The Pilcrow

A Journal by Paulo Zoom

  1. Faith

    While exchanging emails with a friend about doing our own thing, I asked myself:

    Why the hell do I make Listary? Why am I putting so much time and effort into something that, in the end, doesn’t make enough money?”

    This is what I concluded:

    1. I know we’re doing something good and learning a lot.
    2. Lots of people way smarter than us, whose work I admire, keep telling us they like our work too. Compliments don’t pay the bills, but keep us going.
    3. Enough faith — or naiveté — in believing this is a time of sacrifice, and things will pay off in the end. Like Conan O’Brien said, “If you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

    Works for us.

  2. Share the Fun

    There’s a new iPod touch TV ad from Apple. It’s interesting. Here’s what it shows:

    • iMessage
    • Playing a game
    • Game Center
    • Playing a game
    • Recording a video
    • Sharing a photo on Twitter
    • FaceTime
    • Multitasking (with iMessage)
    • Music
    • iMessage (yes, again)

    It’s a great ad, but what’s most interesting about it is that the Music app shows up for just one second (00:23s), and very late in the ad (30s long). Music doesn’t matter much anymore.

    With previous ads, Apple made clear that they see the iPod touch as a great portable gaming device. But now, with iMessage, this could perfectly be and iPhone ad. More than a game console, the iPod touch is the almost-iPhone-but-without-a-contract, the perfect christmas gift.

    I wonder if and when we’ll see an iPod touch 3G.

    (via @bdc)

  3. Back To Work #41, “Carpal Tunnel Diem”

    Merlin Mann:

    There’s a very unkind phrase that I’ve actually applied to myself. The phrase “poser” or “poseur”.

    This is where you take on all the trappings and all of the affectations of something, and where you end up doing some pantomime version of something that’s theoretically interesting to you.

    That could be an artist, it could be an activist, it could be a programmer, but it could be something where you have watched enough of this one kind of thing to be able to mimic it to your own level of satisfaction, that you feel like you look like that kind of thing.

    But no matter how good you get at looking like you do a certain kind of thing, or looking like you are making certain kind of thing, it’s absolutely no solution for being able to produce that thing.

    Go listen to it. It gets better halfway through.

  4. I’m going to be a teacher

    Starting next January, I’m joining the teaching staff of a postgraduate course on Web Design, here in Portugal, at ESAD1.

    It’s a year-long course that will teach the web to a small group of students, three days a week, with evening classes. We will teach the web of 2011, with an up-to-date curriculum comprised of topics such as digital culture, the history of the medium, designing for the web, HTML/CSS and programming. Students will work on their own project and we’re planning to invite a few special guests to come over and talk to our students.

    I was absolutely thrilled and humbled when Tiago invited me to be part of the staff. I’ll be teaching a bit about the history of the Web, and more on programming topics, specially about best practices and progressive enhancement. That’s what’s on the curriculum.

    But there’s a bigger and more important message that I want to pass to our students. It’s this feeling that we are all part of the web, we shape it with our work and our discussions, and as such, we should care about the future of this wonderful and very young medium. And the best way to do it is by caring about the quality of what we do. Simon Collison wrote it best in the first issue of The Manual:

    In his book The Craftsman, Richard Sennet proposes that craftsmanship is a basic human impulse: the desire to do a job well for its own sake. Sennett sees this as a core value, one available to every person working on the web. So the question is: Do I want to simply make a living and move from project to project building websites a getting things done, or do I want to imbue my every process with the skill, integrity, and value of a true craftsman?

    If I can get a single student to fall in love with their craft, learn on their own, and care about this industry, I’ll be fulfilled.

    The applications for the postgraduate are open, and close in a few weeks, on December 4th. You can know more about it at the official website.

    1. ESAD is one of the most important and influential art and design colleges here in Portugal. I can’t wait to work in such an amazing environment. ↩

  5. In real life

    Short but fine piece by Mandy Brown:

    We have this phrase—“in real life”—to distinguish between the life that goes on in our pockets and the one that happens on the street. […] But the obvious corollary to a “faux” life grates more and more each day. Is life online necessarily less real?

  6. On Leaving

    In times of trouble, I always come back to this quote:

    No matter where you were born, where you have lived, how long you have been away, this is the only country that is yours. It’s a God-awful mess right now, has been for awhile, and probably will be for awhile longer, but that doesn’t make it yours to desert. It makes it yours to fix.

    From the always lovely Pictory.

  7. Jobs’ Theory

    After reading many pieces about Steve Jobs’ passing, I couldn’t stop thinking this: what I’m thankful for isn’t any product that he helped to create, it’s that he proved that shipping products with great care and attention to detail is not just a theory. It’s possible.

  8. I had a conversation with a lovable bastard

    A week ago, a friend of mine, Ricardo Melo, told me he wanted to interview me regarding a tweet I posted. What? An interview? I said. But I put the weird feeling aside and agreed to do it. It was more like a good conversation you’d have at a bar. But online. With no drinks. Well, I know I wasn’t drinking, can’t be sure about him. No strangers nearby either. That changes things, but what had more impact was the medium. I tend to suck at IM, always typing a load of really short sentences as my minds makes progress. And in this case, thinking a lot more before typing. It was different. But really enjoyable.

    We talk about making a choice to make things our own way, and in which ways that goes on to change you and give you a lesson about yourself. It was very personal, but these are the kind of things about myself that I have no problem talking about. It still feels like a private just-you-and-me-here-talking thing. Even if it goes online afterwards. I wish I had better conversations like this more often, but I tend to believe that most of credit in a conversation goes to the party that sets the tone and topic by asking the questions. Good questions beget good answers. I need to learn how to do it better.

    It started OK, maybe a bit cold, but then the ideas in my head started to feel like excited particles in a chemical reaction, and the conversation gets a lot better. I wish we could this more often. With drinks. In a bar.

  9. Running Towards

    I used to draw pictures and there are many that wish I would still draw pictures. Maybe I will. Probably. But, I have a new job. It is to make these words. There are those that say that by not making these pictures, I am devaluing myself, that I am some how running away from the thing that made them like my work in the first place. They’re right in saying that I’ve abandoned making images for a little bit, but I am not running away: I am running towards.

    Replace words and pictures with other kinds of creative work. Still applies.

  10. Ten things Austin Kleon wishes he was told when he was in college

    It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past. This list is me talking to a previous version of myself.

    I like these kind of things. Some slap you in the face, some make you nod in oh-yes-I-have-been-there-too agreement. Most of all, they make you think (if you’re willing to). Like Austin says, your mileage may vary.

    Print it, Instapaper it, but please don’t miss it.