NV NATANSH VERMA

When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow & exclude people. So create. Why The Lucky Stiff

Sometimes, we learn more by wandering casually than by studying dedicatedly.

Quite a thorough article on Counter Notions about what Apple hasn’t done till date. One thing stood out for me - the stylus.

Apple has successfully educated half a billion users in the art of multitouch navigation and general use of mobile devices. That war, waged against one-year old babies and 90-year old grandmas, has been decisively won. However, until Apple invents a more precise method, taking impromptu notes, sketching diagrams and annotating documents with a (pressure sensitive) stylus remains a superior alternative to the finger.

I still think that for an iPad to be a serious creation device, something similar to a stylus must exist. Combined with high performance touch, it would be awesome!

If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal-cost analysis, you’ll regret where you end up. That’s the lesson I learned: it’s easier to hold to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time. The boundary—your personal moral line—is powerful because you don’t cross it; if you have justified doing it once, there’s nothing to stop you doing it again.

Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time. Clayton Christensen

If you approach your moral line and are in a dilemma, these words make so much more sense. It is important not to cross that moral line because beyond that lies chaos from which it is almost impossible to get out.

It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. Herman Melville

(via @jack)

Originality must’ve resulted in far more failures than imitation ever would but the thrill of attempting something original, something unique and unknown still makes it all worth it in the end. It is about the journey, not the destination.

The video was a wonderful way begin the WWDC 2013 Keynote. I was surprised at the emotion it invoked. The TV ad was good too!

Scott Berkun did a wonderful job to pick out the best quotes by Ed Catmull in a brilliant talk at The Economist’s Innovation Summit, 2010.

My favorite bit -

If I look at the range, you’ve got one [constraint] that is art school, I’m doing this for arts sake, Ratatouille and WALL-E clearly fall more on that side, the other is the purely commercial side, where you’ve got a lot of films that are made purely for following a trend, if you go entirely for the art side then eventually you fail economically. if you go purely commercially then I think you fail from a soul point of view… we’ve got these elements pulling on both sides, the art side and the commercial side… and the the trick is not to let one side win. That fundamentally successful companies are unstable. And where we have to operate is in that unstable place. And the forces of conservatism which are very strong and they want to go to a safe place. I want to go to the same place for money, I want to go and be wild and creative, or I want to have enough time for this, and each one of those guys are pulling, and if any one of them wins, we lose. And I just want to stay right there in the middle.

We generally change ourselves for one of two reasons: inspiration or desperation. Jim Rohn

These two reasons present themselves in drastically different circumstances and the ability to change oneself due to either reason is a remarkable thing to have.

I’ve been thinking for a long time about the in-your-face heading that I had put at the top. It didn’t feel right and I felt the need for more subtlety. So I finally got down to making a few changes, nothing extravagant, just a few minor tweaks. Alongside, I also added sprites to make the site load faster, which was basically to satisfy the optimization geek in me.

I feel that the changes make the blog look cleaner and simpler now, even with the addition of a profile photo.

Sacha Grief, on Malcolm Gladwell-style books -

These books take one central idea (“we make snap judgments”, “influencers are important”, “aliens built the pyramids”) and then drown you in an avalanche of studies and anecdotes to support that theory. In my opinion, they’re mostly bullshit.

When I first read the ‘Blink’ book, I got the idea within the first few pages. After that, it was just a tirade of stupid studies and anecdotes trying to drill in that same idea. Felt off-putting. Sacha Grief just put into words what I have been feeling for a surprisingly long time.

Sometimes the only way to ever find yourself is to get completely lost. Kellie Elmore