Month: April 2021

Brent Simmons on To-Do Apps

More Brent Simmons, this time on the Goldilocks to-do system:

But it’s not around the corner. It’s really not. There’s no perfect system for anybody. All of these apps are pretty good, and you may find one fits you better than another, but you’re not ever going to make it the perfect system for you. Even if you started from scratch and wrote your own, you’re not getting the perfect system.

There are a few things to consider with to-do applications. I think first and foremost, they are, to some degree, their own entertainment industry. If you like tinkering with productivity apps, just own it and enjoy it. If you start getting obsessed, though, take a step back and reconsider this:

To-do apps are supposed to help free your mind from having to worry about what you have to do. As David Allen says, your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. A corollary to that is you shouldn’t be spending a lot of time thinking about your system–as long as you trust it.

The other thing, as Brent mentioned, is that they require constant input. You need to review what you put into them. You need to do the things on the lists, in the projects, or renegotiate. You can’t automate that. The colollaries here are:

  1. You need to like using the software, and,
  2. You need to find meanining in the things you have to do. You don’t have to love your job or your home improvement project, but there has to be a sense of purpose and mission there.

Otherwise it’s all intention and cruft.

The Perfect To-Do System Is Not Just Around the Corner

Brent Simmons, Thinking Big About Vaccines, and the Social Contract

Brent Simmons recounts having chicken pox as a child, and laments the lack of a vaccine:

I was in third grade when I got a severe case of chicken pox. This was in the days before there was a vaccine for it. When I returned to school, I found I couldn’t read the blackboard anymore, and I had to get glasses.

…

But was this all better than getting a vaccine would have been? I could have died, and I’m still living with the effects. In a heartbeat I’d swap that experience for having had the vaccine.

His story is one of my talking points when I mount the soapbox after people suggest that COVID-19 isn’t so bad, or that the vaccine might be worse than the disease. It’s not an either/or proposition: yes, some people fully recover from illnesses, and some tragically die–but others live with debilitating after-effects. And if you you happen to feel cavalier about your chances of either contraction or transmission, consider the impact of spreading it around like a goddam lawn sprinkler.

For me, chicken pox was a week of from school and watching a lot of “My Favorite Martian” in syndication. But I sure as shit got my kids vaccinated.

I’m Still Living with the Longterm Effects of a Disease that Now Has a Vaccine

The Book of Eli

The Book of Eli

Rewatched the Hughes’ Brothers “Book of Eli” last night. Ebert reviewed it back when:

The Hughes brothers have a vivid way with imagery here, as in their earlier films such as “Menace II Society” and the underrated “From Hell.” The film looks and feels good, and Washington’s performance is the more uncanny the more we think back over it. The ending is “flawed,” as we critics like to say, but it’s so magnificently, shamelessly, implausibly flawed that (a) it breaks apart from the movie and has a life of its own, or (b) at least it avoids being predictable.

Denzel Washington is one of those actors you can’t not watch… which put me in mind of the interview Terry Gross did with him on Fresh Air. As is her tendency, she asked a question based on a detail that caught her eye:

GROSS: There is a scene in this where you’re holding two guns on someone, and you kind of scrape the guns against each other as if there two knives that you’re sharpening.

WASHINGTON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: Was that a bit of business that you came up with when you were holding the guns?

WASHINGTON: Of course. I mean, you know, it’s just rhythm. You know, acting is like music, you know, and you improvise and you, it’s like jazz, you know, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s not a plan. I just did it. You know, it’s just rhythm. To me it’s just a rhythm. It’s like you do – Stanislavski said, you know, you cut 90 percent. You do all your research and you prepare and then you let it rip, you know, and that’s how it is. You know, you practice to music and you just play it.

Denzel Washington Remembers ‘Malcom X’ And ‘The Wizard Of Oz’

Good Friday Apple Arcade Drop

Apple announced a number of new Arcade games today. There are a number of classic titles, including Cut the Rope, Oregon Trail, Chameleon Run, Don’t Starve, Fruit Ninja, Monument Valley, and the excellent Threes.

Apple Arcade

I’m not sure if they were underwhelmed with the games developers were offering or if it was a negotiation all along, but almost all of these are phone-friendly games that found life in the touchscreen, casual-gaming era ushered in by the iPhone. Having sunk many nights on the sofa feeding Om Nom, I recently peeked at Cut the Rope for a dip into nostalgia, only to find that the game had flipped over to a subscription model. This is good news for Apple Arcade subscribers.

DIY Origami Unicorn from Blade Runner

Via Boing Boing, here’s how to fold Gaff’s origami unicorn.

In the theatrical cut of Blade Runner, the unicorn is a clue that Gaff had been at Deckard’s apartment. But the symbolism gained greater import in the director’s cut, suggesting that Deckard was a replicant:

For instance, in Ridley Scott’s 1992 Director’s Cut of the film, the filmmaker added in the famous “unicorn scene” dream sequence that appeared to confirm the Deckard-as-replicant speculation. Early in the film, Deckard dreams of a unicorn during a drunken reverie. Later, one of Deckard’s fellow blade runners, a wigged-out dandy named Gaff (Edward James Olmos), leaves an origami unicorn for Deckard to find. This suggests that Gaff knows Deckard’s memories, which means they’re implanted, which means he’s a ‘bot.

I don’t personally think he was a replicant, but I love the debate.

How to Fold the Blade Runner Unicorn