ben lowery

Great essay by Mike Johnson today, called Feet are Optional, about bending the rules and his vision of what it takes to be a great photographer. This bit really struck me:

What these straight-A kids wanted was for me to set the terms of their success for them. They wanted me to set up the hoop so they could jump through it for me. They wanted to be told how they could be certain of success. It was what they encountered everywhere else. But what I wanted was for them to set up their own hoop, or, better yet, look askance at the hoop and go, “Nah, not today,” and wander off somewhere and see what they could find. The fact is, you need to fail a lot if you want to succeed as an artist. That’s why the kids who were used to failing weren’t fazed by my classes: they weren’t threatened by the idea of falling flat on their faces 90% of the time. The good students definitely were.

Sounds rather… familiar.

I have finally given in and gotten a crackberry.
Not the original crackberry, but a crackberry none-the-less. I’ve already got it hooked up to sync down my gmail and $job email. The IMAP client is fantastic; I just wish Outlook’s were nearly as good.

The first problem I ran into was a borked sync of contacts, calendar and tasks from Outlook. Thankfully, other have run into the problem and solved it. If anyone ever runs into errors that look like this and have Verizon’s wireless sync installed, the fix is to go into Wireless Sync -> Settings -> Connection -> Advanced -> Enable other sync apps.

Here’s the error log for future reference:

OK Media
Outlook Calendar
The attempt to open the database failed.
Date Book application database is not found. Please invoke the Date Book application on the handheld once and re-synchronize

OLERR:05-0001
OLERR:0D-0004
OLERR:0D-0001
– Not Synchronized
Outlook Calendar synchronization failed

OLERR:15-0002

OLERR:06-0001
Outlook Contacts
The attempt to open the database failed.
OLERR:02-0001
OLERR:0D-0004
OLERR:0D-0001
– Not Synchronized

Outlook Contacts synchronization failed

OLERR:15-0002
OLERR:01-0001
Outlook Tasks
The attempt to open the database failed.
OLERR:10-0001
OLERR:0D-0004

OLERR:0D-0001
– Not Synchronized
Outlook Tasks synchronization failed

OLERR:15-0002
OLERR:0F-0001

Through Mark Pilgrim I found my new favorite extension for Firefox. Unlike the Greasemonkey version, it doesn’t appear to cause Firefox to leak memory like a sieve, which is nice. Great for moving through pictures on just about any photoblog with a next / previous link.

So the wife talked me into taking one of those personality tests, threatening divorce if we turned out to be incompatible. Little did she know I turned out to be an INTP, one familiar with the darkside! Now she cowers in the corner, worried what I might do to her. That’ll show her.

Though the ladies do like power… Especially dark power. hmmmm…

Slow day?