Ideas for 30/10/2013

1) The James Franco smile works well with senior citizens. What? Old people seem to relate to the crinkled eyes. They say hello back, quite cordially too.

2) Calculate HSC scores accurately. How to do it? I think boredofstudies.com.au has one, but I really want one that hits the nail on the bat – take in consideration scaling, school rank, year-by-year performance etc. The only thing you can never calculate is the adolescent ego.

3) iselect for Universities: Compare and categorise from location, courses, entertainment (bars, night life) and of course % of attractive people on campus. Because the last would totally work and I’d have to pivot into campusfriendfinder.com

4) Crowdsourced platform/app to determine where parking officers are. Great hyperlocal app, tightnit community – until they officers start going undercover and sending bogus facts! (Or we get shut down)

5) Invest time in finding/learning a good, lean calendar app that syncs with any.DO. Any.DO is my GTD tasks app – it’s amazing, but I wish it had an in-built calendar feature that was as lean and simplistic as the app itself. Every other calendar app is needlessly bloated (though I don’t think they meant it).

6) Mobile app that allows you to mind map ideas easily and efficiently. Obviously not a big pain point here, can sell with a higher price point but damn I would love to find/dev an app that can elucidate my ideas in visual form…

7) The Airbnb of tutors & mentors. Maybe they don’t want money in exchange.

8) Mobile app that gives you real life data on where your overseas package is during the delivery cycle. Because I’m getting quite anxious about mine. Long distance does the heart great pains.

9) Really understand what Elliot Hulse meant by ‘Breathing into your balls’. Great philosopher – I really need to work on my nerves getting the better of my judgment.

10) For vanity reasons, do 8 minute arms every morning. While we’re at it, breakfast menu: 4 eggs, a banana and lots of pepper. The fact that I start my day swole and filled with natural Oxycontin could be revolutionary.

Ideas for 29/10/2013

1) Need an hour of silence every day to just think of stuff and sort my head out. Found out my brain works like The Flash. Too much things happening too quickly. I need time to just sit my ass down and collect all my thoughts

2) Earphones block out my brain to the world. I’m a terrible multitasker and even worse at absorbing the environment when I’m listening to anything. In order to get ideas, I have to get curious about my surroundings – can’t do that when I’m rapping along Jay-Z all the way down the road.

3) Need to research more on the NBN. More of a task, but I found I know next-to-nothing about the biggest technological initiative in Australia.

4) WHAT ARE MY FAVORITE THINGS IN THE WORLD? Jesus, Comics & Pop Culture, Fitness and Entrepreneurship

5) LEARN HOW TO PRIORITISE THE IMPORTANT THINGS AND ZERO TASK THE HELL OUT OF IT BEFORE MOVING ON. None of this “I’ll do a little bit here, stop, look at my facebook or check my messages, and then go back to it.” When I start something, I finish it. Doesn’t help that I have two monitors, a smartphone and an iPad on my table daily.

6) Airbnb for personal trainers! But the pain-point isn’t strong enough! Not until the world truly depends on a personal trainers to save them from extinction!

7) Heavy Duty socks for martial artists so they don’t get split skin/blisters on the balls of their skin. Whether it’s on the mat, carpet, grass, eventually pivoting on the the balls of your feet so you can do 100x kicks Bruce Lee style will net you some mean feet sores. RND will involve finding a product that compresses feet (prevent pain from accidentally slapping the other person’s knee/leg when kicking) and internal non-blister soles (because if you wore socks while doing this, you’d get shredded also)

I think I hit seven.

Ideas for 28/10/2013

1) Uber’s app (drivers, not customers) has such an awesome interface. So much so that other taxi and service provider apps that require a subcontracted party are starting to use it. The Maps screen and simplistic work triggers are something that can inspire a better version of the Mechanio mobile app, currently under in development

2) Accept there are somethings that you cannot change no matter how hard you will it; find that peace – because it’s actually a good thing. You don’t need the baggage of yesterday or the anxiety of tomorrow #pretentiousphilosophy

3) Waking up before 8AM may have it’s benefits. Such as getting another hour or so worth of reading done.

4) Find the best Car Magazines/books/manuals/forums to learn. So far: motor, wheels, fast fours. Need to talk to more people who are passionate in cars

5) Twitter is full of ideas. Using keyword searches such as “I wish I had” “I just paid someone for” “is the worst product” “is a horrible company” “has a terrible website” “my favorite website” “does anyone know how”

6) Summarise 10 ideas at the end of every night on your blog. I’m doing that now. Update Reading list. Need an overhaul.

7) WILL PEOPLE PAY FOR SPERM SAMPLES IN SYDNEY? (question from twitter – thought it’d be a messy startup idea) Now I’ve ended up researching places where I can donate sperm. They get reimbursed pretty well. Need to look for complications in that. Like:

WHAT DO I DO AFTER I’VE GOTTEN 30 VIALS OF FROZEN SWIMMERS. HOW DO I GIVE IT TO FAMILIES I NEED? SHOULD WE AUCTION THEM? HOW DO I GET PASS LEGAL REASONS (IT’S ILLEGAL TO PAY FOR SPERM), AND MOST IMPORTANTLY HOW DO I DO IT WITHOUT GIGGLING LIKE A GIRL AND MAKING CRASS JOKES?

8) WE NEED A WONDER DRUG THAT CURES HANGOVERS, INSTANTLY. OR MAKES YOU IMMUNE TO DRUNKEDNESS FOR A PERIOD OF TIME. WE SHOULD CALL THAT ONE ‘HERO DRINK’.

9) Buy two less comic titles every week and buy a proper book off Amazon Kindle or BD. The corollary is that I practice leanness in my life and am enriching my other interests which I’ve neglected pretty badly thus far.

10) Aleph is possibly the most badass name for a son. Until mum says it. It sounds like ‘Ah-lepp’, or Alex. It means Alpha in old Hebrew, which means ‘Alpha’, and it’s basic glyph is an Ox Head. I’m setting up for success here.

The Untold Origin Story of Coffee and the Ultimate Nutella Sandwich

As a writer, I try to write things that are meaningful and usually have some sort of value to readers. Not today. I’m just going to tell a story about a fantastic culinary accident.

There’s a story somewhere of a bloke named Kaldi, who herded goats all day, way back in the 9th century. One fateful day, he discovered that one of his goats could to backflips after eating beans out of a bush. Curiosity got the better of him and he decided to try some. He couldn’t do any backflips, but he felt more productive and got more things done from his forager to-do list.

He managed to pitch his new found supplement to the local holy man, who was a bit of an entrepreneur when not exorcising demons and making runes.  Sadly, the holy man wasn’t too impressed with the idea, and in his close-mindedness, flung the beans into burning fire. Out of the ashes, the all to familiar waft of ground coffee rose, but for the two, it was like a magnificent Phoenix rising.

Both men knew they were on to something, so they took the burnt beans, ground it up and dissolved it into a cup of hot water, and then sold it to everyone they knew. There you have it, Kaldi and the Holy Man, the world’s first Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.

Years later the two sold their invention to some prominent investors at the time. Due to misdemeanors by the investors, their stocks became more diluted than a long black with too much water, and became broke, penniless and out of a world changing drink. Generations later, the Kaldi male decided to rename his clan to ‘Zuckerberg’.

So that’s the story about the invention of coffee; as told by Mayans and Wikipedia, anyway. I felt like sharing this because one of my favorite foods in the world is an accidental combination of two different products: Nutella and crunchy peanut butter on toasted pita bread.

Despite the atrocious calorie count, I eat it and have been eating it on a regular basis. I’m all for watching your kilojule count and being health conscious, but sometimes you just gotta have your daily serendipity moments.

Other deliciously odd variations of nutella:

– Nutella and celery
– Nutella and any biscuit on Earth
– For the daring: Nutella and Weet Bix. Yeah, I did.

I am like Mr. Kaldi. That is all.

The obligatory meme.

How to Hack your Brain to Being Happy: 21 Days of No-Complaints.

10:45 AM, Today: I wake up to the sound of a small circus coming from my iPhone. It’s a few metres away. Realised I’ve downloaded a new alarm clock app and today was the testing day. Bells, whistles, horns and all sorts of animal noises are now blaring loudly. My brain still wants to sleep.

I say many four letter words that I shouldn’t repeat, get up from my bed to turn the alarm off. In order to do that I have to play a stupid minigame which involves shooting haphazardly moving ducks on the screen, with crosshair is reversed and the sound is getting unbearably loud. My brain is in no state to process this. I curse some more. The phone drops from my hands.

I notice a woolen bracelet dangling on my left hand. It’s got garishly hippy colours.

“Oh, crap.” I say to myself, remembering the significance of the bracelet.

“Now I’ll have to switch it to my other wrist.”

3:45PM, Yesterday: I come across one of my favorite bloggers talking about a new type of thought experiment. I’m all up for self-improvement, so I read on. The post talks about the movement of anti-complaining.

“Will Bowen, a Kansas City minister who had recognized that word choice determines thought choice, which determines emotions and actions. It’s not enough to just decide you’ll stop using certain words, though. It requires conditioning.

Will designed a solution in the form of a simple purple bracelet, which he offered to his congregation with a challenge: go 21 days without complaining. Each time one of them complained, they had to switch the bracelet to their other wrist and start again from day 0. “

You can read the rest here.

I am inspired.

I have been complaining a lot about fickle things lately, and can feel it taking it’s toll in my headspace. Work has gotten me to the point where I see practically everything critically. This is the perfect solution. The advantages were numerous; this could be a great exercise in verbal discipline, because I generally speak my mind. Most importantly, show gratitude and appreciation of things small and large, which I know I take for granted most times.

1:11AM, this morning: I decide to give myself solid rules if I want this to succeed. After all, failing to plan is planning to fail. It takes roughly 21 consecutive days to build a habit, so the bracelet (I have my own, because I’m not one for waiting 5+ weeks the official rubber bracelet, and symbolism is whatever you want something to be) and the wrist switching create powerful channels to your cognitive state on how to prime something to become a habit.

What is a complaint?

Will describes it as “to express pain, grief, or discontent”. Part of my day job involves me expressing discontent. I’m going to feel like I might as well stay a mute for the next 21 days, which friends have suggested.  Therefore, I’m going to follow Tim Ferriss’ definition: “describing an event or person negatively without indicating next steps to fix the problem”. 

Which means, in order for the bracelet to stay on, I will have to think quick and come up with a solution. Path to positive thinking and mental productivity? Yes please.

Other qualifiers: “unconstructive criticism,” “profanity”, “surly humor”, and “gossiping”. 

The bracelet will stay on on most reasonable occasions.

7:00PM, Today: As of now, I’ve had to swap wrists roughly eight times. I didn’t even do anything particularly stressful today either. I’m still optimistic that this will have a positive effect on my life, so I soldier on. After all, the first day is the hardest.

If you decide to take up on this thought experiment, let me know. We’ll compare notes and then complain about how har-AHA NO.

My anti-complaint bracelet. I might as well make it stylish.

‘Killshot’ Review: When Joseph Gordon Levitt Got his Redneck Game on.

Killshot (2008), by John Madden

A few years ago, there was a rumor going around that Joseph Gordon Levitt was marked to play the villain The Riddler in Christopher Nolan’s last Batman movie. This is how I pictured he’d look in  the potential film:

Artwork from Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo’s ‘Joker’. The Riddler here was clearly inspired by Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Unfortunately, we all know that in ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, JGL was not The Riddler, but (I’m not even going to say it for the ONE person in the whole world who hasn’t seen the film). Tonight’s review of ‘Killshot’ reminded me of how close that could have happened.

Enter the lives of Carmen and her on-again, off-again husband Wayne (Diane Lane and Thomas Jane). They are having slightly more marital problems than your average  couple from Neighbours. They cross paths with Blackbird, played by Mickey Rourke. He’s an American-Indian mob hit-man looking for redemption. His young sociopathic protoge Richie Nix (Joseph Gordon Levitt), commit a crime that Carmen and Wayne are witnesses to. Blackbird can’t have none of that, so he and Nix spend the majority of the movie hunting down the couple while avoiding the mob, who he has beef with.

We get to see some quality acting chops here. Rourke, freshly resurrected from ‘The Wrestler’ has an accent which stems from a colorful pallete of stereotypes. Fortunately, his acting is much better and the majority of the movie you end up cosying to his isolation, guilt and redemption. Joseph Gordon Levitt pivots between cocky young-gun to redneck serial killer at a breakneck pace, it’s really enjoyable to watch. The mentor-mentee relationship between the two is probably the biggest highlight of the film. Diane Lane is a character study on the modern day independent woman, while Thomas Jane is her accessory. These two are almost as forgettable as the mafioso introduced in the backstory.

Based on the novel by Elmore Leonard (who wrote cool stuff like ‘Jackie Brown‘), one wonders what could go wrong. Unfortunately, aside from the two main characters, everything. We have a lot of elements here: the mobster seeking redemption, a failed mafia mark, a couple rekindling their relationship through witness protection, and even a short sub-plot involving Nix’ girlfriend (an Elvis-loving Rosario Dawson). All these concepts are squashed into 95 minutes, never allowing anything to fully materialise or conclude, making me feel like there was a lot of messy editing in the cutting room.

Moreso, ‘Killshot’ fails to deliver impressively, many other movies have delved into this territory before and have executed better. As the movie progresses, it borderlines between ‘a little interesting’ and ‘been there, done that’. You could make a game counting the number of stereotypes and/or cliches that zoom by before the credits roll.

The movie moves at a pace which feels like the lovechild of an action-thriller and a daytime soap. There are implausible gunfights, then moments of implausible relationship-rekindling, rinsed and repeated until the culmination of the movie. The only aces in the hole here was the unintelligent shenanigans by the rambunctious Richie Nix. Call it over-acting, but Joseph Gordon Levitt really stole scenes here.

Watch only if you are a fan of his.

But admit it, the similarities in the visuals between the illustrated Riddler, earlier in the post and say, that picture right about above us are ASTOUNDING.

My Rating: C

Killshot (2008)
• Directed by John Madden
• Written by Hossein Amini, based on the novel by Elmore Leonard
• Starring: Mickey Rourke, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Diane Lane
• Runtime: 95 minutes

‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Review: Spoiler Free

The Dark Knight Rises, (2012), by Christopher Nolan

One word comes to mind when I sum up my viewing experience that is The Dark Knight Rises: Ambitious. Ambitious in the sense of complex multi-layered storytelling of Inception, budget-blowing stunts, incredible set pieces, and some stellar acting. Then meticulously lay it all out through the course of a nearly three hour epic.

Rises is clearly inspired by Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and the story arc KnightFall. Writer Jonathan Nolan, uses the material, but makes it feel fresh and somewhat unpredictable.

We see our Caped Crusader 8 years after the events of The Dark Knight, getting his reclusive Howard Hughes on instead of running around playing superhero. Gotham’s still busy: it’s getting progressive about crime and Batman is nothing but a past memory – Nolan not only expertly connects last film, but shows repercussions of Harvey Dent’s aftermath.

Your regular cast is there, which is more or less what you’ve seen before. Christian Bale adds ‘eccentric’ to his polarisation of ‘growly’ and ‘celebutante’. Michael Caine plays his best hand as the ever-paternal butler Alfred Pennyworth. Veteran actors Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman don’t see enough screen time at all.

Tom Hardy channels part Joker, part William Wallace and part Darth Vader in his performance as Bane. The burly terrorist is menacing to watch and plays Batman’s opposing element very well. Joseph Gordon Levitt’s character gets an enjoyably surprising amount of screen time. I’m somewhat ambivalent about Anne Hathaway, she can do the femme fatale very well, but there’s a ‘chick-flick’ vibe in my psychology from typecasting. Marion Cotillard embodies her role very well, especially toward the end act.

The first act sets up the inclusion of these characters among other things. It’s hard to keep track of everything that happens, especially when they lead to payoffs later in the film. The sheer volume and pacing of things makes you feel like you need to watch it again because you’ve missed something. It doesn’t feel cohesive at first, and maybe a little convoluted. In Nolan fashion, there’s a layer underneath the narrative that gets into the psychology of the viewers. The runtime is long, and I felt that the script could have been leaner.

There’s a pressure cooker feeling when watching Rises. The villain is established early, and his erosion of Gotham is something of a slow burn. While it’s not as frenetic as The Joker, there’s a creeping feel that something is wildly escalating. About the midway, the location changes into the perfect setting for Batman to bring out his biggest toys to date, and some of the largest non-CG stunts seen this year in blockbusters. The estimated shooting budget was over $250 million, and I can definitely appreciate the scale here. Remember the semi-trailer flipping scene in the last movie? The ante is upped: this is wanton carnage meets creativity at it’s finest.

I won’t speak of the ending, but it certainly pleases casual goers and the fanboys. Expect to hear many speculators of the future of the franchise as you leave the cinema, you know you’re going to be one of them. Mr. Nolan, thank you for all you have done in the last 8 years. You’ve shown Hollywood that superhero movies can be a craft and not be a means to just sell toys. Like I said, ambitious.

My Rating: A-

Dark Knight Rises (2012)
• Directed by Christopher Nolan
• Written by Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer, Jonathan Nolan
• Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman
• Runtime: 185 minutes