What he isn’t

My son is 8. And he’s a lot of things. Over the course of the average day he saves the world from all sorts of bad guys, he rescues damsels in distress, and he designs and builds a variety of mostly flying vehicles for the aforementioned missions. He can also switch to being a dancer in a split second if the music and mood are right. He plays a mean air guitar. He sings while he works. He’s studying martial arts. And of course he’s also a student with a significant course load for one so young.

And what is so very cool about any this is he hasn’t drawn any lines around himself stating what he isn’t. He is whatever he wants to be for as long he wants to be it. And then he’s on to the next thing. (Admittedly, often without cleaning up. We’re still working on that…)

Soon friends, acquaintances, society will begin to ask him to make decisions about who he is. Probably before he’s given it much thought. The question in the less serious form has, of course, already occurred. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” But there’s so many things wrong with that question it makes me grimace, although his answers on any given day can be amusing.

I think the decisions about who we are *not* are complicated. Do you remember when you realized that you’re not an athlete? Were you picked last for any organized sports? Did it take any of the fun out of running or jumping? Riding or swimming? Should it have? Should you have thought “I’m not good at…” just because by whatever measure someone else seemed better? Is it good thing that “I’m not good at…” becomes “I’m not a…”? Is it helpful at steering us? Or is it the first real challenge we face—to not let anyone else define who we are and put off the decisions about what we are not for as long as possible.

It might be more important to figure out who we’re not (do you want to be *that* guy?) but we should do it on our own terms, and as late in life as possible. By then we have the information that allows us to to be reasonably certain about our “nothood”.

For years I’ve taught student of all types that most important thing you can do to get better is to concentrate on the things at which you are not good, because it’s easy to chase the I-do-that-well stream of endorphins. Want to be a great person? Work on everything you’re *not* good at. Want to be a good baker? Bake every day. When you realize you’re good at pie but not bread…bake bread every day. Etc. And if I can get The Kid™ to work on the skills he’s not good at, I’ll never have to be concerned about someone else defining who he is or is not, merely where he needs to apply himself.

Data Scientist Intro Education, 6,800 at a Time – Business 2 Community

Data Scientist Intro Education, 6,800 at a Time – Business 2 Community:

“Wonderful things can happen when the instructor doesn’t jump in,” she said. She often would let the conversation go and several hours later weigh in and have everybody move on.

“I think it was fantastic,” she said. “Our students who come back to mentor and tutor in on campus intro courses learn more than the students in the course. It’s not just that this is the second time around for them. They get the information again, but now they have to use it flexibly, they have to be able to respond to all the questions the students are asking. In any technical area we often make students take an intro course and then they have no interest in going on. This was a great opportunity to think how peer tutoring can be that second course — getting students exited, getting their confidence up.”

It was also a great exercise for her, she added.

“When you have to think about 10,000 students you will never talk to or explain things to, it took my materials to a new level. This had to work without my being able to talk to them.” She took a project approach to the MOOC, she added, with videos, lectures and demonstrations so students could go back to any areas they had difficulty with and collaborate with other students online.

[Great stuff. More! Much More!]

What the next CEO of MS might say

What the next CEO of MS might say:

Here’s the deal. As a company, we’re in a bit of a pickle. Because of policies and decisions that made sense in 1995 being clung to as though we were carved in stone, we are now thought of as a company that hasn’t innovated, or really, done a damned thing right since the Xbox, and I have to say, the people saying that aren’t wrong. However, that’s our fault, not the naysayers. Yes, I know, haters gonna hate, but when that many people are saying something’s kinda screwy, you don’t have to slavishly do what they say, but you should allow for the fact they’re at least not completely wrong.

[If only…]

Source: bynkii.com

Animation pain

Along For The Ride:

These animations in iOS 7 feel like its designers are showing off their cool new abilities, and we’re just along for the ride. After sitting through all of these, day after day, it’s no longer impressive — it just feels needlessly, artificially slow.

Cut the animation durations in half.

[While I can’t speak to this case (since I haven’t spent any significant time playing with 7, I agree with his point. Animations are delightful the first time you do something, or when you have something that you don’t do all the time and suddenly you become aware of the depth of care a dev put into this quiet corner of the app. But generally, speed is the killer feature, and anything that gets in the way of that that doesn’t inform or make some more useable is a problem. It’s why the splash screen died.]

Source: Marco.org

Patience

Brent:

Don’t be impatient. Consider Hemingway: “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” Start there. You’re not going to publish a novel by age 20, but, if you work hard and keep working, you might write one true sentence by then. There are no shortcuts, and *sounding* true is not the same as true.

[Patience seems especially difficult in our world. It’s why I’m so amazed at what Bezos pulls off with Amazon’s financials. How do you get all those hard charging investors to accept that the answer is “we’ll get there”. Magic!]

Slow Bicycle Movement Wins Fans

Slow Bicycle Movement Wins Fans – WSJ.com:

In 2011, she launched the Slow Bicycle Society on the Eastern Shore, an Alabama club with 100 members and a mission statement: “No Spandex needed!” In Tennessee, the Murfreesboro Slow Ride Cyclists, which formed two months ago, calls itself “a never-get-left-behind fun bicycling group” with “baskets encouraged.”

“We’re mostly focused on ringing our bells and waving at kids and just cruising around and chatting with the person closest to you in line,” says Sarah Murray, a 40-year-old manager for the city of Chicago who founded the Slow Bicycle Society in Chicago in 2009 and has watched membership grow to 300 from 15 people. She rides a three-speed upright.

[I never understand the issue that surrounds spandex. Why the hatred? No one forces anyone to wear it and why care if someone else does? Also, why do you have to be either/or? Sometimes I like to ride slowly and be social, other times I like to ride as hard and fast as I can. Why does society always as me to choose? I refuse.]

via Dave

Don’t fly during Ramadan (if you’re not white and stuff)

Don’t fly during Ramadan:

I barely noticed the irony of the situation – that the TSA and NYPD were clearing me for takeoff, but JetBlue had decided to ground me. At this point, I could think of nothing else but how to inform my family, who were expecting me to be on the other side of the country, that I wouldn’t be meeting them for dinner after all. In the meantime, an officer entered the room and told me to continue waiting there. “We just have one more person who needs to speak with you before you go.” By then, I had already been “cleared” by the TSA and NYPD, so I couldn’t figure out why I still needed to be questioned. I asked them if I could use my phone and call my family.

“No, this will just take a couple of minutes and you’ll be on your way.” The time was 12.35.

[Amazingly sad. These processes don’t work at all at the individual level. They protect no one, harm innocent people, and give people who don’t care, or who want to exercise power over others, the freedom to do so with impunity. It all needs to change, stop, and go away.]

via @GlennF

Hedgefox Buys Metayacht

Hedgefox Buys Metayacht:

Amazon isn’t a store. It’s a system for making other systems, some of which sell things. He has a meta-platform from which he can, with a wink and a wave, fabricate any media platform he could imagine. Still he buys a big old paper?

[snip -ed]

Again—not Bezos. He could slip leaflets into every Amazon box and have a greater reach than any paper in the world. As to the Post, aren’t there cheaper, more efficient ways to find power in Washington, D.C., and without alienating your customers? For example Bezos could buy Politico and destroy it utterly, then salt the ground on which it sits while grinding its web servers into powder, and we would all celebrate this gift to humankind way more than the future descendants of our parched hellworld will celebrate some oddball clock in the desert.

People hate the media and with good reason; it tells them things, often without first asking their permission (self-link; deal). And usually the writers take the brunt of popular hatred; after all the words are theirs. But sooner or later people figure out who really owns the paper and pays the salaries and start to yell and scream and promise boycotts. In order to stomach running a paper, an owner needs to take a near-erotic pleasure in being: (A) hated; and (B) sued. Newspaper employees sometimes hate their owners, too, and will humiliate them. It’s the inverse of a compliment sandwich. The owner of a mass-market news publication is typically the money cream in an Oreo of hate.

[Love the viewpoint. Delicious writing and descriptions. ]

Zoë Goes Running

Zoë Goes Running | Running Le Tour de France for World Pediatric Project:

When I finally did finish, at 1:05 am, my knees and elbows were crusted with blood, and my palms dotted with blood blisters from falling down, my skin pickled and covered in a sun rash, my ankles swollen red and hot, dirt everywhere, and my face completely flushed with fever.  It was, after so many runs in my life, the first time I felt so deeply that I could not possibly have gone one extra step.  So often people have commented upon seeing me after a 30 mile day that I look great, considering.  I’ve always felt conflicted about that – sure it’s nice I can run that much and not look awful, but on the other hand, I want to look awful!  I want to look like I’ve been through something.  And finally, at 1 am on Friday morning, I looked like I had been through something.  23 hours, 110 degree heat, 8000 feet of elevation gain, all of it was written on my face, etched in my body.  Finally, I looked like hell.   And it felt great.

[It’s amazing anyone ever thinks of these things… let alone complete them.]