If You Work Really Hard and You’re Kind, Amazing Things Will Happen
Coco had it right bigtime when he said this during his last speech. Kindness is important; watching out for other people is important. Doing what you can, lending a hand, and building relationships is vital in any endeavor.
The thing is, kindness is tough. It takes time and energy to write thank-you notes. Sometimes it’s hard to remember to smile, and to keep it from becoming a phony reflex action — it takes energy to keep your mind open so that every smile comes from a genuine, truthful place. It takes effort to remember peoples’ names (something which I am horrible at), and to maintain that enormous rolodex of information about them. And the toughest part about kindness is showing it in the face of hostility — sometimes even kindness can be a hard sell.
Yeah — kindness is hard, but at least it doesn’t cost money. It costs time and it costs energy, but at least it’s inexpensive. If you’re poor, kindness might be all that you can give; and man, is it ever appreciated. And if you’re rich: You’d better be kind, motherfucker. Because being kind will open up opportunities for you that have nothing at all to do with money.
But yeah — marry kindness to hard work and talent, and you’ve got the keys to the goddam kingdom.
Okay, the blowback from the Internet on the iPad has been going on since last week. I’ve been glued to all the coverage and I’ve really been enjoying the circus.
The iPad is too different, and the day is too early, to make any sort of call on the success or failure of this thing. At worst, Apple will be faulted for atypical conservatism. At best, the iPad will be likened to the first Mac, which combined hardware and UI elements that were familiar on their surface, but which had finally been combined in the right way to produce a satisfying stew that everybody else will leap to copy.
You should read the rest of this report. Not only does Andy Ihnatko seem to have it right, he’s also a very entertaining writer.
I Am Now a Fully Armed and Operational Battle Station
Today’s the day, my little Droogs. The last day of the day job. After today I have one weekend where I’m FunEmployed — aka between careers — and then on Monday I’m officially on the clock as Joe Hollywood.
I cleaned out my office and found the following:
- Many, many old photographs of myself and my friends doing stupid, fun things
- My original 16 year old Drivers’ License
- Lots of old LCC stuff: Fliers, old programs, etc..
- CodeWarrior discs
- “Programming for the Newton”: Nostalgic considering Wednesday’s announcement
- Plastic aquarium plants
- A quarter-full bottle of Smirnoff
It was a pretty sweet and sad series of moments going through all my drawers. Everything was layered by eon in an archaeological fashion. I recycled a lot of old scripts and papers. TONS of old timesheets. I saved everything that needed to be saved, although it’s moments like these when you get a little paranoid about some special remembrance getting lost.
Everything’s wrapped up, documented, and ready to roll. I’m going to cruise back into the office a couple of times next week to pick up a few remainders and make sure the place is in good order before I leave for good. And maybe you’ll find me there every now and then, just checking in.
One of my agents asked me how I felt about the whole transition.
I told her I felt a little scared, but really excited. I almost feel like it’s not really happening. I still can’t believe people get paid to do this, but there it all is. I’ve said it before and I will say it when I wake up every morning from now on: I am so very lucky.
To all my friends that have already left their day jobs: I’m now a member of your club. My clubhouse is your clubhouse. I can come to WeHo or Hollywood or Studio City for lunch on a weekday, but don’t expect me to be out late — I’m still observing school days and their required hours.
My lawyer said, “Hey, so now you’re a full time writer. Feels good, right?”
I told him that I’ve essentially been a full time writer for years now; I just also had a full-time job. But now that the job’s gone I can go to 200%. Explore ideas that I didn’t have time to explore before, ramp up my productivity. Read even more than I do now. Holy shit, I can read more books!!
I think the best thing is that I have the time to try out some really crazy things. Take acting classes, cooking classes. If I need to be in New York for three weeks for rehearsal, I can just go. I could get into professional clowning.
Improv???
One thing I really don’t want to do is to give up programming. I sometimes wonder what things would have been like if my life had gone the other way; if it had, I don’t think I would’ve ever been able to give up writing. I would have always written little things in my spare time to amuse myself.
So now I’m going to write little programs in my spare time. Hell, I’m an iPhone developer. I didn’t have time to really get my hands dirty before, but now…
It’s time to go get that iPad dev kit.
Form Factor
The iPad. There have been a lot of cheers from the Apple faithful, a lot of mehs from the Apple unfaithful; the battle lines are being drawn pretty quickly. All day yesterday people were emailing me, IMing me, and asking me in person for my thoughts on the thing.
My thoughts: This is definitely a first generation product.
It’s basically 2007 all over again: The first generation iPad is essentially another first generation iPhone — a device that’s missing key features that people will be pissed over until they arrive. The original iPhone lacked cut and paste; the iPad lacks multitasking, and it probably won’t get it until Apple can find a way to make it work perfectly interface-wise.
But here’s my prediction: I think that this is a win. Looking at the thing, I think that Jobs had two primary goals: 1) Get the form factor right, and 2) Get the thing into as many peoples’ hands as possible.
Regarding form factor, note that the basic shape and size of the iPhone hasn’t changed through three generations of the device. That’s because Jonathan Ive and company wanted to get it right on the first shot. They also wanted to make sure the software and the basic usability was rock solid from the beginning; every future addition (web cam, MULTITASKING, etc..) would be built upon that foundation. The iPad is the same: Get the basics right, the form factor right, and build upon it. And I trust Stephen Fry when he says they nailed it.
Next, the “getting the thing into peoples’ hands part”: Price. The Wall Street Journal postulated that this thing was going to cost a grand. This was probably an intentional leak on Apple’s part to set the bar; before yesterday, no one thought this thing would come in at $499. Nobody. No one mentioned price at all except by saying in passing that it was probably going to be expensive. In fact, an Apple product intro’ing at this price is kind of shocking.
But it seems that Jobs’ goal is to get as many of these things sold as possible. Sell them cheap and in volume. He learned his lesson from the iPhone debacle where Macheads bought first gen iPhones at inflated prices and then had to be given $100 gift cards later on to keep them from revolt.
And I think that he’s betting that once you own one of these things, you’ll upgrade to the next one and the next. Essentially he’s positioning the iPad as a product that asks to be constantly upgraded, with users buying a new one every 1-2 years.
So this product is betting the farm on form factor. Did Apple get it right? Did they create a product that lacks in features but is so rock-solid that it will eventually earn a place in a new, must-have product category?
The only way to find out is to hold one.
It’s iTablet Eve
Here it is my friends: The night before Apple changes the world again. Fake Steve Jobs reports that “He’s tingling all over”. The Financial Times tells us that the tablet will be to the Kindle as color TV is to black and white. Walt Mosspuppet says that the tablet allows you to order free pizzas delivered by a unicorn.
You’ve read my own predictions on this thing. Now that we’re less than 24 hours away from its unveiling, even I’m getting kind of tingly.
Today I was thinking about the print industry and what tabletization means for it. Here’s a pretty good article on Gizmodo about the tablet’s relationship with print.
So I have a few thoughts on this: One, I’ve been reading Newsweek and Time on the Kindle DX. This is fine and good for newsmagazines, but what people really need are layouts. Photos, graphics, spreads. National Geographic, which is all about incredible photography, doesn’t work on a grayscale Kindle. Neither do fashion mags. The Kindle is great for text, but it sucks for graphics.
This is where the tablet comes in. Magazines could be a great central hub for everything — video, audio, web links. Publishers could become the center of the media universe again, as they were when print and newspapers ruled in the early half of the 20th century. It’s just a matter of finding the right business model and for all the major players to come together on the right technological standards.
Should magazine layout be based on HTML 5? That might be a good way to go because of its usability and because it’s already based on an existing standard. The business model might literally be akin to putting a paywall in front of a website, something that the New York Times is definitely going to do in 2011.
Man, I’m excited. I’m all set to buy whatever is unveiled tomorrow. Until then I’ve got Mass Effect 2 and a writers’ workshop to occupy my time. But by March or so, I will be tableting all over this MF’er.
Very Few Discerning People Will Ever Own The Life of Christ in Cats
It is the greatest story ever told, now in cat form. Own the commemorative collector’s plate today.
(Beware of Judas Cat.)
So how’d you like the weather last week, my fellow Angelinos? Not so great, right?
When the sun finally came out of the clouds on Friday it was like nature’s Prozac. My will to live finally returned in that brief afternoon burst of sunlight. Then all weekend the rays recharged my battery of happiness — finally got to hang up my umbrella and go running.
I think this is part of the reason why I could never live anywhere else. I am now a fully entrenched creature of LA. All I need now is a boob job.
I saw this guy in Union Square (NYC) last week wearing a Boba Fett helmet and playing the Super Mario Bros. theme song on the accordion. By magical coincidence, here he is, featured on People of Public Transit:
I Am a Newly Minted Hobo
T-Minus one week until I’m a professional layabout without an office to go to every day. I need to find a new daily place to commute to in order to keep cabin fever at bay.
I’m thinking about rotating among various coffee shops in the neighborhood, although I don’t want to become a member of that species of weirdo-with-a-laptop that you see at such places. But maybe it’s inevitable; maybe this is how that type of weirdo gets born.
Someday you might see me in the corner wearing two pairs of glasses and a trucker hat that says “FEMALE BODY INSPECTOR”, shuffling through a stack of National Geographics from 1987. Maybe I’ll be working off of an iMac that I dragged in with me on a shopping cart, leveling up my World of Warcraft doods. Maybe.
I also might hang out at the libraries at UCLA. I’ve always been extremely productive there. Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in the basement of Powell Library on a rented typewriter. I feel his ghost hovering around there even though he isn’t dead yet. I get a bit of joy off this idea, and seriously speaking, I feel energized by having lots of people working around me. It’s like we’re all in a gang together — a gang of nerds.
I could also hang out at my manager’s place. She has an office. I could work there every day until she boots me out. I believe that there are Diet Cokes there that I can steal from the fridge. That would be a nice transition.
Maybe I should just hang out in random offices. I’m Asian, so people would think that I belonged there and they wouldn’t call the cops. But then again, people would keep asking me to fix their computers. And I’d have to fix their computers because I’m polite.
Maybe I’ll just stay at home.
Regretsy is my new favorite site. It was pointed out to me by my good friend James. It contains the most horrible of the horrors available for purchase on etsy.com, the website where hipsters hawk their handcrafted tchotchkes.
I actually really kinda love this thing:
It’s kind of awesome in a folk-arty way, like a product of that crazy artist dude from Junebug. Plus Heidi Montag only looks vaguely irritated by being in hell, like she would if you made her eat at Applebee’s.
In fact I kinda sorta want to buy it if it hasn’t been bought already. Now you know what to get me for my birthday!
Oh, I know what I’ll do re: this office-less nomadic situation: I’ll adopt a co-worker.
The Apple Tablet: The Magic of “Hover”
In my last post I discussed the idea of media delivery and how media and advertising will be hyperlinked. Since I’m a pretty huge interface nerd (I love studying and designing web-based interfaces), I’ve been thinking more about the interface design for hyperlinks.
Please pay special attention to this patent that Apple filed a year ago which tracks non-touch, or “hovering” gestures. Such a technology would mean that your iPhone or iTablet/iSlate/Whatever would be able to sense when your fingers are hovering over — but not touching — the screen.
Interface-wise, this is perfect for hyperlinking from video. For instance, when you see an object in a show that you want to know more about, you place your finger above the screen without touching it. The tablet should then bring up a little pop-up (much like Vh1′s Pop-Up Video) which follows the on-screen object and contains little widgets of information like who sells this product and what its name is; little buttons like “Find out more…” or “Share this with a friend…” Likewise, if you hover your hands over the bottom of the screen, the device should bring up a virtual keyboard so you can start typing, or a virtual playback remote so you can pause, fast forward, etc..
Hovering would be great because it would eliminate the need to press a button to bring up a touchscreen interface. The device would merely sense where your fingers are and contextually bring up the required interface so you can start tapping away. It also makes it such that video doesn’t need to pause as you hover over things — and you could hover your fingers over multiple objects of interest and see contextual pop-ups for each. Also, making hovering an analog input method (i.e. the device senses whether your finger is close to the screen or further away) could be very useful for manipulating 3D objects in the interface.
It is unknown whether hovering will appear in this iteration of the Apple tablet. Although an unconfirmed report suggested that users will be “surprised” at how they interact with it. Could this be a nod towards hovering?
My Work in Print
Year Zero
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.com
Cowboy Versus Samurai
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.comFor a complete list of books containing my work, please click here.
