tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410447933493689892012-02-16T13:00:24.501-06:00<B>cathect</B> (k&#601; thekt<B>'</B>), <I>tr. v.</I> To invest emotional energy in (a person, object or idea)Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.comBlogger401100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-20938659493174973522010-04-02T21:55:00.002-05:002010-04-02T22:01:57.235-05:00

Lucy recently moved her site to WordPress, and in the process of helping her move - tinkering, tweaking & tuning things behind the scenes - I realized I was jealous. From here forward, my blog will be hosted at johnhorstman.com. Thanks for reading, and please update your RSS readers.

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-82210254823248345782010-03-03T20:04:00.001-06:002010-03-03T20:04:50.851-06:00

Last May, my brother Tyler and I encouraged dozens of our friends & family to donate to our team in Walk Now for Autism, a charity event planned by Autism Speaks.  Thanks to the support of those generous folks, our team contributed over $1,000 to autism research. This May, I’m participating in Walk Now for the third time, and my goal is to beat last year’s fundraising total. Autism has a

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-26199284534597362472010-01-12T22:15:00.001-06:002010-01-12T22:15:04.392-06:00

John Maeda made a brilliant observation in his TED talk about simplicity.  To paraphrase: people like complexity in things they enjoy, and they hate complexity in things they dislike.  Yes!  Complexity in music & books captivates me, complexity in my tax returns makes me want to jump in front of a train. In 2010, I’ll be trying to reduce some of the unnecessary complexities in my life.  As an

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-20008028266529740982009-10-07T22:24:00.001-05:002009-10-07T22:24:21.163-05:00

Mike Doughty’s new album, Sad Man Happy Man, came out this week.  Mike has been one of my favorite singer/songwriters for years, so I have to pick up a copy.  Only one decision is preventing me from finalizing my purchase: Should I buy the physical CD or the mp3s?  There are a number of arguments for one side or the other, but for some reason I’m really focusing on one thing: Do I want to own a

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-51987859642879389132009-09-14T18:17:00.001-05:002009-09-14T18:17:37.148-05:00

Pitchfork Media recently published a list of the top 500 songs of the millennium, along with several other retrospective lists covering the past 10 years.  These “top x” pop culture lists are bullshit in most cases, since the lists imply that the authors are definitive authorities on purely subjective matter.  These lists might be relevant if they were compiled as “most influential,” simply

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-37842284705352145452009-09-01T22:57:00.001-05:002009-09-01T23:00:22.340-05:00

In July, I went to Paris.  Physically and mentally.  And with my girlfriend.  Amazing Paris comic journal courtesy of Lucy Knisley. Lengthy vacations allow us to pull up the anchor and drift for a bit.  The difference between today’s Johnny and June 2009 Johnny is probably greater than the difference between June 2009 Johnny and the Johnny of one year prior, and not just in fromage content.

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-10750287697541259302009-06-22T23:46:00.001-05:002009-06-22T23:46:35.144-05:00

Last week, Lucy told me about The Bechdel Rule, and I’ve been fascinated by it ever since.  Actually, I’m not fascinated by the rule itself, but rather by how powerful a statement it makes despite its simplicity. Alison Bechdel is a comic artist, creator of the long-running strip Dykes To Watch Out For and the autobiography Fun Home, which was nominated for numerous awards and appeared on many

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-13879049367715649712009-04-13T23:44:00.002-05:002009-04-15T17:18:37.901-05:00

Last May, I joined 17,000 walkers on Soldier Field for Chicago’s Walk Now for Autism.  Together we raised almost $1.5 million to support autism research and to raise awareness about this increasingly common disorder.  (One in every 150 kids born today is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder.)  I was proud to raise $400 in honor of my older brother, Luke, and I’m really grateful to all

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-88601398954392517922009-03-25T23:21:00.001-05:002009-03-25T23:21:31.797-05:00

Hi, everyone.  I have some big deal, hot shit, life-altering news that I’d like to talk about, but it’s in my best interests not to go postin’ all over the interwebs about it.  Alas, this is a teaser post.  Individual inquiries about said news, addressed directly to me via email or face to face, are welcomed. Since the news hit, I’ve been indulging in two of the biggest technology-enabled time

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-90923111453044729612009-03-05T02:26:00.001-06:002009-03-05T02:32:00.281-06:00

Lately I’ve been mining the archives of presentations at the annual TED conference.  Each 20-minute talk addresses a subject from the field of technology, entertainment, or design, and many are presented by geniuses: Stephen Hawking and Frank Gehry’s talks are lined up in my downloads right now.  Three of the talks that I watched recently share a common theme: choice.  Their juxtaposition in my

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-68961165548353885982009-02-04T23:09:00.001-06:002009-02-04T23:09:44.256-06:00

This blog post is long overdue, but with good reason.  My latest client is headquartered in Vancouver, a city that's been on my top destination list for quite a while.  I was determined to make the best of my time there, thus I resolved to spend my weeknights seeing Vancouver rather than writing about it. I'm never sure how much my feelings about a new city are influenced by my predispositions

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-39455181614452138302009-01-05T23:51:00.000-06:002009-01-06T00:05:45.065-06:00

For starters, new blog with zee puppets.   * * * * * * * It's a new year, folks!  Did you rock in 2008?  Did you suck?  Yes, you sucked?  Is it time to stop sucking so much?  There are a number of things I'd like to work on in 2009: regrowing an attention span, not being a jerk to my mom when she asks me computer questions (ugh, so bad at this... sorry, Ma), getting more sleep like I

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-88395657393789893572008-12-18T00:19:00.001-06:002008-12-18T00:27:19.662-06:00

As Lucy's comic suggests, I'm a huge Malcolm Gladwell fan.  I could blog my thoughts on almost every chapter in his latest book, Outliers, but I'm not sure I'd be able to curb my desire to just copy the book into my blog verbatim in an attempt to expose more people to his fascinating socio-economic hypotheses, so I'll try to keep it brief.  Here are a few points of interest from his recent

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-74353137658957240502008-12-02T00:43:00.001-06:002008-12-02T00:43:55.808-06:00

The Spanish language has two verbs that mean "to be."  To generalize, estar is used to indicate location or a temporary state. John está en el cuarto de baño, probablemente el juego de Riesgo en su iPhone. John is in the bathroom, probably playing Risk on his iPhone. Ser is used (again, generally) when describing a more permanent state of being, such as physical attributes or

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-4515535394785302822008-11-10T22:54:00.001-06:002008-11-10T22:57:41.676-06:00

From Obama election night rally 2008-11-04 Like most Democrats, progressives, and young people out there, I was elated when CNN announced that Barack Obama had won the presidency.  Obama ran an outstanding campaign and made a lot of great promises.  Most of my friends have astronomically large expectations of our president-elect.  It will be interesting to

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-31077796006437016142008-10-21T23:15:00.001-05:002008-10-21T23:15:48.534-05:00

When a dermatologist told me a few weeks ago that I should get a biopsy for a mole on my head, I never seriously entertained the idea that I had skin cancer.  I didn't lose any sleep playing out worst-case scenarios in my head (though I did lose sleep trying to lie down in a way that kept the stitches in my head off my pillow).  I thought so little of the matter that I didn't even mention it to

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-11086281981613612512008-10-14T00:05:00.000-05:002008-10-14T00:10:15.607-05:00

Hi, all.  It turns out that my work didn't appreciate my last post, which combined the company name and booze, drinking, etc. in such a way that my blog was spotted by their saved Google searches, and I was asked to take it down.  Here are the bonus items from the bottom of the post. Quimby's is hosting a release party for Lucy's book on Tuesday, Oct 14th, starting at 7 PM.  If you're reading

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-79134737263269811132008-09-17T23:59:00.000-05:002008-09-18T00:07:18.660-05:00

The Sunday night before my first trip to Arizona, I checked the local temperature in Scottsdale at 10 PM.  It was 95 degrees. Luckily, it's a dry heat, and yes, that makes a difference.  One of the locals told me that their heat index sometimes drops below the real temperature.  This is unheard of in Chicago, where humidity is a malevolent force and the heat index can be likened to the Terror

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-53149321132478603452008-09-10T02:01:00.002-05:002008-10-21T23:17:32.335-05:00

Hi, all.  About two weeks ago, my lungs turned into the La Brea tar pits, and I've been a wheezing bag of slime ever since.  Luckily, in between games of Super Mario Galaxy and meals of greasy breakfast foods, I've found a few interesting things to read.  Here are two pieces I'd recommend to anyone interested in dusting off the old quill and inkwell. Through Merlin Mann's wonderful blog on

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-72558794863226909512008-08-21T20:43:00.001-05:002008-08-21T20:43:19.458-05:00

OK, so I've blogged about productivity a few times before.  This time, though, I'm going to pass along some useful information instead of just talking about how great GTD is.  Here are three of my favorite efficiency tips from three of my favorite efficiency gurus. Batch your tasks (from Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek) - This one is pretty intuitive: buy all your groceries at the same

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-47426595013777963772008-08-14T21:01:00.000-05:002008-08-14T21:54:46.469-05:00

In her latest book, What It Is, Lynda Barry provides methods, exercises and general motivation for getting your creative juices flowing.  Large portions of the book are dedicated to memories: What is a memory?  What is the past?  Where (and why) do we keep bad memories?  Why are memories important?  A few recent blasts from the past have had me thinking over these questions. I downloaded a

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-25185051009295336302008-07-30T21:10:00.000-05:002008-07-30T22:20:54.897-05:00

My personal organization & productivity streak is still rolling. I worship zealously at the altar of GTD, and I'm working hard to internalize the dogmas of Tim Ferriss & Merlin Mann. Feeling confident in my knowledge of modern productivity theory, I recently decided to pick up a slightly older (1989) but still immensely popular advice book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-24655124541552464602008-07-17T19:32:00.000-05:002008-07-17T20:14:55.059-05:00

Lucy & I are now two weeks into our cohabitation.  We've reconciled our inventories, and a few more items are going to go on the eBay/Craig's List/Freecycle chopping block.  Purging is my newfound love, but it has not replaced my lifelong passion: organization.  Luckily, the two complement each other nicely, and our ménage à trois has produced a sweet little living space.  Of course, it didn't

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-40023301533402159182008-06-26T23:55:00.000-05:002008-06-26T23:56:35.151-05:00

Tomorrow morning, I'm hopping on a 6:55 AM flight to Boston, where I'll meet Lucy and her mom and then drive 2 hours to White River Junction, VT.  For the next 2 days, we'll be packing Lucy's stuff up and loading it into a van, and for 2 days after that we'll haul it all to Chicago.  On Tuesday, July 1st, we arrive in Chicago, load my stuff into the van, and bring it all to Logan Square for The

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-72656337176128026762008-06-16T21:32:00.001-05:002008-06-16T21:52:51.585-05:00

Anyone who's ever wondered what a perfect eulogy for a perfect life sounds like would do well to watch last Sunday's episode of Meet The Press. Tom Brokaw and group of Tim Russert's closest friends reflect on the life of a devoted father, a loving son, a fiercely loyal friend, and a paragon of journalism. No one could hope to be remembered more fondly. Keep the tissues handy. Good luck and

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-43339993348248040622008-05-23T21:13:00.001-05:002008-05-23T21:13:11.805-05:00

Reason #852 why it's awesome to work for Google: the company frequently brings in really interesting guest speakers and gives you the opportunity to attend for free.  Also, in another Google act of web benevolence, most of these lectures are recorded and posted on the Google Tech Talks YouTube channel where anyone can view them for free.  One of my coworkers pointed me to Merlin Mann's lecture on

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-34733464384185437712008-04-22T21:25:00.001-05:002008-04-22T21:28:16.554-05:00

Yesterday's Dinosaur Comics addressed our society's widespread inability to use the word "literally" correctly.  Today, in an interview on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Hillary Clinton described America as being "literally over the oil barrel" with regard to our energy policy. Et tu, Hillary? One easy way to make the world a better place is never to misuse the word "literally" again.  If that

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-67154308589679424942008-04-12T17:05:00.001-05:002008-04-12T17:05:17.270-05:00

Thanks to everyone who made our party a rousing success!  Pam's piñata was a smash hit (ha!) and we damn near drank the place dry.  Also, we raised $55 in donations for my autism walk this May! The party kicked off an insane 48 hours for me.  After going to bed around 5 AM on Sunday morning, I woke up at 9 to start working - as in work working.  I left the house at 2:30 Sunday afternoon to

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-56513114244783385532008-03-25T22:21:00.001-05:002008-03-25T22:21:56.336-05:00

Hey gang.  Since my last post was all about recommendations made by computers, I thought I'd balance that out with some recommendations made by humans - namely, me.  The following recommendations are my attempt to better your lives. Now that it's not so cold that every moment spent outdoors is spent swearing, I've started taking walks and listening to podcasts.  This American Life, The Savage

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-14410975482667119392008-03-12T20:30:00.002-05:002008-03-12T20:31:58.954-05:00

In his 2005 interview with Giant Robot magazine (.pdf posted here), the artist Ryan McGinness (whose work is featured at the beginning and end of this blog) talks about how the role of the curator is increasingly important as it becomes easier and easier for people to produce creative output.  McGinness says that technology has created many more writers (thanks to blogs), musicians (thanks to

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-35249484566340859502008-03-05T20:45:00.005-06:002008-03-05T23:04:08.228-06:00

For those who haven't seen this yet on my tumblog, here's proof that my girlfriend is the best girlfriend in the world. In your face, chumps! I remember reading something online a little while back about how Google is actually having a detrimental effect on people's memory skills. Because so much information is now available at all times and can be accessed with a negligible amount of

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-40248268885869992852008-02-21T20:43:00.005-06:002008-03-06T13:46:01.955-06:00

Work is kind of slow these days, so I'm taking some corporate training classes online, like "Influencing Without Authority" and "Critical Thinking," and the best thing about them is that they have all sorts of great pictures to illustrate their points.I know this is basically a case of the smug, cynical employee making fun of the corporate videos to prove that he's too cool for The Man's

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-20528273458874876462008-02-10T20:45:00.002-06:002008-03-06T13:44:00.667-06:00

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-30834409453371568622008-01-20T18:47:00.002-06:002008-03-06T13:40:47.862-06:00

After a consistent two weeks of too much stress and not enough sleep, my body decided that it was going on strike.  I woke up Friday morning aching from head to toe and I've barely left my bedroom since.  Luckily, I've used what little strength I could muster up to post a new set of songs on my MySpace page!  Say hello to the new Tiger Stance EP, Bee Dances.  All of the songs can be downloaded

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-54626345952025772322008-01-10T22:35:00.003-06:002008-03-06T13:43:11.237-06:00

Last night I was reading a book called Time and the Art of Living, which is a collection of meditations on time by an English professor named Robert Grudin.  I'm in the middle of a chapter in which Grudin is advocating metric time, which would be a system built upon our base-10 numbering system, and I have to admit that it's making a lot of sense.  24 hours in a day?  60 minutes in an hour?  Why

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-25363420965688060042008-01-09T23:07:00.002-06:002008-03-06T13:37:48.277-06:00

Just a few quick updates from Johnny HQ. As I mentioned in a previous blog, there are already multiple bands named Sub Rosa including one local to Chicago, so I've decided to change my band name. From now on I'll be putting up music under the name Tiger Stance, which appears to be a unique band name after a little bit of Googling and MySpace searching. I just changed the name of my Sub

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-44462499903110225742007-12-21T18:39:00.001-06:002007-12-21T18:39:41.096-06:00

Thursday, 12/13, was my last day working in Beverly Hills, so to commemorate the occasion I wore my favorite suit. On our last night in town, our dinner was comprised of great Italian food and cupcakes. The only celebrity I spotted while I was there: Jon Voight, in the lobby of the Beverly Hilton.LA was the most interesting and most glamorous location of all my work assignments - not my

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-46444587225634668092007-12-04T01:20:00.002-06:002008-03-06T13:37:00.946-06:00

I expect that almost everyone reading this has Googled their own name at one point. Three years ago, I held the 10th spot among the Google results for "john horstman" with a link to my senior design project web page, Audio Spatializer for Headphones (now replaced with an abbreviated description here - awarded Most Marketable project of Spring 2003 and totally the idea of my friend Jon Boley),

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-21495526154956007102007-11-29T00:55:00.002-06:002008-03-06T13:46:20.176-06:00

Wow, guys, you know what the only thing better than working an 11-hour day is? You might say "Nothing," but I have the answer: working an 11-hour day and then going out to a business dinner where you talk about work the whole time. Oh, but wait, stop, hold on, there's something still better than that: if you can immerse yourself in that situation but then also be conversationally marginalized

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-241044793349368989.post-49769022980273994282007-11-13T01:33:00.002-06:002008-03-06T13:44:35.246-06:00

*NOTE: This is my first post to Blogger, but I have blogged on MySpace for quite a while. To dig through my MySpace blogging history, go here.After a thoroughly enjoyable month of employment based in the Chicago suburbs, I'm back on the road this week, writing this blog on my 4-1/2 hour flight to LAX. Fortunately, I brought along some excellent reading material that's making me forget that I

Johnny5http://www.blogger.com/profile/16124944858524031274noreply@blogger.com0