Category Archives: Personal

Personal

Urban Airship Meeting Rules

1 Comment

I came across these on this post, via Svbtle. I think they’re awesome.

  1. Schedule a start, not an end to your meeting – it’s over when it’s over, even if that’s just 5 minutes.
  2. Be on time!
  3. No multi-tasking – no device usage unless necessary for the meeting.
  4. If you’re not getting anything out of the meeting, leave.
  5. Meetings are not for information sharing – that should be done before the meeting via email and/or agenda.
  6. Who really needs to be at this meeting?
  7. Agree to action items, if any, at the conclusion of the meeting.
  8. Don’t feel bad about calling people out on any of the above – it’s the right thing to do.
Personal

Blaine Hogan on faith and storytelling

2 Comments

Blaine Hogan on faith and storytelling

An interesting take on the relationship between faith and good storytelling:

Want to get someone to believe in something? Want them to have faith? Tell them an amazing story and tell it well – really, really well.

I think there’s more to it than that – there’s certainly a rational dimension to my faith – but I suspect Blaine’s onto something here. What do you think?

Personal

On the elimination of leap seconds

8 Comments

On the elimination of leap seconds

You’re probably already familiar with the xkcd webcomic, but if you’re not following the author’s “What if?” blog, you really should be. It’s like MythBusters, but for hypotheticals way too grand to actually test. If you’re into science or maths, you’ll love it, but even if you’re not, you’ll still find it approachable, hilarious and fascinating.

Today’s post, for example, answers this question from a reader in Germany:

Every now and then we have to insert a leap second because the Earth’s rotation is slowing down. Could we speed up Earth’s rotation, so that we do not need Leap Seconds?

Clicky clicky!

Personal

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

6 Comments

According to Rotten Tomatoes:

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has a story worth telling, but it deserves better than the treacly and pretentious treatment director Stephen Daldry gives it.

A quick reading of reviews by critics and certain reactions to the movie’s Oscar nomination for Best Picture tells the same story: September 11 is too sacred for a superbly crafted aftermath story to be much more than gratuitous Oscar fodder.

That’s if the critics are to be believed, anyway. I think they need to get over themselves and stop worshipping September 11 as if it can only feature in movies that meet their arbitrary standards, but maybe that’s just me.

The story of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is beautiful, original and as you’d expect, heartbreaking, but not because September 11 features so prominently. At its core, it’s a story about the unusually strong bond between a father and son, the reconstruction of a family when that bond is broken, and the redemption of an estranged grandfather. Superb acting by the young lead (Thomas Horn) and supporting cast (Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Max von Sydow) make this a confronting, powerful and ultimately triumphant movie that didn’t once allow my mind to wander.

Production quality is very high. A number of head-spinning sequences that let us inside the fears, anxieties, hopes and frustrations that drive Oskar’s intense persona are particularly impressive, from photography to editing to soundtrack.

You should expect to feel emotionally drained after watching Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (hardly surprising with such a title), but I still highly recommend it as an inspiring fusion of fact, fiction, storytelling and art. I didn’t find it gratuitous or contrived at all. Purposefully awkward, if anything.

The critics were wrong about this one.