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After a couple more hours, I am a little closer to completion on my boat painting. I don't really know what I can add or change, but I am not satisfied with it. Probably because I worked over each part too much. I'd love to be able to get it right with the first layer or two... but I went over this so many times that it lost all it's distinctive color I think. It's just a big messy mix of dull colors now.

Oh well. There's always next time. The first two photos are repeats from yeasterday's post. Picture 1 is where I stoped last night. Picture 2 is the original I am trying to copy, Picture 3 is my (finshed?) version from tonight. It doesn't look bad so long as you don't click on it.

I came across a great article called What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson, who has written several books about internet / start-up related work. I really liked Nudist on The Late Shift which I read a couple years ago, but I wonder if I would like it now. My ideas of work and career have really changed since then. I like to blame it on the French people I had been hanging out with, but I really don't think it is their fault. I am simply reverting to the ideas I once had that being happy with myself is more important that having an important sounding career and making big bucks. A couple years ago though, because it was new to me to think about becoming a "success", I tried it out and threw myself into business and internet career, and it was very short lived... only three years later I am reverting to my old slacker self.

Anyway, the article states the obvious that our lives would be much better if we lived our passions, rather than for what society considers "success". It makes me feel good, but that's probably because it's a feel-good article for lots of people who suddenly lost their big dot-com jobs. I doubt the article would ever have made it onto fastcompany.com two years ago.

Even so, it is filled with some obvious gems that I need to be reminded of sometimes... such as

The first assumption to get busted was the notion that certain jobs are inherently cool and that others are uncool.

I can't say that I seek out "cool" jobs, but I do feel like a looser if the job I seek is not considered "cool", even if I enjoy it more than people who do "cool" jobs enjoy theirs.

It turns out that having the ?financial independence to walk away rarely triggers people to do just that. The reality is, making money is such hard work that it changes you. It takes twice as long as anyone plans for. It requires more sacrifi?ces than anyone expects.

Hmmm. Easy for him to say, since he has no worries, but I have written before, somewhere on the bastsihnet, that I have no admiration for people who sacrifice to get to where they are, if they didn't even have to go there in the first place.

The shortest route to the good life involves building the confidence that you can live happily within your means ( whatever the means provided by the choices that are truly acceptable to you turn out to be ). It's scary to imagine living on less. But embracing your dreams is surprisingly liberating. Instilled with a sense of purpose, your spending habits naturally reorganize, because you discover that you need less.

This is something that luckily I think I don't have much of a problem with. I already have a hard enough time finding things to spend money on. With the exception of some expensive watercolor paper, or some new paints (I just got em today-yipeee!), I can't really think of anything that I have to spend money on. I have no need for a bigger apartment (although the one in Fujino was bigger -and cheaper). I don't need expensive food, except for a good Belgian beer every now and then, and I don't find great pleasure in going out and partying. The vacation I enjoy most is bound to be the cheapest, rather than staying in luxury hotels.

I was with someone once who looked longingly in the window of an expensive restaurant and said "One day I'll be in there." I felt so lucky that I would much rather be eating at the Ramen stand on the street, or better yet, grilling a nice Mackerel at home.

I guess that means I should be ripe for embracing my dream. No I just have to find it.

I should point out that the photo a few days ago of Tomoe looking longingly at the Coach bag was posed. She has no desire for a Coach bag, but that night we were in Ginza and stopped by the Coach store to get a feel for the side of Japanese culture we miss out on by being cheap.

There was a man in his 50s looking for a gift who asked the sales lady to show him something under 10,000 yen. She showed him a little pocketbook that was over 15,000. He thought about it a bit and asked to see a cell-phone strap, (which is just a cheap loop to put on your phone for style. They are about as valuable as a happy-meal toy) She showed him a strap, which looked like any other, except it said "Coach" in small letters. He says "Oh that's cute" thinking "It's the cheapest thing here, and if I don't get it for my 25 year old girlfriend she will find someone richer". He bought the strap for just over 10,000 I think. I wonder how many cell-phone straps his girlfriend has.

I don't really have to worry about money, but I do anyway because everyone else says I have too. But when I see a scene like the one in the Coach shop, I feel a little relieved that the reason they worry about money so much is that they have to feed their brand-goods and worthless crap habits. I don't have those habits, so maybe, just maybe, I don't have to worry so much about it.

I just talked to some 12 year old kid about that scrolling pic on the museum website, and he said it should be no problem to add that to a blog site and still retain all the userfriendliness it currently has. I told him "No way'!" How could a 12 year old kid know how to do something when a paid proefessional can't do it?

I have some extra phone straps from old cell phones. I can have 'Coach' embroidered on them few pretty cheap. I'll mail them to you, you sell them discounted on the street, we'll split the profits. People do it all the time in NYC.

I'm sure there is a way to dynamically update the flash movie with the new links that are created every time you post to your site, but judging on how much you spend on transportation, I don't think you have enough left to pay me to set it up.

If that 12 year old kid thinks it's no problem...and is going to do it for you for free... let him do it. Send me the movie when it's done and I'll put it on your site. There is no way it will retain the same "user friendliness" though.

The point is that other than looking neato... there is no reason to have it. Yet there are many reasons not to.

No reason to have it? That implies that no one uses the internet for entertainment. I, personaly, was entertained by it. And I believe a great website has great content AND is appealing. I purchase a lot of items on the internet. And I choose my virtual stores like I choose my regular stores - gut feeling. If a virtual store has a 'cheap' look and feel to it, I assume (maybe correctly, maybe incorrectly) that it sells 'cheap' items (as pertaining to quality, not price). So I stay away. This museum surely didn't look like a cheap museum to me.

Besides, if people aren't producing some wastefull applications like these movies, then they probably aren't advancing any technologies. Think about how many things are denounced as useless when we first see them (the whole concept of the internet was denounced by a lot of people, and still is). I'm not implying that this 'movie' feature will revolutionize the world, but maybe someone else will adapt it and use it for something else, and someone else will adapt that and use it for another application, and eventually this little movie program will evolve into a multi-media application that is hard-wired into your brain, bringing realtime re-enactments of historical periods of interest to school children everywhere, enabling them to learn at a rate that is unprecedented. How about that, Mr. Negativity?

With out some 'wasteful' technologies being produced, how will we ever make the transition from cars that burn dirty fossil fuels, like gasoline, to cars that burn clean fuels, like hydrogen? There will be some clumsy steps between the two. And a lot of people will scoff at them, denouncing them as useless. But, believe you me, they serve a purpose in the grand scheme of things.

If you judge the quality of a product by the snazzyness of the store you would think Luis Viton is more than just a plastic handbag.

I never implied that no one uses the internet for entertainment, but there is a division between entertainment and useful information. Having an entertaining movie is great. I am all for it, but putting the navigation into it is doing just the opposite of advancing the Internet It is taking it backward into the dark ages (a year or so ago) when people did things only because it was cool, not worrying about usability and accessability. In fact, not even thinking about who the audience is. Oh wait... people still do that.

I wonder what sites you shop on... I really doubt the ones I shop on (Amazon, Dell, ebay) would allow their navigation to be put into a flash movie... think of the sales they would loose... It might look cool the first time, but after that it is just plain annoying to me and many other people (assuming they can access it) After being annoyed twice I would be very hesitant to go back, and any marketer knows the value of an existing customer compared to a possible new customer that might be dazled by moving things.

If you want to do that to your site, I dont care because it is your site and you know your market best. But a museum is a little more important to society in general (no offence). It is the same as if they were to build the doorways too narrow for wheelchairs and say "screw cripples! I think this door looks cooler!".

There is a very good reason that there are regulations about government sponsered web-sites using "cool" technologies created in an age when the internet was young and people, like you (and me too then), were too caught up in the neato-factor, instead of technologies that are moving forward and actually advancing the Internet.

Any dreams about sharing information via brain transfers and what not will not be realized near as quickly if people opt for using propriatary technology like that. What is pushing the Internet forward and giving it real value are open standards that make (among other things) you site possible.

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