Colin Wright's Blog, page 42

If You Don’t Feel Stupid

If you don’t feel stupid half the time, you probably aren’t trying hard enough.

See more quotes from my writings and talks.

The Internet of Things

This piece was originally featured in Let’s Know Things, a free, irregularly published email in which I discuss a topic and do my best to explain it concisely in historical, present, and future context.

A piece in WIRED magazine focusing on the company IFTTT (If This, Then That) discusses a larger trend, and one that may become mainstream sooner than originally predicted.

The trend in question is often referred to as The Internet of Things — a secondary internet (either independent of the inter...

Writing the Words

I never thought I would write for a living. I spent some time when I was younger cobbling together news analysis pieces for a few newspapers, and I went through a period where I wrote a lot of poetry and solemn lyrics, performed on guitar at coffee shops in front of uninterested audiences, but I never saw it as anything more than a hobby. Something I did alongside my real craft. Something I did for fun.

Of course, it’s still something I do for fun, but there’s a lot more to it than that these...

Opportunity Costs

Every choice you make means millions of paths not taken. Big or small, your decisions ripple outward, impacting everything else you do. What’s more, the opportunities and experiences you leave behind in favor of others have a sort of impact, as well: by not coming to fruition, they become ‘what if’s’ and ‘could have beens.’ It’s amazing how much non-events can sway actual ones.

I like to imagine what might have happened, had I made different choices than I ended up making. If I’d stuck with pa...

Bootstrapping Art

I’ve always wanted to do creative work. From the moment I could hold a crayon, I was lost to the artsy lifestyle.

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to gain support for your work. Especially in the beginning, it’s an uphill climb. It may be that no one else will ever appreciate your creations the way you do; not even enough to help you pay for the time and materials required to create them.

This shouldn’t be an excuse to quit doing what you love. You’ll just have to borrow an idea from the wor...

Harmonious Independence

It’s said that if you want a relationship to succeed — to last — you have to make sacrifices.

I strongly disagree.

It’s important to bend when dealing with other people on any level, sure, but that doesn’t mean you should break. If you have to give up what’s important to you in order to be with someone else, it’s very possible you’re with the wrong person. This applies to business relationships, friendships, and more-than-friendships equally. Why on earth would you want to give up what makes yo...

Coffee

I decided to start drinking coffee the other day. I don’t like coffee.

It’s not that I can’t appreciate the drink and what it represents culturally. Coffee is thought to have been a major boon to the Industrial Revolution (if not the fuel for it), and the smell is lovely. Coffee shop culture is appealing to me, and most everyone I know who does good work has one coffee minimum per day.

That being said, I grew up working at a bookstore with an espresso bar. From age 14 until 19, I saw regulars c...

28 and 4 Years Later

Today is my 28th birthday, and I couldn’t decide whether to write something touching and meaningful, do some kind of list of things that I’ve learned over the years, or talk about how this project has evolved in that time. So I opted to do all three.

I started Exile Lifestyle about 4 years ago — April 19, 2009 — and if you look back at my earliest posts, they’re pretty rough. My voice hadn’t really developed and I spent a lot of time those first months trying to figure out where my sweet spot...

Social Contracts

As I walk along the sidewalk, I can afford to daydream.

I’m able to do this partially because of laws that say cars can’t drive on sidewalks, but also because we — as citizens of countries with governments that have traditions and folkways — have common goals that are best achieved by doing what we can to avoid harming each other.

This social contract is never officially signed, but it’s very real. Every time we stop at a red light or stand in a queue — despite there being no law-enforment offi...

Design is a Passport

Design, to me, is a way of looking at the world.

It’s often said that good design is invisible — that it presents the intended message without calling attention to itself — but to a designer, it’s that so-called invisible design that gives you the biggest thrill. Seeing creative work done well is a distinct pleasure.

Design isn’t invisible and it isn’t flamboyant: it’s exactly what you need it to be in a given moment. It’s art, it’s math, it’s discipline, it’s chaos. Depending on the goal, desi...