Tim Keller

I recall the first time I came across YouTube in 2005. Ryan Warzecha suggested we at The (then highly active) Cavern Today put our video content onto a new website called “YouTube”. My immediate reaction was somewhat negative. I assumed it was nothing more than a collection of barely funny memes, myspace-crazed teens, and keyboard cats. And, importantly, it was really slow on my 56k Dialup internet connection.

Fast forward to 2009 and I can easily lose an hour an evening on YouTube. In fact, Amy and I spent more than a few minutes this evening watching some very talented Yale students’ music videos. Amazing.

The talent of some YouTube posters is absolutely astounding… and most of them are in High School or College. When I was in school (not terribly long ago), Tech-savvy meant knowing some Python or Java, running Firefox version 0.7, and hacking Linux on the weekends. Today, the tech-savvy youth are producing amazing creative work through simple (often free) audio and video editing apps on Macs, PCs and the web. It is hard not to be impressed.

Here’s a couple of embedded videos from a YouTube-exclusive series produced by a bunch of Yale students. I think they deserve a watch. Enjoy!

College Musical

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

I think New Year’s resolutions are stupid. In fact, I dislike New Year’s Eve in it’s entirety. Why? Well.

First of all no one ever keeps New Year’s resolutions, be it as a result of too much Orange Juice (read Champagne) or just because no one really wants to change the way they do things. Maybe it’s because the beginning of a New Year is always so fraught with *sigh* feelings. It’s almost the end of your holiday, Christmas has come and gone, and you somehow have to summon the energy to face yet another year of work. For these reasons above I move to introduce a new concept: Spring Resolutions!

Spring has sprung in Cape Town, South Africa (I’m told we’re a bit behind the Vernal Equinox due to our longitude and/or latitude) and what better time to set new goals for the year ahead! Psychologists studying Seasonal Affective Disorder (with the ironic acronym SAD) have found that depression and happiness cycles can be triggered by the different seasons of the year. It was first proposed by Norman E. Rosenthal, MD in 1984. He moved from sunny South Africa to New York City and found that he become lethargic and depressed during the cold Winter months. The treatment of this disorder is fairly simple: Dawn simulations (that is, programming one’s bedroom lights to simulate sunrise by slowly getting brighter over a period of 1 or 2 hours prior to waking) have been highly successful… and the usual plethora of Anti-depressant SSRI drugs have also been shown to be an effective remedy.

This means is that Spring – a time when everything is pure, crisp, and new – is the perfect time to start thinking about one’s future plans. Think about how you’ve felt this week, and compare that to how you felt 2 months ago, in the middle of winter. I bet you’ve had a better week this week. That’s because Spring has a major influence on our emotional well-being.

Consider Matthew C. Keller’s research (I’m afraid there is no direct relation between the two of us, to my knowledge anyway)

Happiness is a beach, sometimes.

Matthew C. Keller, a postdoctoral fellow at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, decided that researchers weren’t asking the right questions. His study, published in Psychological Science, has found that moods do generally rise with temperature—with or without the beach—but only in the spring. That’s probably because people savor the sun after months of deprivation, Keller says.

Even during the spring thaw, only people who spend time outside in the sunshine are likely to find themselves measurably happier. The optimal daily dose: one half hour.

So, here’s what I’m going to do this Spring and hopefully maintain for the next 365 days. These are my Spring Resolutions:

• Spend 30 minutes a day in the Sun. No, the computer screen does not count as the Sun.
• Try to get less frustrated by the annoyances of daily life.
• Understand that Renault are just a terrible car manufacturer and accept that things are going to go wrong with my Modus. No use fighting with them.
• Say Sorry and Thank You more often.
• Only write websites in CSS and XHTML. No more tables.
• Limit Coffee intake.
• Limit SouperSandwhich (the greatest UCT Food place ever) intake.
• Limit Facebooking, Flickr.com’ing, Forum-reading, and Computer Gaming while I’m meant to be working.
• Read the parts of the Bible I’ve never read before.

Hope you’ll take my Spring message to heart and do the same. It’s a great time of the year to set new goals. Apologies to those Northern Hemisphere guys who are in Autumn. I suggest you start programming your lights for Dawn Simulation

-Tim

*Thanks to Martin for finding me this*

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can; and
the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.

Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.
Trusting that He will make all things right, if I surrender to His will.
That I may be reasonably happy in this life,
and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.

Hey I read this and thought it was quite good… It’s from the blog of the brother of the bride. Those of ya getting married take heed!

1. Your world is getting bigger today, not smaller! More history, more friends, more possibilities. Marriage is not the end of the search, it’s the beginning of all the searches that are more fun to do together.
2. Be the guardians of each other’s solitudes. Not only do you need to give each other space, you need to make each other space.
3. No difficult conversations after 10pm. Not only is it harder to solve problems when you’re tired, but at least half the time being tired is the problem.
4. The Dutch principle of Total Soccer means that any player can attack when there is an opportunity, and any player can defend when there is a need. In Total Marriage you only have two players, so this is even more important. Both of you should be able to do everything your team needs. You’ll have your preferences and strengths and habits, but if one of you goes down, the other one has to be able to cover.
5. Wedding rings don’t really come with magic powers. You will learn how to take care of each other one insight at a time. And even when you’re not sure how, show up and you’ll think of something.
6. Headphones; separate closets.
7. If you aren’t already the world’s leading experts on each other, you will be soon. It is thus your responsibility to be not only the world’s biggest fans of each other’s best qualities, but also the world’s staunchest fans of each other’s weaknesses and flaws.
8. Get pets. By far the easiest way to remember that you have to feed your shared life together is if part of it comes and stomps on you every morning.
9. No ultimatums. Ever.
10. Travel. Surprise and challenge yourselves. It’s easier to have a world together if you have a world to compare it to, and part of the fun of getting to know each other is putting yourselves, together, in positions where neither of you know what you’re going to do yourself.
11. Committing yourselves to one another is one of the most mature, responsible, focused decisions you can make. Balance it out by being immature, irresponsible and playful together as often as possible.
12. When people, especially your relatives, offer you long lists of marriage advice, just smile politely and nod until they finally shut up.

From: http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log&id=245

True Story: A man was driving through a really bad part of Cape Town last week – when suddenly his car broke down. He got out the car and went to inspect the engine. Caught up in the frenzy of traffic trying to divert around his stopped car he closed the driver’s door behind him and heard the heart breaking click as he locked himself out. The keys were still in the car but all the doors had somehow locked.

He was a single man with no wife at home to bring him the spare set of keys and so quickly realised he had a major problem on his hands.

Thoughts of breaking the window of his car to get in were just begining to form in his mind when a random stranger pulled off the road and got out to help him. The two quickly realised there was no getting into the car and to the keys.

Just then the random stranger turned to the man and said: “Here, take my car and go fetch your spare key from home. I’ll wait here and direct the traffic around your car.” Astounded he took the 20 minute drive home and 20 minute drive back to the car and on return found the random stranger still directing traffic around his car.

When I heard this story I knew I had to blog it. Isn’t it amazing: there actually are nice people left in the world… How cool! Have you got a “nice person” story?

From Motivation To Motive-Action by Denis Waitley

With the passing of every new year, each of us needs to understand the magnitude of social and economic change in the world. In the past, change in business and social life was incremental and a set of personal strategies for achieving excellence was not required. Today, in the knowledge-based world, where change is the rule, a set of personal strategies is essential for success, even survival. Never again will you be able to go to your place of business on autopilot, comfortable and secure that the organization, state or government will provide for and look after you. You must look in the mirror when you ask who is responsible for your success or failure. You must become a lifelong learner and leader, for to be a follower is to fall hopelessly behind the pace of progress. The power brokers in the new global arena will be the knowledge facilitators. Ignorance will be even more the tyrant and enslaver than in the past.

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