Digital Parsimony

Here’s what Google looks for in an employee:

… analytical reasoning. Google is a data-driven, analytic company. When an issue arises or a decision needs to be made, we start with data. That means we can talk about what we know, instead of what we think we know.

… communication skills. Marshalling and understanding the available evidence isn’t useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions.

… a willingness to experiment. Non-routine problems call for non-routine solutions and there is no formula for success. A well-designed experiment calls for a range of treatments, explicit control groups, and careful post-treatment analysis. Sometimes an experiment kills off a pet theory, so you need a willingness to accept the evidence even if you don’t like it.

… team players. Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need to work well together and perform up to the team’s expectations.

… passion and leadership. This could be professional or in other life experiences: learning languages or saving forests, for example. The main thing, to paraphrase Mr. Drucker, is to be motivated by a sense of importance about what you do.

These characteristics are not just important in our business, but in every business, as well as in government, philanthropy, and academia. The challenge for the up-and-coming generation is how to acquire them. It’s easy to educate for the routine, and hard to educate for the novel. Keep in mind that many required skills will change: developers today code in something called Python, but when I was in school C was all the rage. The need for reasoning, though, remains constant, so we believe in taking the most challenging courses in core disciplines: math, sciences, humanities.

Google’s advice to students

You can’t hide it, no matter what your resume says, smart companies like Google will challenge your learning and test you for what they’re looking for. To me, it sounds like a great idea. If you wan’t someone to think “outside of the box”, give them a real business problem and ask them how they’re going to solve it. This supports my theory about math. Math teaches people logic, so if someone’s very good at math, they’ll be very logical. The rest, sciene and humanities teach you creative thinking and communication, degrees that are applicable to almost every job. Major in one of these subjects, and you’ll have quite the universal degree, applicable to many job markets.

I always thought that ghost towns were just small villages abandoned by people. As in, not too interesting. It turns out that there are tons of these towns and some have very fascinating stories. Below is Gunkanjima, Japan, known as the forbidden island. It was once one of the most densely populated areas in Japan, but ever since oil took over coal as the top source of energy, the whole island was totally shut down.

The Forbidden Island

In 1959, population had swelled, and boasted a density of 835 people per hectare for the whole island (1,391 per hectare for the residential district) – one of the highest population densities ever recorded worldwide. As petroleum replaced coal in Japan in the 1960’s, coal mines began shutting down all over the country, and Hashima’s mines were no exception. In 1974 Mitsubishi officially announced the closing of the mine, and today it is empty and bare, with travel currently prohibited. The island was the location for the 2003 film ‘Battle Royale II’ and inspired the final level of popular Asian videogame “Killer7″.

[10 Most Amazing Ghost Towns]

I always liked stories about an ordinary Joe doing something extraordinary.

Matt is a 31-year-old deadbeat from Connecticut who used to think that all he ever wanted to do in life was make and play videogames. Matt achieved this goal pretty early and enjoyed it for a while, but eventually realized there might be other stuff he was missing out on. In February of 2003, he quit his job in Brisbane, Australia and used the money he’d saved to wander around Asia until it ran out.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
Check out the whole story at Where The Hell is Matt?, it’s quite amazing. I can only dream about traveling the world like him.

This is a comparison of the same picture taken with and without a Hoya 58mm PL-CIR polarized filter on the my Olympus Evolt E-510 DSLR. It costs $20 and changes a picture that looks like dirt to something that’s ready to be put in a magazine. I applied no post-processing at all to these two photos… This polarizer is worth every penny.

Kottke.org had an interesting video on his site the other day. A trap-jaw ant jumping 8cm in the air. This is equivalent of a human being jumping 40ft. This little bug set the world speed record for the fastest body part and fastest self powered strike.

So Eric and I are considering the start of Duo LLC, our way of making some extra cash and eventually freeing ourselves from the companies we work at. I really want to model our company like 37signals. More importantly, I read their manifesto and now want to create one for Duo as a list of guidelines to keep our business a happy place. I can safely say that I’m becoming obsessed with simplicity and design. Like 37signals, I want to provide a service to people that they really need, in the simplest and most cost-efficient way. I enjoy making people happy, and I think our company will be able to do that cheaper than the competition. As Duo, we simply want to help people for a simple price, and however far this goes, I want to keep it that way.

I finally had some time to post up the pictures from the tips-up event that Brittney’s dad arranged to support our troops. I had a great time at the event and was surprised how long it took to edit the pictures. Some turned out good, some not so good, I posted about one out of three I took. Not bad, here’s a good one that I liked. The troops seemed like they were having a good time and definitely enjoyed all the free gifts they got that day. The event was light-hearted and fun, and a good way to thank the guys for their bravery and courageousness.

The rest are on my flickr gallery.