I've been in a constant conflict about a video game the boys play called Minecraft. On one hand, it's a video game. On the other hand, the amount of imagination it requires to play the game at all is more than I can come up with in one day. Read the following excerpt from a blog post by a STEM Camp counselor and you'll understand my confliction, especially if you feel the same way about video games that I do. I like how he assimilates Minecraft to Legos. What are your thoughts?
"I’ll probably also be posting a lot about Minecraft, our game of the day (and probably the week). At one point in the seminar, we were watching a film about Notch, the creator, while the game ran in half of the computer screens in the room.
It’s a great game to have running. You have a whole world – many whole worlds, some of which are just gorgeous – where you can explore, mine, break all of the rules, and be creative. I saw chicken bombs, canons, currents – all things that the kids made themselves. It’s like Legos but magic – a glorious exercise for imagination and curiosity, which some say are increasingly lacking in our culture. Oh, and it’s fun – and it gets that much more fun when almost the whole class is playing!"
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
Change my ways
Today I realized when I tell Justin "don't push your brothers buttons" when he is a volunteer leader for Shawners vbs group I am essentially telling him that is exactly what I expect him to do. Thank God my sister was on call and available and gave me the words to tell him, "I retract my earlier statement and say instead I trust you to be mature, to be the responsible one, to be the adult, and I trust you to be a good teacher." The beaming smile on his face was worth my fumbling inadequacies as a mother earlier and my own slap in the face realization that I had previously told him, "I don't expect you to do well, I expect you to push your brother's buttons and therefore I am telling you not to." What a world of difference a choice of words makes.
Today I change my ways to tell my boys all the great things I expect of them, but instead of in my mind, outloud, in the form of "I trust you" to do exactly what I expect they will do in my mind. Which is, to be great leaders, to be men of great decision, great character, great morals, gigantic heart. As Brando's Opa once said about Brando, "He is kind in his soul." I believe all these things of my boys, and today I change my ways to tell them so in the form of "I trust you" to do this.
I feel so strange coming to this realization, almost born again. Like a revelation has been revealed to me, a veil lifted from my eyes on how to trust my boys and develop them into the leaders I so desperately fall asleep every night crossing my fingers and toes desiring them to be.
And because I love how Teagan always puts things to songs, these are the two songs that come to mind thinking about this. The first one I thought of immediately when I thought of the title for this post. The second I thought of as I typed the first sentence in the paragraph before this, and also happens to be a song that helped carry me through the last month of craziness.
Mumford and Sons - The Cave
especially:
"I know my call despite my faults"
"But I will hold on hope"
"And I'll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I'll know my name as it's called again"
"You can understand dependence
When you know the maker's land"
Florence and the Machines - No Light No Light -
Especially:
"it's so easy,
To say it to a crowd
But it's so hard, my love,
To say it to you out loud"
and
"Tell me what you want me to say
You want a revelation,
You wanna get it right
But, it's a conversation,"
Today I change my ways to tell my boys all the great things I expect of them, but instead of in my mind, outloud, in the form of "I trust you" to do exactly what I expect they will do in my mind. Which is, to be great leaders, to be men of great decision, great character, great morals, gigantic heart. As Brando's Opa once said about Brando, "He is kind in his soul." I believe all these things of my boys, and today I change my ways to tell them so in the form of "I trust you" to do this.
I feel so strange coming to this realization, almost born again. Like a revelation has been revealed to me, a veil lifted from my eyes on how to trust my boys and develop them into the leaders I so desperately fall asleep every night crossing my fingers and toes desiring them to be.
And because I love how Teagan always puts things to songs, these are the two songs that come to mind thinking about this. The first one I thought of immediately when I thought of the title for this post. The second I thought of as I typed the first sentence in the paragraph before this, and also happens to be a song that helped carry me through the last month of craziness.
Mumford and Sons - The Cave
especially:
"I know my call despite my faults"
"But I will hold on hope"
"And I'll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I'll know my name as it's called again"
"You can understand dependence
When you know the maker's land"
Florence and the Machines - No Light No Light -
Especially:
"it's so easy,
To say it to a crowd
But it's so hard, my love,
To say it to you out loud"
and
"Tell me what you want me to say
You want a revelation,
You wanna get it right
But, it's a conversation,"
Friday, June 8, 2012
Brene Brown on the Power of Vulnerability
Check out this top top viewed video from Brene Brown on the Power of Vulnerability speaking at TED (which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Talks:
Speaking of TED Talks - fascinating and inspiring speakers definitely worth checking out! You can search them on YouTube.
Speaking of TED Talks - fascinating and inspiring speakers definitely worth checking out! You can search them on YouTube.
Steve jobs biography
It was the brighter side of what would become known as his reality distortion field. "If you trust him, you can do things," Holmes said. "If he's decided that something should happen, then he's just going to make it happen." Atari and India p. 52
Bushnell agreed. "There is something indefinable in an entrepreneur, and I saw that in Steve," he said. "He was interested not just in engineering, but also the business aspects. I taught him that I'd you act like you can do something, then it will work. I told him, 'Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.' " Atari and India p. 55
"The Apple Marketing Philosophy" stressed three points... Empathy, an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer. "We will truly understand their needs better than any other company." The second was focus: "In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities." The third and equally important principle, awkwardly named, was impute. It emphasized that people form an opinion about a company or product based on the signals that it conveys. "People DO judge a book by its cover," he wrote. "We may have the best profit, the highest quality, the most useful software, etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities." The Apple II p. 79
"If it could save a person's life, would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time?" he asked. Kenyon allowed that he probably could. Jobs went to a whiteboard and showed that if there were five million people using the Mac, and it took ten seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to three hundred million or so hits per year that people would save, which was the equivalent of at least one hundred lifetimes saved per yet. "Larry was suitably impressed and a few weeks layer he came back and it booted up twenty-eight seconds faster," Atkinson recalled. "Steve had a way of motivating by looking at the bigger picture." The Reality Distortion Field p. 123
"Jobs thought of himself as an artist c and he encouraged the design team to think of ourselves that way too," said Hertzfeld. "The goal was never to beat the competition, or to make a lot of money. It was to do the greatest thing possible, or even a little greater." The Reality Distortion Field p. 123
"I've learned over the years that when you have really good people you don't have to baby them," Jobs later explained. "By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things. The original Mac team taught me that A-plus players like to work together, and they don't like it of you tolerate B work. Ask any member of that Mac team. They will tell you it was worth the pain." The Reality Distortion Field p. 124
As with Eichler homes, the artistic sensibility was combined with the capability for mass production. The Design p. 126
Apple's design mantra would remain the one features on its first brochure: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." The Design p. 127
Jobs felt that design simplicity should be linked to making products easy to use. These goals do not always go together. Sometimes a design can be so sleek and simple that a user finds it intimidating or unfriendly to navigate. "The main thing in our design is that we have to make things intuitively obvious," Jobs told the crowd of design mavens. For example, he extolled the desktop metaphor he was creating for the Macintosh. "People know how to deal with a desktop intuitively. If you walk into an office, there are papers on the desk. The one on the top is the most important. People know how to switch priority. Part of the reason we model our computers on metaphors like the desktop is that we can leverage this experience people already have." The Design p. 127
"Great art stretches the taste, it doesn't follow tastes." The Design p. 128
Bushnell agreed. "There is something indefinable in an entrepreneur, and I saw that in Steve," he said. "He was interested not just in engineering, but also the business aspects. I taught him that I'd you act like you can do something, then it will work. I told him, 'Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.' " Atari and India p. 55
"The Apple Marketing Philosophy" stressed three points... Empathy, an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer. "We will truly understand their needs better than any other company." The second was focus: "In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities." The third and equally important principle, awkwardly named, was impute. It emphasized that people form an opinion about a company or product based on the signals that it conveys. "People DO judge a book by its cover," he wrote. "We may have the best profit, the highest quality, the most useful software, etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities." The Apple II p. 79
"If it could save a person's life, would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time?" he asked. Kenyon allowed that he probably could. Jobs went to a whiteboard and showed that if there were five million people using the Mac, and it took ten seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to three hundred million or so hits per year that people would save, which was the equivalent of at least one hundred lifetimes saved per yet. "Larry was suitably impressed and a few weeks layer he came back and it booted up twenty-eight seconds faster," Atkinson recalled. "Steve had a way of motivating by looking at the bigger picture." The Reality Distortion Field p. 123
"Jobs thought of himself as an artist c and he encouraged the design team to think of ourselves that way too," said Hertzfeld. "The goal was never to beat the competition, or to make a lot of money. It was to do the greatest thing possible, or even a little greater." The Reality Distortion Field p. 123
"I've learned over the years that when you have really good people you don't have to baby them," Jobs later explained. "By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things. The original Mac team taught me that A-plus players like to work together, and they don't like it of you tolerate B work. Ask any member of that Mac team. They will tell you it was worth the pain." The Reality Distortion Field p. 124
As with Eichler homes, the artistic sensibility was combined with the capability for mass production. The Design p. 126
Apple's design mantra would remain the one features on its first brochure: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." The Design p. 127
Jobs felt that design simplicity should be linked to making products easy to use. These goals do not always go together. Sometimes a design can be so sleek and simple that a user finds it intimidating or unfriendly to navigate. "The main thing in our design is that we have to make things intuitively obvious," Jobs told the crowd of design mavens. For example, he extolled the desktop metaphor he was creating for the Macintosh. "People know how to deal with a desktop intuitively. If you walk into an office, there are papers on the desk. The one on the top is the most important. People know how to switch priority. Part of the reason we model our computers on metaphors like the desktop is that we can leverage this experience people already have." The Design p. 127
"Great art stretches the taste, it doesn't follow tastes." The Design p. 128
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Wow, eight pages into Steve Jobs biography and I am totally fascinated. Looks like it might be one of those books where there's so much information, different concepts, and intriguing new perspectives to wrap my head around I'm going to have to pause every ten pages or so to let it sink in. So many issues already in these first eight pages that I can relate to. Fascination with new things, a regular home life, "abandoned, chosen, special" as was the theme in his early years, Silicon Valley - my home grounds, not a salesman but a gentle persistent father (reminds me of Brando). LOVE it so far, and can't wait to let these first eight pages sink in so I can keep reading. The big names of personal friends he knew - Hewlett, Packard, Polaroid, is FASCINATING. Even more so that he knew these guys before they were big. Recognized, appreciated, and took the time to knew before they were big.
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