Yuval Noah Harari’s book ‘Sapiens’ is awesome - I found it a great read. One of the things I enjoyed most was his concept of imagined orders, or how large populations of people can share fictions that only exist in our collective imaginations. Harari suggests that trade and conflict work to forge a global, unified empire and the most popular imagined order revolves around thoughts on commerce. These ideals, he thinks, are more popular and held by more people than any of the religions, governments or political orders that have ever existed.

Yuval does have a point, but I was disappointed when he glossed over timekeeping. I often think of the way we keep time as the most dominant cultural influence to have ever existed. It’s bigger than Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Janis Joplin or even The Beatles.

A year ago I first got my hands on a pack of Estimote iBeacons, I spent a bit of time working out their accuracy and quickly fell in love with them. The quick answer. Super accurate, within 10cm when you are 1 metre away. What bothered me about the test is that it was static. The phone fixed in place and didn’t move in relation to the Estimote. This wasn’t representative of how iBeacons get used in practice.

Dear Van Neistat, So I have been trying to write these little fan letters. I use them as a way of researching and understanding those who influence me. But your fan letter. This. Has just about broken me. I have thrown away countless different versions. Somewhere in the last few years you became a digital ghost. Vanished into the real world and became a recluse from the Internet. I hope you are well and still prolifically making stuff and filming things.

Ugh. I hate bookmarks. They suck. They are painful to search, messy and I happened to have them scattered across multiple backup files. Original reference material* is a curated home for little ideas, tips and tricks that are yet to make it into my long-term memory. I guess they are a cross between ‘gists’ and bookmarks. Little snippets or ideas that are not formed enough to warrant a whole blog post.