46: Paleo

June 26, 2014

Hello, internet friends!

For no reason I could possibly remember, I watched the Google I/O keynote yesterday.[1] It was pretty bad. It started strong-ish, but turned sour pretty fast. The only people who seem to know how the products they were presenting actually worked was some lady engineer and this dude.

Because of reasons I am currently ingesting a lot of advice/history how people got to the point they are now a.k.a. famous/successful enough, that I’d know and probably even consume their content. If I understand the latest episode of Quit![2] correctly, it’s mostly showing up, doing the work, and reliably creating value for other people.
I was sort of hoping it would be not eating pasta or getting up early on the morning or something like that.

That’s it for this morning. I am spectacularly sleepy and tired – I need my 10 to 12 hours of sleep every night and there is no way I can get that. And by “no way” I mean – I don’t get to sleep until noon every day because you better don’t start believing it would be a good idea if I went to bed early.[3]

Dominik

  1. Actually, the reason might be the same reason why football seems to be popular in the US right now – it’s a live event with a global watercooler. (Twitter, in case you were wondering. Twitter is the global watercooler.)  ↩

  2. Or the show formerly known as Quit!  ↩

  3. As we have learned before, this is probably also not a way to make me happy and/or successful.  ↩

45: Brimful of Asha

June 25, 2014

Hello, internet friends!
I was about to write “Good Morning” but who am I to know at what time of day you are reading this email.
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It has been a while, but mostly because I have nothing to add to the global conversation.
And as you know, my expectations are always very high and while my religion has a wide open heart for achievers, it’s also pretty important to take it easy.
And yes, I did re-watch The Big Lebowski last night. For reasons.
Talking about achieving – I am “active” as a member of The Little Lebowski Urban Achievers Lending Team on Kiva. Maybe you want to join and help people achieve, too?
No funny stuff.
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Now why would I even want to add something to the global conversation? It is usually stupid, because people are stupid.
(Bonus points if you can spot the recursion.)
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You will probably not have noticed it, but the world must have ended – I just started following a brand on Instagram. Given that the brand in question is National Geographic, I guess I can be excused. Right? They got me with the apes.
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Take care,
Dominik

44: Rinse

June 20, 2014

Hello, internet friends!

Of course, because things are the way they are, I managed to find a whole bunch of interesting links just after I posted Wednesday’s email. Well – in fact I found one while writing Wednesday’s email and randomly pasted it under the email, thinking that I might write something about it, which I didn’t.

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Ever played any kind of modern video games that had some sort of magic happen in it? Chances are, you were spending “mana” to pay for that magic. But did you ever stop to wonder how an Austronesian concept became a video game mechanic?

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Pixel perfect: the story of eBoy is worth the lengthy reading time, too. There’s a video, but I did not watch that, yet.

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The Spiny Shell is the most profoundly existentialist element of the Mario canon.

Sure. (Remind me to check if my N64 is still working!)

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Yo! Yo? Yo me!

Have a nice weekend,

Dominik

43: Figs

Hello, internet friends!
I really don’t have much to say today, so here is an email that looks like my blog over on tumblr.1

(Hehe. A face palm in a dating app. Maybe a date palm? (I’m so, so sorry.))

Talking about Tumblr and Tinder: apps/websites whose main purpose is to meet people in a dating situation don’t really work for me. Neither those where I have to write something smart or where I have to present myself with photos. Not only because I am not very good at selling myself this way but also because it’s not the way I think of potential future partners.
What I’d really like would be a dating platform that just links to people’s Tumblr and/or Twitter account. It’s really more interesting to see what people (re-)blog or tweet than to read the hundredth variation of “I like to travel2 and do sports3, my favorite band is Coldplay, I like to go crazy4 and please only write to me if you read all of this.”


I rather see someone post a picture like this and have an instant connection through the shared interests in coffee and Twin Peaks.
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Have a nice day. It’s a public holiday here tomorrow, so: yay!
Dominik

  1. I still can’t get myself to say: “That looks like my tumblr.” ↩
  2. But not too much. It’s nice at home, too. ↩
  3. But not too much. Maybe a bit of jogging. And it’s only because I feel pressured by society to do it, really. But here we go: I like to do sports! ↩
  4. But not too much. I’m in my late 20s now. But still, you know. Have a drink outside. ↩

Hitchhiker

June 16, 2014

Dear internet friends,

first a quick note to my male internet friends, who also happen to use the Secret app: I sure hope it’s just one of you guys who keeps posting those whiny borderline-MRA-type posts. Honestly, I had a better opinion of you.

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Now on to follow-up! I got a little analog kitchen scale and a measuring cup, so if for some reason I get too much sun again and decide to bake something, I am prepared!
And talking about prepared – of course I was not left alone, scared and coffee-less after I broke my French Press. Thanks to my ever-growing collection of coffee making utensils, I managed to only be alone and scared.

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And now, a bunch of links!

The Baffling Genius of Jason Derulo – well, I learned about Balkan Beat Box that way and might have scared and/or confused my neighbors by listening to that on a rather loud level yesterday afternoon.

Well, that’s one way to promote your service: Uber is offering helicopter rides over Mumbai and Bangalore for $85 – hey, for that price, I’d take a helicopter for a trip once or twice a month, nbd.

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Here, have a baby hippo and a good Monday.

Dominik

41: Far Far Away

June 13, 2014

Hello, internet friends!

Today I learned that when you folks send me a nice reply to these emails and insert some nice attachment, (maybe a GIF of a baby hippo?) these files will be removed for some reason. So… I don’t even know if it was a GIF of a baby hippo.
Please send me GIFs of baby hippos.

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Plazes, Brightkite, Gowalla, Dopplr… FourSquare?

I am a big fan of these check-in and “hello, here I am” services. But ever since FourSquare changed into Swarm, it just leaves me cold. And mostly because it usually looks like this:

Uhm, yeah. Even though I use it more for myself, this is a bit depressing.

Also, I miss the game aspects of the whole thing. Why would I want to check-in if I can’t be the mayor of something? Or get (completely meaningless) points in exchange for my location data?
And why can’t I be “off the grid” anymore?

Gah, FourSquare. Seriously.

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It also doesn’t help that it is highly unlikely that I have working mobile internet at any point here.

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Erm, sorry. I am being a bit negative here – of course everything is great, the sun is shining, it’s warm and lovely outside.
Now where are my GIFs of baby hippos? Don’t reply to this email to send them to me. Unless it’s just links to them, I guess.

Have a nice weekend!

Dominik

40: Open Sesame!

June 11, 2014

Hello, internet friends!

I am sure you guys missed me already – it has been a few days. Mostly it has been a few pretty warm days, which had the nice result of me basically shutting down all my systems and just sort of stay above consciousness for a while.
Did I mention that I like it when it’s that warm? I really do.

Well, while I dared to not do anything, PSY (Psy?) released “Hangover” – together with Snoop Dogg. I watched the video and by now, I have already forgotten how the music goes. I do remember a lot of drinking, though. A lot! Now I’m waiting for the GIFs to pop up.

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On the weekend I did what everybody seems to be doing these days: experiment around my with my coffee consumption. Specifically, since it is warm outside, I wanted to try cold brewing coffee. Since I have no way of measuring anything I just shoveled ground coffee beans in a pitcher, filled the pitcher with water and put it in the fridge for a night. On Sunday morning I french-pressed them and voila – had cold and pretty weak cold coffee.
The second experiment was with double the ground beans and the result was not pretty – I broke my French Press, because the coffee was that thick.

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I also tried to bake tortas de aceite. Once again – I have nothing to measure anything, so I sort of guessed. “Yeah, that looks like 360g of flour.” I also replaced a bunch of ingredients.
Ehm.
So I ended up with weird cookies, that looked and tasted nothing like proper tortas.

How are you guys doing?

Dominik

39: Mesh

June 5, 2014

Hello, internet friends!

Sometimes, when I am bored or when I like to watch things packed neatly, I watch those videos where people pack clothes “for weeks” in a carry-on luggage. This is always pretty amazing and of course they manage to fit so many things in these convenient backpacks or trolleys.
I just wonder – don’t these people smell?
Maybe I am overdoing it, but I tend to change my underwear and my t-shirt daily. So just a week-long trip means filling up any kind of luggage with seven of each of those, which will take up quite some space, no matter how well I fold and stuff and compress my clothes.

In a bit unrelated thoughts – remember when I tried to order something online from a small-ish webshop and it was a bit of an ordeal?
Turns out – that seems to be a repeating pattern. And maybe it’s a repeating pattern because Amazon has messed so badly with my brain with their hyper-optimized logistics. By now I have been trained to think of “online shopping” as something immediate: I order something today and if I don’t get it the day after tomorrow, something must be broken.
This is not the norm and it’s certainly not something most companies can offer and even less so when it’s on scale – I doubt most of these small to medium sized companies have the capacity to react if there is a sudden high demand on their goods. Ah, well – I’ll cut them some slack – the small ones. But if your company was a mail order business even before the internet, you better get good.

I’ll probably have nothing to say tomorrow, so: have a nice weekend! Go hug a tree or whatever it is you guys do with your spare time.

Dominik