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My friend lexx invited me to show my desktop and participate in another meme series.
My desktop is always as empty as possible. I can’t concentrate on tasks if I see it full of icons and folders. It looks like there are leftovers everywhere.
So here it is.
(Click on the image)
This bird is called mountain caracara (I have no idea what this means) and the photo is taken at Machu Picchu in Peru. You can find the original photo at Flickr in a pretty good resolution.
Now I’m really curious. What’s on your desktop sugarenia?
Consider the term “working environments”. It includes many aspects among them the people you work with, the people for whom you work, an office, the time schedule, how much you earn etc. You get the idea.
Now add a parameter: working environments in the Web universe. Things change. They could change dramatically. It doesn’t have to do with requirements or the people (especially the people). It has to do with certain virtual aspects which join the game. For example such companies don’t provide real touchable products but services. They exist as long as an Internet connection is up. And the list goes on.
What makes the difference
In my humble opinion what makes the real difference is the plain fact that the Web brings a different culture which should be respected and adopted by the companies. But the term “culture” can’t be measured with numbers and it is difficult to be accurately defined as well. So I will try to be specific.
Some years ago people who worked in Apple, apart from having Jobs yelling at them, they were fed with the moto:
Think different
People in Apple were asked to create different products and most probably they had every single reason to do so, being reinforced the culture of the company among others. How many companies ask their employees to think a different way?
The development of the IT utterly changed the way people act and work. Recall people with funny t-shirts and goatees who are the best among their peers. Such people could never carry their culture to different working environments such a real estate corporation. I like this, to be specific, I love this approach. Being serious is a completely different thing than looking so.
Oh it’s about the people baby
Web culture is like a wave. You select to stand on it and let it take you ahead or go to the bottom.
You can be a CEO who feels proud when you see your name in your business card and the next thing you do is to install software which spies your employees. Even if you have no single reason to do so. Even if your employees are no more than 10. Even if you don’t provide them the basics.
No, I don’t hate CEOs, I hate narrow-minded people and especially narrow-minded CEOs. I agree that not all workers are fair, but who selected them to work for him? I could never accuse someone with less power when much of his fate is determined by people who own power.
You know it, I know it, terrible things happen everyday to workers and terrible things happen to IT companies as well. I could mumble and grumble but I don’t like it anymore. It makes you worst. However I do want to talk about the flip side of this coin.
The flip side
In 37signals, one of the most important companies in the Web industry, they choose to move on with different workplace experiments. They promote 4-day weeks, they fund their employees’ passions and they provide them credit cards.
In elephants & ants they finish their week with some beers. In Happy Cog they play Wii to relax. Do you think these people are idiots? I think they are smarter than us.
It takes knowledge and guts to act so. I am pretty sure such companies invest to their people and they want them to be happy there in order to bring better results and never lose them. It’s so simple that we tend to forget it all the time.
Several times in the past bloggers took their guns in order to protect their rights against violation caused by real or so-called intrusions. Most of the times there wasn’t a logical reason behind their actions. What is different now is the Greek government’s intention to bring a real law against bloggers.
Anonymous or not? (Again)
In this website I wrotetwice about anonymity. To put it again, I ‘d say that I certainly stick to people who use their real name when writing, not because I hate anonymity.
I do because most of the times anonymous are plausible to tell lies and act without thinking in order to become popular among their peers and practice some authority they think they deserve. Some people select to give their real names out and this way they can be easily attacked by others. Practically these people are vulnerable.
The nonsense
Now the Greek government aims to control all blogs. The new law will help the government access bloggers’ ID easily or at least easier than ever before. Bloggers can be accused anytime for not obeying to what is good for the government. Politicians and authoritarians, people who admittedly have no idea of the Web culture, people who are afraid of technology want to shut some mouths because people in blogs have too much freedom.
I may not like liars who put the blogger mask on, I may be disgusted of such practices but laws like this are going to make things even worse for those who want to control blogs. There are several reasons why Greek people don’t trust government’s intentions, especially when it comes to the Web.
I am pretty certain that this law is going to be a disaster for the government. Not because Greek bloggers are going to act as a team and change things. On the contrary, the more mouths they want to shut the more blogs are going to emerge and outrage against them.
Once more I am really ashamed of my country’s government and laws but I am optimistic and I say that such an action will bring them a lot of troubles. At least I hope so.
A website may be a presentation of who you are or what you do. However it can also be a whole new experience like building a house and live in there. It doesn’t have to do with the tools one uses but with the way he approaches this experience.
Think of a house, any house. It has rooms for different activities e.g. the kitchen which must be practical or the living room which must be cozy. Each house has also a different style e.g. classic with heavy, old-fashioned decoration or modern with vivid colors etc. We do want people to pass by unless we feel ashamed of it. The same happens to our website. Let’s make a metaphor. I am not talking about designing a website which looks like a house. I am talking about the context.
I like websites that say a lot about the people who own them. I like to see who are these people, what they do and what they have to say to me. The way you smell the taste of a host in real life you do in a website. “I like this sofa, I feel very comfortable in here” or “Oh what a kitsch kitchen… imagine the bathroom”. Aren’t you familiar with such thoughts? We make them all the time and the same happens in the Web.
Bringing down the myths
We do visits websites for the people who own them. (The same happens for houses by the way.) We have learned to create a certain type of icon of a person and we stick to it. Do scientists tell dirty jokes in their bedroom? Do poets read silly magazines at their front yard? Do businessmen cry in their kitchen after a bad deal? You bet.
I ‘d love to share such moments on the Web. Don’t get me wrong, I ‘m never intrigued by the secrets of others. I do respect the personal part of our life. What I am talking about is the human part of our every day routine. Someone who selects to share some of his life, a part he decides to share, remains respectful. A mature person who isn’t afraid of letting others come around him is someone who deserves even more respect and probably my money, if I need him in the future. But, watch out, I will buy your story only if it is a true one. Fake profiles are easily distinguishable.
Web tools and limits
The links we all have in our websites is an equivalent of talking about our friends. And it is only the beginning. Do you listen to music? Show it. Do you take photos? Again, show it. There are a lot of tools out there which can help us tell a story. Take a look at Last.fm, at Flickr or at Twitter. There are lots more. You see I love a good story. Just a story, not being isolated, not becoming a Web whore. You put the limits.
The Internet is useful and dangerous. The same is the nuclear power. It should take some thought before you press the “Submit” button and some more before you turn on your computer. It’s up to you. So give me a story, a good one. Tell it form your virtual home the way you tell it when you invite me home. You ‘ll become my everlasting hero.
The best moment for this website ...are actually two. Smashing Magazine selects porcupine colors among hundreds for its 404 error page and for its favicon. Great news and a lot of traffic here.
A blog which made me read it again and again: The personal website of Andy Rutledge. Great posts about what is to be a professional Web designer and fight for it. Hey, Mr. Rutledge, you did exceptional work and thank you for it. It is the absolute bookmark.
The best: (with no further explanation) Jeffrey Zeldman. I hate him and I envy him, that’s all.
The best book I read:The God delusion by Richard Dawkins. It’s a light romance written for people who try desperately to find the love of their life. No?
The strongest thought:“Ambition! You must want a big success and then beat it into submission; you must be as ravenous to reach it as the wolf who licks his teeth behind a fleeing rabbit; you must be as mad to win as the man who, with one hand growing cold on the revolver in his pocket, with the other hand pushes his last gold piece on the ‘Double-O’ at Monte Carlo.”
From the book of Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own, via blog.pmarca.com
Some random thoughts
2007 was a year of constant changing. A new home, a new car and a new Mac are enough but not the only changes in my everyday routine. Time passed so fast that I let many things uncontrolled and this is the not good part of the story.
I owe some trips, preferably outside Greece in order to change my view and create new life feedback. (Do I write nonsense here? I think so.) I also want to visit Athens again and again, it is my hometown anyway and I never get bored of it.
This website did change my life in ways I could never think of when I begun. It doesn’t have to do with how many visited it only, but who they did. I can’t provide details right now but I think you know what I mean. porcupine colors grows and becomes the center of my activities and work. Stay tuned.
The only thing I wish for myself is to remain healthy and I wish you the same dear readers. Last year I said that the best is yet to come. Now I say that the best is here but is not over. In fact this is only the beginning.
Anyone who drives in a city knows well how difficult it can be. Traffic jams, double parked cars, people who believe they own the roads and most of all the ones who aimlessly toot the horn can make me leave the car in the middle of the road and go away. I don’t do it because I care for my car.
Well, the previous paragraph isn’t quite accurate, since the first thing that comes to my mind is to rush and smack them. However, I know no violent solution is a real solution actually. That’s why I discovered the horn solution.
Imagine a car where each time you toot the horn the sound of it has the same intensity out and inside of it. Do you think it’s unbearable? I don’t.
When exactly someone needs to use his horn? When he’s to avoid an accident or car crash. Each time I needed to use my horn there was so heat around that I never heard the sound of it. If the sound of the horn was to be heard inside of the car as well there would be no problem at all.
Tell me another case where a driver toots it: when he sees the green light and the first of the row hasn’t started yet, when he teases a girl who walks beside his car, when he plays around with his new shiny thing, when he’s waiting for his spouse to come to the car and she ‘s still at the dressing room etc. In these cases it would be really good to hear this piercing sound each time he places his hand onto the wheel and pushes it.
Thanks to this simple idea our lives would have been a bit better.
Some time ago one of the most important Web designers, Derek Powazek, talked about his secret: a bitter moment concerning his wife’s abortion. Heather, his wife, did the same. Powazek justified his expose as a way to “a way to exert some control over a chaotic universe”.
Of course such secrets are common things in Web communities, among people who go out and talk anonymously. That’s another story anyway.
From the moment I first read this post until now one thing is certain: I can’t judge this action. I many times tried to put myself in his shoes and I always failed. Once or twice I might got closer to the moments when you select to talk like this as an effort to leave bad things behind. I know I couldn’t do the same easily.
Other people do the same thing during a TV show. Do you think it’s different? I do. Because Derek and Heather did it the way they wanted to. Not while being torturing by spotlights, cruel hosts and all the other secret TV laws. The more I think over it the more I believe that exposing your life with dignity gives you power to go on.
Usually a million thoughts come along with such events but it is impossible for me to add just one more. I can only wish them the best.
If you want to be taken seriously, be serious with yourself.
I don’t disagree. Not at all. The real question is what makes you earnest. Our every day life is full of fallacies which make us want to behave as adults should. Unfortunately, most people confuse earnestness with a fake tendency of looking earnest.
I am really curious to learn how people who dress formally day by day feel. Do they really like their appearance? Would they exchange their ties with a cool t-shirt?
There are plenty of ways which can fool us and make us behave like “mature people” should: our dress style, the magazines we read, the hardware in our kitchen, our shampoo are some of them.
I always believed this is not the serious part of life. What makes one earnest is the particular way he takes his very happy and his very sad moments in his life, the way he treats people, his professionalism etc.
People who try to look earnest without being so are people who hide things consciously or not. People who can do bad things at bad times. The worst events of human history were triggered by people who looked serious.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like people who follow their own style, no matter what. There are people who are born to follow a business dress code and they look great in it. This is not what I am trying to say.
What I really want to say is that as long as it regards me, I need to take myself not so seriously sometimes. If some people believe that this makes immature then I am. I can’t do anything to convince them. It’s OK.
In the first photo there is Pluto from Eurodisney in Paris. When I went there I missed my chance to take a photo of my own. So I borrowed one from KatmaiAD in Flickr.
In the second photo there is one of my new t-shirts. I bought it from cottyn recently. Isn’t it very serious? (The guy in the photo isn’t me of course.)
This post is definitely not a guide to success for a weblog, it is about something I neglected: write well and write when you want to. It doesn’t matter whether a text is technical or not, it doesn’t matter whether you have a big audience or not and it doesn’t matter whether you write long or short texts. If you write well, it will be appreciated by your audience. Quality requires great style of writing as well.
It’s true you can’t easily concentrate to writing when there are so many things spinning around you. For this website things are somewhat a bit more tricky since it’s bilingual. When I started with it I used to write first the English version of each post and the Greek one came second. By time I saw, since English isn’t my mother language, I got constrained. So now I begin with the Greek text and I kind of translate it in English.
Obviously when you write in a foreign language you have to cross check your syndax and grammar and this takes time and energy. I can’t say I am a good writer but I try to. The strange thing is that in English is easier for me to convert the messages into words and keep up with my style.
The mystery was solved between cooking and cleaning the house. I discovered I started to lose my appetite for good writing. By the time I realized it I started caring once more. I now have accepted that coming back to writing takes time and training and I am pretty eager to make some good efforts towards it.
So I start with re-writing the main areas of this website. I ‘ll do it when I feel to. At the same time I ‘ll try to write better posts as well. I may start with a few stumble steps but I will make it in the end.
I always believed this is not the serious part of life. What makes one earnest is the particular way he takes his very happy and his very sad moments in his life, the way he treats people, his professionalism etc.