Most people don’t realize that when you have to look within yourself for answers, it is like seeing your reflection in a spoon; upside down and backwards. These are you truest moments. These are the moments in which you need to be the most receptive to your own voice.
found scribbled in my journal from about a year ago (via hrrrthrrr)
That is so true.
“I lost my rune stone…”
From The Penguin Blog:
Two of his arguments seem particularly relevant to me as I think about selling Classics:
1. Context is key.
(a) Give people too much choice and conversion from browsing to buying reduces…(b) People find it difficult to judge the value of something in isolation…. the story of the first bread-maker on the market. It didn’t sell until they introduced a second, bigger and more expensive model and positioned it in store next to it — then the cheaper model flew off the shelves as customers had a context and could put a value to that product.
2. Imprinting habits. Once we start to buy something (say, coffee from Starbucks, or Classics by Penguin), it becomes much easier to do it again and again. It becomes a habit.
You hear a lot of talk about “The Cloud” nowadays…. But nobody seems to be talking about Power Laws.
Hugh MacLeod
Link.
I don’t watch TV and I don’t go to meetings. You’d be amazed at the difference it makes…. I would imagine we’re going to see a rapid acceleration in the quality and meaning of things we manage to create with our new-found time. At least I hope so.
Seth Godin.
A stack of books arrived from a magazine. The editor asked me to write reviews. Can’t wait to start reading… and then writing.
(via gaping void) Link
The big story is not about blogging. It’s not about Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Friendfeed or whatever.
It is about..
Cheap. Easy. Global. Media.
CheapEasyGlobal is the big story.
(via Gaping Void) Link
another decision the company has made which has ‘…lead to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand.’
brand autopsy
A hiatus from blogging was needed and taken. Many reasons exist for disconnection from the matrix—the blogosphere—which I may detail later. The primary reason is that I could not maintain the luxury of blogging and accomplish work-related tasks.
After Christmas, and during the following six months, I released seven projects to the market: this book
A respite was needed. So I took off three and a half weeks. I pointed the auto to parts unknown and hit the road in search of coffee houses and lost threads. Three thousand miles were traveled. For five nights during the journey, I slept in a different bed each night. For four nights, I spent in a cabin miles from the nearest phone and six miles from the closest town which is not marked on most maps. Three times I got lost. Twice it was my fault. Once it was not, but that once was a beautiful distraction.
I don’t know if the wind really “takes your troubles away.” I don’t know if I found those lost threads. I did find a couple excellent coffee houses (remind me to tell you where to find a Boris Latte). I’m back in Asheville now. I guess it is time to reconnect and get back to work.
Some caffeine addicts are Starbucks groupies. Some caffeine addicts are Caribou Coffee lodgers. And then there’s those aficionados of caffeine dealers (the last legal drug dealers) that warm there wifi receivers at indie joints like The Java Connection.
Betty Adcock is an excellent North Carolina poet.
From the Charlotte Observer:
[Betty] Adcock tells me that she is not connected to the Internet and would “rather write a long letter than answer multiple e-mails, would rather look in books for information than be over-informed by Google.”
Further, she says, she belongs to few organizations and is active in none.
“I rarely attend conventions of writers or conferences. I do not e-mail,” she says.
Link.
U.S. Gas Prices
A heat map visualization via Gas Buddy
Coffeehouse Junkie 