Adrian’s Microblog

Mother and child; by yours truly

St Helena prays at Bethlehem on the feast of Epiphany to the three kings: ‘Like me, you were late in coming. The shepherds were here long before; even the cattle. They had joined the chorus of angels before you were on your way. For you the primordial discipline of the heavens was relaxed and a new defiant light blazed amid the disconcerted stars.
‘How laboriously you came, taking sights and calculating, where the shepherds had run barefoot! How odd you looked on the road, attended by what outlandish liveries, laden with such preposterous gifts!
’… Yet you came, and we’re not turned away. You too found room before the manger. Your gifts were not needed, but they were accepted and out carefully by, for they were brought with love. In that new order of charity that had just come to life, there was room for you, too.
‘You are my especial patrons, and patrons of all late-comers, of all who are confused with knowledge and speculation, of all who through politeness make themselves partners in guilt, of all who stand in danger by reason of their talents.’ — From Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Helena’. (via Maggie)

“May God, the source and origin of all blessing, grant you grace, pour out his blessing in abundance, and keep you safe from harm throughout the year.May he give you integrity in the faith, endurance in hope, and perseverance in charity with holy patience to the end.May he order your days and your deeds in his peace, grant your prayers in this and in every place, and lead you happily to eternal life.”(from Roman Missal for January 1)

You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew. — Albert Einstein

austinkleon:

Here are some of my favorite things that make easy gifts that will work for lots of different people:

1. Journaling kit This is what I carry around with me for journalizing on the road: 

The Steal Like An Artist Journal - The best journal out there. $10. 

PaperMate Flair pens - best overall for drawing, writing, etc. $9/box. Free if you steal them from the supply closet at your office. 

Fine point Sharpie - for blackouts and big thick lines! $5/box or, again, free if you steal them from work.

Washi tape - fun, colorful, removable tape for collaging. $14/set.

safety scissors - TSA will let you on with scissors 4″ blade or less. $2. optional: canvas bag to carry it all in. $10. 2. Ear plugs

Will get you through long flights, noisy hotel rooms, and nights with a loud newborn. Highest cost/benefit ratio ever. $5  3. Palomino Blackwing Pencils My favorite pencil — great for sketching, perfect for making notes in books. Sometimes I like to just sharpen them and sit around and sniff ‘em. Get a whole box and add a sharpener while you’re at it. $30 for both. 4. Aqua Notes I know, I know: they seem totally goofy, but I get a lot of ideas in the shower, and nine out of ten of them are bad, but that one that is good, well, it’s worth having something you can write it down on. $10 5. Pocket notebooks I love Field Notes, but these are small enough that they fit in my shirt and jeans pockets, and they take a beating. I carry one of these everywhere. $10

6. A Daily Planner  Really, any page-a-day planner will do, but this is the notebook I’ve used to keep a daily logbook for the past seven years. My logbooks are invaluable to me—easier to keep than a diary and way more helpful. $16 7. Kitchen Timer Might seem like a stretch, but I think this is one of the most underrated creative tools. Give it to someone and tell them to find 15 minutes a day to do the thing that they love. $10. 8. A great book You can’t go wrong with books. Some books I’ve read in recent years that I think would help a wide range of people: 

Getting Things Done (for folks who struggle with productivity)

Daily Rituals (for folks who struggle with routine)

What It Is (for folks who want to write)

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (for folks who want to read more and read better)

100 Essays I Don’t Have Time To Write (for folks struggling with balancing creative work and parenting)

The Sisters Brothers (simply the best novel I’ve read in a long time) For more book recommendations, go here. 9. A great documentary Whenever I’m sort of bummed or in need of some inspiration, I love watching good documentaries about art and artists. Here are some of my favorites:

Los Angeles Plays Itself (for film geeks and Los Angeles friends)

Stories We Tell (for people who tell stories)

Beauty Is Embarrassing (for art geeks and artists with families)

Don’t Look Back (for documentary lovers, Dylan nuts, and music fans)

The Last Waltz (maybe the best concert film ever)

Bill Cunningham New York (for photographers and all artists — “If you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do, kid!”) More of my favorite movies and TV shows. 10. The Robin Hood Box Set First you steal, then you share. (Hey, sorry, but they fit perfectly in a stocking!) $14 for both of them. (You could always throw in Newspaper Blackout, for an extra $10.) Happy holidays, y’all! Hope you get everything you want.

A nice list – thanks Austin! :)

Stress and recovery should be our rhythms, and physical interval training can be an excellent tool for improving mental recovery. One of many problems with multi-tasking is that the frenetic skipping leaves little room for relaxation, and thus our reservoir for energetic presence is constantly depleted. — Josh Waitzkin, as interviewed by Tim Ferris. The second half of this interview is good stuff.

Given the interrelationship between living space and human behavior, those who design buildings, neighborhoods, public spaces and cities, ought to draw on the various disciplines which help us to understand people’s thought processes, symbolic language and ways of acting. It is not enough to seek the beauty of design. More precious still is the service we offer to another kind of beauty: people’s quality of life, their adaptation to the environment, encounter, and mutual assistance. — Pope Francis, in Laudato Si’ (paragraph 150)

I highly recommend this video – American Voices with Reneé Fleming.In it, she gathers together American vocalists from many different genres for master classes with young artists, panel conversations on trends in the music profession, as well as stunning performances. The hour and a half goes quickly, and I’m sure there’s something you’ll enjoy!

Bad times, hard times - this what people keep saying; but let us live well and times shall be good. We are the times. Such as we are, such are the times. — St. Augustine

This has got to be one of the funniest product explanation videos I’ve seen - in it, Kumail Nanjiani explains how the new Jet shopping club works.Side note: the idea of Jet is intriguing, and seems like online shopping is evolving. (See Amazon’s “Dash button”, Harris Teeter’s “Express Lane”, and others.)(via Tiffany)

Okay, this is amazing: paper 2.0 with Near Field Computing. Tap the card to load contact details, launch a video call, bring up a playlist, and more.Those folks at Moo were already cool, and their new Paper+ product just kicked it up to a whole other level.

Okay, so I really like this table. It moves, and yet it’s calming and balanced. It has energy, but is well directed. Now, if only it weren’t $2,500.(via Apex 64" Round Dining Table in Apex Collection | Crate and Barrel)

Michael Jackson homage by the Bottle Boys – herewith: Billie Jean. Well done, well done indeed. :) (via Chris)

Fast and Slow do more than just describe a rate of change. They are shorthand for ways of being, or philosophies of life. Fast is busy, controlling, aggressive, hurried, analytical, stressed, superficial, impatient, active, quantity-over-quality. Slow is the opposite: calm, careful, receptive, still, intuitive, unhurried, patient, reflective, quality-over-quantity. It is about making real and meaningful connections— with people, culture, work, food, everything. The paradox is that Slow does not always mean slow. —

In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed (via davemorin)

Check out the whole blog post – some good things to reflect on there.

Cabin Pressure - BBC Radio 4

“Prayer in C” by Lilly Wood & The Prick.I don’t know what it is about this guitar melody and vocal that is just entrancing. I hit replay many times.It later got remixed by Robin Schulz to an electronic version, which is equally fascinating and carries a different but neat energy altogether. And I found Jean Blanc remix that sounds pretty cool too.

These Planned Parenthood videos speak for themselves. Things like, “If we alter our process, and we’re able to obtain intact fetal cadavers [to sell]…”And if you want to dig further and see the unedited versions and interviews with other PP leaders, just follow this link.We’re past ideology, this is biology.

Posting just because I like this. :)

Okay, you may have noticed I’ve been on a Pixar kick lately. ;) In this 27m interview released just over a week ago, Pixar and Disney Animation Studios President Ed Catmull gives some insight into the thinking and habits that have helped them release a string of successes. Some of the things I found particularly interesting:–Pixar has taken as its aim, the bold goal, of being original. (Refreshing for a movie studio actually.) But they’re not pretentious about this, and Ed comes right out to say: they realize it means they’ll always have a good chance of failure whenever they make a movie. And when asked about their process, he describes it as failing all along the way of making each one.–This “humility before the creative process”, and human-centric focus, permeates their approach. They go with the person first, not the idea – persons who have enthusiasm. As Ed says, “we’re always riding on the people.” They have the director work up three story arcs the director is excited about, and then they chose the one that the director is the most passionate about. They gather a small team of six or so around that person for two years as they flesh out that story. The first draft always sucks; always. And they know they’re working towards that “click” moment when the pieces fall into place. They realize it may never come: it’s a very real possibility to them, and they have mechanisms for resets. Resets are painful to the people, and resets are costly to the studio, but they’ve accepted that. A handful of the movies have had major restarts, often with different directors, and one movie never saw the light of day (Newt).–Within the studio, the leadership knows they’re dealing with the two sides of failure: academic and emotional. While we know academically that failure is necessary to learning and doing something new, we still have to overcome the internal angst that comes from feeling we’ve done something wrong, we’ll prove we’re not smart enough, or we didn’t work hard enough. Ed sees his job of helping the team take risks, and making it safer to be creative, by removing the barriers of fear from the creative process.–Ed describes the process of risk taking in three phases: (1) identify and accept the level of risk intended: high, low, etc.; (2) work out the consequences of that risk through internal iterations feeling your way through the process, (3) lock and load once it “clicks”, and don’t intentionally introduce new risk to the process.–Lastly, Ed cautions against drawing the wrong conclusions about success. It’s not as simple as we might like to think – don’t gloss over the messiness. Journalists writing about the success necessarily have to simplify the story, but don’t fall into the trap of believing them. Because it’s an organic system, there’s always something out of view that’s headed out of balance that you need to be alert to, and not blinded by a sense that you’ve got it all figured out now.At the beginning of the video, they share the trailer for the new Pixar movie coming out this fall, The Good Dinosaur. At the time of the video, the trailer hadn’t been publicly released and is hidden from the camera, but it’s available now online, and I’d check it out.

The art of speaking, without something to say. :)(via Ed)