Welcome to this week's edition of our Friday Quality Linkage column. Please enjoy this week’s collection of interesting and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee, find a comfortable place, and relax.
Photo: Nate Otto
Do You Have to Love What You Do? »
Jason Fried of Basecamp:
Attend enough startup conferences or listen to enough motivational speakers and you’ll hear one piece of advice repeated over and over again: You’ve got to love what you do! If you don’t love what you do, you might as well stay home. No less a giant than Steve Jobs famously told Stanford’s 2005 graduating class, “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
I don’t buy it.
3 Reasons Why Your Work is NOT Getting Done »
Chase Reeves of Fizzle, in his usual entertaining way, put together this 6-minute video about getting yourself over the obstacles of distraction and procrastination so you can actually complete tasks rather than simply writing down a vague wishlist of projects.
How to End a Movie »
If you like Tony Zhou's Every Frame a Painting video series or enjoy film analysis in general, you'll like the video above from the stylistically similar Now You See It YouTube channel. In it, the narrator (whose real name I haven't pinned down yet) examines some recurring techniques and themes in movie endings, and how these brief moments can alter our experience of a story for better or worse.
Movies spoiled: 12 Angry Men, The Silence of the Lambs, and Psycho. (Other movie clips are shown but do not spoil anything.)
Funny Amazon Reviews »
Amazon has compiled two lists (to my knowledge) of their funniest product reviews. I've highlighted a couple of them below:
From part 1:
- Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer — “As shown in the picture, the slices is curved from left to right. All of my bananas are bent the other way.”
From part 2:
- Wenger 16999 Swiss Army Knife Giant — “I had it in my hip pocket, then I fell down. When I got up, I was dead. Other than that, it's ok.”
Over at /r/AmazonTopRated, a few Redditors have added some suggestions of their own.
Illustration: James Gilleard
Illustration: James Gilleard
Geometric Landscapes »
Earlier this year, artist James Gilleard rendered these geometric, vintage-looking landscapes. It's easy to get lost in all their beautiful details, and they make great device wallpapers.
- Another great Behance gallery to check out: James Ryder's concept artwork for his company's upcoming game, Midnight Girl.
- Speaking of geometry and landscapes, back in January This is Colossal collected a gallery of gorgeous geometric drawings trampled in snow and sand by Simon Beck.
Photo: IBRoomba
Photo: Mike Bala
Long Exposures of Roomba Routes »
I recently happened across a Flickr photo group dating back to 2009, called Roomba Art, which features long exposures of LEDs attached to Roomba vacuums. Some very cool stuff in here.
Why Designers Love the Ampersand »
John Brownlee of Fast Company examines the history of the ampersand (&), why it became so popular, and shares some interesting facts about it you may not have heard before:
In the 19th century, the ampersand was recognized as the 27th letter of the alphabet, right after "Z," and taught as such to British schoolchildren. At the time, it was common to refer to letters that could also be interpreted as words as per se letters: e.g. per se "A" (as opposed to article "A"), and per se "I" (as opposed to pronoun "I.") Since it stood for "and," the ampersand was the third of these per se letters, so when school children recited their ABCs, they ended it: "...W, X, Y, Z, and per se and." Get a couple generations of kids slurring "and per se and," and you get the word ampersand.
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