[ kottke ] Miniature NYC, a movie – a very cleverly made short film of some scenes from New York City, with some tilt-shift effects.

I’ve had these on the to-blog list for a while: the OTTO espresso stove-top coffee maker and a list of 12 Products for tea lovers.

A short guide to understanding the factors in your own desire to conform.

28 things about starting (theological) graduate school – many of which apply to higher study in general. Some good lessons on study / life balance, and advice on what and how to read.

I’m starting to get the hang of catching the train in to college, and still having time to spare. This week, despite spending the whole trip practicing vocab, and then more time at breakfast (in a cafe in Burwood) revising vocab, I only managed to get 6/10 on the week’s test. This is a sign that I’m not spending enough time practicing, or that I’m doing oo many other things outside of Hebrew study, or that I’m spending time on unproductive things. I’m not entirely sure which, but this week has been spend doing more revision, and less flipping of vocab cards to make sure I know the rules of sticking nouns with prepositions and definite articles and such.

The speed people read the Hebrew words in class seems to be increasing dramatically, and I’m not getting the sense that my own speed is improving at the same rate. In some sense this is an incentive to try harder, but I’m really not sure what would help me get this right. The lecturer has offered to mark any additional exercises I complete, but it’s hard to know what exercises will help: the ones in the textbook don’t seem to be numerous enough, and it seems empty to attempt them multiple times!

Time will tell: there’s a break coming up in a couple of weeks, and it will be a good chance to catch up on what I’ve been missing.

In a work context, you might be tempted to keep a full diary – the more meetings, the more important you are, right? But better advice might be to leave yourself some time to think.

A full calendar may give the appearance of getting things done, but being able to see that next competitive thing coming down the line or being able to see that we’ve got two groups that are fighting here and we really need to invest in getting them to work together — those are the critical things that executives need to do.

Some questions (for Christians) to work through the next time something painful and unexpected comes up: Why Me? Why This? Why Now? Why?. Sorry, but if you don’t have a Christian worldview, this will likely seem to be empty rhetoric.

[kel] Another sad chronicle of a high-profile Christian having some anger management problems. It’s hard to get a balanced portrait of what happened, as emotions run high on both sides of the coverage, but a pastor’s wife getting upset about a problem with her first-class air seat already sends off some alarm bells for me.

Are you addicted to fake achievement? (some bad language towards the end)

A Wired article that talks about some of the challenges involved in getting search right.