Roel van der Ven

This is a story about the coolest astronaut in human history.

If you haven’t heard of this man yet, his name is commander Chris Hadfield (53), who was the first Canadian to walk in space. Helped by his two sons, he harnessed the power of social media to give millions of people access to space, to the incredible views he was seeing and share basic scientific experiments like showing that you can’t cry in space.

He slowly turned into something like a space celebrity, amassing a huge crowd on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit while doing an IAmA.

A space recording

After someone coined “Space Oddity” on the Reddit thread, commander Hadfield tweeted three days ago:

With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here's Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World. http://t.co/DMnMc8qC7f

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 12, 2013

Here’s the video in it’s full glory:

Summing it all up

• There was an astronaut in space doing a Reddit IAmA.
• He shared beautiful and unique views of the earth using social media.
• He had his two sons help him set up and manage his social media accounts and was very transparent about it.
• Using social media, he educated people about the effects and brutality of space.
• He sung Space Oddity in space and made a video of it.

I am overwhelmed. My inner geek, music lover and people admirer were all crying in trinity. Hats off to commander Hadfield!

PS: If you want to learn more about commander Hadfield check out this and this Guardian article.

I have been reading and writing a lot the past 8 months when I came across Noah Stokes’ birthday lists. Inspired by these I figured I could highlight some learnings myself. Scanning through my scribblings I tried looking for the ones that appear to me as important or beautiful. These are probably lessons that have shaped me into who I am, it will be interesting to see how this will look a year from now.

Below is a list of 29 things in no particular order that made the cut.

• Reading is good. Everyone should read more. There is always too much to read and too much to think about, but that is a great thing.
• Whenever you want to introduce something new to your daily rythm, make a commitment to six weeks. Just keep at it for six weeks every day and see what happens afterwards. You’re setting a goal which is not too far away, but once you’ve reached it you’ve made the potential habit an actual habit.
• The other person is never the problem.
• We’re all in our own movies. Communication might get you far but you can never guess how another person perceives things. You’re in your movie and the other is in his/hers. We’re all conditioned by society and our legacy, but this only makes it easier to align our perceptions. You can never be sure you’re completely understanding someone.
• Drink more water.
• Idling is important. Working hard can be fun if you enjoy your job, but you still need to disconnect on a regular basis to maintain a healthy balance. We are not build for infinite endurance. Working on pet projects is not idling.
• Lean into the Pain. Pain is a signal that you’re pushing your boundaries. If something hurts, confront yourself with it and do it again. It will make you stronger.
• Music is all about the experience. Recorded music is just a thin rehearsal of something that has been performed earlier. A live performance generates incredible amounts of energy that inspire and fuel people.
• Reading is brainwashing. Whatever combination of letters you are looking at, your brain will try to parse it. Reading a lot about a certain subject will likely influence your personal development.
• Love is brutal and therefor interesting. The highs are incredible and the lows are painful, but we should not shy away from them. The pain is making us understand more about ourselves, which is all we can do. Everything else is just acceptance.
• Trying to understand love is futile. While Plato might give you some useful metaphors, it will always be bigger and more complex than we can wrap our heads around.
• We need to let go of the idea of always being productive. This is impossible. Try working in small bursts with a high focus. The Pomodoro Technique is an interesting method for this. The quality of our work will also increase when we’re relaxed.
• By trying to understand more of the world, we will probably feel like we understand less. This is one of the great and humbling things about life.
• Alcohol seems like an obligatory addiction of Western society. You will only accept this when you take a break from it and realize how interwoven alcohol has become in our social interactions.
• I love being able to live in a city because I choose to do so, not because it just happened to me.
• A todo list is helpful, but a tada list works better for your mood. Collect all the things you’ve done on a list and reflect on it at the end of the day. You’ve done a great job.
• If you don’t believe in yourself you will never change.
• Try to collect parts of lyrics from songs you like. It will train your ear to listen to music better and you will build up a small collections of beautiful sentences or word combinations.
• We can change our behavior overnight but changing our character is way harder.
• “Just slowly, calmly, harmoniously keep up, keep up, keep up, keep up, keep up, and it will come to you. Don’t hate it. Don’t be frustrated about it. Just keep going.” – Yogi Bhajan.
• Find friends who do work in an entire different field than you. It will result in more interesting conversations and helps you stay curious.
• Buy things at markets or greengrocers. Groceries with a barcode are probably not very good for us.
• Playing video games is actually addictive. It will likely mess up your sleep rythm.
• Spend more time in Rio de Janeiro next time. It’s a great city.
• We are way more vulnerable than you think. Be more careful and listen to your body and gut. This is difficult when living at large. Stop and reflect often.
• Greet kindness with kindness. Even if you don’t feel comfortable, an act of kindness deserves kindness in return. Always.
• Books and magazines (e.g. printed media) will not go away. They will find their niches and keep on being printed, but will just grow more expensive.
• Working with great people is a privilege. Being able to turn these people into friends is an even greater luxury.
• Traveling is good, but we should be aware of Curse of the Traveler. Traveling should be balanced with time you spend in your home. We need time to ground and build persistent connections.

Disney Animation recently published a short film called Paperman. They put the whole thing on Youtube for us all to watch Update: the original video is gone, here’s a trailer:

Continue reading “Paperman”

Lately my (online) reading experience has been improved a lot, partly because of Quote.fm. I noticed I was storing a lot of good articles for later use, but wanted to share these with people but at the same time keep a log of what I’ve been reading and what good stuff I came across.

To keep track of what inspired me or what I simply marked as “awesome”, I’m going to keep a log of interesting articles. I’m not set yet on a rythm for this, but here’s a first attempt.

• Employees leave managers, not Companies – An eye-opening view on how managers affect their coworkers happiness in work life.
• A short lesson in Perspective – An amazing read on things that matter in our lives, but in a context that I know: in the worlds of creative agencies, workaholics and self-deceit.
• Holden Caulfield’s Goddam War – The background story on Catcher in the Rye: how J.D. Salinger kept the writings on his body while storming the beaches of Normandy. Truly inspiring, how an artists works changes by the changes of the artist itself.
• Amen! (D’Angelo is Back) – The story of where D’Angelo has been for the last 11 years, and how he’s coming back. Quoting Angie Stone: “It’s not a little bit of God in him. It’s a lot of God in him. Sometimes when you have that much power, Satan works tenfold to break you.”
• The Book that Changed my Life – I’ve been going through Aaron Schwartz’ blog since his passing, some articles are incredible. Here he writes about ‘Understanding Power’ by Noam Chomsky, how the book sheds a whole new perspective on the world and how it crushed him.
• Why we took Cocain out of Soda – How Coca Cola used to be an “Intellectual Beverage” but was soon to become a problem by “The negroes of the South”.
• The Indiepocalypse – We all know the music industry is broken, the Indiepocalypse is upon us. But how did that happen and is it possible for upcoming bands to become successful without signing to a big label?

Enjoy!

The answer turned out to be a bit tedious so I tried fixing that. Say hello to Viewportmarklet:

How does it work?

The tool is build around the assumption that you need an actual letter m on your canvas in the base font size. The width of that letter m is what the browser will use as 1 em.

When working on a frontend project I found myself struggling with the sites current viewport width in em and in pixels. To save myself and others from demotivation problems I build a small tool that helps you to wrap your head around em usage.

Check out the repository on Github.

Help me improve it

I know the code is not great but for now it’s helping me a great deal. If you see any improvements or have any feedback, fork away or let me know in the comments!

I like music a lot. I enjoy listening to it, let it grow on me, let it define me for that moment. Maybe I build up a connection to a certain song because of my mood, or because of the memories I’ve attached to it over time.

Discovering music has changed a lot the last years. There are great online services helping you find amazing gems from all over the globe. But I realized one thing: this whole thing around timing and newness of music is slowly fading away. It’s not important anymore if you discover this band right after they released their new EP, or if you heard that song on the radio the first day it aired.

Continue reading “Organizing your Music Discovery”

Of course you remember Primer. That film from 2004 that would keep you puzzled for days. After nine years Shane Carruth is back with a new project, Upstream Color.

Continue reading “Upstream Color”