The very famous sculpture Eva Hesse once had a very famous mental block. She wrote to the equally famous artist Sol Lewitt about how she was having problems. He wrote back:
Dear Eva,
It will be almost a month since you wrote to me and you have possibly forgotten your state of mind (I doubt it though). You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it. Don’t! Learn to say “Fuck You” to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping, confusing, itchin, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, numbling, rumbling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO!
From your description, and from what I know of your previous work and you [sic] ability; the work you are doing sounds very good “Drawing-clean-clear but crazy like machines, larger and bolder… real nonsense.” That sounds fine, wonderful – real nonsense. Do more. More nonsensical, more crazy, more machines, more breasts, penises, cunts, whatever – make them abound with nonsense. Try and tickle something inside you, your “weird humor.” You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you – draw & paint your fear and anxiety. And stop worrying about big, deep things such as “to decide on a purpose and way of life, a consistant [sic] approach to even some impossible end or even an imagined end” You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO!
I have much confidence in you and even though you are tormenting yourself, the work you do is very good. Try to do some BAD work – the worst you can think of and see what happens but mainly relax and let everything go to hell – you are not responsible for the world – you are only responsible for your work – so DO IT. And don’t think that your work has to conform to any preconceived form, idea or flavor. It can be anything you want it to be. But if life would be easier for you if you stopped working – then stop. Don’t punish yourself. However, I think that it is so deeply engrained in you that it would be easier to DO!
It seems I do understand your attitude somewhat, anyway, because I go through a similar process every so often. I have an “Agonizing Reappraisal” of my work and change everything as much as possible = and hate everything I’ve done, and try to do something entirely different and better. Maybe that kind of process is necessary to me, pushing me on and on. The feeling that I can do better than that shit I just did. Maybe you need your agony to accomplish what you do. And maybe it goads you on to do better. But it is very painful I know. It would be better if you had the confidence just to do the stuff and not even think about it. Can’t you leave the “world” and “ART” alone and also quit fondling your ego. I know that you (or anyone) can only work so much and the rest of the time you are left with your thoughts. But when you work or before your work you have to empty you [sic] mind and concentrate on what you are doing. After you do something it is done and that’s that. After a while you can see some are better than others but also you can see what direction you are going. I’m sure you know all that. You also must know that you don’t have to justify your work – not even to yourself. Well, you know I admire your work greatly and can’t understand why you are so bothered by it. But you can see the next ones and I can’t. You also must believe in your ability. I think you do. So try the most outrageous things you can – shock yourself. You have at your power the ability to do anything.
I would like to see your work and will have to be content to wait until Aug or Sept. I have seen photos of some of Tom’s new things at Lucy’s. They are impressive – especially the ones with the more rigorous form: the simpler ones. I guess he’ll send some more later on. Let me know how the shows are going and that kind of stuff.
My work had changed since you left and it is much better. I will be having a show May 4 -9 at the Daniels Gallery 17 E 64yh St (where Emmerich was), I wish you could be there. Much love to you both.
Sol
Interestingly, she took his advice to heart, and took her process apart. She just did, and literally started with the idea of a line. And drew one line at a time, until she literally re-figured out how to draw, how to sculpt. She became a female monument to post-minimalism before she died at age 34.
I suggest when you are stuck, reading this letter. A teacher gave it to me as a reading a long time ago.
There's no need to give an attitude [1], she might not be the only one with this question. Just explain what VMWare is: it's a way to run a virtual machine inside of your main box, so that you don't need another computer to test operating systems out on. And linky: http://www.vmware.com/products/player/
1. Remember the guidelines: Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.
Consider: If OP was trolling, I was trying not to feed them. If OP was serious, I was trying to point in right direction. Either way, I was trying not to waste much time doing it.
Edit: Wow, there's a great way to tank someone's comment score. Show up late to the thread and accuse them of being rude. Thanks for that. Judging from the upvotes, most people seem to think that your lesson on civility is the most insightful part of the thread. sigh
Re: edit: hah, sorry about that - I certainly wan't out for your karma. But the community response is encouraging: it's important to value politeness in an anonymous forum, as that's the most endangered requirement for constructive conversation.
That's the point of VMWare, so you can virtualize another system inside of your primary one, in effect "sandboxing" the guest OS so you don't screw anything up.
Running an OS in a VM per se is unlikely to. But if the host system has poor package management and the virtualization software proves problematic (some of them install files all over the place, including kernel extensions), restoring the host system to its previous state can be difficult. It's not an unreasonable concern.
Actually, This article is impossible. A LAB* colorspace would suggest that color is not uniform at all, and we have large perceptual issues with it. Metamerism and all. There is both infinite Chromaticity and Infinite Luminance from a variety of directions to a point. You get an infinite amount of colors...
So what???? Just because We've decided to use the Pantone system to simply things doesn't mean a Pantone Swatch looks the same in all lights (Luminance). Within each swatch, there are infinite subcolors.
So yeah, it's impossible to copyright a magenta- although you can probably specify which Pantone magenta for the sake of certain pigment specifications you mean, you can't trademark magenta. There are infinite magentas...
An sRGB or Adobe RGB colorspace is just a specific cut of LAB*, since there is a specified singular white-point rather than a fluctuating relative luminance. You'll still get infinite color problems with both, as well as Metamerism (different colors via spectrum that look the same to the human eye)
So Trademark all you want. I'll stick your magenta on a yellow background. It's now a different magenta because of perceptual issues.
You know, the University of Chicago still sounds like it.
The best answer would be, there are 14 haircutting places within the shopping disctructs of the U of C, and it is currently overzoned for hair currently, accroding to the maroon. Only two are true barbershops. It consists of three long blocks. Lets take the U of C landscape to be somewhat abnormal, and that there should really only be 7, of which 1 is a barbershop. There are about 24 neighborhoods in chicago. There should be 24 barbershops...ect ect....
I believe there are sites that reiew overhead. That's a first big one...
I donate to things are non-denomniational, but of my religious background. That's a personal choice. They tend to be a top on my list.
Assoicated with children is anohter big one. However it really had to make an impact.
Also I tend to want to give where there is impact where I live. And I can go check in. It is nice to not only make a monetary impact, and also a physical impact.
Also, I was brought up that charity should long term get the person off charity. Teach a man to fish. The charity might end up self-destructing, but that's ok. People get up and fall down, and the point of charity is the helping of the getting up.
I've taught some very intillegent third graders. No. No they wouldn't have under the time constraints and pressures. People blank with pressure. The first thing the interviewer should do is lay off the pressure not turn it on. Seniors and Out of Job People tend to freak.
First easy thing to do which isn't describe. Tell the person to sit down with a pen and paper. And then talk about the why and how. That was the demeaning part. Antoi-collaborative, very scary.
People blank with pressure. The first thing the interviewer should do is lay off the pressure not turn it on. Seniors and Out of Job People tend to freak.
Even at Google, a job is not a vacation. Wanting to hire people who react well under pressure is completely valid.
The mistake, which is not at all unique to Google, is to think that "high pressure interrogation at a job interview" is usefully similar to the kind of pressure that might occur on the job. For some jobs it will be. For many others, it's completely different.
Compare these scenarios: "QA just found a huge, unexpected performance problem in this server application and no one knows what's causing it. The application goes live in 48 hours and you and your team have until then to make it handle ten thousand times as many users as it does now." vs. "You just landed after a 10-hour flight and will be meeting a major potential customer in 30 minutes. TSA blew up your laptop because it looked suspicious and the airline sent your luggage to Albuquerque so instead of a carefully-prepared presentation all you have are a couple index cards with vague notes about the product. If you don't make a sale, your company will be bankrupt in a week."
No job is a vacation: I've done work under pressure as well for both school and other land.
Google is not going to be bankrupt in a week. If your interviewer is really smart, do the Seth Godin thing: freelance the person for a few weeks, or offer them a real life case they are currently working on to see what that person is actually going to do.
One of the ways I figured out I would make a horrible teacher was I worked as a teacher. I really believed and worked very hard as a teacher. Ultimately, I needed a more collaborative environment, and I was stressed out because I met some really smart kids who were flunking half of exams on purpose when I confronted them about it. They would not work with me to fix these skills in third grade, particularly when there were background issues going on, and I was not the primary teacher. I found it not appropriate for me. I found that really high pressure, and not appropriate for me. Meanwhile, I know I will stay up all night on my own unpaid looking for affordance of different websites and how they can be applied for different business reasons. There you go? That seems to be appropriate for me. I just wish I knew more people in that field, and I wish I had the time to learn to code (after first round BA critiques....)
Interviewers need to sit down and know what is the pressures of the job, Half that interview would not have helped her at all. Furthermore, It is can I work with that person on the job, and help me and her reach a goal under pressure. That's a reasonable expectation. Very reasonable.
There're a couple parts to your comment. Yes, some third graders could do that no problem, even under the time constraints and pressure. I certainly could - I think I could actually have done it faster in 3rd grade than I could now. It's just like a math test or math competition, and good students have no trouble getting perfect scores on a math test even under intense time constraints (< 1 min/problem) and intense pressure ("If you don't ace this quiz, you'll never get into Harvard and then your life will be wasted.")
The second point of your comment is legit - this sort of time/pressure constraint isn't really representative of the workplace as a whole. Nobody should have someone hanging over them making sure you do your math right in under one minute - you certainly don't at Google. The interviewer probably should've tried to make the candidate feel a bit more at-ease.
But the sort of quick estimation skill necessary for these interview questions is really important. There've been countless meetings when someone (often me) has proposed a solution and I've done some quick mental math calculations only to find out that it just won't work. It's really valuable to get those calculations done in a minute so that you can brainstorm new ideas, rather than waiting until after the meeting when you probably just won't do the math at all.
And this is something that I really wish schools taught more of. Being able to get a quick, mostly-right-but-slightly-wrong answer, and being able to tell what ways your answer is wrong, is probably more important than being able to come up with exact answers or parrot back the formulas you supposedly memorize.
That and how to work with people to get to the answer.
I would want to work out that problem with someone. For that math problem right:
lets ignore the 20 people problem (aka 20%) right now and pretend that all the people who visisted clicked. for every 100 people who visit, they now get 1 dollar (it was ten cents) before). in order to get $20 if a hundred people visited for every dollar, you would need
20,000 people.
One problem, they need to click. and only 20 people click per 100 people. so in order to really make that money, you would have to multiply again by 20. I would take the 2s out and start counting 0s because I would get confused at this point.
400,000 people. I think. I may have screwed up the 0s. But If I didn't have a chance to slow down and write down the problem I think I would have screwed that up badly. I'm not sitting around and doing those math problems all the time...
> The first thing the interviewer should do is lay off the pressure not turn it on. Seniors and Out of Job People tend to freak.
If I was at a job interview and was asked these sort of puzzles, I wouldn't feel under pressure. Instead I'd think "Cool, I like solving puzzles! And I'm good at it too so this is a chance to make a good impression." Maybe Google are looking for potential employees with that attitude?
