life « Towse: views from the hill

September 20, 2008

43 Folders: Time, Attention, and Creative Work | 43 Folders

Filed under: blog,life,lifehacks — Towse @ 4:20 pm

But, if you want a “site about GTD,” “a blog about index cards,” or a wide-mouthed sluice of recycled links to lists of geegaws that will keep you momentarily distracted from how sad you are, then you’re wasting both of our time here. So, go. You’re stinking up the joint.

This is now a site for people who want to finish things that they care about — but who still occasionally need help, inspiration, and the courage to push all the bullshit off their work table. This is about clearing that space every day, and then using it to do cool stuff that makes you proud.

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Pfizer: Graffiti | Creativity Online

Filed under: design,life,video — Towse @ 3:09 am

Pfizer: Graffiti | Creativity Online

If you can watch this through to the end without a tear. …

*sniff*

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September 19, 2008

Google Co-Founder Has Genetic Code Linked to Parkinson’s

Filed under: health,life — Towse @ 5:43 am

Sergey Brin Has Genetic Code Linked to Parkinson’s: [NYTimes article] … found after having his genetic makeup analyzed by 23andMe, a biotechnology start-up co-founded by his wife, Anne Wojcicki.

So, would you want to know? Or not?

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September 17, 2008

5 Questions That Will Change Your Life

Filed under: life,lifehacks — Towse @ 3:30 pm

5 Questions That Will Change Your Life – Tim Brownson

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September 16, 2008

113/70

Filed under: health,life — Towse @ 11:59 pm

I can live with that.

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September 12, 2008

RIP MJT (1924 – 11 Sep 2008)

Filed under: life,people — Towse @ 6:56 pm

Mom’s gone home.

Big, boisterous, raucous family of eight now consists of three siblings.
Fourth of six children is now oldest of three remaining family members, by two years.

Not what I expected, growing up.

Quiet.

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September 6, 2008

Recent Earthquakes – Map for 122-37

Filed under: California,life,quakes,San Francisco — Towse @ 4:08 am

Recent Earthquakes – Map for 122-37

We’re sitting at the dinner table.

Me: “Did you feel that?”

“Huh?”

Me: “Oh, come on. The chimes on the spiral fire-escape out there are rattling! Listen.”

“Oh. OK. I thought you were kicking the table. The seagulls are squawking too. 2. something.”

Me: “I say 3.5 and fairly nearby.”

I came up to check

~~4.1~~ 4.0 (updated)

2 miles ENE of Alamo, CA

Shake. Rattle. Roll.

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August 27, 2008

Kos: It’s a hell of a thing.

Filed under: life — Towse @ 6:47 am

Jefe has an excellent post titled, It’s a hell of a thing.

And in reply, I posted in the comments:

Life is full of things that are a hell of a thing and I get deep into the dark ooze if I think about it too much.

When I hear stories like the one you tell, or I hear about the guy who was minding his own business riding in a car that was crossing the bridge last Sunday when a drunk rear-ended the Mercedes he was in, killing him, or I hear about ex-Raider Gene Upshaw, who died Wednesday of pancreatic cancer. He’d been diagnosed on Sunday.

It’s a hell of a thing.

I live like I will live forever when it comes to making plans for staying out of the poorhouse when I’m on a pension, but I live like a truck may come off the overpass tomorrow and squish my Mini flat when it comes to not putting a certain class of things off until “some day.”

Hugs don’t get put off. Friends. Important things. Things that I don’t want to wind up years from now thinking, I wish I had that time back again. I wish I got a do-over. …

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August 26, 2008

And so it begins … Balsa Man, A Diminute Effigy For A Reduced Community

Filed under: culture,life — Towse @ 5:27 am

Folks I know remember the original Burning Man events out on Baker Beach and … refuse to go to the what-now-it-is experience out in the Nevada desert.

(Shout out! to Don who’s off on his post-significant-bday Burning Man experience! and to those folks his nibs worked with in the Exploratorium tech haven who are burners in their off-hours!)

Here is an alternative this Saturday out at Baker Beach for those in town.

We’ll be up at Donner Lake with the Bixby Creek crowd who soon (well, now, obviously) will no longer have a Bixby Creek place to gather because our illustrious hosts are selling their place and none of the rest of us — much as we love the place and the memories — have the wherewithal to buy it.

Alas.

[via Laughing Squid]

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August 22, 2008

How to Smell Like a Used Bookstore

Filed under: books,life — Towse @ 9:03 pm

How to Smell Like a Used Bookstore from Dwight Garner’s PAPER CUTS blog about books for the NYT.

Review is of Perfumes: The Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez. Garner quotes from a perfume review in the book.

DZING! (L’Artisan Parfumeur) ***** vanilla cardboard

Olivia Giacobetti is here at her imaginative, humorous best, and Dzing! is a masterpiece. Dzing! smells of paper, and you can spend a good while trying to figure out whether it is packing cardboard, kraft wrapping paper, envelopes while you lick the glue, old books, or something else. I have no idea whether this was the objective, but I have few clues as to why it happened. Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good-quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us. L’Artisan Parfumeur is, for reasons unknown, planning to discontinue this marvel, so stock up.

Sounds nice to me.

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