Weekly Thing #181 / Grit, Collectible, Crypto
I’m Jamie Thingelstad, and this is the Weekly Thing. One of the delights of sending this email is hearing from you! Hit reply and say Hi…
Some things from this week…
- It has been Spring Break for Minneapolis schools and the kids have been enjoying great weather, kicking a soccer ball around, and getting ready for a return to in-person school next week.
- I did a fun team challenge coin using a Non-Fungible Token. This is fun tech to play with. Ethereum gas prices make everything too expensive though.
- I’m happy to be back into casual grilling weather. Steaks on Big Green Egg, Smashburgers on the Flat Top Grill, and a good smoking session for a Pork Shoulder.
"If code scripts machines, media scripts human beings." — Balaji Srinivasan on Tim Ferris Show #506
I’m cooking up a new project that the whole family is going to be involved with. If you'd like to get a quarterly newsletter all about books and reading, subscribe now to Reading Things and expect the first issue sometime in April! 🙌
Must Read
grit: A multitree-based personal task manager
I found this a fun project and a delightful README.
Grit is an experimental personal task manager that represents tasks as nodes of a multitree, a class of directed acyclic graphs. The structure enables the subdivision of tasks, and supports short-term as well as long-term planning.
I’m not terribly sure how my primary task manager OmniFocus manages data, but I assume it is some typical SQL like structure. This project attempts an entirely different approach. Most of it seems to end at the same spot as any other task manager with root nodes (projects) and other nodes (tasks) attached to those. But it gets interesting when they get to Links and Pointers.
One aspect where Grit differs from other productivity tools is the lack of tags. This is by choice—Grit is an experiment, and the idea is to solve problems by utilizing the multitree as much as possible.
How do we organize tasks without tags, then? As we add more and more nodes at the root level, things start to get messy. Running grit ls may result in a long list of assorted nodes. The Grit way to solve this is to make pointers.
It is cool that you can create a pointer that doesn't point to anything as a placeholder for a future decision.
Unrelated from the data structure, seeing command line fu like this makes me wish OmniFocus had a CLI interface.
$ for i in {1..35}; do grit add -p textbook "Chapter $i"; done
What a cool project. 🤓
How to Value an NFT (or any Collectible) - The Contrarian Mindset
A lot of the conversation around NFT's has been around art, but that is just one use case. I find the use of NFT's as a form of collectable much more interesting. This article is an interesting read on determining value for a collectible.
In all my years of helping to sell collectibles, I came to the conclusion that collectibles derive value from a set of three qualities: brand, scarcity, and market. I believe it is those same qualities of brand, scarcity, and market that determine the value of physical collectibles that will also govern the value of NFTs. The following is an exploration of what I think makes any collectible valuable and a framework for how to value collectibles, including NFTs.
His conclusion is positive on the value of NFT's.
I think NFTs are here to stay, and I think that they have application well beyond speculative art. NFTs could offer a powerful mechanism for creators to monetize music, videos, and writing as a new type of DRM. They may even build in a future cash flow mechanism that allows owners to profit and would allow investors to value them more like securities. Royalties are already a robust industry for music. NFTs could democratize that across many other industries.
Fundamentally they are a tool or system that allows for proof of provenance. That capability can be used in many ways.
Great mural of Minneapolis' street car history.
Apr 4, 2021
Minneapolis MN
Recommended Links
Albums 4.0: A Must-Have App for Music Lovers - MacStories
I had never heard of this app before but I definitely fall into its target audience. I still prefer to listen to an entire album versus cherry picking individual tracks. I downloaded Albums and immediately found the way it intelligently surfaces albums in my library very helpful. I like the little touches like asking your birthday and then grouping albums for high school, college, etc.
Technology Guilds at SPS Commerce - SPS Technology
Over the years I've come to appreciate even more that your company and team is also a community. We've taken this all the way to having an entire community track of activities. One attribute of those community activities is that they engage our team as a community, so reporting relationships and titles are not relevant. These have been great forums to share knowledge and best practices laterally through the community, just like they do in technology communities at large.
Fixing Zoom calls: Looking better and feeling better | Seth's Blog
I have highlighted a number of video conferencing setups, and this one hits on the usual things like using a DSLR camera, however this is the first time I've seen a beam splitter used this way.
The alternative? A beam splitter.
These are used for teleprompters. It’s basically a piece of fancy glass, at an angle, on top of a monitor or screen. Behind the glass is the camera.
If your someone like Seth Godin that likely does a lot of group presentations remotely this makes sense, but it turns the whole setup into a highly specialized thing that is only useful for video conference. For some, that may be worth it.
Introducing Clubhouse Payments - Clubhouse
This makes total sense for Clubhouse. I would imagine we will see private events soon that will only be available to people that pay to enter. I did find it shocking that Clubhouse says they take no percentage of the payments though.
The person sending the money will also be charged a small card processing fee, which will go directly to our payment processing partner, Stripe. Clubhouse will take nothing.
That may be a wedge that only applies to paying a creator directly?
Building the world's fastest website analytics - Fathom Analytics
Thorough overview of the process Fathom Analytics went through in evaluating new database solutions, going through the buying process, and finally planning and executing the data migration. SingleStore sounds like a very impressive solution.
Apple’s C.E.O. Is Making Very Different Choices From Mark Zuckerberg - The New York Times
This is a wide ranging interview with Tim Cook. Swisher pushes him on Apple's position vis-a-vis Facebook. I’m a Cook fan. He is incredibly thoughtful, and direct in his comments.
Apple ProRaw + Adobe Super Resolution = Amazing! – On my Om
Computational photography is marching forward faster than light and physics can possibly. It is unclear to me how tiny sensors in phones are going to topple what larger sensors with high-quality glass can, but the progress is incredible.
Balaji Srinivasan on The Future of Bitcoin and Ethereum, How to Become Noncancelable, the Path to Personal Freedom and Wealth in a New World, the Changing Landscape of Warfare, and More (#506) – The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss
Am I really recommending that you listen to a 3h 43m podcast? You could watch Godfather II, one of the best films ever made, in less time. Yes, but Balaji Srinivasan is an incredibly interesting thinker. Calling this interview "wide ranging" seems obvious given the duration. You can break it up into a few listens, but I guarantee you will end it with some new questions and thoughts to sort out in your mind. 🤔🎧
Animated choropleth of vaccinations by US county
I so love this post from Willison, the creator of Datasette.
My build_database.py script then iterates over the accumulated git history of that counties.json file and uses sqlite-utils to build a SQLite table:
Years ago I made a project called Wikiapiary that collected data from thousands of wikis. It used versions wiki pages to track a lot of data about the sites. Willison's use of git to track versions of JSON objects and then capturing the time-series data by marching through the revision history is a relative of that same wiki method. I just love the simplicity and beauty of this. 🤘
1729 - Learn Skills & Earn Crypto
New newsletter from Balaji Srinivasan that has a novel concept of giving away $1,000 in BTC for tasks on each issue. Added to the newsletters I subscribe to.
The "Barisieur" Coffee-Brewing Alarm Clock — Tools and Toys
This just looks really fun, and how great would it be to wake up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. This video review is very detailed, and hits on the key question though "I don't know how I feel about drinking coffee in bed." I like her idea of using it on your desk and having fresh brewed coffee at the ready cup by cup.
How I’ve improved my remote presentation setup | Lara Hogan
Another writeup on improving your setup for presentations. Another use of a beam splitter. Hogan also has the Elgato Key Lights which I've been wanting for a while. I also thought it was cool that she used a removable wall mural instead of a green screen background. Now I’m off to order the key lights. 🛒
Writing and Publishing | Feel The Byrn
I like Byrn's reflection on the value of writing, blogging, and what it has brought him. The whole concept of writing to clarify your own internal thoughts resonates so much with me. I've had concepts in my head that I've been unable to write about, the issue there is a lack of a clear thought. Something that writing brought to the table.
I've had a lot of people ask me how to go about writing a blog or a newsletter. I always say the same thing, you have to start by starting. Byrn has some similar thoughts here on writing and what it can bring you. I write mostly for myself, and love that I can share that via various means so others can get value as well.
Journal
Ready to put the steaks on the Big Green Egg! 🔥🥩
Called up Bevcomm today and upgraded our DSL connection at the cabin to the fastest that we can provision. Hopefully this resolves the lag I've been experiencing in Zoom.
Incredible night for a fire on Cannon Lake.
We watched The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tonight and it was a fun remembrance of reading the book when I was a little kid. Everyone enjoyed it. It is an epic story.
FYI
wETH | ERC20 tradable version of ETH
Wondering what Wrapped Ethereum is? This answers it quickly. TL;DR: It is an ERC-20 compliant version of Ether.
The Perfect To-Do System Is Not Just Around the Corner: inessential
Simmons' speaks truth here. Perfect is a mirage, agile and flexible is the thing to look for in a task manager. I change it all the time. It flows with me.
Frenzic: Overtime – Coming Soon to Apple Arcade • The Breakroom
I was a fan of Frenzic 13 years ago when it first came out. It was an awesome game. I'll be excited to see what Iconfactory has in store for this new release!
NFT Canon - Andreessen Horowitz
Robust set of links to serve as a complete reference for all info NFT.
Novel HIV vaccine approach shows promise in "landmark" trial
HIV still affects 38 million people per this article. It would be amazing to see a vaccine for HIV become a reality.
Fortune
Here is your fortune…
You feel a whole lot more like you do now than you did when you used to.
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About
I once created a wiki to track thousands of global wikis and store the number of users, pages, edit and files over time. It records the extensions used and is the most comprehensive data system of the wiki ecosystem. The project, called WikiApiary, is still being run by people in the MediaWiki team.
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Recent Issues
- Weekly Thing #180 / Tetris, Ever Given, Backstory
- Weekly Thing #179 / Nemawashi, Transformation, Geldingadalur
- Weekly Thing #178 / Reverse Meetings, OODA Loop, Hockey Goalies
- Weekly Thing #177 / NFTs, Roblox, HEY World, Exchange
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