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A very good friend asked me about where do I get some of the ideas and inspiration when I feel I am stuck. I told him about my 6 favorite quotes and I thought it would be good to publish them here too.

In no particular order:

Combat is an incredibly intense microcosm of life. In the space of a few minutes you can run the entire gamut of emotions—from fear to hate, from loss to triumph. It is an extremely powerful metaphor. Combat requires the ability to focus like nothing else. In combat, action has to be simple and it has to stay simple. Under the life-or-death pressure of an attack, even the slightest complexity will lead to confusion, and confusion can get you killed. Success in combat is about thinking and acting decisively, cutting through fear and achieving clarity in rapidly changing circumstances.
- Richard J. Machowicz : Unleash the Warrior Within

One must first learn to control oneself before attempting to harmonize
and control others. Without a good balance and control of oneself, one
can neither avoid an attack nor apply an effective technique on
others. It is through self-control that one can learn to enjoy a
harmonious way of life.
- Rod Kobayashi Sensei, Masakatsu Agatsu - True victory is victory over oneself

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.
- Patton

Simple and light equals freedom, agility and mobility.
- Anonymous

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
- Winston Churchill

The more you know, the less you need.
- Yvon Chouinard

A few folks have pingged me to ask when to expect new episodes of Enough — The Minimal Mac podcast. The current schedule is Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8am CST. Each episode will be fairly short (about ten minuites) but sometimes will run long if the topic warrants it. This way, you can queue a few up if you want and hear several in a row. Teaser: In tomorrow’s episode, we will be discussing Information Silos and the tradeoffs that often come with certain features. Subscribe now: http://minimalmac.com/enough

Happy 27th Birthday, Mac.

An interview with Andrew Plotkin : The Setup:

I always have Emacs up, in one Terminal. A couple more generally have Lynx. When I read email, I swear, I’m ssh’d into a shell account and running Pine. I’m thinking of switching to Alpine but I haven’t made the leap yet. It’s just habit, is all. I set up my email in 1995 and I haven’t really had a reason to change it around since. Yes, it’s a hassle in some ways; my mail is procmail-sorted into mbox files, which means… cough, ahem… I can’t read my email on my iPhone. I cope.

This whole piece is a wonderment. There is so many little nuggets I could pull out that would be an example of some of the thoughts I try to put forth here. I mean, here is a guy who sets up technology to work the way he wants, then he uses it until there is a compelling reason not to.

Going through the website of Mo+Mo Living is much like going through the secret blackbook of some professional stylist. And as it turns out, that’s not far from the truth.

Brain and heart behind the site is Michelle Wentworth from Boulder, Colorado, and indeed: she runs a interior design consulting business. In her work, Wentworth combines the pared back aesthetic of modern minimalism with a considered way of living.

On the Mo+Mo Living blog she openly shares her ideas, finds, and resources. Her goal: to inspire her readers to live more simply and to find beauty in the everyday. I like that.

Millswyn No.1:

Sometimes, I post things here not just because they are topical or functional but, also, because they are beautiful. I also believe in supporting hand-craftsmanship and micro-businesses. For those looking for all of those qualities in an iPad case, here you go.

“iPhoto works, iTunes works, iMovie works, iChat works, Safari works, Apple stuff works. Sure there might be a program that lets you organize photos better than iPhoto, or a faster music player than iTunes. But my Mac was handed to me preloaded with 98.3% of what I want my computer to do. You can’t put a price on that.”

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Chuck Skoda - technochocolate: jailbroke and back again