• ‘Locked’ Value, and Paying for Everything Twice

    How to account for the true cost and value of our possessions?

    In the same vein as Thoreau, who wrote in Walden: “the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run”, David Cain suggests that everything must be paid for twice.

    There’s the first price, usually paid in dollars, just to gain possession of the desired thing […] But then, in order to make use of the thing, you must also pay a second price. This is the effort and initiative required to gain its benefits, and it can be much higher than the first price. […]

    If you look around your home, you might notice many possessions for which you’ve paid the first price but not the second. Unused memberships, unread books, unplayed games, unknitted yarns. […]

    In our search for fulfillment, we keep paying first prices, creating a correspondingly enormous debt of unpaid second prices. Yet the rewards of any purchase – the reason we buy it at all — stay locked up until both prices are paid.

    With this approach in mind, it seems logical that for us to make wise and intentional purchases, we should consider how much value we might derive from an item, judging whether it is greater than both the first and second costs combined.

    I like the two-cost model, but wonder whether there are additional costs to consider, or whether these should be accounted for in the first ‘purchase price’. For instance: the research price, the storage price (not just physical, but the mental storage of an item whose second price has not yet been fully paid), and the disposal price.

  • How to Title Your Work

    Written as advice to visual artists (painters, sculptors, etc.), How to title your art is half rallying cry half tutorial on why and how you should give your art a title.

    As Claudia Dawson said in Recommendo, the guidance is useful for anyone who writes titles or headlines. Some points that stuck out for me:

    • Stand up for your art. Tell it like it is. Strong titles reflect what inspires you to make it, what personal beliefs it represents, what messages it is meant to communicate, and why we should look at and think about it.
    • Good titles help people to recognize and appreciate aspects of your art that may not be immediately obvious. […] Titles help viewers see what you want them to see.
    • [Cryptic] titles that do not obviously or immediately relate to the compositions or subject matters of your art can sometimes work in your favor. But they have to be well-thought-out. Good ones can intrigue viewers to the point where they spend time trying to figure out their meanings, like captivating mysteries or riddles.
    • Use titles that seduce viewers into taking longer looks, and maybe even ask questions. Unexpected or uncommon titles engage viewers in ways that ordinary or common titles don’t.
    • Unusual words or word combinations tend to attract more interest and attention than ordinary ones. At the very least, they slow people down. […] Be careful though. You want to use these kinds of words only when they relate directly to something about your art, and not use them gratuitously or to try and game the system.
  • A Visual Technique Library for Film Shots

    From the common to the lesser-seen cinematographic techniques, Eyecandy is a “visual technique library” for film shots.

    A database of over 5,000 GIFs, organised into around 100 different techniques, you select the technique and you get a short description and a wall of example clips.

    While I love movies, I’m certainly a cinematography neophyte, so it’s nice to be able to browse some techniques to learn new things.

  • Video Clip Search Tool

    As both a movie lover and a Xennial, I still (unashamedly) send a lot of video clips and gifs when texting with friends.

    If nothing apt comes up immediately, there’s a couple of sites I use where I can enter any phrase and immediately get a clip of it being said in various films and TV shows: PlayPhrase.me and YARN.

    If this is something you like to do, too, then these are pretty useful web apps to have in your bookmarks.

  • Sets of Things

    Found while looking up information on various puzzle hunts is this long list of sets of things.

    That’s it. That’s all it is. Sets of different things, in a big list. Sorted by the number of things in that set.

    For some reason, I find myself coming back to this list to satisfy a curiosity on a not-infrequent basis.

    Eight Minesweeper colors: BLUE (1), GREEN (2), RED (3), NAVY (4), MAROON (5), TEAL (6), BLACK (7), GRAY (8)

    Ten Innovation Ages: PREHISTORY, CLASSICAL, MEDIEVAL, RENAISSANCE, EXPLORATION, ENLIGHTENMENT, ROMANCE, MODERN, POSTMODERN, INFORMATION

    Twelve Pentominoes: F, I, L, N, P, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z (Conway naming uses letters O-Z)

    Some (14) of My Favorite Things (Sound of Music): RAINDROPS ON ROSES, WHISKERS ON KITTENS, BRIGHT COPPER KETTLES, WARM WOOLEN MITTENS, BROWN PAPER PACKAGES TIED UP WITH STRINGS, CREAM COLORED PONIES, CRISP APPLE STRUDELS, DOORBELLS, SLEIGH BELLS, SCHNITZEL WITH NOODLES, WILD GEESE THAT FLY WITH THE MOON ON THEIR WINGS, GIRLS IN WHITE DRESSES WITH BLUE SATIN SASHES, SNOWFLAKES THAT STAY ON MY NOSE AND EYELASHES, SILVER WHITE WINTERS THAT MELT INTO SPRINGS

    Crayola 24-pack colors: RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, VIOLET, BROWN, BLACK, CARNATION PINK, RED ORANGE, YELLOW ORANGE, YELLOW GREEN, BLUE GREEN, BLUE VIOLET, RED VIOLET, WHITE, VIOLET RED, SCARLET, DANDELION, GREEN YELLOW, CERULEAN, INDIGO, APRICOT, GRAY

    And plenty more where they came from.

  • Five Books: Books Reviews Through Expert Interviews

    Five Books has been a favourite reading discovery site of mine for a few years. Twice a week, an expert in a given field is asked to select five books on a related topic, and then explains that selection in an often-enlightening short interview.

    I’ve never failed to come away from an interview with some new insights or a great book recommendation (or both). And if you’re new to the site, there’s almost 2,000 interviews in the backlog!

    Want somewhere to start?

  • NPR’s Annual Book Concierge

    One of my favourite annual publications is NPR’s Book Concierge, released each December.

    After suffering from “an acute case of list fatigue”, NPR stopped producing year-end lists in 2012 and, from 2013 onwards, has instead elicited recommendations from NPR staffers and other critics to create this “interactive reading guide [that’s] more Venn diagram-y than list-y”.

    It’s a wonderful way to discover new books for that never-ending to-read list.

    From the introduction to the 2019 concierge, a short introduction from Mary Louise Kelly, Ailsa Chang, and Petra Mayer (NPR’s book editor):

    Mayer: So the way it works is it’s a giant visual matrix of […] more than 350 books. And they’re all recommended by our staff and critics and down one side of the page […] there’s a list of filters: straight-up things like nonfiction, realistic fiction, science fiction. And then there’s kind of what we call the ‘subjective tags’, which are the fun ones like Ladies first or The dark side.

    Kelly: And one of the things I love about it is it’s not some big, long book review that I have to slog through before I decide if I want to read this book. It’s just a few sentences. […] How I would describe this to my best friend.

  • Music Theory, Language Transfer, and the Thinking Method

    I’ve wanted to learn music theory for a number of years, but have never found a source that’s both engaging and educating. That is, until now, thanks to Language Transfer’s music theory course.

    For a while now, whenever I’ve read an article or post about language learning, someone in the comments invariably praises Language Transfer and the underlying methodology. Now, the site/app has expanded away from just languages to include music theory, too!

    Founded and run by Mihalis Eleftheriou, I think of his approach to learning (dubbed The Thinking Method) as using analogies to teach. That is, emphasising similarities and patterns between the new material and concepts you already know. I find it an intuitive and effective method.

    I’ve not used it to learn a language (although do plan on doing so), but the music theory lessons are great. As Mihalis says in the first lesson, when discussing the development of the music theory course:

    The more I try to finalise [the course], the more there seems to be to investigate and to weave into the course. The more I fall into the rabbit hole of looking at the world through the lens of music, the more I see its principles reflected elsewhere and everywhere, and so I need to learn about rock formation, colour wave lengths… origami even!

    If you’re interested in the underlying teaching methodology, Mihalis has also put together an extensive Thinking Method Guidebook (pdf).

  • Learning Languages from the Peace Corps, Diplomats and the DoD

    Earlier this week I shared language learning difficulty maps based on experiences from the Foreign Service Institute (FSI).

    As I mentioned in that post, the FSI courses are public domain, having been developed by the US federal government for training diplomats. However, there are two other similar language learning sources: those from the Peace Corps and the Defense Language Institute.

    I often find myself re-searching for quality resources for these courses, so wanted to share my findings for future reference. It’s important to note that these courses are a little outdated, so definitely need to be supplemented with more recent materials, too.

    • The Live Lingua Project is a proprietary language learning school, but they host probably the most comprehensive database of materials for the FSI, DLI and Peace Corps language learning materials.
    • The Yojik Website is maintained by Eric Streit and hosts various other resources in addition to those from the FSI, DLI and Peace Corps.

    You can find plenty of alternatives, but these are two reliable sources.

  • Language Learning Difficulty Maps

    The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is the primary training institute for employees of the “US foreign affairs community” (diplomats, military personnel, etc.). The FSI is probably most well known for its foreign language courses, which, while sometimes a bit outdated, is still great quality and in the public domain.

    The FSI has has compiled “approximate learning expectations for a number of languages based on the length of time it takes to achieve [professional working proficiency]”.

    Reddit’s /u/Fummy took that data and created the maps below, showing the learning difficulty of the major European languages and the major Eurasian and North African languages:

    The underlying data comes from Wikibooks, where the following disclaimer is important:

    It must also be kept in mind that students at FSI are almost 40 years old, are native speakers of English and have a good aptitude for formal language study, plus knowledge of several other foreign languages. They study in small classes of no more than six. Their schedule calls for 25 hours of class per week with three or four hours per day of directed self-study.