Aku Aku

Where is Camp Tipsy?

CampTipsySatPhoto

It's on Lake Lagoda, AKA East Park Reservoir. Culminates on June 26/27

Google Map link.

Facebook event page.

"Boat" Building 101

In preparation for this year's Camp Tipsy, I've started collecting buoyancy at my office. We go through a bunch of Vitamin Water (and bottled tea, orange juice, etc) each week. According to WolframAlpha, each empty bottle of Vitamin Water provides provides 1.195 pounds-force of buoyancy (or 5.315 Newtons) .

Here's how to build boat for Camp Tipsy:

Step 1: Get a bunch of empty bottles with caps. The photo above is about 3 weeks worth.

Step 2: Build a big box. Like a coffin. 2x4s and plywood work fine. Angle the front a bit for that boat-like profile.

Step 3: Put the empty bottles in the box.

Step 4 (optional): Cut a hole in the box. It doesn't matter. As long as the bottles don't escape.

Step 5: add an outrigger for stability

Step 6: Toss it all in the lake. You've got "boat".

Product Dictatorship

I don't always agree with Arrington, but I think he's dead-right here:

Product should be a dictatorship. Not consensus driven. There are casualties. Hurt feelings. Angry users. But all of those things are necessary if you’re going to create something unique.

If you really want to innovate, you need to establish an outpost in uncharted territory. Then you can start with the UX/optimization work to polish and refine your vision. Lots of people in this industry today start with a weak wishy-washy vision and depend on constant user/AB testing and/or funnel optimizations to build their product. This might result in a successful business, but it bores me to tears. I'd rather fail big and fast with an outlandish vision than plod along conservatively towards mediocre success.

stones in a field

Excerpt from Don DeLillo's novella, Point Omega.

He said, "Matter. All the stages, subatomic level to atoms to inorganics molecules. We expand, we fly outward, that's the nature of life ever since the cell. The cell was a revolution. Think of it. Protozoa, plants, insects, what else?"

"I don't know"

"Vertebrates."

"Vertebrates, " I said.

"And the eventual shapings. The slither, crawl, biped crouch, the conscious being, the self-conscious being. Brute matter becomes analytical human thought. Our beautiful complexity of mind."

He paused and drank and paused again.

"What are we?"

"I don't know"

"We're a crowd, a swarm. We think in groups, travel in armies. Armies carry the gene of self-destruction. One bomb is never enough. The blur of technology, this is where the oracles plot their wars. Father Teilhard knew this, the omega point. A leap out of our biology. Ask yourself this question. Do we have to be human forever? Consciousness is exhausted. Back now to inorganic matter. This is what we want. We want to be stones in a field."