Ben Nesvig's Blog, page 7

What You Can Learn From Watching People Cross The Street

When I worked as a valet, I began to notice how people cross the street. It’s fascinating.

These are the types of people you see cross the street depending on time of day and where:

Waits for the signal before crossing, as cars trickle by.
Doesn’t even know the signal exists. They cross the street anyway and flip the bird to any car with the right of way.
Checks the signal to cross and then looks down the road to see if they could cross ahead of time. If there is a sufficient gap, they’ll dart ac...

One Second Every Day: May

While the app is a little clunky still, I love the concept of filming one second every single day. Quite amazingly, I don’t have a single clip of a cupcake in the month of May. Perhaps in the month of June, I’ll catch a glimpse of this thing called the “sun” which Minnesota has yet to see this year.

Do As I Say Not As I Do

The entire world revolves around story. With any behavior, there is a story to rationalize it, whether it comes before or after the fact. It may not make sense to anyone else, but the story that’s flimsier than a Swedish pancake makes sense to the person doing it. We want something and then develop a story to fit that narrative.

Where the story often crumbles like a house of gingerbread cookies is when you have to explain the behavior to someone else.

No One Else Does This

I ordered a t-shirt from TeeSpring recently. It’s a HackerNews shirt. I wore it today as an undershirt, making myself feel like some sort of nerded out Superman, who could have ripped off my sweater at any moment to reveal my shirt and type a few lines of code.

I forgot the shirt came from TeeSpring. A week or so after I got it, they sent me an email with the subject line: Pop Bottles

That isn’t an image in the email. It’s an animated gif. If there is a direct road to my heart, it’s littered wi...

The Greatest Cup of Coffee I’ve Had

I love coffee.

I go through phases with coffee. I used to make it at home in the standard drip maker, then shifted to ordering at Caribou Coffee w/ a breakfast sandwich, then switched to cold press coffee, then to mochas, and now back to standard coffee.

I can’t understand why someone would order regular coffee from a coffee shop. I understand if you’re meeting someone for business purposes or are stopping by while traveling or mooching wifi, but I’m more curious about people who get their morn...

Failing To Understand The Obvious

Some things that are completely obvious to me, others fail to understand. This also works in the reverse order with some things being obvious to others while I’m clueless (like why people choose to own cats).

I’m indifferent on roasts. What started as a way for old friends to poke fun at someone they enjoy and respect turned into a spectacle with people you barely know roasting washed up people, everyonedesperatelytrying to humiliate each other. They’re the type of thing you might laugh at but...

Timeless

“It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations— past and present— are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual’s hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millennia. Thus, we are up against the paradox that the individual who is more complex, unpredictable, and mysterious than any communal entity is the one nearest to our understanding; so near that even the interval of millennia cannot weaken our feel...

Thought Dump: Coffee, Montaigne, Dogs, and More

This is what happens when I sit down at the computer and type whatever is on my mind for about 20 minutes…

It’s the small things that make a big difference in life. The coffee shop putting one of those chocolate covered coffee beans on top of my coffee makes me happier than ordering the coffee itself because it’s “extra.” This act also drives me slightly nuts because they disperse thechocolatecovered beans so inconsistently. People hate inconsistency. Whether something is consistently good or...

How To Record An Audiobook Step By Step

A few months after I published my book in December of 2011, a reviewer commented that she liked my book, but thought it would be even better as stand-up comedy. This got my wheels moving. Then I saw Audible has a program (ACX) where you can either self-narrate an audiobook or hire someone to do the voice talent within the site. Either way, I was sold. I called up a friend who had access to a recording studio from a local band he works with. He said he was interested in the project and could g...

How Hot Dogs Are Made

The video below shows how hot dogs are made. I haven’t watched it and it’s likely you don’t have an interest in watching it either. There is a point here.

Who watches a video about how hot dogs are made? Throw out all of the people who watch out of curiosity and kids under 13 and you’d get people who want to know how hot dogs are made because they’re in the business of making hot dogs.

There is a big difference between the person who is interested in how hot dogs are made and the person who is...