Minimal Universe

Minimal Universe collect posts from our favorite minimal-related blogs listed on the right.
  • The Messy Desk Story

    Yesterday, I posted a link to a site called Messy Desks, as part of my usual “Not what we believe in.” meme. While it is certainly true I am not a fan of clutter, this particular link and post was all a part of an elaborate practical joke on my good friend Pat Dryburgh who curates SimpleDesks. See, his roommate, John, sent me an email a few days ago that, in part, said:

    One of the things that I have been bugging him about to no end is his site:simpledesks.tumblr.com. I keep bugging him about his fascination with clean looking desks… I ask him why he calls it desk p0rn, and ask him if he would ever date a girl that didn’t have a clean minimalist desk… etc, etc ;) all in fun.

    Any who… I have decided to take things to the next level by making my own site… which I have called: messydesks.tumblr.com. I have basically copied his exact layout, and wording, but put in my name and pictures of messy desks. I honestly laugh every time I see the two sites side by side.

    So, that was how it began. John put it together, asked me to link to it, knowing that Pat would see it. Worked like a charm. Everyone had a good laugh.

    One of the lessons I have learned, especially in curating this site, is to not take any of this stuff too seriously. This was the perfect opportunity to do just that.

  • Steve Jobs' Advice to Nike: Get Rid of the Crappy Stuff [Video] | Fast Company

    Steve Jobs’ Advice to Nike: Get Rid of the Crappy Stuff [Video] | Fast Company:

    “Just get rid of the crappy stuff, and focus on the good stuff.”

    Just as true for a big company as it is for everything we do.

  • Messy Desks

    Messy Desks :

    Not what we believe in (and by “we” I especially mean SimpleDesks).

  • onethingwell: Pester is a simple alarm clock and timer for Mac...



    onethingwell:

    Pester is a simple alarm clock and timer for Mac OS X.

    Works great! If all you need is a simple reminder, consider this.



  • "My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions but in the fewness of my wants."

    “My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions but in the fewness of my wants.”

    - J. Botherton

  • Apple Hardware Longevity

    Apple Hardware Longevity:

    My son dropped it on the concrete, used it as a hammer, and may have even taken a dive in the tub with it once or twice. I don’t think I’ve ever had a device as throughly beaten as this old Mini

    Apple: They take a licking, and keep on ticking. Fun little tale here. Also some interesting ones in the comments.

  • Steve Jobs (by Roberto_Garcia) BadAss™ (via Morten Vegard)



    Steve Jobs (by Roberto_Garcia)

    BadAss™ (via Morten Vegard)



  • simpledesks: Nouveau (by mαxsmith) There are several things I...



    simpledesks:

    Nouveau (by mαxsmith)

    There are several things I love about this. The old “Luxo” iMac. The tin cans for office supply holders. The 10 dollar task lamp. But something about the composition and lighting are so full of win that I am forced to reblog.



  • Moliner House by Alberto Campo Baeza

    Spanish architect and educator, Alberto Campo Baeza doesn’t own a car or a cell phone. Interesting choice — but how could I live like that? “Más con menos” (more with less) symbolizes Alberto Campo Baeza’s architectural principle.

    The Moliner House in Zaragoza, Spain is comprised of three levels, a library for dreaming at the top, a garden for living in the middle and a space for sleeping at the bottom. The concept is so poetic and Alberto’s logic is convincing. “Without an IDEA, Architecture would be pointless, only empty form…” Alberto explains.

    Dazzling whiteness and translucent glass walls that reflect light in all its manifestations. Does the space feel too abstract? Some people like to live with a precise number of elements and a lot of emotions. Could it be that simple geometry should follow a passionate way of being?






  • Simple Productivity Task of The Day: Remove One Thing From Your Desk

    Simple Productivity Task of The Day: Remove One Thing From Your Desk:

    Do this: look at your work area and pick one thing, just one thing, that doesn’t belong there, isn’t helping you with your work, and has just been taking up space. Pick up this one thing and find a place for it – store it, throw it away, but get it off your desk.

    Works for your Mac Desktop desk as well ;-)

  • society, reimagined: how to make it reality

    There was a lot of positive reaction to my last post: society, reimagined … and it was encouraging, to say the least. Lots of people want to live in a world that’s car-free, digital (except for books, which many people don’t want to give up), unschooled, locavore, non-consumerist, with lots of free time instead of wage slavery.

    Here’s the thing: you can already have it, right now.

    So often we forget that the things that constrain us … they’re in our heads. They don’t exist in the real world, except where we believe they exist. Money, for example … we already live in a moneyless world, as money only exists in our heads. Sure, there’s the physical paper money or gold coins, but those have no value except the value we believe they have, and our ability to buy things with money, our need to do work for money, our stress over not having money or owing money … it only exists in our heads. The world around us, if we suddenly stopped believing in money, would be moneyless.

    Governments are the same. The U.S. Declaration of Independence states that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” … but actually, they exist only in the minds of the governed, and only have power so long as the governed allow them to have power. The same applies to any system: schools, work, banks, and so on — they exist in our minds.

    And so, to live in a world reimagined, we only need to use our imaginations. We have that power already.

    Want to live in a car-free world? Stop using a car. Now the world you live in becomes one in which you walk, bike, and use mass transit. Others might not follow, but that’s their choice. If you want to live where there aren’t any cars, there exist such places and you can move to one of those places, if that’s important to you. But already, you can live in a car-free world.

    Want to live in a world where your food isn’t shipped thousands of miles and grown unsustainably by agribusiness? Start a garden. You can just start with one plant, and then another, until you have enough to eat eventually. Or start a community garden, or use farmer’s markets, or join (or start) a CSA.

    Want to live in an unschooled world? Unschool your kids. It’s not hard, and takes zero resources — although the Internet and the library are great if you can get them, and the world around us is an unlimited resource for education.

    Want to live in a non-consumerist world? Stop buying things. Make things last, reuse things and move to reusable things (such as cloth napkins and glass containers), fix things when they break, trade, join Freecycle. Stop watching ads (which might mean you stop watching TV or reading ad-supported magazines and newspapers).

    Want to live in a paperless world? Stop buying and using paper. Want to work from home or near your home? Start a business where you can do that now (it costs almost nothing), or work with your boss to telecommute.

    Want happiness? Everything you need is already here, in the world around you: beautiful people, gorgeous nature, the legs you need to walk among these things, and the eyes, ears and mouth you need to appreciate them.

    I acknowledge that we won’t stop global warming with just our own actions, but at the least, we’ve stopped participating in the destruction of our planet … and at best, we inspire others by showing them it’s possible.

    I realize these things would be better with larger numbers, so find a friend or family member willing to join you, and you have a partner. Then a third, and a fourth, and now you have a club. Get a fifth, and you have a movement. And then you have some real magic.

    But the magic, my friends, can start today.

  • What's that?

    The first quarter of my life was spent in a world where there was no such thing as a “personal computer”. The idea of someone having a computer in their home was as futuristic when I was, say, eight years old as a jet pack or rocket car. By the time I was in my teen years, they were as much of a reality, at least for the folks I knew who could afford one, as a toaster. The generation just after mine, has never lived in a word where personal computers were a not common possession of almost everyone they knew. I’ve been thinking recently about the probability that my two year old daughter may hear about something called a “keyboard” or a “mouse” and stare at me just a blankly as today’s college grads would when you mention running programs off of a cassette recorder (“What’s that?”) from a computer you hooked up to the antenna jack (“What’s that?”) on a TV.

    When I see Beatrix pick up my iPad and, after some very brief instruction, launch the Photo app, gleefully squeal “Pinch!” and “Swipe!” as she does just that to navigate the interface, I can’t help but think that this is all she will ever need to know about how one interacts with the computer for the foreseeable future. I can’t help but think that one day, we will be down in the basement, and she will see some old system we should have disposed of long ago, and it will have these strange things attached to them, things we never imagined doing without, and she’ll ask “Daddy, what’s that?”.

  • Beautiful. Make sure to click through and see the rest of the...



    Beautiful. Make sure to click through and see the rest of the shots. (Submitted by David Roe)



  • The $3.44 iPad Desk Stand Solution

    I want to start off by saying that all credit for the tip goes to Andy Ihnatko and last weeks episode of MacBreak Weekly. On that episode, for his pick of the week, he mentioned that he picked up a pair of rubber stoppers at his local hardware store as the perfect portable solution for holding his iPad at a comfortable angle on a desk.

    Today, I ran out and got some and, boy, i’ll be darned if they are not the most perfect thing ever for typing on the onscreen keyboard. The angle is just right for not only typing but viewing in this sort of situation as well. The total cost: $3.44 with tax. These will go in my bag and travel everywhere my iPad does. No need now for an expensive case that does the same.

  • The "What if" Myth

    There are these little myths we often let ourselves base important decisions and major purchases around. I like to call them the “What if” myths. Because of my business I seem to hear them all the time. That said, the tech savvy are not immune either. I myself have fallen prey more times than I care to admit. In almost every case, these phrases lead us to spend more money than necessary, pack more in our bag than we have to, and purchase far more machine than we will use . It also keeps us from truthfully examining our day to day needs.

    Here are a couple of common examples:

    “What if I need to run Photoshop?”

    This is the common excuse I hear from designers as to why they need, in addition to a desktop machine with a large screen and powerful graphics card, a portable machine that can perform with suitable aplomb.

    My challenge to this myth is two fold: a) How often do you really need this kind of power in a mobile situation? Can these rare times not wait until you return to your desk? b) Do you really need a desktop machine as well as a portable? Why not sell the desktop and have one machine that is both powerful and portable.

    “What if someone sends me a Word document?”

    This is usually the myth I hear from people who are convinced they need Microsoft Office. These folks are certain that they run into such situations “all the time” but, when pressed or investigated, I usually find out it is about twice a year and the documents themselves are things like kids birthday party invitations where the information within is far more important than the formatting.

    My challenge to this myth is that TextEdit can open any Word document to the extent that you need it to. Most times, it will do so flawlessly. It can even save out in MS Word formats so if you need to make some simple edits and send it back to someone who has fallen prey to this same myth, you can. Even those funky new .docx files all the MS kids are crazy about these days. If push comes to shove, you could get the iWork suite so that you can open Excel files (in Numbers) and Powerpoint files (in Keynote). The bottom line, you don’t need Microsoft Office.

    Don’t you mind about the future? Don’t you try to think ahead? Save tomorrow for tomorrow; Think about today instead.

    – “What’s The Buzz” from Jesus Christ Superstar ‘

    The thing with all of this is, why plan for and base such choices on the boundary cases? Why buy something for what you hardly ever do as opposed to what you do all the time? If you encountered such a scenario, is the fallout so costly that you can justify spending more or having more than you need up front and every day? If so, then I can understand such a choice. If not, then why not purchase what you need (or even better, find a way to make do with what you have) when you need it?

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