Brain Pickings

Blog-Turned-Book Success Stories: Part Two

Charting happiness, why you should tip your waiter, and how to tug at heartstrings right.

Last week, we spotlighted five of our ten favorite blog-turned-book success stories. Today, we’re back with the sequel.

INDEXED

It’s no secret we have an infoviz fetish, fueling our longtime love affair with the wonderful Indexed blog — Jessica Hagy’s absolutely charming graph-and-chart-driven visual exploration of, well, everything. With brevity and brilliance, Indexed has captured everything from the secret formula of James Cameron’s biggest hits to the challenges of proposing to a virgin.

So we have no words to describe just how much we’re loving Indexed, the book — a wonderfully curated selection from what’s already a treasure trove of gems.

WAITER RANT

Since 2004, one veteran New York waiter has been dishing out delightfully cynical musings about the inner workings of the restaurant world in Waiter Rant — a hilariously candid and unfiltered account of life in the restaurant service industry.

Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip — Confessions of a Cynical Waiter captures the best, juiciest, most amusing of these stories, from chef scandals to patrons from hell, and promises a solid chuckle.

Thanks for the reminder, @femmmefatal

THE SECRET DIARY OF STEVE JOBS

He’s been worshiped and reviled, but what do we really know about the man who “invented the friggin iPhone”? Thanks to The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, a lot. Yeah, yeah, he may be fake, but we bet he’s a ton more fun than the real one.

The ensuing book, Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs — A Parody, is an absolute treat of humor, snark, and random rants against anyone from shareholders to Ray Kurzweil.

MRS. O

Some time ago, we interviewed Mary Tomer, who in 2008 launched Mrs-O.org — a blog chronicling Michelle Obama’s style.

That public fascination with the first lady’s fashion sense struck such a cultural chord that less than a year later, Mrs. O: The Face of Fashion Democracy hit the press. And it’s a must-read for anyone striving to understand the relationship between fashion, public persona, and popular taste.

1001 RULES FOR MY UNBORN SON

We have a strong aversion to cheesy heartstring-tuggers — cliche photos, contrived greeting cards, regurgitated quotes — of which the interwebs are full. But 1001 rules for my unborn son is positively the loveliest, most moving piece of universal-relevance-disguised-as-fatherly-advice. It combines precious nuggets of insight with just the right dose of quirk and randomness, producing powerful wisdom that doesn’t take itself too seriously — a priceless combination.

The book, Rules for My Unborn Son, is every bit as delightful.

BONUS

More recently, we were ecstatic to find out one of the smartest, most indulgent blogs out there, The Footnotes of Mad Men, got a book deal. The glossy tome, titled Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America, is out on July 20th, but is available for pre-order now.

We can’t wait.

Missed the first five? Catch up right here.

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Wake Your Inner 8-Year- Old: Errandboy Interview

Inner children, manual CGI, and what a bucket of confusion has to do with skate culture.

Today, we’re picking the brains of Willy Sions, the creative visionary behind Errandboy — one of the coolest creative projects we’ve ever come across, a lovely mission bundled with superb creative execution and smart social commentary.

Hey Willy, good to have you. Tell us a bit about your background and your brand of creative curiosity.

Thanks. It’s a pleasure to be a part of Brain Pickings. I was born and raised in Philadelphia. I’ve always been one to exercise the imagination and let the curious mind wander. Our world and things people are into, do, and create, have always been a great interest and inspiration for me. After college, I started working in advertising. Now, I try to keep myself involved in a mix of creative services from advertising, action sport photography, and artist album design.

OK, what is Errandboy?

Errandboy is the 8-Year-Old Wonderchild. He represents the pure fun of childhood. His point of view comes from the inner child and being untainted by the adult world. He is a creative platform and a social commentary piece that started in 2003.

Errandboy is universally relevant in spirit, but he’s also rooted in skate culture, right? Tell us a bit more about that connection.

Yes, Errandboy definitely has been born from the skate culture. Most of my life has been spent immersed in the skateboarding and surfing worlds and many of the influences surrounding them since the late 70′s.

I’ve always admired the attitude and individuality that is inherent in skateboarding. It didn’t matter who you were, what you did, or where you came from. The only thing that mattered was having fun and riding a skateboard.

We love Errandboy’s mantra, “Don’t Act Your Age. Unless You’re 8.” What are some of his messages to the adult world that help break down our grown-up barricades and self-constructed realities?

Errandboy’s messages tend to vary, but for the most part he doesn’t believe in the adult make-believe world. He likes pointing out its nonsense and how silly things can be. Other times he might remind us of simpler ways, forgotten values or the joy and fun too easily neglected in adult life.

For example, there’s a “Don’t Forget to Play in the Dirt” Game Boy design. This tells kids and adults alike to turn off the technology and be active. Sometimes Errandboy’s messages are posed as questions. For instance, “What do you want to be when you don’t grow up?”

If anything, Errandboy can serve as a little tap on the shoulder to remind us of what’s really important – whether you’re 8 or 88.

The Playground is beyond impressive – so much so that it gives the illusion of being CGI. How long did it take you to design and construct? How did you shoot it?

The website took nearly two years to complete. It started with initial concept sketches and CAD designs for both the toys and playground set. Foam core and paper comps were used to test construction and then the elements were cut from metal. Mini-trees were used, which I glued foliage onto and painted. The trees alone took about a week to finish. The set is a Styrofoam-tiered Lazy Susan that sits in a rig outfitted with studio lighting and fluorescent black lights. Glow-in-the-dark paints were used for trim and graphics on the toys.

Everything was shot with 2 Nikon D200’s and stop-frame animation software to capture the 988 frames used for navigating the playground. For every regular-lit frame, an identical glow-in-the-dark frame was shot so it could be programmed to toggle seamlessly between states.

Separate images were also shot for the curtains, submarine periscope, slide, and limeade stand. Once all of the assets were captured, individual frames were retouched and the animations tested to determine the right balance of quality and file size. The Flash work then began on the pre-loader, introduction and main navigation. Coding for the rest of the site followed.

What’s your vision for the Errandboy brand moving forward?

At this point, I want to keep having fun and evolving it in different ways. There are so many facets to it now and a slew of new creative initiatives on the way. One of the next things you’ll see from Errandboy is a postal letter campaign that is going to be lots of fun. Getting into short films or an animated series is definitely on the list. I’m currently looking for the right partners to help move that forward.

There may also be some other characters showing up in the playground soon, so you’ll have to come back later and play…

Let Errandboy bring your inner 8-year-old out to play, and show him some love by grabbing some delightfully quirky Errandboy goodies at the storefront — we like the Bucket of Confusion, and those skate decks are pretty sweet.

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Beyond the Dunbar Number: Picking Dunbar’s Brain

Kinship vs. friendship, the cognitive demands of monogamy, or why 400 Facebook friends may be a health hazard.

In 1992, anthropologist and evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar proposed Dunbar’s Number — a theoretical cognitive limit on the number of people with whom we can maintain viable social relationships. He pinned that number at 148, or roughly 150. But how does this translate to today’s social media environment of 400-friend Facebook profiles — does it help us beat Dunbar’s number?

We asked the iconic British social anthropologist himself, who addresses the issue further in his new book, How Many Friends Does One Person Need? — we highly recommend it.

The amount of time we invest in a relationship is proportionate to its quality. Face-to-face relationships are simply unmatched by online ones. “A touch is worth a 1000 words any day,” says Dunbar. But what online relationships are good for is to stall the decay of a relationship.

If you don’t go to the pub sooner or later, it will die.” ~ Dunbar

But what of all those huge numbers of online friends, aren’t they worth something? Perhaps kinship. The difference between friendship and kinship is that kin won’t fall apart with time and distance, “you can abuse your kin and they’ll still come,” says Dunbar.

Dunbar argues that having lots of kin means having fewer friends. Imagine your time-budget devoted to relationships as a pie. When you start handing out slices of your time to your friends, if too many people crowd around, no one gets a proper slice. Kinship is more about similar social groups, interests, geographical locations, whereas a friend, defined by Dunbar, is a person you can have a personal reciprocated relationship where you are willing to do each other favors.

Have humans always been able to handle 150 personal relationships? Dunbar explains that our brains have grown over time to handle our more complex relationships. The most taxing on our brain is the romantic kind (monogamous). Pair-bonded species have unusually big brains to do all the work.

Romance is very hard work and extremely costing to maintain.” ~ Dunbar

Will our brains continue to evolve to accommodate this hyper-connectivity? The brain accounts for only 2 percent of your total body weight, but uses 20 percent of your daily energy.

Hold on, someone just tweeted me…

Filip Matous hosts a pop-philosophy video show at standstrong.tv. He currently lives in London and is always seeking to find the next interesting person to interview.

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