Speak to me. But the only thing you can’t do is to ignore me.

If you have an Illustrator-based web design workflow, try pictorial which automatically monitors a directory of choice, and runs exported .PNGs (it’s regex-based, so maybe other PNGs or any PNG whose name matches a particular pattern) thru PNGCrush², and shows a Growl notification after every iteration. I do this manually 100+ times a day, and not having to do it manually anymore certainly helps.

If you trace many Git forks locally, or if you do git clone a lot, clone can help by cloning to the “right” directory named with both the user’s screenname and the project name.

@cloudhead went to the future, found CSS 4 and gave us LESS. To write LESS efficiently you need syntax coloring. My fork of LESS Syntax Mode provides many fixes. Have a look into it if you use Coda or SubEthaEdit.

But life is buggy. Any piece of software may be buggy, but its inherent malleability ominates it from any accusation; we forgive as usual and it’s never harder to ask for forgivance than it is to ask for permission. Maybe that is because we can always press RESET, or do a procedure that rejuvenates the software back to its ideal, pristine state.

The ability to start itself over in a perceptible way ¹ makes software bugs tolerable, and it is the very same lack of this ability which makes real-life bugs intolerable. Reincarnation may wrap it up in a truly encapsulated, self-documentary, self-explanary, recursively complete way, but this concept will not go very far before we learn to love what we are, as-is.

As is

Every wake in a foreign body is a torture, no different from another. If life is a game, I’m needing some cheats. Or maybe a typecast, and call it a day.

It’s dangerous to design your life around getting into college, because the people you have to impress to get into college are not a very discerning audience. At most colleges, it’s not the professors who decide whether you get in, but admissions officers, and they are nowhere near as smart. They’re the NCOs of the intellectual world. They can’t tell how smart you are. The mere existence of prep schools is proof of that. (What you’ll wish you’d known)

Many things we teach in schools are going to be outdated in less than five years’ time. Some everlasting things got taught but some others did not. The modern schooling system made it inreasonably convinced that once it’s over the learning process is “over”, and with a clearly defined exit strategy (finish college, get diploma) it has became a behemoth.

I go with Jobs on this,

If we gave vouchers to parents for $4,400 a year, schools would be starting right and left. People would get out of college and say, “Let’s start a school.” You could have a track at Stanford within the MBA program on how to be the businessperson of a school. And that MBA would get together with somebody else, and they’d start schools. And you’d have these young, idealistic people starting schools, working for pennies.

They’d do it because they’d be able to set the curriculum. When you have kids you think, What exactly do I want them to learn? Most of the stuff they study in school is completely useless. But some incredibly valuable things you don’t learn until you’re older — yet you could learn them when you’re younger. And you start to think, What would I do if I set a curriculum for a school?

God, how exciting that could be! But you can’t do it today. You’d be crazy to work in a school today. You don’t get to do what you want. You don’t get to pick your books, your curriculum. You get to teach one narrow specialization. Who would ever want to do that?

These are the solutions to our problems in education. Unfortunately, technology isn’t it. You’re not going to solve the problems by putting all knowledge onto CD-ROMs. We can put a Web site in every school — none of this is bad. It’s bad only if it lulls us into thinking we’re doing something to solve the problem with education.

Lincoln did not have a Web site at the log cabin where his parents home-schooled him, and he turned out pretty interesting. Historical precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting human beings with technology.

It’s not as simple as you think when you’re in your 20s — that technology’s going to change the world. In some ways it will, in some ways it won’t. (Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing )

Deus ex machina.

There is a window that is closing. I am already over 18. Approximately 1.5 years left.

Recourse

So went the book of Isaiah:

Fear not, for you will not be put to shame; And do not feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced; But you will forget the shame of your youth, And the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.

And one could hope. Hope sets the soul free, and subsequently can set one free. Time and space are mere illusions while energy is everything.

Recourse

And so was:

Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: “Σιβυλλα τι θελεις?”; respondebat illa: “αποθανειν θελω.”

(I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging in a jar, and when the boys said to her, “Sibyl, what do you want?” she replied, “I want to die.”)

Perceived desperation, frustration and plausible enlightenment

ipso facto. I have made many mistakes, but I have learned from them and will be making more of them to learn more.

Obligatory plug

I newly discovered artist & musician Ólafur Arnalds.

We want invitations so much that it hurts.