From the talented and always-creative Mike Ransdell.
Author Archives: Steve Mays
Google +1
I was going to do a post about Google’s +1 but anyone who cares probably already knows what it is and how it works. The rest of you… just click the little button below each post if you like it. That will make that post more like to show up in relevant Google search results. Just click the fucking button.
The Two Bobs
The Missouri Department of Transportation recently announced the closure of a number of offices around the state and the elimination of a bunch of jobs. Difficult times call for difficult decisions.
A few days ago I got a whif of how this is coming down, at least for some employees.
In at least one section, managers at a certain level and above were notified they will have to “reapply” for their current jobs. They’ll log in to a website and justify why they should keep the job they have had for years.
They’ll also have to identify some other jobs within the department that they’d be qualified for, in the event they don’t keep their current job.
Anyone who has ever done a stint in management sees what’s going on here. Someone up the food chain doesn’t have the authority (or balls) to decide who stays and who goes, and to tell them that, eye-to-eye.
“Yes, I know you did your job for 15 years and got great evaluations every year, but someone more qualified got your job. Sorry.”
Now I ask you, after going through this demeaning process, even if you get to keep your job, how do you feel about the people you work for?
I started playing with Instagram about 6 months ago but never got around to writing about it here because I couldn’t think of how to describe it (“Fast beautiful photo sharing for your iPhone”).
From the website: “Snap a photo with your iPhone, choose a filter to transform the look and feel, send to Facebook, Twitter or Flickr – it’s all as easy as pie. It’s photo sharing, reinvented.”
I have about 3,000 photos on my MacBook and a couple of thousand on flickr. I post photos here at smays.com and a few on Twitter so, there’s no shortage of places to share photos. And it’s really no more trouble to post a photo to flickr or Twitter than Instagram.
So how to explain the popularity of this little app (4.5 million users)? I can’t.
Today I came across a website called Inkstagram that brings Instagram pics to your web browser. So I can introduce you to the gritty images of tonydetroit; and komeda whose photos almost feature one or two people against a beautiful but lonely backdrop; and today I discovered travisjensen who sends instagrams from San Francisco.
I don’t know these people and will probably never interact with them, short of liking or briefly commenting on one of their photos. But I like to think the images they share tell me something about them. Something, perhaps, they don’t know about themselves.
Ah. Just came across this interview with the founder of Instagram.
Reality, there’s nothing like it
“We can’t comprehend Reality with our intellect. We can’t pull it into a static view of some thing. All our explanations are necessarily provisional. They’re just rigid frames of what is actually motion and fluidity. In other words, if you can think of how Reality is, you can be sure that’s how it isn’t. Reality simply cannot be put into a conceptual form — not even through analogy, for there’s nothing like it. Reality simply doesn’t fit into concepts at all. Nevertheless, Reality is something you can see. You can’t conceive of it, but you can perceive it.”
— Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen