Quotes etc...

Words I have read, and photos I have taken, and wanted to remember.

[21012013]

History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell

Science tell us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is not good to either forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralysed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.

[21012013]

The day gone by - Richard Adams

I had always respected and admired my sister. Her own fine university achievement had made me dare to hope that one day I might be able to manage something of the sort. During my time at Bradfield, although I had achieved certain academic successes, she had never spoken a word of praise or congratulation. At last, I thought, I knew why. I was because, as I now perceived, these had been relatively trifling, parochial matters, not really worth remark by a scholar of her standing. She had been waiting to see whether I was capable of doing something worthwhile in the real world. Now I had. Now, at last, she - the only knowledgeable, discriminating person whose praise was worth having - would say what she had been keeping back for something that really deserved it.

She showed up in her usual door-slamming, kick-off-your-shoes style. I waited happily while she had a drink and a meal. Afterwards, while she was reading the paper, my mother said something about the scholarship.

"Well," said my sister, "I do think someone might have taken the trouble to ring me up and tell me." A little later she went out somewhere. She didn't allude to the matter again.

It still hurts, after all these years. But little by little I came to realise that her saying nothing was due not to deliberate unkindness, but to a sort of emotional inhibition which made it impossible for her to find or come out with words of warmth or compliment. There are people - usually very clever people - who have this limitation.

[21012013]

The day gone by - Richard Adams

Since those days I have read the book many, many times. Often I have set out to read it aloud to various people. My mother loved it, but I could never get my feeling for the book across either to my father or my sister. Indeed, they teased me. This surprised and somewhat upset me. It was the first time that I had had the experience which I reckon that as we grow up we all undergo in one way or another. We find that even our intimates, and those we love very much, do not always understand or empathise with things which we ourselves feel deeply: either they don't feel them at all or else they see them differently. In the deepest recesses of the imagination we must expect to fin ourselves often alone, separated even from our closest friends. (I was one in love with someone who hated Jane Austen.)

[21012013]

The day gone by - Richard Adams

During my first term I was dreadfully homesick. Homesickness can be tantamount to a nervous breakdown - that is, you no longer care what anyone else thinks; you weep openly and so on. No one could have been gentler, kinder or more understanding than Mr Stow. He spent what seemed a long time in comforting me and talking to me privately. Later, one bit of this conversation came to be a standing joke between the two of us for years. Between sobs of misery I said, "Sir, can I say anything I like to you?"

"Yes Dicky, you can say anything at all."

"Well, sir, that Dickens this morning; I didn't think you read it very well."

[21012013]

The day gone by - Richard Adams

I remember the annual Two Minutes' Silence on 11 November. I dare say that anyone who hasn't experienced it as it was kept in those days will find it impossible to imagine. Whatever day of the week 11 November happened to be, the Silence was observed on that day. In London and the other main cities of the country, guns were fired on the stroke of eleven o'clock. Elsewhere, the wireless sufficed, or signals were given by the police, or by soldiers firing blank. Thereupon everything and everybody, wherever they were and whatever they were doing, stopped exactly as they were for two minutes, until the guns fired again. It was more than impressive: it was overwhelming. I suppose there can never have been anything like it: streets, cities full of people standing perfectly still and silent. Anyone who was driving a car, taxi or 'bus stopped the engine and got out and stood in the road with bowed head and hat in hand. In the shops, the assistant who was tying a parcel laid it on the counter and the lady who was paying for it put down her purse and stood opposite. Often, one say tears on the faces of grown up people.

[21012013]

The day gone by - Richard Adams

Reading was highly reassuring. It was the perfect escape - into other worlds which often seemed more valid and valuable than the real one... The thing that happened in books didn't evanesce, like last Christmas of yesterday's picnic. They stayed put, to become familiar, to be reexperienced as often as you wanted.

... The permanence of books and the memorability of dialogue are well up among the most supportive things I have ever found. Becoming literate put me in possession of a new expanse, constituting a better bolt-hole than I could have dreamt of... Words, my own imagination, could open wider prospects and make the world more lucid and vivid - yes, enjoyable - than I had known to be possible.

[21012013]

The Creative Act - Rick Rubin

In the moment when we feel the work is taking shape, there's a dynamic surge, followed by an urge to share, in the hopes of replicating that mysterious emotional charge in others.

This is the call to self-express, our creative purpose. It's not necessarily to understand ourselves or be understood. We share our filter, our way of seeing, in order to spark an echo in others. Art is a reverberation of an impermanent life.

As human beings, we come and go quickly, and we get to make works that stand as monuments to our time here. Enduring affirmations of our existence. They all echo the same human cry, life graffiti scrawled in a bathroom stall: I was here.

Each of us has our own way of seeing this world. And this can lead to feelings of isolation. Art has an ability to connect us beyond the limitations of language.

[21012013]

The Creative Act - Rick Rubin

The goal of art isn't to attain perfection. The goal is to share who we are. And how we see the world.

... Once you feel a project is close to completion, it can be helpful to open the work to other perspectives.

The primary aim is not to receive notes or opinions. This is your work, your expression. You are the only audience that matters. The intention is or you to experience the work anew.

If we write an essay and give it to a friend, before even hearing their perspective, our relationship to the work changes.

If someone chooses to share feedback, listen to understand the person, not the work. People will tell you more about themselves than about the art when giving feedback. We each see a unique world.

...When making art, the audience comes last. Let's not consider how a piece will be received or our release strategy until the work is finished and we love it.

Finishing our work is a good habit to develop. It boosts confidence. Despite our insecurities, the more times we can bring ourselves to release our work, the less weight insecurity has.

... Try finding the simplest, most elegant way to put a point across, with the least amount of information.

[21012013]

The Creative Act - Rick Rubin

Art is choosing to do something skilfully,

caring about the details,

bringing all of yourself,

to make the finest work you can.

It is beyond ego, vanity and self-glorification,

and need for approval.

[21012013]

The Creative Act - Rick Rubin

Being open to possibility gets you to a place you want to go that you may not know you wanted to get to.

If you know what you want to do and you do it, that's the work of a craftsman. If you begin with a question and use it to guide an adventure of discovery, that the work of the artist. The surprises along the way can expand your work and even the art form itself.

[21012013]

The Creative Act - Rick Rubin

Rules direct us to average behaviours. If we're aiming to create works that are exceptional, most rules don't apply. Average is nothing to aspire to.

The goal is not to fit in. If anything, it's to amplify the differences, what doesn't fit, the special characteristics unique to how you see the world.

Instead of sounding like others, value your own voice. Develop it. Cherish it.

The reason to make art is to innovate and self-express, show something new, share what's inside, and communicate your singular perspective.

... Art is confrontation. It widens the audience's reality, allowing them to glimpse life through a different window. One with the potential for a glorious new view.

[21012013]

The Creative Act - Rick Rubin

Our thoughts, feelings, processes, and unconscious beliefs have an energy that is hidden in the work. This unseen, unmeasurable force gives each piece its magnetism. A completed project is only made up of our intention and our experiments around it. Remove intention and all that's left is the ornamental shell.

Though the artist may have a number of goals and motivations, there is only one intention. This is the grand gesture of the work.

It is not an exercise of thought, a goal to be set, or a means of commodification. It is a truth that lives inside you. Through your living it, that truth becomes embedded in the work. If the work doesn't represent who you are and what you're living, how can it hold an energetic charge?

[21012013]

Charles Chaplin - My Autobiography

John (Steinbeck) worked in the morning and averaged about two thousand words a day. I was amazed at how neat were his pages, with hardly a correction. I envy him. 

I like to know the way writers work and how much they turn out a day. Thomas Mann averaged about 400 words a day. Lion Feuchtwanger dictated 2,000 words, which averaged 600 written words a day. Somerset Maugham wrote 400 words a day just to keep in practice. H. G. Wells averaged 1,000 words a day, Hannen Swaffer, the English Journalist, wrote from 4,000 to 5,000 words a day. The American critic, Alexander Woollcot, wrote a 700 word review in fifteen minutes, then joined a poker game - I was there when he did it. Hearst would write a 2,000 word editorial in an evening. Georges Simenon has written a short novel in a month - and of excellent literary quality. Georges tells me that he gets up at five in the morning, brews his own coffee, then sits at his desk and rolls a golden ball, the size of a tennis ball, and thinks. He writes with a pen and when I asked him why he wrote in such small handwriting, he said, “It requires less effort of the wrist.” As for myself I dictate about 1,000 words a day, which averages me about 300 in finished dialogue for my films. 

[21012013]

Charles Chaplin - My Autobiography

In Tokyo Cocteau had bought a pet grasshopper which he kept in a little cage and often brought ceremoniously to my cabin. “He is very intelligent,” he said, “and sings every time I talk to him.” He built up such an interest in it that it became our topic of conversation. “How is Pilou this morning?” I would ask. 

“Not very well,” he would say solemnly. “I have him on a diet.” When we arrived in San Francisco I insisted on him driving with us to Los Angeles, as we had a limousine waiting. Pilou came along. During the journey he began to sing. “You see,” said Cocteau, “he likes America”. Suddenly he opened the car window, then opened the door of the little cage and shook Pilou out of it. 

I was shocked and asked: “Why did you do that?”

“He gives him freedom,” said the interpreter. 

“But,” I asnwered, “he’s a stranger in a foreign country - and can’t speak the language.”

Cocteau shrugged. “He’s smart, he’ll soon pick it up.”

[21012013]

Charles Chaplin - My Autobiography

Interviewers have asked me how I get ideas for pictures and I am not able to answer satisfactorily. Over the years I have discovered that ideas come through an intense desire for them; continually desiring, the mind becomes a watch tower on the look out for incidents that may excite the imagination. 

I would say, pick a subject that will stimulate you, elaborate and involve it, then, if you can’t develop it further, discard it and pick another. Elimination from accumulation is the process of finding what you want. 

How does one get ideas? By sheer perseverance to the point of madness. One must have a capacity to suffer anguish and sustain enthusiasm over a long period of time. Perhaps it’s easier for some people than others, but I doubt it. 

I will not attempt to sound the depths of psycho-analysis to explain human behaviour, which is as inexplicable as life itself. More than sex or infantile aberrations, I believe that most of our ideational compulsions stem from atavistic causes - however, I did not have to read books to know that the theme of life is conflict and pain. Instinctively, all my clowning was based on this. My means of contriving comedy plot was simple. It was the process of getting people in and out of trouble. 

But humour is different and more subtle. Max Eastman analysed it in his book “A sense of humour”. He sums it up as being derived from playful pain. He writes that Homo Sapiens is masochistic, enjoying pain in many forms, and that the audience likes to suffer vicariously. 

With all this I agree. But it is more an analysis of drama than of humour, although they are almost the same. But my own concept of humour is slightly different: it is the subtle discrepancy we discern in what appears to be normal behaviour. In other words, through humour we see in what seems rational, the irrational; in what seems important, the unimportant. It also heightens our sense of survival and preserves our sanity. Because of humour we are less overwhelmed by the vicissitudes of life. It activates our sense of proportion and reveals to us that in an over-statement of seriousness lurks the absurd.  

[21012013]

Charles Chaplin - My Autobiography

Between us we had two thousand dollars and a dream of making a fortune; we planned to buy land for fifty cents an acre in Arkansas, two thousand acres to begin with, and spend the rest buying hogs and improving the land. If all went well, we had it figured out that with the compound birth of hogs, averaging a litter of five a year, we could in five years make a hundred thousand apiece. 

Travelling on the train, we would look out of the window and see hog farms and go into paroxysms of excitement. We ate, slept and dreamed hogs. But for buying a book on scientific hog raising, I might have given up show business and become a hog farmer, but that book, which graphically described the technique of castrating hogs, cooled my ardour and I soon forgot the enterprise.  

[21012013]

Inspired - Marty Cagan

Principles of structuring product teams

It’s a significant factor in keeping teams feeling empowered and accountable for something meaningful, yet contributing to a bigger vision where the sum is greater than the parts. 

1. Alignment with investment strategy

2. Minimize dependencies

This helps teams move faster and feel much more autonomous. While we can never entirely eliminate dependencies, we can work to reduce and minimise them. 

3. Ownership and autonomy

A team should feel empowered, yet accountable for some significant part of the product offering. Some level of inter-dependencies will always chip away at the sense of ownership. 

4. Maximise leverage

As orgs grow we find the need for shared services. 

5. Product vision and strategy

Teams need to be well positioned to deliver on them. 

6. Team size

The minimum size for a product team is usually two engineers and a product manager. 

7. Alignment with architecture 

Many will start with the product vision, come up wiht an architectural approach to deliver on that vision, and then design the teams around that architecture. 

It’s usually easy to see when a company has not paid attention to the architecture when they assemble their teams - -it shows up in a few different ways. First, then teams feel like they are constantly fighting the architecture. Second, interdependencies between teams seem disproportionate. Third, and really because of the the first two, things move slowly, and teams don’t feel very empowered. 

8.