Though he understood children deeply, Mr. Sendak by no means valorized them unconditionally. “Dear Mr. Sun Deck …” he could drone with affected boredom, imitating the semiliterate forced-march school letter-writing projects of which he was the frequent, if dubious, beneficiary. But he cherished the letters that individual children sent him unbidden, which burst with the sparks that his work had ignited. “Dear Mr. Sendak,” read one, from an 8-year-old boy....
John Gruber writes about his private briefing for the upcoming ‘Mountain Lion’ release of OS X. Mac OS X — sorry, OS X — is going on an iOS-esque one-major-update-per-year development schedule. This year’s update is scheduled for release in the summer, and is ready now for a developer preview release. Its name is Mountain Lion.
Moshe Kai Cavalin enrolled in college at age 8. He is now 14 and is about to graduate from UCLA. In addition, he has written a book, We Can Do, which he translated himself from Mandarin to English. Why is this notable? Aren’t there other “geniuses” who go to college early all the time? Yes, but when asked if he is a genius, Cavalin states, “That’s always the question that bothers me,” Cavalin, who turned 14 on Tuesday, says when the G-word is raised....
After watching an episode of “Downton Abbey” the other day, I tried to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes the show so enticing and riveting for me. Then I realized, it’s a period-piece soap opera. I never gained any interest in American soap operas when I’ve seen random episodes, and I don’t like to clump “Downton Abbey” into that category, because it is a far better series than any day-time soap opera I’ve seen....
Arun Thampi recently caused quite a stir when he found out that an iOS application, Path, was uploading his entire Address Book to their servers. Upon inspecting closer, I noticed that my entire address book (including full names, emails and phone numbers) was being sent as a plist to Path. Now I don’t remember having given permission to Path to access my address book and send its contents to its servers, so I created a completely new “Path” and repeated the experiment and I got the same result – my address book was in Path’s hands....
Exploiting Bethesda’s freshly released Skyrim Creation Kit, the team at Valve has put together a Space Core mod, which literally drops a Portal 2 personality core out of the sky and into the realm of Tamriel. You can pick up the hardy little orb and tote it around with you — it’s pretty much indestructible and its major purpose is to babble uncontrollably using the vocal talents of Nolan North....
Leo Babauta writes about a program to get fit even if you find yourself pressed for time. I’ve trained for marathons, triathlons, 10Ks, a 13.5-hour challenge, Ubanathlons, and more. But my favorite fitness program isn’t one where you train for a major event. It’s where you get fit by a thousand little actions. When the actions are tiny, they are easy. You have no excuse. You can do them anywhere, all day long....
If the world overwhelms you with its constant production of useless crap which you filter more and more to things that only interest you can I calmly suggest that you just create things that you like and cut out the rest of the world as a middle-man to your happiness? David has some good ideas about sparking the creation habit. This post hit home because I find myself consuming more than creating....
Design team BRC Imagination Arts has proposed a roller coaster that would travel up a steep track at speeds of 100 miles an hour before beginning a controlled drop that would essentially put its passengers into zero gravity for eight seconds. Unlike normal roller coasters, the ride would be completely enclosed, giving loosely-buckled passengers the feeling of floating in a room rather than speeding through space. I love roller coasters....
This might make a nice little birthday gift and will be out just in time for mine.