video and the time spent typing these words here I haven’t given them anything. It’s Habbo Hotel. That’s the thing people liked before Facebook was invented. That’s the thing that died when Facebook was invented.

Now now, I wish them the best of luck and all – it’s cool seeing non-North American startups dive in and try to take NA markets – but I look at the patterns and wonder why they’re trying to repeat what we already know: bringing the virtual abstraction that is avatars for people into isometric doesn’t really change the social ‘etiquette’ that the 2D FB already (and unfortunately) creates. That awkwardness he describes in the video is entirely true, but outside of MMORPGs where trading and interaction is a necessity to continue on your quests, wandering up to people is still weird in virtual environments. The alternative is the opposite: a chat room. A free-for-all of text conversation. Talking across a noisy bar. If we use the real life analogy, this isn’t exactly ideal for everyone. I personally, and most of the people I hang out with (and by extrapolation, would like to meet), are more of the quiet pub type. Personal conversation. That works in real life because the physics of sound allow for conversations to change dynamically as groups grow and sub-conversations take over amongst themselves.

But, I’m interested. I’ll certainly give it a try if I can. I’d rather see a digitally aided social device for real life instead of a real life aided virtual social device, but hey, let’s experiment and see.

I remember when they announced these and I watched the first few (because that’s all there were at the time) and was really inspired and excited.

Jump forward a few years and I’d all but completely forgotten about them, stumbling back on the path just recently.

With my recent forays into speed painting and concept art this seems like the perfect refresher course. Feng Zhu is, and I say this without hesitation, the master at so many different aspects of this medium. Characters and landscapes and robots and the subtleties of emotion and scene drama. It’s more than just drawing something, he knows and has a mind for creating an impacting image, which is that bridge between marks on a page and art.

Definitely inspiring and definitely a lot to learn. Exciting!