80beans

Running

I’m reading a memoir by Haruki Murakami af the moment, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I came across this interesting thought:

Sometimes I run fast when I feel like it, but if I increase the pace I shorten the amount of time I run, the point being to let the exhilaration I feel at the end of each run carry over to the next day. This is the same sort of tack I find necessary when writing a novel. I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that and the next day’s work goes suprisingly smoothly.  I think Ernest Hemingway did something like that. To keep on going you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for longterm projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to at a set speed – and to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can manage.

We’re working on a few very longterm projects and it’s always a problem to keep making steady progress during all phases. Especially in the middle when the excitement level goes down and the goal seems to be far away. I’m going to try this idea and report back about it later.

New year’s reception

We’ll be at the IPAN/212 Amsterdam/IAB new year’s reception tonight. We would love to hear your views on how the internet is going to develop in 2008 (maybe because of your web app?). You can recognize us by… erm… we promise to put up some mug shots soon ;-)

Felix Meritis, Keizersgracht 324, 7 to 11 pm.

Rails 2.0 released

Today the release of Rails framework version 2.0 was announced. We have been developing using release candidates for a while and are happy with it, especially the RESTful resources.