9/11

one. six.

sixteen.

years.

the nerd

when the following job description comprises the most exciting 140 characters you read all day
"Be able to speak engineering, UX, design, analytics and finance. Sometimes, be ready to speak all of the above in the space of fifteen minutes."

first mover advantage

textbooks at management schools teach you that the market is a "first come, first served" kind of place for companies. that innovators and pioneers will rise to success above all others.

reality reads differently. steve jobs (/apple) announced the iPod to the market at a time when mp3 players had long tried to drive the discman (or its 1990's equivalent, the walkman) out of the market. a similar story could be told about the iPad and the myriad of tablets that preceded it.

oliver samwer, founder & ceo of rocket internet, has built an entire company on the premise that the textbooks are wrong, and backs his strategy with the fact that a number of the largest companies in the world did not invent their business models. by believing that if a business model has never been attempted before then it is unlikely to succeed, rocket has built a strength in optimizing risk to drive serial success. the modus operandi is hence to take good ideas and leverage on the company's execution capabilities and impressive access to capital.

the list is endless - which makes one wonder how library-based education stacks up to the cliché-d school of life. as we rethink the way that content is delivered to students, might be worthwhile allocating some headspace to the discussion around the content itself and how we can move that closer to real life.

obby

once in a blue moon, something you wish for comes true.

rewind to summer of 2015: while looking for a photography class in london, my excitement with the idea of learning something new quickly turned into frustration. of not finding the right class. in the closest location. at the best price. oh, yes, and it would have to be on a weekend. so, simple enough, i say.

the reason being i wanted to be able to take those pictures that make magazine covers - or, at the very least, a cool tube add (and i eventually did - case in point below).

fast forward to 2016, and last thursday in particular: my mission impossible just moved to the field of real life. three lovely gents (with a surprising love for emoticons) launched https://obby.co/. not only does it look awesome, but most importantly it is a seamless way to find and book the best live classes / courses / workshops in the great city of london. oh, and it's completely free! not to mention the sharing-is-caring discount codes when you spread the love.

(to book the best london classes, check out https://obby.co/)

video games know best?

"Here's the thing, kid: we don't get to choose how we start in this life. 
Real greatness is what you do with the hand you're dealt."

(Victor Sullivan in Uncharted)

so they said this job opened doors...?

literally

(taken from here)

on 2015

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

(Charles Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities)

marketplaces for managers (1)

• Think of a catchy name
• Buy a domain
• Set up dns configurations
• Design a logo
• Create an appealing landing page
• Integrate it with a distribution list manager (say, mailchimp)
• Write and automate welcome emails to people who sign up to your website
• Edit the coding for some good-old SEO
• Design lists, sitemaps and mockups for the fully fetched website
• Hire (or become) a website developer
• Rinse, and repeat

By the time you figure out all of the above, an engineer and his marketer friend have already turned the company into a unicorn and sold it to Rocket Internet...but, hey - you can congratulate yourself for having a great idea!

startup for dummies

#exodus

dodged a bullet

cara metade, ou complementos?

pardoxal?

holocene

"Holocene is a bar in Portland, Ore., but it's also the name of a geologic era, an epoch if you will. It's a good example of how all the songs are all meant to come together as this idea that places are times and people are places and times are... people? [Laughs.] They can all be different and the same at the same time. Most of our lives feel like these epochs. That's kind of what that song's about. "Once I knew I was not magnificent." Our lives feel like these epochs, but really we are dust in the wind. But I think there's a significance in that insignificance that I was trying to look at in that song."

(Justin Vernon)

The ultimate soundtrack song.

(As heard on Wish I Was Here, The Judge, Suits, and surely many others)

come together

what happens with a band such as The Beatles is that every once in a while you hear a familiar song, can't quite put your finger on it but know you've heard it before. you will likely hear this song being sung by someone else and question if it's theirs - until you realize that Lennon wrote it. and you then find yourself feeling a little guilty questioning if one one the 1,000 cover versions can ever beat the original.

(about Come Together)

the thing is, no matter what you're listening to, you will somehow always hear the Beatles - be it an obvious cover, an influence in the background, a random name-dropping.

.

"I was looking at my resume feeling real fresh today // they rewrite history I don't believe in yesterday  // and what's a black Beatle anyway, a f***ing roach // I guess thats why they got me sitting in fucking coach"

wildlife

i recall seeing an exhibition when i was 18 years old. basic maths would tell me that was 10 years ago but surely it cannot have been that long,

2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the competition and shows how far photography has evolved in the past 5 decades. the lighting is perfect in bringing out the incredible results of the photographers' impressive courage and patience. 

Grand Title Winner 
Michael 'Nick' Nichols, USA

"Nick set out to create an archetypal image that captured the essence of lions in a time long gone, before they were under such threat. The Vumbi pride in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park are a ‘formidable and spectacularly co-operative team,’ Nick says. Here the five females lie at rest with their cubs on a kopje (a rocky outcrop). Shortly before he took the shot, they had attacked and driven off one of the pride’s two males. Now they were lying close together, calmly sleeping. They were used to Nick’s presence as he’d been following them for nearly six months, so he could position his vehicle close to the kopje. He framed the vista with the plains beyond and the dramatic late afternoon sky above. He photographed the lions in infrared, which he says ‘cuts through the dust and haze, transforms the light and turns the moment into something primal, biblical almost’. The chosen picture of lions in Africa is part flashback, part fantasy. Nick got to know and love the Vumbi pride. A few months later, he heard they had ventured outside the park and three females had been killed."

Grand Title Winner - Young Wildlife Photograph of the Year 2014
Carlos Perez Naval, Spain

"This common yellow scorpion is flourishing its sting as a warning. Carlos had found it basking on a flat stone in a rocky area near his home in Torralba de los Sisones, northeast Spain – a place he often visits to look for reptiles. The late afternoon Sun was casting such a lovely glow over the scene that Carlos decided to experiment with a double exposure for the first time so he could include it. He started with the background, using a fast speed so as not to overexpose the Sun, and then shot the scorpion using a low flash. But he had to change lenses, using his zoom for the Sun, which is when the scorpion noticed the movement and raised its tail. Carlos then had to wait for it to settle before taking his close-up, with the last of the light illuminating its body."

(50th Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

amor e uma cabana

não me lembro de sonhar com castelos - "casa" sempre foi mais um estado de espírito do que um amontoar de vigas e betão.

"casa" lembra-me sempre esta fotografia - construção ou não - de steve jobs, uma máquina de escrever, meia dúzia de livros, um candeeiro e uma bebida quente. 

não me recordo da última vez que liguei a televisão do apartamento onde habito - faz-me mais falta o espaço que as coisas, o braço à minha volta do que a cama

.

your girl is lovely, hubbell

"Um dia destes encontro-te e estás mais velha. Um dia destes cruzo-me contigo na rua, numa esquina, no café, e estás feliz, mais feliz, insuportavelmente feliz, e não consigo evitar desviar o meu olhar do teu. Um dia destes vejo alguém que me pareces tu e afinal és mesmo tu e faço de conta que não te vi e me pareceste outra pessoa. Um dia destes dou de caras contigo e a tua cara é a mesma de há anos, só que sem ter havido eu e sem ter havido anos. Um dia destes esbarro connosco no passeio e mal nos reconheço à primeira, de tão apressados que vamos de encontro aos nossos encontros. Um dia destes dou-te um encontrão sem querer e descubro que um encontrão é apenas um encontro vítima do sufixo aumentativo. Um dia destes distingo um vulto cheio de brancas no cabelo e rugas por trás dos óculos, apesar de conservar o teu anel preto de cabelo e o preto das íris sem aros dos teus olhos. Um dia destes arrependo-me de não ter dito nada nas alturas em que não havia nada a dizer. Um dia destes não dizemos nada um ao outro, uma vez que nada temos em comum [...]"

(Miguel Marques in 365)

what my friends think i do

Schumacher, Senna e Cobain

"O acidente de Michael Schumacher fez-me lembrar o dia em que deixei de ver Fórmula 1: um de maio de mil novecentos e noventa e quatro, o dia do acidente mortal de Ayrton Senna, um dos meus heróis, o dia da vitória abjecta de Schumacher, um dos meus vilões. Foi um daqueles episódios sísmicos. O café do bairro ficou cheio de gente comovida com a morte do brasileiro e furiosa com a aparente amoralidade do alemão, que celebrou a vitória depois da morte do colega de profissão. Alguns dos meus amigos, os verdadeiros aficionados, falavam como se tivesse morrido alguém da família. E não andavam longe da verdade. Os pilotos de F1 eram uma presença constante nos almoços de domingo, eram uma espécie de tios afastados que partilhavam a grande refeição da semana. O meu tio favorito era Nelson Piquet, um brasileiro com pinta de Roberto Caros que voava não num calhambeque mas num Lótus amarelo com anúncios da Camel. Piquet, Senna e os demais pilotos eram heróis partilhados por toda a gente, em Portugal e na Europa. Aliás, na voz de António Nicolau (faleceu há dias), o comentador dos Grandes Prémios na RTP, os nomes dos pilotos de F1 compõem uma faixa inteira da banda sonora dos anos 80 e 90: Prost, Mansell, Patrese, J. J. Lehto, Gerhard Berger, Larini, Nannini, Alboreto, Alesi, Senna, Piquet.

É preciso compreender a época. Nós víamos a F1 da mesma forma que víamos o Eurofestival. Em maio de 1994, a nossa cabeça estava formatada por dois canais de televisão (a SIC nem um ano tinha). Não tínhamos net nem TV por cabo. Toda a gente via os mesmos filmes, as mesmas séries, as mesmas novelas, os mesmos programas, as mesmas corridas de F1. Tínhamos pouca liberdade de escolha? Talvez. Mas em compensação tínhamos assuntos de conversa, esse antepassado remoto do Facebook. Nos últimos tempos não têm sentido um desconforto crescente nas conversas com os vossos amigos? Eu sinto. A arte da conversa está cada vez mais difícil, porque não temos pontos de referência comuns, andamos a ver, ouvir e a ler coisas diferentes. Já não falamos com amigos sobre um programa, recomendamos aos amigos o tal programa que eles não conhecem, e eles recomendam-nos séries que nós desconhecemos. Já não conversamos, só recomendamos.

E esta fragmentação cultural faz-me lembrar a outra morte sísmica de 1994: o suicídio de Kurt Cobain. Se Senna provocou lágrimas em maio, Cobain originou dilúvios em abril. A minha turma inteira chorou a morte do vocalista da banda que toda a gente ouvia. Hoje em dia, esse impacto emocional seria impossível. A fragmentação cultural em que estamos mergulhados não permite aquela concentração de emoções num único objecto. No tempo do vinil, da cassete e do CD, toda a gente ouvia mais ou menos as mesmas coisas. Com a internet, a fragmentação atingiu um absurdo quase cómico. Nos youtubes desta vida, podemos encontrar toda a música do universo. Liberdade de escolha? Sim. Mas falta o espaço comum da partilha, da conversa, da discussão, da pancadaria emocional em redor do mesmo objecto. Em 1994, o suicídio de Cobain e a morte de Senna geraram semanas de conversas. Em 2014, a (hipotética) morte de Schumacher só dará para uma manhã de posts no Facebook. à tarde já será preciso outra coisa. Andamos a fazer qualquer coisa de errado."

(Henrique Raposo in "Expresso", 04-Jan-2014)

cantar da emigração

"Este parte, aquele parte
E todos, todos se vão [...]"

E, nisto, - quem fica [...]?

Financial wisdom

there are underlying drivers to the expressions:

"This is a gold mine" OR "Black gold"

that are not fully clear to one's mind until you model an actual gold mine or oil company 

on a spreadsheet.

(there is clearly more financial wisdom in proverbs than meets the eye)

No good deed goes unpunished

No.

Good.

Deed.

Goes.

Un

Punished.

how to write a dissertation

"Never allow your scientific work to overshadow a handful of inspirational quotes"

(Albert Einstein) 

hindsight is always 20/20

.