Bryan Schumann and I talk about composing music, improvising music, and whether the classical guitar pairs better with an upright bass or an electric trumpet.
This Beer Tastes Like Corn
For the past week all the commercial beer I’ve tasted has this flat, grey, toffee-textured, corn-like taste. Doesn’t matter if I’m drinking at one of many brew pubs in Wisconsin or a sixer of something imported from the 49th state.
In all cases, this taste is so strong the beer is undrinkable.
Thankfully the first time this happened, I was catching up with a friend with a history of judging beers.
He pulls out his phone and points me to the Home Brewing Wiki’s page on DMS (Dimethyl sulfide).
Yes, I think as a general rule I’ll be skipping lagers containing 20% corn.
“Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.”
- There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
- Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
- There is no editing stage.
- Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
- Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
- The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
- Once you’re done you can throw it away.
- Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
- People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
- Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
- Destruction is a variant of done.
- If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
- Done is the engine of more.
– The Cult of Done Manifesto – Bre Pettis
GOOG Bonds Now in Beta
Towards Freetail
In the past couple weeks, I’ve been stuck in a queue at the supermarket, IKEA, or other big box with lots of self-service checkouts. Stuck.
Contemplating whether standing the queue actually took longer than finding the items I wanted.
That maybe, just maybe, this entire endeavor could be made more efficient and joyful.
Rather than the punishment for enjoying the selection.
The Pay-What-You-Want Panera feels like a step in the right direction
The need for a new news system
Earlier this week, a natural gas main ruptured on the other side of the block.
Our block and half a dozen other surrounding blocks were evacuated.
There were no 30 foot flames shooting into the air. Just the constant sounds of gas leaking into the atmosphere at high pressure.
It could have been worse.
Much worse.
But it wasn’t – so word of the rupture and evacuation was isolated. A couple general sentences in the Star Tribune, Twitter, and KSTP through out the day.
Communication to the affected families. I sensed the fire department was getting frustrated at repeating himself to each citizen that walked up.
Then again how would he have communicated status of the repair to ~60 evacuated households?
Failbox – Knuth/Eco Edition
Measuring with an Earthworm
A couple years ago – Pete suggested I look closer at the relationship between the stock market levels, oil prices, and the value of the dollar.
My preferred metric of measuring the strength of the US Dollar is it’s value relative to the Euro. As I write this – 1 USD = .70 Euro. While I’d prefer their values to be equal (the result being the effect of a single global currency and an interesting conversation on global pricing) – I think the USD is undervalued until it passes .80 Euro.
Over the past week, the USD has increased in value from .68 to it’s current .70.
Along the way oil, US stocks, and other commodties prices – including gold – have decreased. Basically anything priced in US Dollars and traded globally.
Fewer (strong) Dollars are needed to purchase the same quantity of these goods.
As the dollar continues to climb – it will continue to have downward pressure on these prices.
Where it gets interesting is when both prices and the USD’s value are increasing.
The earliest we could see that is this autumn.