Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man….
Luisteren naar Richard Feynman
Ik ben de laatste week naar een serie luisterboeken en colleges van Richard Feynman aan het luisteren, een tikkeltje eigenwijze natuurkundige, nobelprijswinnaar, sambaspeler en mafketel. Een kort voorbeeld:
Ideaal voor op de iPod in de trein & auto 😉 Wat mij er aan doet denken, ik rij nu hier in:
Is wel lekker makkelijk terug te vinden.
Waarom zijn mensen gelukkig
Een boeiende TED (www.ted.com) presentatie over het menselijke verschijnsel “gelukkig zijn”
Leesvoer: Hacking as Applied Philosophy
Boeiend verhaal, en interessante manier van kijken naar de wereld. In een regel samengevat:
‘Hacking’ kan breder gezien worden als het zoeken van de gaten tussen de bedoelde regels van systemen en de feitelijke regels (de realiteit). Sommige mensen zijn hier heel goed in (Kevin Mitnick, Bernie Madoff, Steve Jobs) en gebruiken die gaten om hun voordeel te doen. De truc is om, anders dan “gewone” mensen die gewoon trouw de regels volgen, proberen de mogelijkheden te zien buiten de regels om.
“Every system has two sets of rules: The rules as they are intended or commonly perceived, and the actual rules (“reality”). In most complex systems, the gap between these two sets of rules is huge. Sometimes we catch a glimpse of the truth, and discover the actual rules of a system. Once the actual rules are known, it may be possible to perform “miracles” — things which violate the perceived rules.”
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/10/applied-philosophy-aka-hacking.html
London baby!
I’m currently staying in Reading, a rather unattractive town which boast of attractions that are "a mere 20 minute drive" away.
Luckily, it’s also a 20 minute train journey to London Paddington. I spent some time today in Greenwich, lovely place, and in Camden. Some higlights:
Camden Lock
Docklands seen from Greenwich Observatory
Which brings me to the point that I recently started using Flickr – thanx to Pieter for the subscription! – to showcase some of my more succesful attempts at photography. Have a look at my flickr photostream
My Car – a Fiat 600, 1972
The red one is mine, the black truck is just there for perspective..
It’s a Fiat 600 from 1972, although the model was introduced in 1955. It sports a whopping 28 HP 767 CC engine in the rear, which provides a 0-100 km/h sprint in 35 seconds – on a quick day.
Anyway, it’s loads of fun to drive. I managed to take it up to 121 kmh (according to my TomTom), which was scary as hell. Better stick to 85 in the wake of a caravan…
Back!
It’s been a while – almost nine months – since my last post. Shame!
Short summary:
-I returned safely to Amsterdam from Prague around Christmas
-I started working at Deloitte ERS in Januari
-I have had quite some interesting assignments in Infrastructure and Web Application Security
-I’m still living in Amsterdam but now looking for a place to live with Renee…
I’m sure the next post won’t take me 9 months… .
In the meantime; enjoy this:
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” – Steve Jobs, 2005
Bratislava
Small but a good vibe. And a good set off hostel guests to have fun with! Simon, Robin, Zoe and Emma are a friendly bunch, maybe the excessive amounts of gluhwein that we
needed to keep our fingers defrosted also helped…
Anyway, the whole city was …. to be continued!
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Budapest
Quite a culture shock again, Budapest is so much more touristy and modern than Bucharest that I’m sure i’ll never mix the two of them up in my head. Budapest is living, partying, shopping… and they know it. Not as adventurous though.
The hostel is really nice, The Loft Hostel, complete with christmas tree, gluhwein and a good selection of DVD’s for the cold nights. The town is pretty, both the Buda and the Pest side are attractive in their own ways. I’ll have to come back here for the railway museum sometime in summer since half the attractions were closed for winter.
I managed to squeeze in a short visit to both a Picasso, Klee and Kandinsky and a Hundertwasser exhibition in the museum of fine arts.
Nice surprise: Bratislava is only 2 hours by train from Budapest. Definitely better dan 22!
Bucharest
22 hours is a bit long for a train journey, even for the ipod owning traveller. The sights during the daytime while crossing Bulgaria where good though. Fresh snow, sunshine and a horse and cart every now and then on the deserted country roads.
Bucharest felt almost like going back to the Ukraine in how strong the poverty is visible, but then everybody speaks some English and actually Romanian is pretty intelligible in itself. I’m told 90% of its vocabulary can be traced to Latin, either directly or via French or Italian. The grammar is a simplified form of Latin which should be familiar. Maybe a nice challenge for Tim to master this language as well, shouldn’t take him more than a few weeks I’d say.
The palace of the people can be summarized as: Big. and rather tasteless. A shame the tours don’t really go into the historic perspective and impact of the building, instead they focus on facts about the amount of marble used, the number of chandeliers and the size of the thing. Our 1 hour tour covered almost 4 % of the building apparently.
Other then this building most of Bucharest is in a severe state of disrepair and the few western malls are not really helping much. It reminds me of a SImCity 2000 town where the road funding has been cut to 0 and the taxes to maximum.
The local food is pretty nice, I had some that I would describe as rolls of rice and minced meat mix in cabbage leafs, together with a dough thingy that reminded me of Semolina (NL: griesmeel) pudding that has been left in the fridge too long. Interesting…
I spend my second day mainly wandering through the town, and then decided it was time to move on.
Getting a train ticket involved a 30 minute wait for a bus, 15 min trip to the train station, 30 min wait in line, 15 minute wait for ticket lady to do her business, and then again 15 min wait and 15 min bus back to the center.
It does make you appreciate the dutch railways.
The train was good, modern and complete with 220v socket for charging iPods. Very nice indeed. Too bad it was too dark for photos since it was beautiful going in and out of little towns. I even spotted a steam engine somewhere on a side track.
So now i’m in Budapest, uploading my photos in the warm and cozy smell of gluhwein that is being prepared by the hostel staff. A friendly bunch and a very well equipped hostel with big screen TV and a Christmas tree!