Nicolas Carr (altijd goed voor controverse 😉 over de invloed van het internet: "Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."
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Attention deficit?
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Mission Statements
Als altijd heeft Guy Kawasaki wijze woorden voor de ondernemers onder ons: Write a mantra, not a mission statement.
Super om te zien. Nu nog bedenken wat mijn Mantra dan moet zijn.
Leuke quote over de "vloek" van de over complexe en generieke mission statement: "
JFK dodged the Curse [with “put a man on the moon in a decade”]. If he’d been a modern-day politician or CEO, he’d probably have said, “Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry, using our capacity for technological innovation to build a bridge towards humanity’s future.” That might have set a moon walk back fifteen years." (zie ook "Curse of Knowledge")
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The Importance of Marketing
Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man….
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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.
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Waarom zijn mensen gelukkig
Een boeiende TED (www.ted.com) presentatie over het menselijke verschijnsel “gelukkig zijn”
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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
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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 ObservatoryWhich 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
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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
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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![hgallery3 id=”169″ render=”smoothgallery”]