Mactalk:
If you’re after a Mac or an iPod on the cheap, but good as new, take a look at the refurbished products – whatever you may think of buying a resurrected iPod or Mac, you can’t deny the value for money.
I agree. My Mac Pro and 23-inch Apple Cinema Display are both refurbished, I got my bluetooth keyboard from eBay, and everything works and looks perfect.
If you want to build a ship, don’t teach men to build a boat. Teach them to yearn for the wide and open sea.
РSaint-Exup̩ry
Up until a few days ago I was using TextWrangler, Transmit & Safari for all my web development. After I downloaded and demoed Coda to build Shawn Blanc {dot} Net everything changed.
Coda has opened my eyes to the possibility of an extremely easier CSS/HTML/FTP workflow. But I’m not sold just yet … if you know of an app you think beats Coda for my amature web-foo, please send me an email.
Today is my 26th Birthday. To celebrate I have launched Shawn Blanc {dot} net.
This irresistable weblog is officially opening today – July 2nd, 2007.
I installed Mint about 3 minutes before Announcing shawnblanc.net
To be a good leader you have to do what nobody else is doing even though everyone else wants to. You have to blaze the trail.
That Moment – when you are sitting right on the edge of something daring and scary and creative and powerful and perhaps wonderful… and you blink and take a step back.
That’s the moment. The moment between you and remarkable. Most people blink. Most people get stuck.
All the hard work and preparation and daring and luck is nothing compared with the ability to not blink.
Having the ability to make choices and follow through is what seperates the men from the boys. Those following are only trying to do what the someone else already did because they didn’t have the self-discipline to make it happen on their own.
Once you’ve blazed that trail you have to make a way for others.
The best leaders serve those who are watching. They do what’s best for everyone around. They’re servants.
We thought someone in our neighborhood was going patriotic on us when they recently painted their house white, the shutters blue and the trim red. But they painted the finishing touches to their garage today and looks like we were wrong – they’re Cubs fans.
I got this email today:
Shawn, I want to send you some awesome coffee from a nearby roaster. The coffee is called Peru a la Florida. It is an organic fair trade coffee. Would you like the beans or already ground? My family and I will be at IHOP for our family vacation in August. Do not forget that we want to take you to Chipotle and Starbucks next store for desert.
Thanks Marc! Whole please. And I never forget Chipotle and Starbucks.
John Gruber’s 1st Impressions of the iPhone
Overall day one impression: the iPhone is 95 percent amazing, 5 percent maddening. I’m just blown away by how nice it is — very thoughtful UI design and outstanding engineering. It is very fun.
This is why people read Daring Fireball — John stayed up all night putting together that article so it’d be fresh off the press for everyone.
TUAW’s First Impressions of the iPhone
After 15 minutes of hands-on ‘research’ in the Apple store these are my sentiments exactly.
iPhone on ebay is currently at $960.00. That is a lot of money – reminds me of the Beanie Babies. [link]
More and more folks are getting the mullet. Is it an attempt to push away from the norm and tread their own path? Thus, going in a direction other’s are not? But as it always happens, the rest will follow. And as they follow, those who were previously trend-setters now blend in.
In another attempt to stand out and push away from the norm they go back to a path that is empty. Thinking they are treading a new one. But they are not. It’s been done before. The mullet has been done before. For 15 years people made fun of it, and now they’re asking for it at their local salon.
What most people want is to simply stand out. Even if it means getting a haircut that is “business in the front and party in the back”.
Most people don’t like change. Even if it’s going to be good for them.
Tonight I’m helping a band set up their equipment and monitors. They travel with some relatively dated equipment, that used to be state of the art two years ago. They system we have set up at our facility is better, easier, and faster. But it’s new to the band. It would require a change of what their familiar with. They would have to try something new.
Instead of trying it out, they assume it won’t be what they want and they spend an extra hour to get their dated equipment plugged in instead of using the newer, nicer equipment that was ready and waiting.
If they had gone with our gear it would have saved them time setting up and time sound checking. Also, they would have had a better mix in their earphones than they have probably ever had, and they would leave here asking “how do we get ourselves that setup?”
Our traveling conference team was in this same situation last year. We could have saved ourselves the hassle of figuring out a new system, saved the money it cost to buy the new system and simply kept on doing what we had been doing.
Instead, we did the research, spent the money and now – 14 months later – we are spending one-third less time on setups and sound-checks when we’re on the road. We have more time to get coffee and read our Bibles.
Change is very rarely embraced. But it’s the big changes that are often the best for us.