Scrapbrain

tumblr because it’s easy

A running gag of mine has been to look at situations and think “Oh we should start a tumblr of that!”  The truth is I’ve been finding it so painlessly easy to set up a new tumblr. One of my favorite new tumblrs is textsfromhillaryclinton.tumblr.com because it shows how easy you can go from idea, to posts, to submissions, to meeting an important political figure! :)  I don’t expect to hit it big, but I think tumblr makes it fun to blog about just about anything.  So you have an idea, you quickly create a tumblr and if it’s a dud, you didn’t spend months setting up a carefully crafted and expensive CMS.   

The web is become a place where there’s so much information out there that you need content filters, and I think tumblr is a good way to go there.  This is not to say tumblr is the best blogging platform, or the best meme platform, but just a good place to share. I’m sure there’s some better suited to whatever you have in mind, but this is suitable for me at this point in time.

So without much fanfare…I did set up a few extra tumblrs, but the primary one to post random pictures without bombarding scrapbrain with random things that might not be as interesting to everyone is coffeegrime.tumblr.com (don’t bother going unless you’re really bored, it’s not all that interesting.)

Not that anyone’s reading this except me - this is more of an exercise of me writing more - more on this later.

Legos: Form and Function

I bring you the typical story of the poor kid whose mom couldn’t afford much for him growing up.  However, one thing she could afford to help him expand his curiosity and encourage his intellect was sets of cheap plastic snap-together blocks called Legos.

My fascination with Legos started like with most kids.  Receiving that first set.  Building it. I’m guessing most unimaginative kids would at that point stop, as the latest Disney movie started playing on the tv screen. However, my interest didn’t stop there.  I started to think…what can I build out of this.   

My very first lego set was a boat set.  Which was awesome.  I must have been 10 or so when I had a fascination with the sea and captain hats, after a rainy day where I was sent to school with a heavy jacket with a hoodie and a captain hat for extra cover!   It became my thing every rainy day. I loved that hat.

So back to the story, of course I loved a boat made out of legos.  I believe it was Santa Claus who had given me that as a gift. I probably had a few smaller lego sets before then, but this was a big deal.  It was the biggest set I had ever owned which also meant it had the most pieces to experiment with.  So of course, after I built it, I started to wonder…could this thing float?  

I filled the sink with water, and sadly…the boat barely floated at all.   It was disappointing.  The water slowly seeped in between the lego pieces and shortly after my boat sank.  This might have deterred most kids, but I was determined to attempt to solve the problem.  I did think about using some sort of sealant (glue?) but it would have ruined my only lego kit, and good luck getting another one any time soon.   So instead I tried to design my own boat that wouldn’t sink.  I did have some success but along the way I realized that maybe I could create something better…a submarine…that was waterproof.  So the adventure and challenge then became snapping the pieces together in such a way that it would prevent water from seeping into the inside of my submarine thus drowning its lego citizen occupant.

Now, I’ve always had a sense of style.  I wasn’t happy with an ugly looking but functional lego submarine.  I wanted it to look great and do exactly what I wanted it to do.  That required a lot of compromise and ingenuity.  So, after finally figuring out how to make my lego submarine submersible the next step was to make it look stylish.  And that took a lot of effort in and of itself.  I remember being so happy with the results, and I remember wishing I had a camera to submit the picture to LEGO Magazine.  Of course, you’ll have to take my word that it looked awesome and it did what it was designed to do since I couldn’t take a photo at the time.

I hoped you enjoyed my story.  Go build your own lego memories! :)

The simplicity of door knob

Apple released a new tv ad for the iPad 2.   Short 30 second ad.  If you haven’t seen it yet go watch it and then come back.

Here you go: 

http://www.youtube.com/embed/tyEpaPEbjzI

OK! Welcome back.  Why is that video important, why should you care?  I think it embodies what Apple is about, and why other companies fail to see something that appears so obvious.   Apple is really good about giving you powerful technology and making it ever so easy for anyone to use it.

The wording of the ad feels like something Steve Jobs would say, got quoted on and was made into a very simple and sleek commercial.  I actually played it back a few times, I just loved the message in the video.  Also after about the 3rd playback I started to imagine this could be spoofed by SNL in funny ways.

It basically says that all the features you can add on a device are nice, but the most important benefit is for people to be able to use the device with ease.  

It reminds me of the door knob.  The underlying technology for each door knob can be quite interesting in and of itself, but the way you use a door knob is simple.  It’s grab and turn.   The material of the door knob doesn’t matter. The mechanical magic that makes the door knob work doesn’t matter.  Turning the door knob so you can open the door matters.  When technology gets out of the way and lets you do the thing you were trying to do (write an essay, review the photos of your trip), that’s what matters.