Mark Pincus Blog

iMacs are an iWaste

for all the time we think we save using imacs for multi media we should also admit how much time we waste on this weaker platform. can anyone tell me why my laptop just turns itself off if i'm inactive for more than 10 minutes? and no it's not on the battery

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comment from former freeloader about tom

i love getting these comments from former friends of dearly departed tom cole...

I knew Tom from when we shared an office at FreeLoader. Every now and then I do the same thing most people do and I look for info on people I know online. I've never been able to find anything on Tom no matter how hard I looked. I just wanted to send him an email or find out what he's been up to or something. I FINALLY found a search string that yelded a result . . . and this is what I found. Only a few days ago my wife and I were talking about Tom after watching some of our wedding video for our 10th anniversary. Tom was at our wedding and, just as he did every day, his presence made everything shine just that much brighter. I had so much fun with Tom for that short period I got to work with him. It was only six short months, but I feel priveledged that I got to spend it sharing an office with him five days a week. For everyone else you've had a year to deal with this. For me, it's all happening RIGHT NOW and it's bordering on the unbearable. Mark; I can't even BEGIN TO FATHOM what this has been like for you. I know how close you two were and by the looks things continued to be. You have my heartfelt sympathy. I'm having a lot of trouble seeing the screen right now through the tears so I'll just stop.

3 office spaces available in my new building - ready oct 1st

My new building on vermont street will be super cool and offer startup oriented features not found in sf buildings.

* open, modern kitchen with espresso and smoothie machines * climbing wall (we hope) * atrium with lounge and lunch tables * nintendo wii * dog friendly

There are 3 open spaces available ranging from 500 to 2200 sq feet.

If you want space email me at mark-at-tribe-dot-net. Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

What happens at burning man...(forwarded by my friend gary)

i dont know who wrote this. reminds me of the supposed graduation speach by kurt vonnegut. anyway this does sum up the experience (as it feels right after the event).

Pay an escort of your preference to not bathe for five days, cover themselves in glitter, dust, and sunscreen, wear a skanky neon wig, dance naked, then say they have a lover back home at the end of the night.

Tear down your house. Put it in a truck.

Drive 10 hours in any direction. Put the house back together.

Invite everyone you meet to come over and party.

When they leave, follow them back to their homes, drink all their booze, and break things.

Stack all your fans in one corner of the living room.

Put on your most fabulous outfit.

Turn the fans on full blast.

Dump a vacuum cleaner bag in front of them.

Buy a new set of expensive camping gear.

Break it.

Lean back in a chair until that point where you're just about to fall over, but you catch yourself at the last moment. Hold that position for 9 hours.

Only use the toilet in a house that is at least 3 blocks away.

Drain all the water from the toilet.

Only flush it every 3 days.

Hide all the toilet paper.

Set your house thermostat so it's 50 degrees for the first hour of sleep and 100 degrees the rest of the night.

Before eating any food, drop it in a sandbox and lick a battery.

Mail $200 to the Reno casino of your choice.

Spend thousands of dollars and several months of your life building a deeply personal art work. Hide it in a funhouse on the edge of the city. Hire people to come by and alternate saying "I love it" and "this sucks balls".

Blow it up.

Set up a DJ system downwind of a three alarm fire.

Play a short loop of drum'n'bass until the embers are cold.

Make a list of all the things you'll do different next year.

Never look at it.

Have a 3 a.m. soul baring conversation with a drag nun in platforms, a crocodile and Bugs Bunny. Be unable to tell if you're hallucinating. Lust after Bugs Bunny.

Cut, burn, electrocute, bruise, and sunburn various parts of your body.

Forget how you did it. Don't go to a doctor.

"Downsize" last year's camp by adding two geodesic domes, a new sound system, art car, and 20 newbies.

Don't sleep for 5 days.

Take a wide variety of hallucinogenic/emotion altering drugs.

Pick a fight with your boyfriend/girlfriend.

Spend a whole year rummaging through thrift stores for the perfect, most outrageous costume.

Forget to pack it.

Shop at Wal-mart, Cost-Co, and Home Depot until your car is completely packed with stuff.

Tell everyone that you're going to a "Leave-No-Trace"

event. (I love this

one)

Empty your car into a dumpster.

Read "Dhalgren" by Samuel R. Delany.

Read "The City Not Long After" by Pat Murphy.

Cut off the bindings, throw all the pages up in the air, and shuffle them back together.

Reread "The City After Dhalgren" by Samuel Murphy.

Burn it. Read the ashes.

Listen to music you hate for 168 hours straight, or until you think you are going to scream. Scream.

Realize you'll love the music for the rest of your life.

Spend 5 months planning a "theme camp" like it's the invasion of Normandy.

Spend Monday-Wednesday building the camp.

Spend Thurs-Sunday nowhere near camp because you're sick of it or can't find it.

Walk around your neighborhood and knock on doors until someone offers you cocktails and dinner.

Bust your ass for a "community."

See all the attention get focused on the drama queen crybaby.

Get so drunk you can't recognize your own house.

Walk slowly around the block for 5 hours.

Tell your boss you aren't coming to work this week but he should "gift" you a paycheck anyway.

When he refuses accuse him of not loving the "community".

Search alleys until you find a couch so unbelievably tacky and nasty filthy that a state college frat house wouldn't want it.

Take a nap on the couch and sleep like you are king of the world.

Ask your most annoying neighbor to interrupt your fun several times a day with third hand gossip about every horrible thing that's happened in the last 24 hours. Have them wear khaki.

Go to a museum. Find one of Salvador Dali's more disturbing, but beautiful paintings. Climb inside it.

facebook games beget strange company...

this is from a user of our texas holdem game. sounds like the beginning of a bad joke but pretty amazing statement about how an online social game can enable new ways to connect...

Just like to add that FACEBOOK is awesome! I played in a room last night with a American soldier, an Iraqi civilian, and a Saudi civilian.  Very heartwrenching convo.  By the end, in a real poker room they would have shook hands. It was a very heated convo that ended well.  Who else but you can give me these experiences!!  Thanks a million!!  Hope you never stop!!

                                         Sincerely,

                                          Leeanne

Telluride film fest - "I'm not there" - neither was the movie

Super creative approach to bringing bob dylan's many personas to life in an abstract way. Too abstract for me. Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

Fabrice's take on the new century genius

Fabrice talks about 10 yrs at 3 hrs a day to become genius at something. Doesn't that describe all of us web surfing/playing? Maybe we have created a generation of web genius's and fabrice is clearly one the leading examples.
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-----Original Message----- From: "Fabrice Grinda"

Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2007 10:56:19
To: Subject: Gladwell on Genius

http://www.fabricegrinda.com/?p=231

Over the past year, I blogged a few time about the importance of deliberate practice in achieving high performance (A Star is Made, A Star is Made – Part 2) and how one of the two types of geniuses are “experimental innovators” relentlessly working on a problem and ebbing at it through trial and error (What Kind of Genius are you?).

At a recent conference organized by the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell described the different types of geniuses. He suggested that given the complexities of the problems we face, stubborn and deliberate innovators who collaborate with others are much more likely to be the leading innovators of the 21st century.
His recounting of how Andrew Wiles solved Fermat’s last theorem was a case in point. It took Wiles years of work, collaboration with multiple mathematicians around the world and resulted in a 200 page proof.

As Gladwell points out, it takes about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become good at almost any activity. The good news is that you can become good at almost anything you set your mind to. The problem is that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is about 10 years of practicing 3 hours a day.

He suggested that as a society, we are not giving people the right incentives. We often reward intelligence, but ignore stubbornness which is arguably more important.

He also points out how there are extreme differences in how individuals capitalize on their potential. If you take otherwise identical groups of white American and Chinese American – groups with the same IQ – 60% of white Americans end up in elite professions, while 78% of Chinese Americans end up in elite professions. In other words, the dominant ethnic group in this country does not do a good job at capitalizing on the potential of its members. We would have millions more people to throw at complex problems if we capitalized more effectively.

We focus on elite universities; but if future innovation is going to come from groups of stubborn smart people working together instead of the lone genius, then we should making sure schools like Penn State are good.

You should watch Gladwell’s speech at:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/gladwell
 

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Crested butte - a real colorado mtn town

Hiked from aspen to cb today (locals call it that). Real co mtn town. Just saw a bear running through the streets. Very basic place with a few nice restaurants. Way more authentic than aspen. Kinda telluride before the money.
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