I find it a little odd that it there is no unofficial database of hair salons that participate in Locks of Love haircuts. I say unofficial because I can understand that it would take a lot of overhead to maintain such a thing for the charity. After googling I found:
Had to drive out 30-40 mins to Hackettstown but they cut my hair for free and my hairdresser was super cool(we had talked about Dark Knight Rises)
Quoting the website:
When you donate your 10-inch ponytail, you get a free haircut!
You can help financially disadvantaged children with various forms of hair loss by donating your long hair to Locks of Love, who will create a custom hairpiece. Your stylist at Kristina Michele Salon will handle all the details for you. Your clean, dry hair will be gathered into a ponytail and secured at the nape of your neck. The ponytail must measure at least 10 inches from tip to tip. The cut will be made above the hair elastic. The ponytail will be placed into a plastic bag, and shipped in an envelope with your hair donation form. Last, but not least, your stylist will then give you a fabulous new look with your shorter hair!
Had to drive out 30-40 mins to Hackettstown but they cut my hair for free and my hairdresser was super cool(we had talked about Dark Knight Rises)
Quoting the website:
When you donate your 10-inch ponytail, you get a free haircut!
You can help financially disadvantaged children with various forms of hair loss by donating your long hair to Locks of Love, who will create a custom hairpiece. Your stylist at Kristina Michele Salon will handle all the details for you. Your clean, dry hair will be gathered into a ponytail and secured at the nape of your neck. The ponytail must measure at least 10 inches from tip to tip. The cut will be made above the hair elastic. The ponytail will be placed into a plastic bag, and shipped in an envelope with your hair donation form. Last, but not least, your stylist will then give you a fabulous new look with your shorter hair!
This search has been harder then it should of have been for finding a Locks of Love participating salon in North Virginia (Reston area) I'll post an update later of where my hair ends up.
A good question is. is Tumblr the future of blogging for people like me or is blogger more appropriate, currently it seems that no neither is very right for me. But Tumblr feels better. If you want another update simply tell me to do it anyway you can contact me! And I'll do it.
So to be honest guys. This blog hasn't really committed to anything, its pretty much a stream of conscious of ideas that I feel people will benefit from. There are projects that I have in the works that I won't announce yet (Derek Sivers' principle) that would be more concentrated efforts.
The topic I'd like to write about today is writing and expression. Over the past year or so I have been learning a lot about the importance of expression. Here's what I have taken away.
Song Writing\Poetry: What I have found here is that "cheesy" emotions are far more comfortable here. For some reason within music and poetry which is what I see lyric writing here, people are judged the least for expression of ideas. Even music without lyrics is very powerful emotionally. I think this is the best medium of art of conveying emotion, especially emotions that are especially hard to articulate.
Best Examples: Live Music
My favorite:
That is my favorite song of all time, and I still don't feel comfortable telling people why. That is one of the many powers of music. (Also that AMV is fantastic)
Writing: Writing is a fantastic medium of expression, it is especially informative and can be quite expressive emotionally also. One of my favorite memories in school was when I got to tell the stories I wrote (they had to include that weeks vocabulary words) and that was my first introduction to comedic writing and presentation all at once. But that is an example of combining writing with speaking(which is a great art form see: TED.com), essay\book\ article writing on the other hand is a great exercise in informing people and conveying ideas.
Most importantly, I see writing as the best way to inform someone accurately about an idea. Writing can be skimmed and read over. Its also (thanks to typing) created in a highly controlled environment, where revisions are made easy.
Best example: Wikipedia, the internet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting
Without that article, I would have never realized why I prefer acting to things like creative writing or painting was because I love rhetoric(conveying information).
Video: Video is great for visual articulation of ideas, its a great way to engross someone through a new experience. Its one of my favorites as body language is such a great conveyance of emotions (and plus it, like music, is built in to humans). Its great way to express one's self but I think that for long stretches of information writing is preferable. However, like Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains tonation and body language are fantastic forms of expression.
I think the first 2 minutes of this is better then this entire section that I wrote, I think you should watch this rather then read what I wrote on the topic.
Best example: Youtube
Game design: Now this is an interesting topic. The games we love and how we play them says so much about human nature. Game design is experience design.
using programming language you can get computers to do things for you, the better you know the computer the more you can do with the computer.
you may think everyone speaks english (or you're location's language) but you'd be wrong, words mean slightly different things to people.
sometimes wildly different things, luckily we have a host of ways to communicate things to people more then language, i am sure you could name quite a few
but still even these things are understood differently by each person.
whats the takeaway?
be aware that when your giving directions to people, asking someone do something, or teaching something. That the person your talking to may not comprehend what your saying.
in programming, i type my code methodically checking if it compiles and does what i intended it to do
(programming is simply giving directions to a computer)
in time i will get used to coding in a specific manner and have to "check" with the the computer less and less if its fully understanding my language.
People sometimes interact with each other in what i call, the Voicemail.
The inherent issue with voicemail is that you are required to give a short statement of what it is you would like to communicate. Its one way communication. There is not even an acknowledgement sent back that what you said was understood.
People sometimes do this in speech, they seem to even like it. They begin to monologue and they don't check with the recipient is understanding what is being said or even cares for what is being said. They may get annoyed with interruptions or even ignore them. Now this could be a good or bad thing depending on what you want to communicate. Be aware that your recipient of your message may not understand you. And make sure they are understanding you.
Care about your listener, at least they are giving you the time of day. Their time, like yours is precious.
I used to spend pretty much all my free time on the internet, I used it less like a tool and more like a place I lived my life. Then I stopped.
My problem: I wanted adventures but the internet absorbed all my time
I would wake up, go on the internet(reddit), then in an instant I made hours disappear. I wanted to live a life where I actually had life experiences, I was trying to apply the Tall Grass Principle to meeting human beings and having things actually happen.
The solution: I went outside.
I decided that reddit wasn't getting me anywhere, I stopped all use of reddit. And starting on New Years I went out to celebrate New Years and the adventures began (And none of which I will share on the internet). For the rest of break, I went outside whenever I could, I started running. It wasn't easy, but my New Years Resolution was to break my lack of:
Discipline and Delayed Gratification
Something if I ever did have. Reddit and the internet killed. So I tried to see why people do this funny thing they call "Socializing". Which was pretty hard for me to do at first and I still am not fantastic at it, but I force myself to try to talk to people as much as possible, sticking through the initial awkwardness, like trudging through mud, but it can be rewarding.
Results:
Well its been about a month so far and I don't miss reddit that much, I skim through news.ycombinator.com once a day, and its a pretty good (and extreme) distillation of what's good on the internet. I have made many more friends and have many more stories to tell.
I still prefer doing active things with people (Tae Kwon Do, Yoga, Drawing, Acting, Singing, Running, Exercising, attending Cons, dancing, and most of all going on Adventures way more then I enjoy simply talking with people, but I see its use, finally, in forging alliances, friendships).
TL;DR
If you spend time IRL, you will have life experiences.
P.S.
If you have any questions, like what to do with all the gained time spent away from the internet, I can do a post on that. Other than that I'll update in a month.
On Spotify:
1. I stopped using it after it made me log in with facebook, and its updates on facebook are tiresome
Facebook:
1. Effectively added circles to their product, and they are useful at curating
2. Subcribing and unsubcribing from friends really helps cut the crap from the newsfeed
3. It definitely helps GSD, projects are easily made into events and events are easily organized, and my friends can actually see my work
Updates:
1.Tall Grass is being rewritten, but I am having second thoughts about it, I almost think I should do it as a series of blog posts explaining how it helped in specific conditions me attain goals
/begin brag
1. Getting a Job at Gamestop
2. Making Interesting friends from all over the world
/end brag
"Stripped to its essentials, every decision in life amounts to choosing which lottery ticket to buy"- Steven Pinker
Whatever it is your looking for in life? Its a good idea to increase your proximity to whatever it is you need.
This is a matter of playing the numbers game. This is how to increase your luck. You're not going to catch any pokemon (rare or otherwise) unless your in their habitat. (Apologies to those who miss the reference, Pokemon is about not going to school to engage in animal cruelty activities, i.e. hunting, forcing animals into really small spaces without food, and engaging in cock fights)
Example:
You want to be the greatest guitarist(see Synester Gates).
You need to increase the chance that you will actually play the guitar.
1. You should have a guitar.
2. Guitar should be accessible and visible.
3. You should hang out with guitarists or people who ship (or specifically practice) consistently
4. Reduce the number of distractions surrounding in your enviorment that don't encourage guitar playing
5. You should sleep with your guitar
6. Make sure your guitar has strings
7. Practice playing the guitar (if you feel like it)
http://www.pixelate.de/games/understanding-games
Go there now.
I grew up wanting to be a game developer, only realizing later that I was in love with storytelling and had no idea what game making actually meant. Understanding Games is a series of short little flash games by someone who knows what they are talking about. This helped me understand why though the SNES had some beautiful games, most of them are variations on mario or the dragon quest\final fantasy. While N64 had far better games with genres of design that were completely revolutionized, (see Mario 64, Goldeneye, Super Smash, Legend of Zelda). If you don't still understand the draw of video games, Understanding Games will chainsaw your skull open to understand what how amazing it is that someone found out how to market work to people as something that is fun. Do you understand that people avoid doing actual work to do virtual work? Why is that? Well click it and find out.
The enemy here is not a person or any one thing. This is something society has just by accident let get out of control.
Do you listen?
Do you watch?
Do you read?
Do you wait?
Are you Passive? When your down, do you wait until its over? Or do you get up?
Before I begin, here is the WRONG thing to take from this post. "All forms of non-action are evil!"
This is what you should take "Life should be a healthy mix of action as well as non-action"
When you are with someone, the common advice is to listen, listen, listen! Why the hell would you treat your friend like he was voicemail? Is that fair? No, you should talk to people. Let them speak damn it and listen actively, and then think about what they have to say, and respond accordingly. How boring would interviews be if all the interviewer simply told the the interviewee to talk? How would you possibly get to ask those burning questions? Or ask them to clear up topics that you don't understand? What if they are saying something thats a logical fallacy? Is it fair to let them go? I can go on and on about this but I think you get it.
This is important message for all those who know they are killing themselves doing what they do. You know that creative spark. I have one word for you to remember.
"Tinker!"
Don't force yourself to like something. Play with the idea of liking something. Don't force yourself to do work you hate. Give the work a shot, play while you work, tinker while you work.
When you want to become something your not currently. Slow and steady will get you to a place your happy with. This is a hard topic to convey. So I give a rule of thumb, when you hate what you are doing, attempt to have fun with it, if you can't find a way to have fun with it, drop it. Don't kill your spark, feel alive.
You see your kid texting a lot? Well force them to get a phone that uses Word T9. Now they have to spell correctly if they want to send text messages. Now when your kid is ignoring you, he can be spelling correctly.
This idea has been already implemented however one part of it which I find crucial hasn't been really talked about at all.
You see this past Christmas. I decided to gift each one of my friends who I was having trouble thinking of gifts for, the Humble Indie Bundle. (Braid was one of the games that was one the list and I loved that game, I feel that gifts should be something you want to share with that person, maybe a part of you in consumerist product form). I could of circumvented the whole paying for each gift part by simply sending them a torrent link on Christmas day. That is the honest truth, it would of been easier and cheaper. I wouldn't of had to put any of my PayPal info. down or wonder if they accidentally double charged me, it would of been of a hell of a lot easier.
But, I didn't choose this option. Why? Because when I give gifts and think of christmas, I think product that has been purchased or creative project that requires a costly amount of time. I associate gifts with being costly either time-wise or money-wise (which really are they same thing, you could say I spent one hour of time in exchange for money). Nonetheless, when people think of gifts (if they do at all), they associate them with cost.
So why does this all matter? Well because I ended up spending real money on digital downloads. Why? Because I wanted to show my friends that I had bought them something. the HBI guys didnt make that big of a deal when it came to the whole gifting feature during the sale. But it was the only reason I decided to get that for my friends.
To extrapolate this point, the idea is this past Christmas I spent money on information. Something I don't usually do, why would I? I could watch anime on hulu, listen to music on grooveshark, or read books for free at barnes and noble. I am willing to pay for information when it comes to gifts.
I bought my friends books and games for the most part. Which are information. I honestly would of loved to get a hard disc copy of humble indie bundle with some nice box art to give to my friends rather than just the gifting e-mail, I wouldn't of minded putting the money down for that. Not enough information dealing (games, books, music) companies talked about a gifting feature at all. I am suggesting they should.
TL;DR
Game Devs, music artists, and authors please have a down-loadable gifting feature when selling your product, you might get one more customer, me.
You can help financially disadvantaged children with various forms of hair loss by donating your long hair to Locks of Love, who will create a custom hairpiece. Your stylist at Kristina Michele Salon will handle all the details for you. Your clean, dry hair will be gathered into a ponytail and secured at the nape of your neck. The ponytail must measure at least 10 inches from tip to tip. The cut will be made above the hair elastic. The ponytail will be placed into a plastic bag, and shipped in an envelope with your hair donation form. Last, but not least, your stylist will then give you a fabulous new look with your shorter hair!
