Latest Posts

• Book of the Week: The Woodwright's Companion

  Roy Underhill has a PBS show called The Woodwright’s Shop that shows traditional woodworking techniques. The Woodwright’s Companion is a book he wrote. Woodworking Woodworking appeals to the inner creationist in me. It’s about taking a tree and turning it into a piece of functional furniture. Using your hands without electricity to do that is pretty amazing. It is more than thinking of wood as a building material, but rather bringing out the beauty of the wood in your piece. One has to really pay attention to the wood to know how to work it. It expands and contracts with the weather. I’m used to working with cold, unfeeling machines, but wood is alive or at least it used to be. The book is not a how-to for woodworking, but more about telling a story and sharing some history.

• Book of the Week: Luxury Fever

  Luxury Fever was mentioned by one of the books I read. I’m guessing it was from a book on happiness. I found the book too long for what it was. Too many examples, took a long time to get to the point. People spend money on stupid shit. America would be a better societal-wise if we had a progressive consumption tax to keep people from spending money on stupid shit. That’s good to know for policymakers, but what the hell can I do about it? Usually I read books where by the end of it, I learn about ways to improve my life. I’m people, so I spend money on stupid shit too, no matter how rational I may think I am. I know eating that piece of cake isn’t good for me, but it tastes damn good. I’m not going to write about why spending money on luxury goods is bad and why a progressive consumption tax is the solution. You can read the book for that. Income Inequality [caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”602”] Share of pre-tax household income received by the top 1 percent, top 0.1 percent and top 0.01 percent, between 1917 and 2005 (wikipedia)[/caption] People complain about income inequality now, but it was worst when J. D. Rockefeller was alive. Yet despite increasing income inequality, a larger percentage of luxury cars are being sold. It could be that the 1% are buying multiple cars and the poor people are buying cars they can’t afford. Percentage of Luxury Cars Sold | Year
  —|—
  7 % | 1986
  12 % | 1996
  17 % | 2014
  It’s All Relative

• Book of the Week: All My Friends Are Still Dead

  This is the sequel to All my friends are dead. I found the first book on one coworker’s desk and the the sequel on another coworker’s desk. I’m going to keep a look out in case a third one comes out.

• Book of the Week: All My Friends Are Dead

  All My Friends Are Dead is a funny book in a way that the statements are sad, but true. It reminds me a children’s book that you would read to a kid.

• Book of the Week: The Design of Everyday Things

  The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman started out as The Psychology of Everyday Things, which was published in 1988. For comparison, IDEO, a famous design firm known for advocating design thinking was founded in 1991. This book was very influential when it was published, but after new developments in human-centered design and designing thinking, the material and examples in the book began to look a little stale. I’m reading the 2013 revision of the book that also incorporates topics written about by Don in other books that he’s published. He was also more cognizant to choose examples that wouldn’t get dated as quickly. This book reminds me of something that would be assigned reading to a class. Something you read, digest and talk about. If you want to take a class on the book, Udacity has a course called “Intro to the Design of Everyday Things” taught by Don Norman himself. Why Should I Care About Design?

• Book of the Week: Juggling for the Complete Klutz

  Juggling for the Complete Klutz was mention in one of the previous books I’ve read. I can’t juggle, so I wanted to read it. Still can’t juggle, because I haven’t practiced yet. Purchase Juggling for the Complete Klutz on Amazon.com or check it out from your local library.

• Book of the Week: Understanding Comics

  After reading How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by the creator of Dilbert, I wanted to learn more about what goes into making comics. I picked up Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud to learn more. The book is a comic about understanding comics. It starts off with defining that comics are sequential art. Then it goes into the spectrum of comics and where they fit in the symbolism, realism, and iconic abstraction triangle. The middle of book goes over how space and time work. The end of the book goes over the six steps that artists go through in the creation process. When you read a comic, you feel certain things without knowing why. After reading this book, I have more of an appreciation of how the comic artist craft those experiences. Time to draw some comics on OpenSmut.

• Book of the Week: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

  How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big was written by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. This book is about Scott’s life and contains advice on how to be successful at life. Since cartoon writers are good are reducing things to their core, there isn’t much fluff in the book. This book sums up a lot of the things I’ve read about happiness and success. Goals are for Losers Having a system is better than having goals. A system is something you live and practice. A goal is some you either achieve or you don’t. By employing a system, you should be constantly heading in the right direction. The Success Formula

• Book of the Week: Zero to One

  Zero to One is based on the notes taken by Blake Masters during Peter Thiel’s startup class at Stanford. Chapter 3 of the book and Blake’s notes are available online. Zero to one is about how to impact the future and be financially rewarded doing so. It is easier to go from 1 to N, than from zero to one.

• Book of the Week: Built to Last

  I read Jim Collin’s prequel, Good to Great a few months ago. It was time to read the book he published first, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. Companies To determine what the successful habits are, Jim and team looked at what was different between the visionary company and the comparison company. Visionary | Comparison
  —|—
  3M | Norton
  American Express | Wells Fargo
  Boeing | McDonnell Douglas
  Citicorp | Chase Manhattan
  Ford | GM
  General Electric | Westinghouse
  Hewlett-Packard | Texas Instrumetn
  IBM | Burroughs
  Johnson & Johnson | Bristol-Myers Squibb
  Marriott | Howard Johnson
  Merck | Pfizer
  Motorola | Zenith
  Nordstrom | Melville
  Proctor & Gamble | Colgate
  Sony | Kenwood
  Wal-Mart | Ames
  Walt Disney | Columbia
  The Myth of the “Great Idea”

• Book of the Week: How Google Works

  How Google Works is part business book, part storybook on Google. The problem is that there are better business books and better storybooks on Google. If you’re a Google fan, then it is worthwhile read. Slides If you don’t want to read the book, you can just flip through these slides. [slideshare id=40175706?rel=0&w;=427&h;=356&style;=border: 1px solid #CCC; border-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 100%;≻=no]

• Book of the Week: The Pursuit of Perfect

  As a follow-up to Happier, I read The Pursuit of Perfect. The book is structured in the same way as Happier. It has 3 sections with embedded exercises. This book expands more on the perfectionist who lives the rat race rather than looking at the world as an optimalist. The second section talks about how pursuing perfect can affect education, work and love. If you’re a parent, the education section is a good read. If you got messed up by the school system, it would also be a good read. Tal references Jim Collin’s Built to Last for the work related ideas. Patterns emerge on what is required to be happy and genuinely good at something after reading many books on happiness, creativity and greatness. The hard part is internalizing those patterns and incorporating them into your everyday life. Perfectionist vs Optimalist The Perfectionist | The Optimalist
  —|—
  Journey as a straight line | Journey as an irregular spiral
  Fear of failure | Failure as feedback
  Focus on destination | Focus on journey and destination
  All-or-nothing thinking | Nuanced, complex thinking
  Defensive | Open to suggestions
  Faultfinder | Failure as feedback
  Fear of failure | Benefit finder
  Rigid, static | Adaptable, dynamic
  The perfectionist is the person who has big goals and relentless pursues them, working themselves into the ground. They head from milestone to another milestone never being happy. When they reach their first failure, they get hit hard and breakdown. They can’t enjoy the journey, because they are rushing toward the destination. They make their decisions around avoiding failure instead of doing what they really want. Safe Place In in a study about organization behavior, Hospitals that had better teamwork had more reported medical errors. This was because those who had better teamwork were more likely to report errors. While the others were more likely to cover up errors. When you analyzed errors that you can’t cover up, like deaths, then the hospitals with better teamwork came out on top. As repeated in books I’ve read about creativity and successful companies, you need to create a place where people feel that they can fail safely. If you never fail, you will never achieve great things. How you deal with failure can change your life a lot.