Jay Robinson

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Nico is needing a haircut.

"Question everything generally thought to be obvious."

— Dieter Rams

If you’re looking for a book to buy me, you could do worse than Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter by Theodore Roosevelt. What a badass.

Books I Read in 2011

One of my New Years Resolutions in 2011 was to read two books a month. I didn’t quite hit my goal as I was often out enjoying the countryside during summer. However, I did succeed in making reading a daily habit.

I enjoy balancing fiction with non-fiction. Non-fiction appeals to my left-brain and I feel I’m becoming learned. When I read fiction, I choose the classics.

The book that had the most impact on me this year was Atlas Shrugged. Maybe it’s because (at 1168 pages) it’s one of the longest novels in existence. Maybe it’s because Rand’s style is repetitious to drive her point home. Either way, it’s a great work that altered my view of the world. I only wish I’d read it sooner.

Fiction

• Earth Abides by George Stewart
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (audiobook)
• A Christmas Carol, narrated by Patrick Stewart (audiobook)

Non-Fiction

• Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• Return to the Little Kingdom by Michael Moritz
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
• On Writing by Stephen King
• Decoded by Jay-Z
• Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
• The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin
• Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson
• Design as Art by Bruno Munari
• Ordering Disorder by Khoi Vinh
• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud
• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• Grouped by Paul Adams

I’ve renewed this reading pace as a resolution for 2012 and I’ve got a stack of books I’m excited to read. I’ve also found I need to take time to reflect on my daily reading, otherwise the knowledge is not as firm in my mind. You should follow my Kindle account to add me as a reading buddy.

** Full disclosure: All of my links are Amazon Affliate links from now on. You pay the same exact price, not a penny more. I get a tiny commission. Thanks, and happy reading! **

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Was thinking it would be cool to own a Polaroid camera, and I found this, the Polaroid Z340. It prints 4x3 photos in under a minute, has room for 10 photo sheets, and you can buy 30-packs for $17.50 (on Amazon). Bad news is the battery will die after taking and printing about 25 shots. Good news is there’s an SD card so you can keep the digital photos and get them printed again.

This would make for a fun hour with some friends.

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A photo of my eye from the other night.

Ze French is back.

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Thanks, Marcelo, for sharing your chimarrão with me.

"I wanted a piece of the pie for me and my family so I made it."

—

Big Boi, from my playlist of favorite Big Boi verses entitled, “Big Boi’s Diamonds & Pearls”.

(The playlist title references a Big Boi lyric from “Ova Da Wudz”; itself a reference to a Prince song.) (Because people that listen to Outkast are smarter.)

Looking forward to using one of these BookBacks by Dodocase on my iPad 3.

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Sencha:

Sencha is hiring!

2011 was an incredible year for Sencha and its employees. We nearly tripled the company, and we’re not done building the team!

If you’d like to come work with us in the Silicon Valley, California, be sure to check out our Careers page for open positions.

It’s true, Sencha is still hiring. If you feel like you’d be a good fit, feel free to email me.

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Give me this day my daily devices.

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Photo by Tatiana Iskandar.

Music That Makes You Dumb by Virgil Griffith →

Caltech student Virgil Griffith correlated musical interests with SAT scores.

The method is highly unscientific, but the grouped by genre graphic makes the most sense. People who list Outkast in their favorite music on Facebook tend to score higher than those who list Lil Wayne.

Unlike conventional approaches which quantize emotions into classes, [this demo] defines emotions by two continuous variables arousal and valence and employs regression algorithms to predict them. Associated with arousal and valence values (AV values), each music sample becomes a point in the arousal-valence emotion plane, so a user can easily retrieve music samples of certain emotion(s) by specifying a point or a trajectory in the emotion plane.

I’ve always enjoyed sorting iTunes music by mood with Moody.