"Die Fledermaus" as seen and heard from the conductor's Google Glass

Daniel Sánchez Velasco, Director of the "Orquesta Clásica de Asturias," wearing Glass during a rehearsal of Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II.

This year, will you: create or consume?

Rands in Repose:

Turn off those notifications, turn your phone over, turn on your favorite music, stare at your blank slate and consider what you might build. In that moment of consideration, you’re making an important decision: create or consume? The things we’re giving to the future are feeling increasingly unintentional and irrelevant. They are half-considered thoughts of others. When you choose to create, you’re bucking the trend because you’re choosing to take the time to build.

The whole essay reminds me of a decision I made recently, I no longer talk about the personal projects I am working on. Talking about them can easily be confused with actually doing them. Now I only talk about them when doing so will enhance the work. 

The Week's Links: December 20, 2013

All the links posted on social networks this week: 

• Why the 9-to-5 Day Is So Tough on Creative Workers http://owl.li/rPvZT
• Online publications see a future in printhttp://owl.li/rPw36
• Famous Writers’ Sleep Habits vs. Literary Productivity, Visualized http://owl.li/rPw6e
• The Most Crucial Games of 2013: The New Yorker http://owl.li/rPw7N
• Dickens, Darwin, Dr. Johnson: Millions of Images From the British Library Now Available Online http://owl.li/rPwjM
• What You Look Like to a Social Network: The New Yorker http://owl.li/rPwoN
• The Most Important Economic Stories of 2013—in 44 Graphs http://owl.li/rPzgH
• 12 Tools For More Mindful Livinghttp://owl.li/rPzit
• Why Good Programming Projects Go Badhttp://owl.li/rPEtg
• Where Are They Now? Fast Company checks in with last year's Most Innovative Companies to see how their big ideas fared in 2012...
• ◉ Maira Kalman On The Power Of Lists, Maps And Organizing http://owl.li/rkfcf
• The surprising reason we have a 40-hour work week (and why we should re-think it)http://owl.li/rQTOq
• Music holds key to providing a quality education system owl.li/rPud3
• ◉ Recommended: Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries -smartercreativity.com/recommendation…
• ◉ Jad Abumrad: How Did Radiolab Happen? Gut Churn owl.li/rkfbD
• 19 Awesomely Designed Books From 2013 That Prove Print Isn’t Dead owl.li/rPrjS
• Top physicists gather at Stanford to discuss the value of fundamental research owl.li/rPqa7
• 5 Unsung Heroes Who Shaped Modern Lifeowl.li/rMMG3
• 10 Things We've Learned About Tasteowl.li/rM4vT
• Is the Future of the Internet in Iceland?owl.li/rM4sv
• What is the Trick to Making the Most Waterproof Stuff on Earth? owl.li/rM4nz
• Have Scientists Found a Way to Pop the Filter Bubble? owl.li/rM4iP
• Can Bees Be Trained to Sniff Out Cancer?owl.li/rM4hy
• ◉ Alain de Botton's Healing Arts -smartercreativity.com/blog/2013/11/2…
• ◉ Recommended: The Design of Everyday Things -smartercreativity.com/recommendation…
• How Are Stores Tracking the Way That We Shop? owl.li/rM4fg
• ◉ The Making Of A Groundbreaking Animation: Paperman owl.li/rkf8s
• The Art and Science of Growing Snowflakes in a Lab owl.li/rM46a
• This is What Happens When You Ask Scientists to Explain Their PhDs in Dance owl.li/rM44V
• How Are Stores Tracking the Way That We Shop? owl.li/rM42F
• A New Education Lab Called Q?rius Aims to be the Mother of All Curiosity owl.li/rM41A
• Siberian Musicians Used the Frozen Surface of the World’s Largest Lake as a Drumowl.li/rM3Xy
• Benjamin Franklin Invented a Glass Harpowl.li/rM3VX
• This Camera Capture Images in the Dark, Using Just a Few Particles of Lightowl.li/rM3TG
• You Can Be Really Good at Certain Skills Without Having Any Idea How They Workowl.li/rM3MX
• The NYC Subways Will Give You a Late Slip If Your Train Is Delayed owl.li/rM3HV
• ◉ The Code of Life -smartercreativity.com/blog/2013/12/1…
• ◉ The School of Life: Mark Earls on Copying and Originality owl.li/rkf1q
• Mindlessly Snapping Photos at Museums Keeps People From Remembering the Actual Visit owl.li/rM3EG
• Facebook’s Most Popular Check-In Spots This Year Include Places in Iceland, Argentina and Nigeria owl.li/rM3zX
• Some Animals Don’t Get Weaker With Ageowl.li/rM3vU
• This River And Medieval Bridge, Paved Over for 100 Years, Will Soon Return to the Lightowl.li/rM3so
• ◉ Everything is a Remix, Case Study: The iPhone -smartercreativity.com/blog/2013/12/1…
• How One Chinese Corporate Spy Dodged the FBI to Steal Inbred Corn Seeds from Iowaowl.li/rM3lM
• ◉ Recommended: Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality -smartercreativity.com/recommendation…
• It’s Not That Hard to Make People Do Bad Things owl.li/rM3e7
• How Are Stores Tracking the Way That We Shop? owl.li/rM367
• ◉ It's Okay To Be Smart: The PBS Renaissance Continues owl.li/rkf0l
• Creative Ways to Bring Music to Students — Every Day! owl.li/rM34U
• 5 Historical Attempts to Ban Coffee owl.li/rM32f
• Kierkegaard on Anxiety & Creativityowl.li/rM2Or
• Making the "Twin Peaks" Love Themeowl.li/rM2N0
• MIT's 3D motion-tracking tech can see you through walls, no camera needed owl.li/rLXyz
• British Library uploads one million public domain images to the net for remix and reuseowl.li/rLXrg
• Google acquires Boston Dynamics, makers of robots as cool as they are terrifying owl.li/rLXq7
• The Art of Rube Goldberg: (A) Inventive (B) Cartoon (C) Genius, A Book About the Famed Cartoonist & Inventor owl.li/rLX9k
• Harnessing Collective Creativity To Develop An IQ Test owl.li/rLX8B
• The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Reuse & Remix owl.li/rLX7y
• 20 Ways Sitting in Silence Can Completely Transform Your Life owl.li/rLX2S
• In 1900, Ladies’ Home Journal Publishes 28 Predictions for the Year 2000 owl.li/rLX1H
• Science & Cooking: Harvard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Courseowl.li/rLWZI
• Jawbone Tracked Hundreds Of Thousands Of Up Users To Find The Most Sleep-Deprived States owl.li/rIH6b
• Oxford University Presents the 550-Year-Old Gutenberg Bible in Spectacular, High-Res Detail owl.li/rIy3R
• Stephen Fry Profiles Six Russian Writers in the New Documentary Russia’s Open Bookowl.li/rImVU
• Hephaestus and How Brokenness Contributes to Creativity owl.li/rImJR
• 4 Reasons Why Apple's iBeacon Is About to Disrupt Interaction Design owl.li/rI6jS
• Free: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Offer 474 Free Art Books Onlineowl.li/rETTD
• Brain Stimulation May Induce the Human Will to Persevere owl.li/rEkAK
• Street artists go to court to protect their work - A New York legal case is challenging traditional views of graffiti owl.li/rEkz6
• The Guardian's responsive design team share some code to help make old browsers work with media queries owl.li/rEkhr
• If a Story Is Viral, Truth May Be Taking a Beating owl.li/rEjuG
• Incredible Photos From An Urban Explorer's Journeys To The Forbidden Parts Of The Cityowl.li/rEjfn
• The Rise and Fall of BlackBerry: An Oral History owl.li/rEj5g
• Can You Really Learn a Skill in A Week? The Secrets Inside Tim Ferriss' Insanely Fast Learning Strategy owl.li/rEiZJ
• How The Fourth Dimension Of Sound Is Being Used For Live Concerts owl.li/rEiHQ
• New MIT Media Lab Tool Lets Anyone Visualize Unwieldy Government Data owl.li/rEiG5
• The Revolutionary New Music Apps You Missed In 2013 owl.li/rEiio
• ◉ The Week's Links: December 13, 2013 -smartercreativity.com/blog/2013/12/1…
• 8 Beautiful Snow Scenes from Literatureowl.li/rD9Ih
• ◉ Recommended: Maximize Your Potential: Grow Your Expertise, Take Bold Risks & Build an Incredible Career -smartercreativity.com/recommendation…
• ◉ Are You A Hipster? Do You Think Video Games Are Art? And Other Important Questions owl.li/rkeZP
• In a petition to the UN, a group of authors agree that democratic rights must apply in virtual as in real space owl.li/rD9ne

Alain de Botton's Healing Arts→

Modern day philosopher, and one of my favorite writers, Alain de Botton, in The New Yorker discussing how museums could re-position their missions to be places were people experience art as therapy:

Somnolent visitors drifted from painting to painting. Faces registered pleasure, but also weariness. People stepped through the familiar choreography of the art museum: lean in to look for explanatory wall text; when you don’t find it, elegantly shift your lean toward the painting to scrutinize some arbitrary detail. We paused in front of Gainsborough’s portrait of Mrs. Peter William Baker, an aristocratic beauty in a golden dress. People walked up, looked, and then walked away. “These very nice people have taken immense trouble,” de Botton said. “They’ve come to New York, they’ve come to the Frick. It’s clear that we’re in a place of great value: this Gainsborough is worth maybe twenty million dollars. And, yet, it’s done nothing for any of these visitors, and spends ninety-eight per cent of its life ignored.” De Botton is soft-spoken, with an open, sensitive face; his lips, lifted at the corners, hinted at ironic self-awareness—wasn’t it silly to get upset about other people’s museum-going?—but his eyes suggested alarm, even outrage. “People think there is no problem with art museums,” he said. “But there is.”

In “Art as Therapy,” de Botton argues that museums have taken a wrong turn. They should never have embraced as their guiding paradigm the discipline of art history; it’s led them to lose track of what actually makes art interesting. Most people, he thinks, care only a little about who commissioned what. When a visit to a museum succeeds, it usually isn’t because the visitor has learned facts about art but because she’s found one or two works that resonate in a private way. And, yet, museums do very little to foster these kinds of personal connections; if anything, they suggest that our approach to art should be impersonal and academic. “The claims I’m making for art,” de Botton said, “are simply the claims that we naturally make around music or around poetry. We’re much more relaxed around those art forms. We’re willing to ask, ‘How could this find a place in my heart?’ ” “Art as Therapy” is large, beautifully designed, and filled with images of paintings and sculptures alongside explanations of how those artworks might be approached in a more personally helpful, therapeutic way. (De Botton co-wrote it with a longtime friend, the art historian John Armstrong. “John is very in sympathy with this approach,” he said, “even though his colleagues are not.”)

The Code of Life

In The New York Times, author and book critic Juliet Waters shares what happened once she realized that learning to code could enhance her career:

The first surprise of learning to program? I actually enjoyed it. Yes, programming is challenging, frustrating and often tedious. But it offers satisfactions that are not unlike those of writing. The elegant loops of logic, the attention to detail, the mission of getting the maximum amount of impact from the fewest possible lines, the feeling of making something engaging from a few wispy, abstract ideas — these challenges were familiar to me as a critic. By my third month, I had internalized a new logic, a different way of looking at information. By the time summer came around, I was learning about good web design by constructing web applications, taking them from simple prototypes to something sophisticated enough to test with users. And by the end of the course, I knew the basic structure of computer operating systems.

Now, I was never going to be a career programmer. Though I got into it with the idea of getting myself out of a financial pinch, it turned out to be unnecessary. I managed to transition from a book critic to a features writer.

But my code year changed me. Whenever I meet someone involved in technology — which is pretty much everyone these days — I have a real understanding of what they’re talking about, whether it’s an I.T. consultant working with a bank trying to exploit the possibilities of Big Data or a biomedical engineer who has created software to more precisely visualize an M.R.I. scan. Knowing some code has made me feel more connected to others in our tech-driven society.