Better Quest

fail better.

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Hypo-quandary of the Week

♥ — 5 Useful Articles is great.

While on an expedition in Indonesia, a nature photographer’s equipment is hijacked by a roving band of artistic monkeys. One of them snaps a photograph of herself. The photographer recovers his camera and posts the picture to the internet. A designer creates a 3D model based on the picture, and uses a 3D printer to make this.

The designer also uploads the file of the model (monkeyselfie.ztl) to Thingiverse. Parker downloads and edits the file, mounting the monkey’s head onto a centaur’s body of his own creation. Can the designer sue Parker? Assume any litigation takes place in the Second Circuit.

via Takedown My Breath Away: 5 Useful Articles – Vol. 1 Issue 23.

algorithms are values.

What a terrifying—and true—statement about our times:

algorithms are values.

via Twitter Respected Our Choices Until It Didn’t – My Linux Rig.

Why Flunking Exams Is Actually a Good Thing – NYTimes.com

Very interesting quotes on the proper balance of study and practice. The article relates the idea that pre-testing (i.e. failing) primes the brain for future success by opening different neural pathways than studying a single question:answer relationship.

The quickest way to master that Shakespearean sonnet, in other words, is to spend the first third of your time memorizing it and the remaining two-thirds of the time trying to recite it from memory.

Further, it expands on the processes of remembering, studying, and guessing. Of the three, guessing is the most likely scenario to result in failure, and this failure once again inspires a fuller listing of associations to spur memory.

Retrieval — i.e. remembering — is a different mental act than straight studying; the brain is digging out a fact, together with a network of associations, which alters and enriches how that network is subsequently re-stored. But guessing is distinct from both study and retrieval. It too will reshape our mental networks by embedding unfamiliar concepts (the lend-lease program, the confirmation bias, the superego) into questions we at least partly comprehend (“Name one psychological phenomenon that skews our evaluation of evidence”). Even if the question is not entirely clear and its solution unknown, a guess will in itself begin to link the questions to possible answers. And those networks light up like Christmas lights when we hear the concepts again.

It seems clear that this linking of failure, guessing, and higher test scores — derived from more complex mental associations — may contribute more directly to creativity.

via Why Flunking Exams Is Actually a Good Thing – NYTimes.com.

Non-Ambiguous Tasks

The dishes clearly need to be washed. There’s no ambiguity about whether it’s a necessary task and when you’re washing the dishes, it only takes a tiny portion of your attention — a tiny portion of your mind — and so the rest of your mind just wanders around drifting and stumbling across all sorts of interesting shit. And then when you’re done, it’s clearly done. You say: Yep, moving on to my next task. And honestly, I don’t exactly know how to phrase it, but that was the most pleasant aspect of the whole thing. My day was a series of discrete things that I knew that I wanted to do, and I knew when they were done and none of them were lingering. At night, I had achieved them and they were done and it was all off my plate and there was nothing hanging there for later. It made me nostalgic for manual labor.

via 5 Things You Learn When You Take a Yearlong Break From Facebook, Twitter, and Work (nymag.com).

The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection – Boing Boing

I’m relieved to learn that someone has taken the time to codify terms and phrases related to pre- and post-web. There are currently—and increasingly will be—reasons to mourn what we have already lost. We should also celebrate the many advantages.

Straddle Generation

Neither Digital Natives nor wholly Digital Immigrants; they were born in the 1980s and will be the last people to remember life without the Internet. After she got text-dumped, Stacey was determined to only date Straddle Gen guys. “They’re so Romantic!”

via The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection – Boing Boing.

Being obsessive about detail is being normal | Spiekerblog

Every craft requires atten­tion to detail. … Unless you are obsessed by what you’re doing, you will not be doing it well enough.

via Being obsessive about detail is being normal | Spiekerblog.

Fedora Wallpaper

Unfortunately it looks like I misinterpreted the deadline for Fedora wallpaper submissions. Enjoy.

My late Fedora Wallpaper Submission

My late Fedora Wallpaper Submission

Old Office Art

I used to do repetitive work for pay. Office-type work in a building with cubes. I was surrounded by staplers, locked shred bins, clinging cash registers, and disorderly queues served by staff who didn’t care. When I had downtime I would take the humble office tools I found myself surrounded by and stave off boredom by creating art. I would use cheap plastic pens and office supplies to create art on discarded scraps of paper. I would arrange the office supplies on the scrap paper, trace a part of their outline with the pen, and then move them to another location and retrace to create images like a duck.

I have kept these creations for the past 9 years. They have been folded flat at the bottom of a box that has moved with me from almost-Canada to nearly-Mexico. My packrat nature would not allow me to part with these artworks. I recently found them while cleaning out my basement and they were perfectly preserved between other things I should have discarded long ago. Instead of throwing them away I decided to do make them better.

Now that I have a different set of circumstances and skills1 I decided to update those old pen drawings using krita, gimp, and inkscape. This new work has finally made these drawings useful after sitting for idle so long. My only goal 9 years ago was to keep boredom at bay. I very much hope that these artworks lift your spirits as they have lifted mine.


The duck artwork was originally created on the back of a scrap piece of paper turned landscape. I used scissors for the rounded outline elements2 and a black pen for tracing. Digital FLOSS tools1 were used to augment these original drawings.

You can see my art for sale here. I plan to add additional works as they are completed.


  1. a powerful computer, FLOSS, a pen input device 
  2. inner, large handle for body; inner, small handle for head; tip of scissors for beak and wings 

Measure Up | S.B.LattinDesign.

What a fantastic graphic.

The GNU/Linux Lagniappes

I’ve been enamored with free software since Windows Vista decided to disappear what I called my “trial run” Wubi install of Ubuntu. By the end of this “trial” I preferred GNU/Linux so strongly that I had forgotten there was another operating system (OS) installed on the computer.

But then there was a problem. I couldn’t boot into GNU/Linux anymore. Vista was working fine but my preferred OS was missing. I would later discover that my first real issue with GNU/Linux was created by Windows. While this situation did not give me joy at the time, it was extremely fortuitous.

The problem of a “missing” OS prompted my first visit to a support forum. I solved my own issue with helpful guidance from others. A total stranger thanked me or my efforts because they were experiencing the same issue and benefited from the solution I had discovered and shared.

I switched firmly to GNU/Linux that day.

Computing is now an activity I truly enjoy, benefit from greatly, and intend to utilize for the greater good. GNU/Linux is like a rabbit hole of lagniappes; the fringe benefits keep coming. This chain of positives is in addition to the software itself. I now know and care more intensely about computers, technology, sharing, IP law, programming, ethics, teaching, and more.

GNU/Linux changed me. It changed me for the better. There is just one problem: I don’t feel like I’ve changed GNU/Linux. I don’t feel like I’ve given back enough.1

I’ve been working to figure out what I can do to help GNU/Linux. Here are some things I’ve done for a while now:

  1. Introduce people to GNU/Linux
  2. Teach people about the value of the four essential freedoms
  3. Help people become users of GNU/Linux
  4. Donate to projects (e.g. Gimp)

In a post about UX redesign, Máirín Duffy created a graphic depicting the chasm between use and contribution. What a striking image.

CC-BY-SA 2014 Máirín Duffy.

I was left with one burning question: how do I make the jump?

While I continue actively contributing in the ways listed above, I recently came across a very different opportunity to make the leap:

It is time to open the submission phase for Fedora 21 Supplemental Wallpapers… The deadline until you can submit your artwork is the August 16 2014 at 23:59 UTC.

minor commitment: Create and submit a supplemental wallpaper for Fedora 21.

In some ways I believe that this image-based contribution will be significantly less valuable than the educational, philosophical, and monetary contributions I am currently making. It’s not that I don’t think art is important2, it is more that I don’t believe I will clearly see the impact of the contribution so as to correctly assess its value.

When I talk about the necessity of the four freedoms, specific people go away thinking differently. When I help people install GNU/Linux, I am able to see them begin to redefine their relationship with computing. When I donate to projects, I do so with the knowledge that my financial contribution is supporting those who support users. When I submit a wallpaper, I… just don’t know. I can’t imagine what the impact may be and I may never know.

That’s why I’m making the jump. That uncertainty is, for me, a leap of faith. Let’s see if I end up on the other side.


  1. In truth, I don’t know that any individual could give back enough. 
  2. I know art is vital. 

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