Webstock 2011: Jason Santa Maria

Webstock 2011: Jason Santa Maria

Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin are joined by Jason Santa Maria and discuss mitigating the isolation of working in your underwear by reaching out to the community, avenues for creativity, struggling with the line between good enough and perfection, focus, why speaking and teaching are important, and why sometimes the distraction of working with other people is worth it. 5by5.tv

Highway to Hell

If a person doesn't suffer fools well

does that mean they themselves are not foolish?

Can he who is without sin chuck the first wobbly?

Or can the pot call the kettle black

can a fool call a fool at his own game?

I sure am qualified if the later is the rule

but it buggers me around a bit

because I bandy the saying a lot

I suffer fools poorly

but maybe I ought to admit

that tolerance is something I tend to live without

it's my way or the highway

or the highway so long as it's my way

my road is wide but there will be no Volvos

It can't be them all the time, can it

there is always one common demonstrator

and then we're back to the fool

Lord only knows, she's one of the best

 

Biting bullets

Mother flip, I want to write but I can only nail the bullets into the wall. I've wanted to publish a post for the last few days - but I just can't untangle the words so they come out in a recognisable form.

I wrestle with words about my camera:

  • Nikon D70 (dSLR) stopped working in October 2010, aged 6 years (15,818 pictures taken)
  • Cursory inspection by a camera technician at a local store suggested $400+ to fix the 'compression card / broken pin'
  • Technician suggests it is better to buy a new Nikon D90 ($2,000) camera as a replacement
  • As I can't understand the logic of advice - I tell him that I don't want to buy a new camera / don't want to pay $450+ in repairs
  • Watching trademe.co.nz and eBay.com.au for a cheap D70 as a replacement
  • Tormented by the apparent insanity of trying to buy an old camera to replace an old camera
  • Decide not to call my old, nor my pending new old camera 'old' any more - name change to RETRO dSLR
  • Feel better
  • Find a Nikon D70s - hardly used (1,053 pictures taken) for $380 (free postage) on trademe.co.nz
  • Purchase.

This is me being strangled by a bunch of movies I've seen lately:

  • How to Train Your Dragon (good)
  • Date Night (nearly average)
  • Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (stands up well, all things considered)
  • Social Network (spectacular)
  • Tangled (Okay: Tandia's going to love it)
  • Catfish (Accurate, fabulous, about time)

Pacing and thinking through the observation and mystification of how people get to where they are without knowing how to use their tools of their profession is also causing me anxiety.

  • What do you mean you can't type?
  • It was a requirement in the job advertisement that you applied for that you could use a PC and the Microsoft Office suite
  • But you've said on your CV that you can use the Microsoft Office Suite on a PC
  • You know you don't have to go to double you double you doube you google dot com to type a site name into the search box, right? oh.. sorry.
  • The CD tray keeps opening because that's not the computer OFF button