Impulse » Life

I am powered by Chocolate Chip Cookies

Rob McKaughan — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:08:14 +0000

I’m convinced that I run on chocolate chip cookies. In the last two weeks, there have been a number of times when I felt unproductive, slow, moody, ill. Each of those times that I then had a chocolate chip cookie, I soon became happy, productive, and loving life.

Proof positive that cookies make Robs go. If I donated blood, it’d probably be 65% cacao.

(And yes, earlier today, I did the calculation of how many cookies I would have if I were paid in cookies instead of dollars (market resources report that the cookie is up vs the dollar and euro in late trading today)). (photo by wenday )

Back in Seattle

Rob McKaughan — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:51:45 +0000

The Race Across America took a detour to the UK the last few weeks as I headed off to Cambridge. A very nice city Cambridge is; I’d happily spend more time there. The place positively reeks of knowledge & learning. Great ancient buildings (giving it a Harry Potter atmosphere), twisty roads, good curry, and I got to work with very cool people.

In the meantime, though, I’m back in Seattle where a little work on the titles for the movie, and a lot of reading await me.

Benjamin Zander: on music & leadership

Rob McKaughan — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:53:54 +0000

There’s nothing quite like a manically enthusiastic British professor. Benjamin Zander’s TED talk is excellent. Switching easily between comic and profound, he demonstrates how classical music can move everyone, and smoothly weaves in excellent lessons on leadership and optimism. I want to grow up to be like him someday.

Sunshine in Seattle

Rob McKaughan — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:20:57 +0000

Not!

I’ve heard that New Zealand looks very similar to the Pacific Northwest. I think someone took that too literally. Here we are, one week from summer, and we have the same weather as the Kiwis have one week before their winter.

I’m glad I have a good winter coat to enjoy this summer in!

Update: Not looking much better. Flights from Seattle to Auckland start at $2044. Hmm…

It’s a wonderful life

Rob McKaughan — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:37:27 +0000

I’ve been sending my resume around, sniffing out job opportunities in the tech world again. A friend of mine, curious at this choice after spending 5 years on other creative pursuits, asked the good question: “Why?” I liked me response enough that I decided to post it here:

Funny how paths don’t go straight, but in more of a circle. It’s a bit like the movie It’s a Wonderful Life (visible in it’s entirety on google) — Jimmy Stewart keeps trying to travel to distant lands and adventures, only to come to appreciate later what he already had all around him in his home town.

My story is just like the classic: Once upon a time I worked in a fortress of software and grew to hate it. I thought I was bored of tech, so I left the land of technology for the radiant fields of creativity. I made movies in the land of filmmaking, hunted Definitive Moments in the land of photography, wrote stories in the halls of fiction, and even rode the roller coaster of startups.

I noticed that these creative careers didn’t seem all romantic and glowy as they had seemed. In fact, because I had walked away from everything I was good at (in the tech world) to do things I had barely done before, it was quite a bit harder. Further, it never really “felt right”.

Meanwhile, I was constantly playing with tech — probably about 40hrs / week.

So, I climbed a craggy rock in my mind and thought about what I enjoy: imagining new things, creatively solving problems, building things that hadn’t existed before, synthesizing new ideas, working on something that demanded an intensity in balance with how passionate I felt about it, working with others, learning new things. These are all things I can do in any field. It’s all design — whether it be software design, graphic design, story design, etc.

Why not do all that in a field I have a ton of experience, skills, and interest? Meanwhile, I can get an extra helping in the so called “creative” arts.

After 5 years, I finally had come to understand wisdom in Hugh MacLeod’s book, How to be Creative, namely: “Keep your day job”. (I read that book 4 years ago; I guess it took one year per word to sink in)

I hadn’t gotten burned out by tech at my old job, but by the fact that I was up in the senior management cloud, managing people instead of doing all those creative things I listed above.

With that, I turned my metaphorical horse around and rode back home to the land of tech — via a convenient sunset, of course.

Now, this all doesn’t mean I’m abandoning everything I did in the last five years — I’ve had too much fun doing it. I’m just realizing that there’s ways to have my cake and eat it too.

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I am a font geek

Rob McKaughan — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:59:46 +0000

Proving you can’t take the geek out of the geek: The latest issue of American Photo, and the FontShop newsletter came in today’s mail. Charlize Theron, devastatingly beautiful as always, appears on the cover of American Photo with a headline promising more pictures inside. The FontShop newsletter, on the other hand, contains specimens of the latest fonts and essays on graphic design and typography.

Guess which one I opened instantly.

(font credits: Pique’n’meex by Kevin King, via DaFont.com; Trebuchet via Microsoft)

Published again!

Warm, cozy cafes with geeks

Rob McKaughan — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:36:01 +0000

I am, as you may have noticed, a geek. Total nerd.

I like hanging out in cafes with good food & good wireless network access. But, I get bored going to the same place all the time. So, I decided to start a list. Being a nerd, I want it accessible from every computing device I can access — phone, laptop, jott, etc.

Being a good natured nerd, I thought I’d share. So, so for those in the Seattle area, if you’re ever in need for some cozy place to curl up with your laptop, just go to here, or here, and you’ll see it.

Got a recommendation for me? Post it in the comment thread here.

Remember: Technology is for satisfying cravings easily.

Update: Googling around, I found Jeff Carlson’s list

(photo from flickr by brutal)

Cafes Brewing Discontent in Customers

The bleary-eyed hacker

Rob McKaughan — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 23:16:59 +0000

Moles & trolls; molls & trolls. Work, work, work, work, work. Hope everyone’s Thanksgiving weekend went well.

Me, I spent the last three days in front of a computer. Not that unusual, I know, but this time I had singular purpose: to bringing up a web site. Over at Lilipip, we’re gearing up for our beta launch later this month. I’ve been writing migration scripts, tweaking video compression settings, building automation, testing the site, and keeping up with the flurry of emails from my equally busy colleagues. Ahh, the smell of fresh startup. Stay tuned and I’ll keep you informed. We’re very excited.

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Only on the Internet

Rob McKaughan — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 01:00:42 +0000

I just spent three hours surfing the net, looking at watches I couldn’t possibly afford. Let me repeat that: three hours looking at products I’ll never buy…

Well, it’s better than TV, anyway.

(Shown here, the gorgeous Langematik-Perpetual by A. Lange & Söhne. It can be yours for a mere $55,000).

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Where’d he go?

Rob McKaughan — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:10:16 +0000

Haven’t been blogging lately as you can see. The problem hasn’t been lack of motivation — in fact, it’s really been over-motivation. The fact is that I’m very interested in writing on a whole bunch of topics — photography, film, creativity, business, startups, politics, geekery, graphic design & typography, history of polymaths, fictitious oratory, and several other things. The trouble is, these don’t all fit under the roof of “Artistic Whim” any more. Thus, the dilemma — to have one single blog that I can blather about anything, or to have lots of little blogs focused on one topic.
Conventional web wisdom says that having a clear, fixed focus helps build readership more quickly as it’s easy for readers to figure out what to expect. That puts the burden on me to categorize my thoughts a priori, and to tune the post for the particular blog it’ll land on. That gets sticky when a post really fits many categories. Do I cross-post it to several blogs? Or just post it to the most applicable blog, then post a few “hey look over there at my other blog” posts elsewhere?
On the other hand, having a single blog is really convenient for me — I write posts off the top of my head, then tag them with a whole slew of categories. Such a diverse blog might also help attract other diversely diverted people like myself. It’s also more convenient for friends & family who want to keep up with all my antics and don’t want to track a dozen blogs. On the other hand, being filled with random topics, a kitchen sink blog is unlikely to grow readership.
Any suggestions?

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