ifindkarma. elegance is refusal.

December 9, 2011

42.

Filed under: ifindkarma!, life, the universe, and everything! — ifindkarma @ 4:20 am
Anything that happens, happens.
Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
It doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though.
~ Douglas Adams
.

Most people do not comprehend,
[no matter how] they encounter such things,
nor do they understand what they learn;
they believe only themselves.
~ Heraclitus

.
Every thought is a seed.
If you plant crab apple, don’t count on harvesting Golden Delicious.
~ Bill Meyer

.

All the lessons of history in four sentences:
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.
The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.
The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.
When it is dark enough, you can see stars.

~ Charles A. Beard


In the spirit of Thirty and Thirty-Five comes Forty-Two — the following awesome, beautiful, and creative web of thoughts that occupy my brain.

No matter.

I’m not patient enough to write poetry or prose, so I’ll just count down after Futurama.

Don’t you worry about life, the universe, and everything; let me worry about blank

42. We believe in the interconnectedness of all things.

41. Everything is about inclusion.

40. Everything is everythang.

39. Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.

38. As human beings, our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

37. Let it go. This too shall pass.

36. SIMPLIFY.

35. Lessons are repeated until they are learned.

34. The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

33. Reflect on happiness.

32. People are very bad at predicting what will make us happy.

31. There are shortcuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.

30. We are feedback loops. We are the stories we tell ourselves.

29. Love is when you open your heart to pain.

28. To get over grief, be there for someone else’s grief.

27. Kittie heaven is mousie hell.

26. Bird is the word!

25. The ride does not require an explanation. Just occupants.

24. It’s not going to stop till you wise up.

23. Character is destiny.

22. Reflection creates identity.

21. You can do anything.

20. We can change the world with a pen and paper.

19. Starting is hard.

18. We’ll see.

17. Life is… delicious ambiguity.

16. Beware drift. Do what you love!

15. True happiness comes from within.

14. Get yourself a giant panda! (Super kawaii!)

13. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.

12. That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.

11. It goes to 11. (Be sure to read through to Andy Weir’s story, “The Egg”!)

10. Life is like business. It’s 20 percent what happens to you, and 80 percent how you respond.

9. 80 percent of success is showing up.

8. Our attitudes produce our luck.

7. Love more, fear less.

6. Be grateful for every breath.

5. Be who you are, as hard as you can.

4. Be here now.

3. Be excellent.

2. There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.

1. Only kindness matters in the end.

********* …enlightenment… *********

November 2, 2010

The State of Social in 2010…

Filed under: ifindkarma! — ifindkarma @ 1:23 pm

Ziggy Marley sang that if you don’t know your past, you don’t know your future.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of social applications, and consequently am retracing ten recent thoughts on the subject…

San Francisco in Jello

And now, the countdown.

10. LOOK: because of the ubiquity of follows and video in social applications, we are always being watched.

9. “Pandas and Lobsters” explains why it’s hard to build great social applications.

8. “Whales and Lobsters” explains why it’s lucrative to build great social applications.

7. So I told TechCrunch that Facebook is worth more than people think.

6. And I told TechCrunch that Twitter is worth more than people think.

5. And I told TechCrunch that Google is struggling with usability issues in social applications.

4. So I told Gigaom that Google should stop playing games and get serious about social applications.

3. But I have the feeling that conversations with Google about social applications haven’t landed the target.

2. Mind you, being a Facebook whale is an epic fail, too.

1. Luckily for Facebook, advertisers have been embracing Facebook so much, that they have the money and time to figure it all out.

Which leads us to the question…

What next great social application should be developed?

Troutgirl and I know the answer. Now we just need time and the right resources.

It is not a cliché: There is good money, and there is bad money. Good money can make a great idea better; bad money can destroy a great idea.

Now comes the fun part. The part that puts the “fun” in funding.

Such is the state of social in 2010.

Talk Nerdy To Me #2

May 17, 2010

Looking for me? I’m on Posterous.

Filed under: ifindkarma!, pandas! — ifindkarma @ 3:42 pm

In an ironic turn of events, Bakadesuyo got me hooked on Posterous, so now I spend most of my blogging time there, and in the meantime, he’s in process of moving his blog from Posterous to WordPress.

So if you’re looking for me, you’ll find me on Posterous. (And occasionally here. But mostly there.)

Here’s a sampling of my top ten favorite Posterous posts:

10. Road Trip Across I-10 in 2010. Road food!
9. On aneurysms.
8. Everything is about inclusion.
7. Top 10 Ridiculous Facebook Pages.
6. Death panda!
5. Fuck iPhone, I’m gettin’ an Evo!
4. Eulogy for Bob.
3. My bucket list.
2. Lessons are repeated until they are learned.
1. Get yourself a giant panda!

Onward and upward, to infinity and beyond!

April 13, 2010

If you don’t hear from me till May, it’s because I’m on the road!

Filed under: ifindkarma!, relax! — ifindkarma @ 12:10 am

ROAD TRIP driving coast-to-coast across the 10 to celebrate 2010!!!

January 31, 2010

Would you bet your company on PhoneGap?

Filed under: mobile! — ifindkarma @ 4:20 am

I posted this to a list of mobile/social/geo entrepreneurs.

Let’s say (hypothetically, of course) I’m starting to develop a brand new mobile application/service today, January 31, 2010.

I’m gonna want it to run on iPhone first, and eventually Android. Maybe even Blackberry and WebOS someday. Possibly even Symbian. Possibly.

So I start by reading…

PhoneGap

…and then look at some iPhone-specific help…

jQTouch / Three20

…and then I scratch my head:

1) Is PhoneGap flexible enough that I can feel good betting my company on it? Or should I just start by building my iPhone app natively and THEN figure out what to do once I want to be more than iPhone/iPad?

2) Will I want to throw PhoneGap out 3-6 months from now because of its own limitations?

3) Will Apple stay consistent in its belief that it approves of PhoneGap?

I’ve added this as a question on Quora as well.

January 25, 2010

Where can I whale in 2010?

Filed under: ifindkarma!, it's the economy stupid!, silicon valley!, whales! — ifindkarma @ 4:20 am

It’s Twenty Ten and I’m hungry for something new to add to my steady diet of facebooking, linking in, and tweeting. (2009 was pretty much the year of Twitter for me, thanks to Tweetie 2.)

So I asked myself: On which service can I become a whale in 2010?

Whale, n. One of the biggest users of an Internet service, who together with other whales form its delicious nucleus. Whales are Malcolm Gladwell‘s “Connectors” and they are the foundation of any social network’s etiquette, memory, and wisdom.

Being a whale on a social network can be quite frustrating — Facebook stops us at 5000 connections at which point our iPhone app pretty much stops working; LinkedIn won’t tell people how many connections we have once we’re over 500; and Twitter displays a fail whale whenever they can’t handle the truth.

So why do people become whales? Whales are born, not made; whales cannot NOT whale. It’s in our nature. Plus, being a whale can be quite rewarding: you get a lot of social capital and are able to move among different groups of people to spread interesting thoughts and products. Bonus: Whales also feel inexplicably good when they introduce people who otherwise might never have met.

So where in 2010 will I be able to whale to my big pimpin’ heart’s content?

Of the 30something startups I know who are hiring, this weekend I got more than a dozen invitations from:

Yelp has been around for years, but its recent use of Facebook Connect has given it new life. Foursquare launched last year, but it has gotten really hot in the last month.

Even so, none of my connection counts on these services come close to my friends on Facebook (4997), LinkedIn (“500+” — really??), and Twitter (3838).

Side note: I’m also a fan of Gowalla (180 connections) but I haven’t gotten any new invites on there in a while. I wonder if users are intimidated by places with names like Death Star and Helms Deep.

Memo to all consumer Internet services: You get the behaviors you allow. Whales make it so.

January 15, 2010

Friends who are hiring!

Filed under: it's the economy stupid! — ifindkarma @ 11:11 am

Yes, this is the worst economy of my lifetime. I know plenty of great people who are looking for work, and I remind them not to lose hope. We’re clawing our way out of the recession one job at a time, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I do have some friends who are hiring — mostly for developer jobs, but as these companies grow, they’ll hire for other positions, too. I will try to keep this list up-to-date. But as heisenthought points out, everybody wants JavaScript developers, it seems.

Please at-reply me on Twitter if you’d like an introduction to any of these companies:

SayNow (Palo Alto, CA) — JavaScript and Ruby developers who like to rapidly prototype social applications

Gowalla (Austin, TX) — Ruby, JavaScript, and mobile developers

Foursquare (New York) — Excellent developers

Hypertable (Burlingame, CA) — Technically-minded salesperson

Quora (Palo Alto, CA) — Python developers

Asana (Palo Alto, CA) — designers, developers, and a businessperson

Plancast (San Francisco) — JavaScript and PHP developers

Payvment (San Francisco) — JavaScript and PHP developers

Apture (San Francisco) — JavaScript and Python developers

AppDiscover (Redwood City, CA) — iPhone and Android developers

Campfire Labs (San Francisco) — Javascript, Ruby, and Python developers, and systems engineers

Dolores Labs (San Francisco) — your guess is as good as mine

Sitepen (anywhere) — JavaScript developers, visual designers, and project managers

EcoFactor (San Carlos, CA) — Java developers

Manymoon (San Francisco) — Java and JavaScript developers

InTwig (Redwood City, CA) — JavaScript and PHP developers

eFitPlan (San Francisco) — Java/PHP/Ruby developers who want to fuse the latest exercise science with computer science to provide personalized workouts and fitness coaching to the masses, for free

Breakthrough (Palo Alto, CA) — Ruby engineers, a Product Manager, and a Director of Sales, ideally with health care experience but not required

Palaran (Palo Alto, CA) — Search scientists, Systems engineers, Frontend hackers

Reputation Defender (Redwood City, CA) — JavaScript and PHP developers

Truveo (San Francisco) — web developers and sysadmins

iSocket (San Mateo, CA) — JavaScript and PHP developers

Ribbit (Mountain View, CA) — C++, Java, Flash, and mobile developers

Ustream (Mountain View, CA) — C++, PHP, Flash, JavaScript, and mobile developers

Blekko (Redwood Shores, CA) — Perl, C++, and JavaScript developers

Wolfram Alpha (San Mateo, CA) — everything

Lithium (Emeryville, CA) — a little bit of everything

Gaia (San Jose, CA) — PHP and Flash developers

Watercooler (Mountain View, CA) — JavaScript, PHP, and Flash developers

Playdom (Mountain View, CA) — JavaScript, PHP, and Flash developers

Sociable (San Francisco, CA) — Product manager

Liftium (San Francisco) — JavaScript and Ruby developers who want to on-ramp new publishers using Liftium’s ad technology

Chai Labs (Mountain View, CA) — Rock stars

Snooth (New York) — JavaScript and PHP developers, and salespeople

Yelp (San Francisco) — JavaScript, Python, and iPhone developers

Etsy (Brooklyn, NY) — The question is, what AREN’T they hiring right now?

Hunch (New York) — JavaScript and Python developers, and an analytically-driven blogger

Betfair (San Francisco) — a little bit of everything

Glitch (Canada) — ???

Trackville (Mountain View, CA) — ???

Kerosene and a Match (Orange County, CA) — ???

knx.to (Menlo Park, CA) — business development person

speedi.ly (Palo Alto, CA) — ???

AdCru (San Mateo, CA) — ???

Ellerdale (Menlo Park, CA) — ???

PandaWhale (Palo Alto, CA) — iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and CSS/JavaScript-on-mobile-Webkit developers

Career Resources (Redwood City, CA) — looking for temps

And of course Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Zynga, Ning, Bing, and Silver Spring Networks are hiring too.

January 8, 2010

Solidman Group: Event and Tour Management

Filed under: ifindkarma! — ifindkarma @ 4:20 am

It’s been a while since I’ve written. More on that soon.

Meanwhile, a friend I haven’t heard from in a while wrote me out of the blue.

If you know anyone who wants to talk with her, please contact me.

She writes:

I wanted to say hello and also let you know what I have been working on the past couple of months. I have just recently been hired on full time by The Solidman Group as head of all their sales and marketing. We are an event and tour managing company. We coordinate all facets of tour operations including 3 party vendor hiring/management, travel arrangements, budget oversight, project management and communications with TV networks and other media outlets. We provide all Audio/Visual installation and coordination for diverse concert venues. We also provide expert audio production and project coordination advice and consultancy.

Working for this company has been a dream job. I have never worked with such an organized team of people. I think I have finally found doing something that I like….haha! Pass my contact info around to anyone you may think would be interested in what we have to offer; that would mean so much to me… =)

Here are some of our “NOTEWORTHY CLIENTS”:

The Pretenders
Stevie Wonder
Lady Gaga
Serena Ryder
Wu-Tang Clan
Paul McCartney
Amy Winehouse
T.I.
Mark Ronson
Santana
Spank Rock
Atlantic Records
CMJ Music Conference
Bilal
The Fleshtones
QTip
Semi-Precious Weapons
Ghostface Killa
The Clipse
John Scofield
Jeremy Enigk
Pink
Envy On the Coast
The Roots Jam Residency
Harper’s Bazaar
Gilded Age Manufacturing
Fashion Rocks
PRPS
AMC
FUSE
IFC
SPORTS ILLUSTATED
ESPN
DISCOVERY CHANNEL
HBO
TBS

August 10, 2009

Why is searching Twitter so hard?

Filed under: facebook!, twitter! — Tags: — ifindkarma @ 4:20 pm

Chris asked me,

Didn’t you tweet something about social networks and lobster traps not that long ago? (analogy or post, etc)

To which I replied,

Isn’t it crazy how hard it is to find a tweet from last month? If you google or bing “ifindkarma lobster trap” you’ll find a RT.

Which begs the question, why is searching Twitter so hard for finding the original tweet? All the search engines find ReTweets from other people.

Why can I not search Twitter and find the tweet?

Why can I not search Google and find the tweet?

Bing or Facebook (which itself is powered by Bing)? I don’t think so.

The original tweet was on July 3rd:

“Facebook is basically designed like a lobster trap with your friends as bait.” http://bit.ly/oR2o2

And apparently over time it will be come increasingly hard to find until eventually it disappears, because eventually all tweets disappear:

3200 tweets ought to be enough for anyone. #famouslastwords http://bit.ly/3B5ntp

I don’t like that Twitter search maxes out at a week.

I don’t like that the length of time tweets stay in Twitter search keeps getting shorter.

I don’t like that Twitter search is only concerned with what happened recently, and not what’s most relevant, or most comprehensive, or what best uses my social graph.

So even though I’m predicting that Twitter will be the world’s second biggest search engine within five years, they have a long way to go to be a comprehensive, relevant, social-graph-based search engine.

Unless

“Someone will probably come around with a microblogging service that syndicates better & searches better than Twitter.” http://bit.ly/8AXYd

Wal-Mart of the Internet or World’s Second Biggest Search Engine? Maybe both. Time will tell.

In the meantime, I’d better backup my tweets

August 8, 2009

Life lessons a baby can teach you!

Filed under: babies!, believe!, life, the universe, and everything! — ifindkarma @ 4:20 pm

If you looked at just my last three posts, you’d think my life was nothing but down lately.

But that’s not entirely true. I spent July with my family. I went to Mississippi, and my nephew Zachary turned 3. Also, earlier this year my brother and his wife had their second son Nicholas, and later this year my sister and her husband will have their first daughter (and my first niece!), who remains to be named.

Next week my sister has her shower in St. Augustine, Florida, and I cannot make it, so we got her a teddy bear and a baby stroller and a card from Gibson that was so cute I wanted to capture it here…

Life Lessons Your Baby Will Teach You

  • Everyone needs to be held.
  • One smile can brighten a whole day.
  • Change is good.
  • So are naps.
  • Simple pleasures can bring great joys.
  • Comfort is more important than fashion.
  • Quiet time is precious.
  • Good health is a great gift.
  • The best things come in small packages.
  • Every day is an adventure.
  • Miracles do happen.
  • We never, ever stop learning.

Michelle with baby Nicholas

July 10, 2009

Unveiling of Tia Rifkin.

Filed under: life, the universe, and everything! — ifindkarma @ 4:20 pm

Today Mom, Dad, Aunt Gail, Tom, and I went to New Montefiore Cemetery in Pine Lawn, New York, for the unveiling of my grandmother Tia, who died a year ago. What follows is the service my mom prepared for her; we read all of the passages out loud.

She is Gone, by David Harkins

You can shed tears that she is gone
Or you can smile because she has lived
You can close your eyes and pray that she will come back
Or you can open your eyes and see all that she has left
Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her
Or you can be full of the love that you shared
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday
Or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday
You can remember her and only that she is gone
Or you can cherish her memory and let it live on
You can cry and close your mind,
be empty and turn your back
Or you can do what she would want:
smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

When I’m Gone, by Mrs. Lyman Hancock

When I come to the end of my journey
And I travel my last weary mile
Just forget if you can, that I ever frowned
And remember only the smile

Forget unkind words I have spoken
Remember some good I have done
Forget that I ever had heartache
And remember I’ve had loads of fun

Forget that I’ve stumbled and blundered
And sometimes fell by the way
Remember I have fought some hard battles
And won, ere the close of the day

Then forget to grieve for my going
I would not have you sad for a day
But in summer just gather some flowers
And remember the place where I lay

And come in the shade of evening
When the sun paints the sky in the west
Stand for a few moments beside me
And remember only my best

Sonnet 72, by John Donne

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee, 5
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell, 10
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Her Journey’s Just Begun

Don’t think of her as gone away,
her journey’s just begun,
Life holds so many facets,
this earth is only one,
Just think of her as resting,
from the sorrows and the tears,
In a place of warmth and comfort,
where there are no days or years,
Think how she must be wishing,
that we could know today,
How nothing but our sadness,
can really pass away,
And think of her as living,
in the hearts of those she touched,
For nothing loved is ever lost,
and she was loved so much.

Remember, by Christina Rossetti

REMEMBER me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Prayers

Shema Yisrael adonai elohenu adonai ehud
Baruh shame kavod malhuto layolum va-ed
Hear Oh Israel the Lord is one over all the earth.

Mah tovu oh ha lehah ya-acov
Mishcanotehah yisrael
How wondrous it is to dwell in the land of Israel.

Yimloh adonai layolum elohai-ik tzion
L’dor va-dor halleluya
God of the world who brings us to Israel

From generation to generation, praise the lord
Barhu et adonai hamvorah
Baruh adonai hamvorah layolum va-ed
Blessed is the Lord
Blessed is the lord forever and ever

Aleina lisha bayah ladon hacol
It is our duty to praise the Lord, God of all things

Mi camoha ba ayleem adonai
Mi camoha nehdar bar kodesh
Who is like the Lord, most high among the mighty?

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

For everything there is a season
A time for everything under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die
A time to laugh and a time to cry
A time to lose and a time to seek
A time to be silent and a time to speak
A time to love and a time to hate
A time for war and a time for peace
God brings everything in its time
Nothing is added, nothing is taken away.

The 23rd Psalm

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’ sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

(followed by The Mourner’s Kaddish)

Tia Rifkin

June 14, 2009

Failure, loss, and learning.

Filed under: believe!, life, the universe, and everything!, relax! — ifindkarma @ 6:14 pm

Joyce and I have reflected a lot in the last fortnight.

Among other things, I recall this line a month ago from yishimcgee:

I feel like I failed… I feel no relief.

I wish I could speed the assuaging of her pain… but I cannot. Relief from the feeling of failure — especially when it accompanies loss of someone or something you love — comes only with the passage of time. That’s been my experience.

So today as Joyce, Kenneth, and I pulled two dozen boxes to the point of physical exhaustion, I found comfort in this passage Joyce sent me from Will Wright in the New York Times:

When I’m managing creative people, the way they relate to failure is very important. Because there are certain types of failure that you really want to celebrate. I personally learned a lot more from my failures than from my successes. And if you look at it that way, then all my failures, you know, in some sense brought me to my larger successes, because I recognized why I failed, and I learned from it. And so, at that point, you can even argue that it’s not a failure. It’s part of your learning process.

And so, even with interns, it’s kind of interesting to see how they relate to failure. Does it motivate them, do they go a different direction, do they give up or do they learn from it and get some insight and add it as part of their tool chest? In some sense it is an award that they’ve earned.

One of the questions I will usually ask somebody when I am interviewing them is, what was your biggest failure? And what did you learn from it and what would you have done differently? Within a team setting, a lot of times we’ll go down paths and we’ll prototype things. And at some point we’ll realize it was a bad branch and we have to back up and go take a different branch. Those forays — as a team, we can celebrate those.

Joyce and I have lost a lot of people recently. Billy and Rajeev, to name two.

How am I coping? Mainly through physical exercise and recalling 90-year-old wisdom:

No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

I used to sweat every little detail about every little thing. Now I find myself regularly asking, “In five years, will this matter?

I used to packrat things from every era of my life. Now I’ve started to throw things away. I’m struck by a feeling that until I let go of some things, I have no room to grow. So I look to get rid of anything that isn’t joyful, useful, or beautiful.

I think that’s part of how I’ll get myself back to the right state of mind so I can have the vision to see opportunities again. As Richard the Wise Man once said,

Being in the right place at the right time is actually all about being in the right state of mind.

Richard Wiseman says that only about 10% of life is purely random; the remaining 90% is defined by the way we think. Our attitudes produce our luck.

Failure happens. Think of Thomas Edison, who tried thousands of filaments while failing to make a working long-lasting light bulb, “I never failed. I simply discovered 10,000 ways not to do it!”

So yes, unexpected death and feelings of failure happen regularly. They are an inescapable part of this world.

It’s hard to lose people and things. It takes time to internalize what happened and integrate it all as part of ourselves.

I will remember to breathe, and I will remind myself to be patient because healing takes time.

And remember to get outside every day. Because miracles are waiting everywhere.

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