How interesting and urgent doing the dishes becomes when you are about to start a creative activity. My mind is highly creative in inventing urgent things before difficult things.
I guess it’s that thing called Resistance.
How often can you hesitate posting something? One other such thing. Good enough is good enough. And here it is.
De tweede post in deze fotografische onderneming.
Ik haal de achterstand op mijn archief in. Hoewel het project goed op weg was in mijn hoofd, en ook in de hoeveelheid oppervlakte, heb ik mijn foto’s nooit consciëntieus gearchiveerd met locatie-informatie. Als gevolg daarvan moet ik het hele archief doornemen, waarbij ik uit mijn hoofd de foto’s match met de locatie waar ze gemaakt zijn. Vreemd genoeg lijkt het erop dat ik me voor het overgrote deel van de foto’s heel specifiek herinner waar ze zijn genomen.
Misschien is dat wel wat fotografie is: mijlpalen voor ons geheugen. De aantekeningen die ik maak in mijn notitieboekje geven me niet de levendige (visuele) herinneringen die ik van foto’s krijg.
Het quadrant van deze post ligt aan de rand van Zaandam, dicht bij de Zaanse Schans. Hier komen toeristen in grote hoeveelheden om klompen, windmolens, tulpen en groene houten huizen te bekijken.
Een paar woorden over mijn fotografische strategie voor het NHQ project. Ik heb de provincie Noord-Holland in kaart gebracht op vierkanten die ik vrij systematisch bezoek. Voordat ik het geografische raster had gemaakt, bezocht ik vroeger willekeurig plaatsen. Maar ik concludeerde dat dat een moeilijke aanpak was. Onderweg ben ik van gedachten veranderd, of werd ik ergens door afgeleid. Ik kwam vaak terecht bij een verspreide set van foto’s van verschillende plaatsen.
Tegenwoordig maak ik een afdruk van de kaart van een of twee vierkanten en ga die bezoeken. Op de kwadranten loop ik vrij willekeurig, het grootste deel van het gebied bedekkend. Ik heb niet het doel om elke straat op het plein te bezoeken, dus ik loop vrij rond, alleen geleid door de grenzen van het kwadrant.
Een paar dingen. Ik heb besloten het Noord-Holland per kwadrant project strikter en systematischer voort te zetten. Vervolgens: de projectupdates hier posten terwijl ik door het archief ga (het zal dus niet iets chronologisch zijn). Tenslotte: toch maar meer fotografische updates hier plaatsen.
Ik ben een paar jaar geleden begonnen met het Noord-Holland project. Tot een paar jaar geleden heb ik het nooit gepushed. Tot ik las over Blake Andrews’ grid-projecten (Portland toen, Eugene nu).
Vandaag IJmuiden.
Halfway through December, I received my signed copy of Hell Yeah Or No. A good motive to re-read the book.
I had already read the ebook. I purchased in one same offer – ebook and signed paper copy. Given the work Derek has put into producing and distributed the signedhard-cover version, I can not imagine he made much money on it.
I seldomly re-read books. But this one is definitely in the re-reading category. As a sidenote, my re-reading category includes: Gerrit Krol (Dutch writer (probably one of the first people writing on Artificial Intelligence in De Man Achter Het Raam (1982!), definitely in the Netherlands, but probably also internationally), Douglas Coupland, Haruki Murakami, Tom Peters (not everything, but definitely The Little Big Things).
One of the blogs I read regularly is the one by Scott Young. Scott got some fame by arranging his university degree online, for a few thousand dollars. Especially in the US, where the costs for a college degree has gone totally out of hand, this was unheard of.
Scott has been writing his blog for a very long time now, and/but keeps coming with interesting thoughts on learning and other things.
Scott also wrote the book Ultralearning about effective learing.
This response from Nick Cave to a question form a reader of his blog is so beautiful.
Somewhere on the great Interweb I found a review of Kim Gordon. I did not know the book. It had disappointed this reader. Nevertheless I purchased the book, being a long term lover of Sonic Youth and curious about Kim Gordon’s life.
I found the book very good. Nice details describing Kim’s environment, household things, stuff, music. Written in a loose style. The edition of the book I have – the pocket edition with the orange cover – is a bit grungy. A nice fit with the black and white pictures in the book.
Kim Gordon sketches an entertaining and informative image of punk-rock life in the 80s, 90s and 00s. There seems to be no end to the progress of Sonic Youth, until Thurston Moore falls into an affair with fortune hunter Eva Prinz (the name is not in the book, but it required little research to find out).
The tone turns from melancholic, in the description of het schizophrenic brother, to disillusioned in her marriage with Thurston Moore.
Beautiful book and woman, strange.
The Art of Doing was recommended here and there, so I put it on my list. The book turned out to be different than what I expected. Not in a negative way. I had expected a self-help book in the form of chapter by chapter advice. Instead, every chapter in the book shares 10 learning point from the achievements of high flyers in a wide variety of professions. The list of these person goes from author Stephen Dubner, tennis champion Martina Navratinova to soprano Anna Netrebko.
A few common threads from these persons emerge. All have a vision, persevere through bad times, and have a collaborative nature. None of them a psychotic “leaders” you typically find in large bureaucratic organizations or egomaniac attention seeking media addicts. All are driven by a Why. All are hardworking and humble.
My highlights:
Martina Navratilova: don’t specialize, dream big, practice and exercise (do the work).
Simon Doonan (didn’t know who he was before reading the book – Simon is a world-famous window dresser): Go Niche, be the best at something.
Tony Hsieh: discover your values (first).
Mark Frauenfelder (by far the best entry in the book!): Make the blog that doesn’t exist, Be original, get an attitude, Don’t bullshit (don’t waste people’s time), mix things, find unexpected things.
The past couple of years we have heard that a blog was something of 2000’s. The rise of Youtube and more recently, the popularity of podcasts, were supposedly make blogs a thing of the past.
But the debatable recommendation and influencing practices of Youtube, and other advertisement-backed social media drive people away from these platforms. At the same time there is a increasing number of people being driven away from tradiditional media, finding the “breaking news” tactics distracting and misguiding.
As a replacement for these, the blog seems on it’s way back, as is the newsletter (via email!) informing the readers of blog updates. Blogs are not found through google searches or Facebook recommendations, but through recommendations by real people. Thus providing a source of manually curated web content by like-minded people.
One of these treasures I found today is Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files blog.
https://www.theredhandfiles.com/
