I found this photo this afternoon on Facebook, and it brought back a slew of good memories from April 2010: It’s a snapshot from Centrestage Youth Theatre’s performance of RENT, where I played geeky filmmaker Mark. That’s me sitting on the table with the striped scarf and the enormous grin. We’re in the middle of [...]
If you read Fast Company’s article about Stripe and scroll down to near the bottom, you’ll see Patrick working at his desk. He is, I believe, in The Zone. The Zone is a mental state where one is most productive. Coders, writers, chess-players and others will all know what I’m talking about. It’s when you [...]
I tend to be more forgiving to the average person screwing up a loose/lose proposition. Writers, however, do not get a free pass on this one. It’s like an accountant not knowing the difference between subtraction and division. It’s like a pilot not knowing the landing gear should be down for landing. And while the [...]
While joking around with a friend, I decided to check out the Greyhound timetables, just to see what they were like. The result: A 3-day journey, taking you through California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio[1], West Virginia, Philadelphia and New York. Admittedly, I’m choosing one of the longest possible routes, but there’s [...]
As a student, improving my memory has always been something I’ve been interested in. Even before S02 E02 of Sherlock, I’d been working on similar methods to try and learn off material for school. The method used in Sherlock is a variant of the “method of loci” (a.k.a. the “link method” and “memory palace”), which [...]
There’s been a good bit of debate recently with regards to whether blog comments are a good idea or not. John Gruber, Marco Arment and, most recently, Matt Gemmell have all made good points in favor of turning comments off entirely. Of course, I recognize that the blogs of all of the above are more-frequented [...]
In my experience, writers of young-adult books can be entertaining and funny, but are rarely poetic. You read Maya Angelou or Markus Zusak if you want poetic prose; but the likes of Phillip Pullman, J.K. Rowling, Robert Muchamore or William Golberg —all undeniably good storytellers in their own right— don’t have that same clever grasp [...]
Recently, an iPhone alarm disrupted a Philharmonic performance. The unmistakably jarring sound of an iPhone marimba ring interrupted the soft and spiritual final measures of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 at the New York Philharmonic on Tuesday night. The conductor, Alan Gilbert, did something almost unheard-of in a concert hall: He stopped the performance. But the [...]
School’s going well. Christmas results came back this week and showed me where I’m doing well and where needs work. I decided recently to drop Physics in favor of Geography. I’m not a Science-y person, and I doubt I’ll do anything in college that’ll require a Science subject. At the moment, I’m considering English/Media/Writing courses, [...]