For reasons better left to your imagination, at 2130 last night I found myself with an urgent need for new white pants and a new white shirt. This is not a metaphor.

My sense of urgency compelled me to buy from trusted providers. The late hour required that they be available online. So Zappos for the pants. Lands End for the shirt.

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As you have by now no doubt guessed, Zappos pulled through. Overnight shipping, no extra cost.

Lands End though — oh Lands End! $27.95 for overnight shipping and no mention of precisely which night it would ship.

What an interesting contrast.

TL;DR — I rant about a minor irritation and end by proposing three solutions, the third of which is my favorite.

Earlier today I had an interesting Twitter conversation (here) around paying for blog content.

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I ended up paying a couple of bucks, and I feel OK about having done so, but it’s a weird situation. Essentially, you, the listener, consume the product and then decide whether to pay for it. Or, you, the subscriber, setup a single podcast “subscription”, where you pay monthly for something you could get for free.

See what I mean? It feels weird right?

And then it starts to feel uncomfortably weird when I hear the suggested subscription amounts. For example, I’ve heard Julie Klausner of How Was Your Week suggest $20 a month.

Yes: $20.

The price point just feels wrong. It feels chump level wrong for me, as in if I were to pay what they asked I’d feel like a chump. But hey — there’s nothing wrong with them asking. There’s nothing wrong with them suggesting. And it certainly isn’t the only potential price point she suggested. Btw, Julie, I really appreciate the often great conversations you post.

The basic model is proven — it’s the NPR model — but the individual podcast has the disadvantage of not being able to amortize their production costs across a variety of content. One show has to justify the whole subscription.

Ok, solution time and remember #3 is my favorite.

#1 One idea is a button built into the iOS podcasting app that let’s me give $1 (or whatever) to an individual program after I listen to it. (The tip jar pattern. ).

#2 Another solution would be for podcasters to hold their content for ransom — not release a new episode until they have received $X from their existing listeners. (The kickstarter pattern.)

#3 A third would be to find a way to group podcasts together, have me make one subscription to all of them, and then somehow dole out subscriber revenue to participating producers. What would be interesting here is a reddit style interface where I could vote episodes up and down based on my preference. I pay $20/month no matter what, but I can control who gets a slice of that pie by ranking what I’ve listened to. Then only the top 10 (for example) episodes get paid. (No idea what to call this pattern. )

Ads is another model but I gotta be honest here: I literally have never bought anything based on a podcast ad. Never. I doubt I’m alone.

Anyway, it’s an interesting problem that I’m sure some enterprising soul will tackle with passion. Until then, I’ll continue to feel awkward for not paying (usually) and (slightly) outraged when someone asks me to.

Ok more on this obsession.

The inner curtain is described as 200′ on a side, 35′ high and 12′ thick. Towers would be 50′ tall. 35′ high is ~29 courses tall, 50′ is ~41 courses.

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I can’t help but wonder at how imposing this would have seemed to the average 13th century Welsh villager.

This is going to take a while.

The other day I mentioned I’ve been thinking about putting too much effort into recreating a fictional 13th century castle — in Lego.  I’m guestimating roughly 75k 2×4 bricks, but the real question is this: how much money would that cost?

As an experiment, I stopped by the Lego store and bought a large pick-a-brick for $14.99.  It included 185 1×2 bricks and 188 1×3 bricks.  If you figure the inner curtain would run roughly 200 a side, with inner and outer walls, and allowing for extra bricks on each course for the gatehouse and towers, it would be a minimum of 2000 dots a course. At 35′ tall, it would need 30 courses, and excluding any type of filler brick, those 60,000 dots would run roughly $1,000.  This is only for the external and inner walls of the inner curtain and excludes filler brick or other buildings.

Filler brick for the curtain — making up the majority of the inner and outer curtain — could be any color, so I could do things like buy 100 pounds of used bricks and not worry about the color.  Price per brick appears to be $5-10 per pound.  How many bricks would I get per pound?  I don’t know.

Base plates, assuming a 7×7 grid of 48×48 base plates, at $15 each, would be ~$750 dollars.

And given that Aberwyvern is built on a rocky outcrop, I’d probably need to build up a rock and show a river, too.

I am not yet deterred.

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Just for fun I’ve been doing some back of the napkin style estimation on what it would take to build the castle featured in “Castle“, Aberwyvern, in Lego.

Assuming a 1×1 brick is equivalent to 1 sq foot, and that each brick would then be 1.2 foot tall, I’m guessing ~75k bricks. This assumes ~50k bricks for the walls and ~25k for the rest of the buildings.

The outer curtain, for example, is 300′ to a side, 8′ thick and 20′ tall. That’s ~15k 2×4 bricks. In the real world that would be a bit over 8′ square. It would require 49 48×48 baseplates.

Wow.

Now that would be a project.

Edit (Monday 2/11): could I really use 2×4 bricks? Each of those would represent a near impossibly heavy 2′ wide, by 4′ long, by 1.2′ tall rock.  9.6 cubic feet or about .27 of a cubic meter.  If a cubic meter of rock weighs on the order of 2500kg, each of those innocuous looking 2×4 bricks would be the equivalent of about 1,500 pounds (more or less).  Even a 1×3 brick would likely weigh about 500 pounds, so figure a 4-6 man crew working it into place.  Now, admittedly, when one is planning on recreating a fictional castle using 21st century toy plastic blocks, unassailable realism does not need to be our first concern.  Still.  Something to think about.

It’s often difficult to separate the how-it-is-now from the how-it-was-then.

We carry shadows of prior reality around with us and use them to guide our day-to-day decisions, even if that perception of reality is no longer accurate.  This is inevitable in a world which changes as fast as ours.

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The challenge is that reality hangovers cause problems.  The bigger the reality hangover, the bigger the problem (as this scientifically accurate graph illustrates).

As mere humans, our challenge is to remember the past without being governed or overly constrained by it.

This is one way I think about “beginner’s mind,” but I should point out I am far from immune to this problem.

Completed a StrengthsFinder 2.0 survey early in January and it’s interesting to see the results.  The core idea of StrengthsFinders is that people are happiest when doing what they’re naturally good at.  You take a questionnaire where you answer questions about your preferences, and at the end you get your “Top 5 Themes”.

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I came to look for something like StrengthsFinders two ways.  First, I spent quite bit of time in December and over the holidays exploring ideas about what makes people happy.  There are a ton of TED talks on it (including a TED Radio Hour) and lots of other info around the web, and then there’s Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness that I pick up from time to time.  It’s all fascinating stuff.  Second, I was exploring Chatter profiles and ran across another employee who had taken the survey, and became curious about what they meant.  So I took a bit of a deeper dive and decided it was worth $10 to find my top 5.

Coincidentally, through my day job with Salesforce, I had an opportunity a few months ago to do a similar exercise during a training and I found the results fascinating.  I was primed for the pump.

My Top 5 themes (and their short descriptions from StrengthsFinder) turned out to be:

Strategic - People who are especially talented in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.

Ideation - People who are especially talented in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.

Relator - People who are especially talented in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.

Restorative - People who are especially talented in the Restorative theme are adept at dealing with problems. They are good at figuring out what is wrong and resolving it.

Adaptability - People who are especially talented in the Adaptability theme prefer to “go with the flow.” They tend to be “now” people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time.

I don’t know yet what I’ll do with this info.  So far I’m mostly meditating on it.  One thing that surprised me as I read it just now (now!) was one of the “Adaptability Ideas for Action”: “Avoid roles that demand structure and predictability.  These roles will quickly frustrate you, make you feel inadequate and stifle your independence.”  That’s so true it’s scary.

You can find the full list of traits and themes here.

What are you working on?

A new dream specification language.

Really? Why?

Well, every time I use the current DSML, I get hung up on its validation rules.

Example?

Ok, I’ll give you an example. I live on Earth, right? And I specify my dreams take place here on Earth too, including general Earth physics. Gravity and so on. Now I can do things like this — change the color of the sky to orange — but I can’t do things like this — see how I have the whole thing specified to fall up? But which way did it fall?

Oh yeah. That’s weird. I’ve dreamt about falling up.

Of course you have. And I’ve specified that here but you can see it’s not happening. That brings me to my next point. Now as you know, I can specify a dream where I’m talking to myself.

Well of course, we’re talking right now.

Exactly but you are me and you’re not me at the same time, right? You are the George Washington me. And now you’re the Betsy Ross me. And now you’re the Oprah Winfrey me. See how you cycled through those things?

Of course. What’s your point?

First, I’m sending you back to Betsy Ross me — as played by Grace Jones.

I love Grace Jones.

We love Grace Jones. Anyway, I can change the fundamental me when I’m defined as me, right? But I can’t change the fundamental physics of the Earth when I define the Earth as using the fundamental physics of the Earth. And that’s the problem.

Oh — you suspect there’s a design flaw of some kind.

More like an unnecessary artificial restriction. It’s like there are two rules engines, one for psycho-emotional constructs such as self image and another for purely physical constructs such as the Earth. In the psycho-emotional space I have the freedom to change everything at will, but the physical world locks me down in unchangeable ways when I specify a basic outline like following earth physics.

Doesn’t that make sense though? That kind of restriction is fundamental to reality, you can’t both be and not be. Why not just skip defining the Earth as using the fundamental physics of Earth?

Reality yes but remember these are dreams. Fluidity is important. Flexibility is important. Everything here in the dream is a psycho-emotional construct, not just my self image. The question of physics doesn’t matter even when I specify up front that it matters. Everything — everything — is necessarily up for grabs.

And a new dream specification language would open up these mental freedoms.

Yes, and it would let me dream things I can’t dream today.

Ah ha — the plot thickens. What specific dream goals do you have that you feel like you could reach with this new language?

I don’t really know, to be honest. I don’t have a pent up queue of dream designs I’ve had trouble implementing. The thing is, I feel artificially constrained regardless of whether or not I really am. Now it may be I create a specification language that lets me fall up even after I specify a base rule like no falling up, and then never actually exercise that freedom. The point is I’ve removed the constraint.

This seems like a lot of work for something you’re never going to use.

Ok, now you’re me as Grace Jones George Washington.

The wig is a nice touch.

Hear me roar.

“You look like a lion!” That’s Stevie. My producer for the last three years. Yes, he knows what I like to hear.

I’m 38, but my legs look like a muscular 25, and I don’t mind letting you know it. These black heels are intentional. My red dress is intentional.

As is my hair. Honey streaks set off against my naturally dark skin, curly down to the middle of my back. It adds another few inches to my height depending on my mood and how I express it.

Yes, it makes me look like a lion.

I want you to look, to examine, to be drawn to me. I like it. I thrive on it. Your looks make me feel warm, alive.

Yes, this is the perfect job for me. Every glance or so-long-you-and-your-wife-are-both-uncomfortable-stare is literal money in the bank.

I make the world more beautiful–that’s my job. And you pay me each and every time you notice. The money flows right in. Well, it does if you’ve signed up, anyway. All it takes is a credit card. And if you spend too much don’t worry there are those counseling programs. The puritans made sure of that.

Some things about this country never change.

We stop, Stevie opens the door and I exit the van. I stretch up to my full height and raise my arms up and out in the universal human pose for victory.

My credits start racking up. Someone is already watching me. I hold the pose just a little longer until I feel the tell-tale double bump indicating I’ve captured all the credits I can from this looker. I wonder who it was. Were they waiting for me?

And then a I feel something else, something splash my left muscular-25 looking leg, and a tingle that quickly becomes a burning sensation. I’ve heard about this.

A threat to my very way of life.

I look down and sure enough it’s a dot of bright blue.

A nearby Urban Security team rushes toward the attacker. Too bad they weren’t a little earlier.

Five feet. Brown coat, torn. Hideous shoes. Looking every bit as out-of-place as you can imagine. The blue acid paint is evident on his left hand on which he has — get this — a knitted glove. With a hole in it.

The team tackles him, pushes his face to the ground and isolates the blue paint they can see. Resistance is futile.

Medics have approached me and are urging me to lie down.

“I will not lie down!” I shout this loud enough that my attacker can hear, loud enough that everyone can hear.

“You need to let them look at you.” It’s Stevie. “This stuff leaves a mark.” I had forgotten about him in the turmoil. I look and he’s covered completely in blue, having taken the full force of the attack.

“Oh Stevie…” He’ll be treated by the medics as soon as they’re done with me, but in my heart of heart I know it’s too late for him. He knows, too. I can see it in his eyes.

This industry is cruel.

I turn to my right, and spot a camera crew heading my way. What a perfect opportunity.

The medic has removed the blue dot from my leg and — get this — turned the scar into a heart. I make a note to get their names when this is all over. They deserve a big tip for the quick and creative response today. Stevie too.

The camera crew has arrived and a reporter is asking me for a blow-by-blow.

I pause for effect (and because cash is rolling in). Lots of people are looking now. It’s a live feed, and suddenly I’m a sympathetic lion. I can make this work.

“I lost a good and beautiful producer today,” I say in my most serious voice. “But we have to go on. We have to protect this beautiful way of life.”

The cash is pouring in as my audience waits for the line I’ve practiced in my head a thousand times. I hold the pause.

“Terrorism,” I say, “is an ugly business.”

Flipped through the classic 1993 business book “The One To One Future” the other day and ran across this gem in a discussion of fax software. PaperWorks (worth a click) was a PC based fax application. Glyphs are a special section of paper with crosshatch patterns.

It doesn’t take much imagination to envision useful extensions of PaperWorks and glyphs. What the [VCR Plus] has done for programming… Xerox could do for programming your PC with glyphs hidden in newspaper half-tone photos. Publishers could look at paper as a medium to communicate with computers as well as readers. Banks and insurance companies could use glyph-forms to help customers keep better track of their accounts and claims. The invoices and statements you and your customers in the mail each month could have glyphs on them that enable a customer to check a box and fax the form back to your company. (p. 256)

Fax: the communication technology of the future!

1993 was the same time as we were making the initial stabs at the WWW.  Everyone was looking for a way to move information more efficiently.  Xerox, who apparent invented the fax in 1964, was just doing their part.

In other business book news, 1994′s The Force about sales at Xerox is also fascinating.

PS Also awesome: before publishing this, the automatic spellchecker wanted me to verify I wasn’t trying to spell “facts” when I wrote “fax”.

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