Please excuse the interruption… I’m doing a little site maintenance today and mindhacks.com is moving over to a new server.
Since you can see this message, you’re looking at the new server which means the maintenance worked. If you notice anything broken around the place, please do let me know (matt at mindhacks dot com). Thanks!
Sunday night means entry to this week’s Mind Performance Hacks book draw is now closed. A drumroll, please, while I pick this week’s winners (as before, with an added sort to make the uniq command work properly)… and our two winners are John Doppke and Jose Antonio Ortega. Congratulations! I’ll be in touch to get your addresses soon. Everyone: That’s our last book draw–thanks for playing!
If you’ve caught my posts the last few Mondays, you’ll know that I read and commented on Mind Performance Hacks, a new book from Ron Hale-Evans and O’Reilly (with some of the regulars of this blog contributing a hack or two) some weeks ago and we’ve been running free draws since. If you want to know more about that book, the sample hacks are worth a read, as is the support site if you want to dig deeper.
Now, at the time we managed to get hold of just a few copies to give away, and there have been 6 lucky winners so far. This week is our 4th and final book draw. You know the drill by now:
If you’d like a chance of winning one of 2 copies of Mind Performance Hacks, send an email to mphdraw4 at mindhacks dot com. If you don’t win this time, you’ll have to buy it. Good luck!
And here’s the usual blurb: Next Sunday evening, UK time, I’ll choose 2 emails randomly and, if you’re a winner, I’ll be in touch to get your address. Please include your name in the email; if my email to you bounces I’ll choose a different one; cheaters will be excluded; organiser’s decision is final; void where prohibited; etc. You don’t have to be in the UK, and emails are deleted if you’re not a winner (if you entered last week and didn’t win, you’re welcome to enter again). Please note that the email address is different from last time.
Hello folks, it’s time to pick out the 2 winners for this week’s Mind Performance Hacks free book draw (I’ll do it the same way as a couple of weeks ago)… Congratulations to Mark Atwood and Monique Milgrom! Well done, and I’ll email you soon to get your postal addresses. Everyone else, bad luck but don’t worry–we’re kicking off the last of our draws tomorrow. Look out for it!
A couple of weeks ago, I posted some thoughts on Mind Performance Hacks, a new book from Ron Hale-Evans and O’Reilly (there are sample hacks online and you can browse the support site for it).
When I made that post, we got hold of some copies from the publisher, and we’ve been having a weekly give-away since. There have been 4 winners so far, and we’re looking for another 2 this week.
If you’d like a chance of winning one of 2 copies of Mind Performance Hacks, send an email to mphdraw3 at mindhacks dot com. Good luck!
Next Sunday evening, UK time, I’ll choose 2 emails randomly and, if you’re a winner, I’ll be in touch to get your address. Please include your name in the email; if my email to you bounces I’ll choose a different one; cheaters will be excluded; organiser’s decision is final; void where prohibited; etc. You don’t have to be in the UK, and emails are deleted if you’re not a winner (if you entered last week and didn’t win, you’re welcome to enter again). Please note that the email address is different from last time. And next Monday… we’ll run the final draw.
Entry to the second Mind Performance Hacks free book draw from last Monday is now closed. All that’s left to do is randomly select the 2 winners. Here we go (I’ll do it in the same way as the first draw)… And congratulations Jacob Krall and Chris Berry–well done! I’ll be in touch shortly to get your postal addresses.
If you missed it last week, I posted some thoughts on Mind Performance Hacks, a new book from Ron Hale-Evans and O’Reilly (you can read sample hacks and browse the support site for it).
We managed to get some copies from the publisher, as they also published Mind Hacks, the book this blog spun out from, and last week we gave away 2 copies in a draw. We’re doing the same this week, and have another two draws after this.
If you’d like a chance of winning one of 2 copies of Mind Performance Hacks, please send an email to mphdraw at mindhacks dot com. Next Sunday evening, UK time, I’ll choose 2 emails randomly and, if you’re a winner, I’ll be in touch to get your address. Please include your name in the email; if my email to you bounces I’ll choose a different one; cheaters will be excluded; organiser’s decision is final; void where prohibited; etc. You don’t have to be in the UK, and emails are deleted if you’re not a winner (if you entered last week and didn’t win, you’re welcome to enter again).
Please note that the email address is different from last time.
Hey folks, entry to the Mind Performance Hacks free book draw from last Monday is now closed. The email address has now been deactivated, and all that’s left to do is randomly select the 2 winners. Here we go (see how I did the selection after the jump)… And congratulations Adrian Neumann and Chris Elliott! I’ll be in touch to get your postal addresses. Well done!
Everyone else, thanks for entering, and look out for the next draw tomorrow.
While I’ve been away, I’ve been reading Mind Performance Hacks by Ron Hale-Evans. (Full disclosure: There are a couple of Mind Hacks pieces in the book, so O’Reilly sent me a free copy.) What follows are some brief thoughts, so if you already know about the book then skip to the end of the post for the interesting bit.
MPH is O’Reilly’s second foray into the cognitive world, and focuses on strategies in high-level areas like memory, creativity and self-analysis. I especially enjoyed the the maths chapter, which includes topics like how to count to a million on your fingers (I’ve tried dactylonomy before) and how to estimate square roots in your head. The approach does mean that, for some of the hacks, there’s little room for the kind of explanation I usually look for, and I do admit to feeling sceptical when reading about a creativity technique from Edward de Bono or a mnemonic structure for figuring out your own emotional responses. Personally, I find some hacks like these are based on world-views that I find difficult to swallow whole–I don’t know whether independent assessments of the techniques exist, but if they do then I’d like to hear more about them. Happily, since the book is based on the Mentat Wiki (that’s the book’s support page), which is constantly growing, it’s quite likely that this kind of information will appear there in the future.
Our own Vaughan Bell and Tom Stafford have original hacks in MPH too, on sleep and nutrition. I’d forgotten they were making an appearance, for some reason, and it was a pleasant surprise to run across the familiar names and always-informative articles.
For me, the highlights were the ideas I’d run across but not chased down, and these had me reaching for my notebook. There’s discussion and much linking on artificial languages, constrained writing and board games, among much more. From this perspective, the entire book is a creativity machine. I can use it as a series of provocations, and that’s always good to have on the shelf. (And, as a last thought, I half-suspect that the fact the title abbreviates to MPH (for miles-per-hour) is not an accident. Hale-Evans comes across as an author with exactly this kind of intertwingled sense of humour.)
(Update: Ron points out, in the comments, that there are MPH sample hacks online (as PDFs). Do have a read.)
Free books!
As you’ll know, mindhacks.com isn’t an O’Reilly site. It was started to support the Mind Hacks book, that’s true, but since then it’s taken on a life of its own, thanks to our blog authors.
We do, however, have enough of a connection to wangle free copies of Mind Performance Hacks. More than that, we have enough free books to give away 2 copies a week for the next 4 weeks.
So: If you’d like a chance of a free copy of Mind Performance Hacks, send one email to freemph at mindhacks dot com. Next Sunday evening, UK time, I’ll choose 2 emails randomly and, if you’re a winner, I’ll be in touch to get your address. Please include your name in the email; if my email to you bounces I’ll choose a different one; cheaters will be excluded; organiser’s decision is final; void where prohibited; etc.
Next Monday, I’ll delete all the emails received so far and we’ll have another draw. Not bad eh?
Good luck!
(Update: I thought I’d better confirm that you don’t have to be in the UK to enter – anywhere in the world is fine – and I’m the only person who will see your email address (except if you win, obviously. All other emails will be deleted at the end of the draw).)
Well, okay, not really a serenade but the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, which kicks off in San Diego next week, on 6 March. I (Matt) will be there, speaking about my new project, playsh, the Playful Shell. And since the conference organisers also published Mind Hacks, I figure a few readers of this blog may be going along too. If you are, please do hunt me down and say hello! It’s always fun to meet new folks.
Just a quick note to say thanks very much to Mark Brown who got sick of mindhacks.com not having a favicon… and made us one. You can see it up there in the address bar, or – possibly – by the title for your RSS feed. Much appreciated, cheers!
The translations come thick and fast! Ajatus (which means “Thought”, I understand) has now been released by publishers readme.fi in Finland, in hardback no less. Many thanks to Chris Heathcote for picking a copy up for me in Helsinki. He took a photo of the book too, if you’d like to see.
Grab Ajatus at readme’s website if you fancy it, and I’ve put the blurb (in Finnish) below the fold.
I’ll stop with the hard sell now, sorry! I just get excited about these things.
Mind Hacks has been available in Japanese since December 2005, and according to the reviews on Google’s translation of the Amazon.co.jp page, the book’s been exceptionally well translated. (Also, very well received which is gratifying!) I believe this is the translator’s blog and, if so, thanks very much and well done.
Looking at a few more translated pages, including that blog again and the O’Reilly Japan news page, it seems that Mind Hacks sold out at the end of 2005 and has now been reprinted. That’s testament to what must be a great job in translating and re-working the book–and, since I now have the finished object in my hand, some beautiful book design. The binding and production is really good. Congratulations folks! It really is exciting to see Mind Hacks do this well… and very odd to see photos of Tom and me and all other others in the book floating off around the world.
Any Japanese readers out there who’d like to buy the book: Please see the links here and the O’Reilly Japan book page for some sample hacks. Also please do report back!
I’ve tucked a couple of photos below the fold…
I’ve taken advantage of the holidays to have a big server move and shift mindhacks.com to a different machine… If you see this post, it worked! If you notice any glitches around the site, please do let me know at matt at mind hacks dot com. Thanks!
To add to Vaughan’s post about cyborg senses the other day, here’s another group experimenting with new ways of perceiving the world. Steve Haworth and Jesse Jarrell are body modification artists, and one of their clients was Todd Huffman, who has had a small magnet implanted in the tip of his finger.
In an interview with Todd, The Gift of Magnetic Vision (some pictures on this site are not for the squeamish), he describes how this magnet isn’t just a trick and what “seeing” magnetic fields feels like:
There are two distinct feelings I get from fields. For a static field, like a bar magnet, it feels like a smooth pressure. Imagine running your hand slowly through lukewarm water, and brushing your finger across the top of a large invisible marshmallow. That is the closest description I can give. Oscillating fields, such as electric motors, security devices, transformers, et cetera, vibrate the magnet. This sensation is much more sensitive and noticeable.
Having the magnet implant makes his understanding of the world more visceral:
Another time I opened a can of cat food for my girlfriend’s pets, and I sensed the electric motor running. My hand was about six inches away from the electric can opener, and I was able to sense where the motor was inside of the assembly. Again it brought my attention to a magnetic source that I understood intellectually, but would have otherwise been unaware of.
The interview also covers other supersenses Todd is thinking about, and the relation of this kind of experimentation to new computer interfaces–which is subject I find fascinating.
Interfaces of all kinds, whether it’s burglar alarms, televisions or computer screens, present information in a very factual way and in a way that’s intended for intellectual understanding. But compare that to the ambient understanding we have of the rest of the world around us: reading somebody’s scribbled note also carries a hurried sense; a car getting a flat or needing an oil change will drive differently; a glance along the spice rack will influence your shopping list. Our regular senses work on both attentive and preperceptive channels… so why do our technological systems so often stick to the former? And is it possible to transform the previously invisible – like magnetic fields – into senses we can use? This is what academic subjects like ubiquitous computing and ubicomp computer-human interaction are attacking, on technological and design fronts. But it seems that the folks really breaking new ground are the body-mod crowd.
Link to The Gift of Magnetic Vision.
Scott Adams, the artist behind the comic Dilbert, has a movement disorder called focal dystonia that prevents him from drawing in the regular way. It, and his response to it, are discussed in an article in the Washington Post.
Focal dystonia, which can affect the hand (where it’s commonly called “writer’s cramp” when it affects writing), the neck (the most common site), eyelids or vocal chords, is something of a mystery. First reported in people who do fine finger work, including writers, seamstresses and musicians, it affects an estimated 29.5 individuals per 100,000 population […] Often, focal hand dystonia patients are people who use the small muscles of the fingers and hands.
What I find most interesting about this condition is its neurological roots, as the fine finger work coupled with the stress that often triggers focal dystonia appears to “teach” part of the brain some broken connections:
“We think the disorder is largely associated with the basal ganglia,” which are deep brain structures that help regulate movement, Karp [Barbara Karp, deputy clinical director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)] said. One theory is that repetitive movements or some other cause somehow trigger abnormal learning patterns in the brain.
One therapy for focal dystonia is “sensory training,” changing techniques of practice so that the sensory areas of the brain can learn again how to give proper feedback to the motion parts. Adams, in his case, now uses a graphics tablet and draws Dilbert at many times the final size.
Link to Scott Adams, Drawing the Line in the Washington Post.
Mind Hacks 