Metafilter linked to an interesting video, in which the speaker (Roo Reynolds) posits that Lego toys are “inherently digital.” The “binary form” and “constraints” of Lego pieces force us to think creatively with some constraint, unlike an activity like painting, which you can smear over canvas without any lines or limits.

Toys that we play with when we’re children can affect our future career path, “in the same way that language is supposed to affect thought.” I’ve recently had similar thoughts – the work I do with content inventories and information design seems to follow the same basic thought pattern as assembling a gray, Mark I Iron Man out of Legos without reading any instructions.

Full talk below – beware that only about 1/30 of the talk has anything to do with the ideas above.

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Bonus link to this awesome video of the secret Lego Vault with every Lego set ever made, which shows several sets I remember as a kid.

Been steadily getting sicker this week, due to high pollen count in Boston.  The kind of pollen that leaves a lime yellow haze over everything.

Luckily it rained yesterday and today – now I have a bit of a chest/head cold.  Ready to head to bed and crash for the weekend.

Hopefully I’ll be back to full speed after a nice relaxing weekend.

Sitting at my new Mac, catching up on stuff.

E-mail’s done, with various calendars and blogs filled with new events.

Reviewed my aunt’s new web site, Doggone Collectibles, and sent her some suggestions on how to get it to show up in search engine results. Took part of the advice I sent her and added it to my wiki, in a page named “Optimize your site for search engines.”

Used YouTube for a marathon watching of the oddball series “Spaced.” Added each Spaced episode to my wiki as well.

Given the huge dimensions of my new Mac screen, it’s no problem to work, wiki, and blog at the same time.

Currently watching a fantastic Spaced episode with an utterly unexpected parody of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Off to read a bit more of The Bonesetter’s Daughter, and then to bed.

Overall a good Friday!

The Boston Globe recently published an interesting article on the benefits of boredom as a prelude to creativity and introspection.

Boredom’s doldrums were unavoidable, yet also a primordial soup for some of life’s most quintessentially human moments. Jostled by a stranger’s cart in the express checkout line, thoughts of a loved one might come to mind. A long drive home after a frustrating day could force ruminations. A pang of homesickness at the start of a plane ride might put a journey in perspective…

Paradoxically, as cures for boredom have proliferated, people do not seem to feel less bored; they simply flee it with more energy, flitting from one activity to the next. Ralley has noticed a kind of placid look among his students over the past few years, a “laptop culture” that he finds perplexing. They have more channels to be social; there are always things to do. And yet people seem oddly numb. They are not quite bored, but not really interested either.

More at the article: The Joy of Boredom.

And on that note, I plan to finish a few more e-mails and then go finish reading War and Peace.

While reading The Liturgy of the Hours during Lent, I came across the following reading:

While all the runners in the stadium take part in the race, the award goes to one man.  In that case, run so as to win!

Athletes deny themselves all sorts of things.  They do this to win a crown of leaves that withers, but we a crown that is imperishable.

I do not run like a man who loses sight of the finish line.  I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing.

What I do is discipline my own body and master it, for fear that after having preached to others I myself should be rejected.

I recall being incredibly moved when I read this passage; I read it at a time when I felt I had “lost sight of the finish line.”  For me, shadowboxing is sleeping in on the weekend instead of getting up early, taking too many coffee breaks, surfing the net instead of coding sites.  It’s the tendency to coast when I could be pushing further – running “so as to win.”

And now when I come across challenges, and have the choice to sidestep it or push myself, I think of this passage – so that “I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing.”