9 Dec 2013
4 Dec 2013
25 Nov 2013
Steve Jobs
RIP Steve Jobs: He Let Us Inside the Media
By James Poniewozik
Time magazine
I spend most of any waking weekday inside Steve Jobs' idea.
I wake up to an alarm clock set by my iPhone, which is docked to it. I get up and go for a run, listening to my iPod Nano on shuffle. Back home I get dressed, listening to NPR (iPhone app). Breakfast time and I read the paper, which is not on the doorstep yet but is on my iPad. Walk the kids to school, checking tweets on the way back. Spend the day at my desk, looking into a rectangle with a glowing Apple in back of it. At night, I'm in front of the TV--usually with the iPad on my lap.
That's where I was when Jobs' death came to me as he would have wanted it to: as a news alert on my iPad. I was watching Jeopardy with my kids, and found myself trying to explain why I would be sad about the death of the founder of a giant company, whom I didn't know. So I told them about all the things they use and see every day that came from Jobs: the computers, the touchscreens, the Pixar movies, the computer mouse.
(VIDEO: Jobs' Career In 2 Minutes)
But really what we got from Jobs and his company was an idea: that computers were something that belonged in your life, not in a science lab. That you would want to use them, play with them, touch them, carry them with you. That they were for not just numbers but music, movies, magazines, creation, communication. A lot of people made computers in the past decades, but it was Steve Jobs who understood that he was making media.
And by making devices an extension of ourselves, he helped change our understanding of media; it would no longer be just a system you got information from but a system you contributed information to. As he envisioned them--before the rest of us knew we wanted this--computers were not tools of calculation but of communication.
And that's part of the reason that Jobs' aesthetic sense for Apple--so famously fastidious and demanding--was so key to what he did. The look and feel of Apple products was not just about making them beautiful, or making you feel cool, but about communicating an idea about the world. The borderless touchscreen of my iPhone says that this Star Trek Swiss Army Knife of information in my pocket should become, wholly, whatever I want it to be, with no form factor getting in the way. It should not run Angry Birds, it should become Angry Birds. The slab-of-glass iPad was his last and truest expression of what a computer should be in its ideal form: a window, a pane that you brush against and reach through.
That, as I was trying to explain to my kids, is the reason I felt so deeply sad about a guy who ran some company: because my experience of his products, like I suspect many of yours, was so personal. Yes, it's partly that Macintoshes were the first computers that I ever used in a college computer lab, that I wrote my first newspaper stories on them, played Dark Castle on them, discovered the World Wide Web on them, and edited my kids' baby videos on them. That's personal; that's nostalgia.
But it's also that the things Apple made were expressions of the idea that technology should be an extension of ourselves, that it only matters to the extent that it can add to what we find important and beautiful in life. Which is why I'll spend much of tomorrow, too, inside Steve Jobs' idea: that a computer should be an elegant, simple frame, and we should fill it with the things that matter to us.
By James Poniewozik
Time magazine
I spend most of any waking weekday inside Steve Jobs' idea.
I wake up to an alarm clock set by my iPhone, which is docked to it. I get up and go for a run, listening to my iPod Nano on shuffle. Back home I get dressed, listening to NPR (iPhone app). Breakfast time and I read the paper, which is not on the doorstep yet but is on my iPad. Walk the kids to school, checking tweets on the way back. Spend the day at my desk, looking into a rectangle with a glowing Apple in back of it. At night, I'm in front of the TV--usually with the iPad on my lap.
That's where I was when Jobs' death came to me as he would have wanted it to: as a news alert on my iPad. I was watching Jeopardy with my kids, and found myself trying to explain why I would be sad about the death of the founder of a giant company, whom I didn't know. So I told them about all the things they use and see every day that came from Jobs: the computers, the touchscreens, the Pixar movies, the computer mouse.
(VIDEO: Jobs' Career In 2 Minutes)
But really what we got from Jobs and his company was an idea: that computers were something that belonged in your life, not in a science lab. That you would want to use them, play with them, touch them, carry them with you. That they were for not just numbers but music, movies, magazines, creation, communication. A lot of people made computers in the past decades, but it was Steve Jobs who understood that he was making media.
And by making devices an extension of ourselves, he helped change our understanding of media; it would no longer be just a system you got information from but a system you contributed information to. As he envisioned them--before the rest of us knew we wanted this--computers were not tools of calculation but of communication.
And that's part of the reason that Jobs' aesthetic sense for Apple--so famously fastidious and demanding--was so key to what he did. The look and feel of Apple products was not just about making them beautiful, or making you feel cool, but about communicating an idea about the world. The borderless touchscreen of my iPhone says that this Star Trek Swiss Army Knife of information in my pocket should become, wholly, whatever I want it to be, with no form factor getting in the way. It should not run Angry Birds, it should become Angry Birds. The slab-of-glass iPad was his last and truest expression of what a computer should be in its ideal form: a window, a pane that you brush against and reach through.
That, as I was trying to explain to my kids, is the reason I felt so deeply sad about a guy who ran some company: because my experience of his products, like I suspect many of yours, was so personal. Yes, it's partly that Macintoshes were the first computers that I ever used in a college computer lab, that I wrote my first newspaper stories on them, played Dark Castle on them, discovered the World Wide Web on them, and edited my kids' baby videos on them. That's personal; that's nostalgia.
But it's also that the things Apple made were expressions of the idea that technology should be an extension of ourselves, that it only matters to the extent that it can add to what we find important and beautiful in life. Which is why I'll spend much of tomorrow, too, inside Steve Jobs' idea: that a computer should be an elegant, simple frame, and we should fill it with the things that matter to us.
9 Oct 2013
29 Sept 2013
24 Oct 2011
Jack-o-lantern
The Irish brought the tradition of the Jack O'Lantern to America. But, the
original Jack O'Lantern was not a pumpkin.The Jack O'Lantern legend goes
back hundreds of years in Irish History. As the story goes, Stingy Jack was
a miserable, old drunk who liked to play tricks on everyone: family, friends,
his mother and even the Devil himself. One day, he tricked the Devil into
climbing up an apple tree. Once the Devil climbed up the apple tree, Stingy
Jack hurriedly placed crosses around the trunk of the tree. The Devil was
then unable to get down the tree. Stingy Jack made the Devil promise him
not to take his soul when he died. Once the devil promised not to take his
soul, Stingy Jack removed the crosses and let the Devil down.
Many years later, when Jack finally died, he went to the pearly gates of
Heaven and was told by Saint Peter that he was too mean and too cruel, and
had led a miserable and worthless life on earth. He was not allowed to enter
heaven. He then went down to Hell and the Devil. The Devil kept his promise
and would not allow him to enter Hell. Now Jack was scared and had nowhere
to go but to wander about forever in the darkness between heaven and hell.
He asked the Devil how he could leave as there was no light. The Devil tossed
him an ember from the flames of Hell to help him light his way. Jack placed
the ember in a hollowed out Turnip, one of his favorite foods which he always
carried around with him whenever he could steal one. For that day onward,
Stingy Jack roamed the earth without a resting place, lighting his way as
he went with his "Jack O'Lantern".
On all Hallow's eve, the Irish hollowed out Turnips, potatoes and beets. They placed a light in them to ward off evil spirits and keep Stingy Jack away. These were the original Jack O'Lanterns. In the 1800's a couple of waves of Irish immigrants came to America. The Irish immigrants quickly discovered that Pumpkins were bigger and easier to carve out. So they used pumpkins for Jack O'Lanterns.
from:http://pumpkinnook.com/facts/jack.htm
6 Oct 2010
SPEED DATING
The origin of speed dating
The concept of speed-dating originated in Los Angeles, California
in 1999. It was invented by a rabbi to help singles in the Jewish
community find a partner. Originally singles were given eight
minutes together, to make an impression before moving on to
the next potential partner. At the end of the rotation they wrote
down who was hot and who was not, and in the case of a good
match contact details were exchanged.
The concept was soon exported, and took off in London in 2000.
The craze soon spread all over the UK, and spawned Speed
Dating Agencies and an Internet Site for finding Mr. or Ms right.
The eight minute limit is supposedly based on science. It is the
time required for our hormones to tell us whether the person
opposite us is a potential mate. In our increasingly busy lives,
where traditional courtship rituals are disappearing this time
limit has now been further reduced to only three minutes, about
the same time it takes us to brush our teeth.
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