Selah to Hagah

A few months back I tried to force more knowledge into my partially rusty brain by reading good recommended books. Even though it wasn’t very successful, I did manage to finish a few books. One of them is Malcolm Gladwell’s instant classic: The Tipping Point.

I read about the author some years ago when I started reading blogs. It didn’t intrigue me enough to explore more about his pieces then. Only after watching his impressively detailed talk about spaghetti sauce at TED, I knew I had to read his books someday. The Tipping Point was an eye opener that simply floored me with even more massive detail exploration that I had never expected coming from a journalist. And what a perfect pace and delivery.

Of course talking about Gladwell should also cover his no less popular other book: Blink. Alas, I haven’t gotten a chance to read it. But what I want to share in this post is his upcoming (soon) book: Outliers: The Story of Success.

Guardian posted “A gift or hard graft?” last Saturday, an edited extract from Outliers. Here Gladwell attempted to scrutinize a classic observation about pure talent v.s. hardwork and chance. I believe it won’t be a spoiler if I just say the tagline (enjoyment in reading Gladwell’s is in his detail analysis, not the deduction): one can be very successful if he has amassed enough hours on it (hardwork) — the magic number is: 10,000 hours — and was born in the right time (chance). Obviously it’s not an exact science but coming from Gladwell, as usual, will be very convincing.

Being a person who doesn’t add much salt when it comes to writings from liked authors, I concede that my [only slightly above] mediocrity is because I haven’t belted 10,000 hours in anything. As for my birth year, I think it did just fine.

“It’s been a hard day’s night and I’ve been working like a dog.”

I’m not a hardcore Beatles fan but also not a complete clueless not knowing the song. I just found out that it’s opening chord has been debated for quite some time. Heck, I’ve even just known it has a unique opening chord. It was told that people for 40 years tried to guess it right with very little success. And eventually a mathematician did it. Yeah, you read it right, a mathematician.

Read more:

Beatles hard days night mystery Solved with Fourier analysis

Live performance video (YouTube)

Clip from the movie (YouTube)

Another analysis: The “A Hard Day’s Night” Chord - Rock’s Holy Grail

Having my posting speed decelerated so much to a halt for more than a year, I really don’t want to let this blog to be yet another deceased one. Ugh, far from it. But, still, besides the ever-increasing workload I can never avoid, a good/intriguing topic doesn’t really come by that frequent. Those and a bunch of other excuses (too many thoughts to tell, too few thoughts, lack of confidence to write well, reluctance to touch borderline issues, and so on) can actually kill a blog.

I resort not to let it die.

Even if this is the n-th time I say it.

This time will be different.

Even if this is the n-th time I write it.

I don’t know how many people actually follow this blog, strangers and acquaintances. In fact, the idea of engaging the network or even merely watching your web stats, no matter how many times I’m hammered by multitude writings, seems to elude my often-absent mind. But, folks, if you do, for some reason, still have my RSS feed in your readers, or (oh please no) casually visit this site just to check if there’s something new, I may have something new to offer.

As some of you may already know, I’m an avid RSS reader myself. I used to have more than 300 feeds that I follow closely every day. But it’s been quite a while I’m content with my reliably good source: delicious/popular, with occasional flings from reddit/programming | netsec, slashdot, digg, engadget, gizmodo, and a few more others. So, without further ado, I present to you: “Netspotting”.

Netspotting is a new post category I created to record some of the spots that manage to interest me to visit and write something about during my RSS swimming. Normally the process is like this:

1. I login to my Gmail account, then open another tab for Google Reader (I used to use GreatNews btw).
2. I have a set of feeds tagged as “must” and start reading/swimming from delicious/popular feed.
3. I scan through the titles, what usually catch my eyes are: descriptive & interesting titles, interesting new web2.0 soundish names, articles from personal blogs I like, articles from my other sources (because when it makes it to delicious/popular, it’s usually gem).
4. What I dismiss immediately are: non English titles (many are Japanese), fictions from livejournal (mostly NC-16 stuffs), top 10/15/nn something (it gets tiring after a while).
5. I open the interesting stuffs in new tabs in background, about 5-10 of them at a time, then start reading them one by one.
6. When something’s more than good: if it’s time-sensitive (news, etc.), I go back to Google Reader and Share it; if it’s not time-sensitive (essays, how-tos, etc.) I save it in my delicious account.
7. Rinse, repeat.

What will be new is, sometime around point 6, when I find something really good, I will open my blog admin site and post about it, with personal brief. (Note to self: need to find a decent blogware be it standalone or Firefox extension. If anyone has suggestions, please fire away in comments).

I foresee this will sustain the site’s life with at least 2-3 posts a week.

Later on, if you’re really interested on my findings alone, you can subscribe to this category:

http://ganius.tanuel.com/category/netspotting/feed

Or, vice versa, if you don’t want any of those but still like to get my other oh-so-seldom writings, use this instead:

http://ganius.tanuel.com/feed/?cat=-6

There. Done.

Now you know why there isn’t any update from me for so long. It took me 660+ words just to introduce a new post category due to my ever-eagerness to help and self documenting.

After a year of hiatus, particularly today, it is now one thing I felt compelled to write:

Congratulations, President-elect Barack Husssein Obama!

Not an avid politic observer, I have never been unmoved whenever I chanced upon his writings, his speeches, and stories about him.

Again, again, and again, like the rest of multitude supporters of him, we’re in no delusion that he or his party will fix everything, for no one will ever do. Yet, his very existence, be it in person or in this ever-unimaginably-wild politic scene, his stand, his not too common background and upbringing, really allows one to dare to hope. Including the skeptics — or even the cynics.

For, now, we’re hopeful skeptics.

Indonesia, I’m daring to hope the same.

I was properly satisfied this morning. Nothing but a darn well written article could make your day unassumingly.

While for some reason my broadband connection at home broke last night, I could still consumed my RSS readings here, at Mt. Alvernia Hospital. Again, unassumingly, eh? Having a less than 1 kg lappy to lug around surely helped.

Perfection.

The utmost enemy of mediocrity. Or for some, the pinnacle you get once in a while in mundanity that tastes like superb dessert. Yum.

I have a fetish.

I fall very easily for a good writing — a not too long one, please. Hence my hobby, blog reading. If you’re persistent enough, once in a purple moon, on a strange planet, it’ll appear. Darn. Good. Writing.

While I’m still faithful following a couple of consistently well written blogs, waiterrant and avanoo’s, after some time, they started to get too familiar. So, upon reading these words from a site named “Gamer’s with Jobs” with title began with “Best Buy” about Guitar Hero 3, it came as a refreshing surprise:

I try to catch his eyes, to make some feeble 40-year-old-dad gesture: maybe a nod, or a humble utterance of “nice.” But, his sutra complete, his eyes have gone to his shoes. His companions pat him on the back, not with a juvenile high-five, but with an almost loving touch, they way you’d touch an aging parent on the back when asking if they’re pneumonia was getting better. They turn away from us and walk back down the aisle in the direction they had come.

Jake squirms. I put him down and take his hand.

It’s warm and soft and surprisingly strong as he squeezes mine. As we walk out of the store, I have the odd sense of being aware of my breathing. For a moment at least, it becomes a conscious act.

My first inhale after finishing the last sentence was deep in contentment.

Made my day.

That or I just want to brag about my new gadget and the fact I’m blogging this from a baby-delivering hospital