{ "version": "https:\/\/jsonfeed.org\/version\/1.1", "title": "Ilya Birman’s Blog: posts tagged life", "_rss_description": "Ilya Birman’s blog on design, cities, music, and life", "_rss_language": "en", "_itunes_email": "ilyabirman@ilyabirman.net", "_itunes_categories_xml": "<\/itunes:category>\r\n<\/itunes:category>\r\n\r\n", "_itunes_image": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/userpic\/userpic-square@2x.jpg?1573933764", "_itunes_explicit": "no", "home_page_url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/tags\/life\/", "feed_url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/tags\/life\/json\/", "icon": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/userpic\/userpic@2x.jpg?1573933764", "authors": [ { "name": "Ilya Birman", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/", "avatar": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/userpic\/userpic@2x.jpg?1573933764" } ], "items": [ { "id": "328", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/all\/i-want\/", "title": "Here is how I want it", "content_html": "

Imagine yourself preparing for difficult negotiations not knowing how you’ll express or defend your position. You already have a hundred scenarios in your head, ninety of which are horrible. What if they perceive my proposal as impudence and turn me away without giving me a chance to discuss the options? What if they get offended by my offer and our relationship goes sour? What if they don’t expect this and expect that? What if... Your brain explodes from trying to think out a “plan” in different cases, and at some point you don’t even know where to start the conversation.<\/p>\n

In this case, I have a simple recipe: start with the words “Here is how I want it”.<\/p>\n

You don’t know the outcome of the negotiations and you don’t know what the other side has in mind. You can’t make the other side do anything. But you know what you want, and you can say it clearly. It’s okay to want something. The key is to speak in a way that doesn’t make the other party feel pressured or manipulated. You’re just sharing a wish, as if you were sharing an observation about the weather.<\/p>\n

Someone struggles to come up with a justification for a salary increase and makes a list of their merits. But sometimes you can just write, “I want to double the salary starting with the next project” and get a “Deal”. Some people spend months wooing or using pick-up tricks to someone they have a crush on. But sometimes you can just write, “I want to go to bed with you”, and get an “I’m in”.<\/p>\n", "summary": "Imagine yourself preparing for difficult negotiations not knowing how you’ll express or defend your position", "date_published": "2021-01-09T10:10:03+03:00", "date_modified": "2021-01-09T10:09:24+03:00", "tags": [ "life", "negotiations" ], "_date_published_rfc2822": "Sat, 09 Jan 2021 10:10:03 +0300", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "328", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": true, "links_required": [], "og_images": [] } }, { "id": "169", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/all\/neat-mail\/", "title": "Ugly and neat mail", "content_html": "

Ugly mail defames the sender. It may later occur that the sender was a good person, but life is unjust: a book is judged by its cover.<\/p>\n

Examples of ugly mail<\/h2>\n

Random line breaks, an unwelcome line in bold with a blue highlight, multi-level colorful signature — the first thing you want to do is wash your hands:<\/p>\n

\n\"\"\n<\/div>\n

Two long links, a fly in the middle, no signature:<\/p>\n

\n\"\"\n<\/div>\n

Shapeless text, strangely split paragraphs, three links in random places:<\/p>\n

\n\"\"\n<\/div>\n

Lines start with lower-case letters, the signature is enormous — only ten percent of the body are actual information:<\/p>\n

\n\"\"\n<\/div>\n

This one is just hell:<\/p>\n

\n\"\"\n<\/div>\n

How to make a mail neat<\/h2>\n

You don’t have to be a designer. Starting sentences with capital lettres and splitting it into paragraphs is something everyone is taught in school.<\/p>\n

This one is pleasant to read:<\/p>\n

\n\"\"\n<\/div>\n

So, little advice:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Break text into sentences. A sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a period, question mark or, rarely, an exclamation point. Sentences are separated with a single space. Excessive use of ellipses and parentheses blur the sentences boundaries.<\/li>\n
  2. Separate paragraphs with an empty line. For a start, a simple rule will work: if you press Enter, press it once again. Do not break line if you are not going to start a new paragraph. Do not start a paragraph with a left indent (an email is not the same as a book). Paragraphs separated by empty lines and<\/i> left-indented are the worst.<\/li>\n
  3. Do not put long links inside a block of text. When broken into lines, such a link looks particularly bad. It is better to give it a dedicated paragraph. Or it can cling to the previous or the following paragraph, if it has to do with it<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  4. Do not include the whole history of correspondence. Quote only the part you reply to. Nobody likes to hunt for meaning. The shorter your mail is, the quicker you will get a response.<\/li>\n
  5. Make your signature short. Does everyone need to know some obscure instant messenger ID you have long abandoned? Probably not.<\/li>\n
  6. Lay out the signature in a clean way. A bad example would be separating the signature with a line<\/a> of hyphens. Do not put the signature in a box, do not use a logo (sure, your logo is awesome). Do not colorize the text: any added color, including grey, adds clutter. Grey signature with blue links attracts attention, while the opposite is required.<\/li>\n
  7. Leave two empty lines before signature. It is the simplest and the most effective way to separate the signature without adding noise.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It amazes me how some people pursue neatness in places where it does not matter (like in how the store their bills or how things are laid out in a car trunk), but don’t care how they look daily on the screens of others.<\/p>\n", "summary": "Ugly mail defames the sender. It may later occur that the sender was a good person, but life is unjust", "date_published": "2014-07-11T19:51:15+03:00", "date_modified": "2014-07-11T19:50:30+03:00", "tags": [ "design", "email", "life" ], "image": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/neat-mail-1.png", "_date_published_rfc2822": "Fri, 11 Jul 2014 19:51:15 +0300", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "169", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": true, "links_required": [], "og_images": [ "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/neat-mail-1.png", "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/neat-mail-2.png", "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/neat-mail-3.png", "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/neat-mail-4.png", "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/neat-mail-5.png", "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/neat-mail-6.png" ] } }, { "id": "142", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/all\/on-jordan-prices-experience-working-at-apple\/", "title": "On Jordan Price’s experience working at Apple", "content_html": "

    Jordan Price in I wanted to work at Apple really bad, and now not so much<\/a>:<\/p>\n

    \n

    Then at lunch time I wiped the iPad data clean, put the files I had been working on neatly on the server, left all their belongings on my desk, and I got in my car and drove home. I left a message for my boss and told him he’s the worst boss I had ever encountered in my entire professional career...<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Ok, so what you are saying is that all the time you have been working at Apple you have not tried to solve the problems you had, prefering to ignore them instead. And when it got unbearable, you just left, betraying your employer and your recruiter.<\/p>\n

    And then you are saying that you are looking for a new job. Oops.<\/p>\n", "summary": "Jordan Price in I wanted to work at Apple really bad, and now not so much", "date_published": "2014-02-13T17:47:31+03:00", "date_modified": "2014-02-13T17:47:28+03:00", "tags": [ "Apple", "life", "quotes" ], "_date_published_rfc2822": "Thu, 13 Feb 2014 17:47:31 +0300", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "142", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": false, "links_required": [], "og_images": [] } }, { "id": "116", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/all\/print-every-day\/", "title": "Wait, you mean they print this every day?", "content_html": "

    John Gruber telling a story<\/a> about two young women and a newspaper on a counter in Starbucks:<\/p>\n

    \n

    I’m gonna just say there are twentyish. And they had a New York Times on the counter in front of them. And one young woman was explaining to the other — and I know it sounds comical, and I don’t think she was stupid, but I think she grew up on the Internet. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was in fact a college student, I don’t think she was living in a cave or something.<\/p>\n

    But the one really had no idea what a newspaper was, and she said to the other one: “Wait, you mean they print this every day?”<\/p>\n

    And the other one says: “Yes, exactly”.<\/p>\n

    And the other one goes: “Why would they do that?”<\/i><\/p>\n

    And she was clearly impressed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    I am also twentyish (okay, I’m 28) and I am also impressed. I find it amazing that people still print stuff. I have no reasonable explanation as to why would anyone buy a newspaper, unless they are a designer liking the layout. I was profoundly surprised by Apple’s announcement of Airprint a couple of years ago: it felt like I was taken back to the 1990s — by Apple, that is. Printing, Apple, are you serious? Come on.<\/p>\n

    Apparently, printing is still a thing.<\/p>\n

    Anyway, I was thinking lately: what will look really weird when one watches a today’s movie five or ten years from now? A criminal taking a SIM card out of a phone and throwing it away probably will. What is that thing<\/a>, right? Or taking an SD card out of a camera to secure the pictures. Why, aren’t the pictures online already?<\/p>\n

    Fast forward some more years, and we’ll hear questions like, why does he need to hold this thing next to his ear to talk to someone? Why is she holding this thing in front of her saying “cheese” to her children? Why is he holding that round thing in his hands when riding a car? Why does she look so old if she is just 80 years old?<\/p>\n

    The future is awesome.<\/p>\n", "summary": "John Gruber telling a story about two young women and a newspaper on a counter in Starbucks", "date_published": "2013-08-08T23:35:27+03:00", "date_modified": "2013-08-08T23:38:02+03:00", "tags": [ "Apple", "future", "life" ], "_date_published_rfc2822": "Thu, 08 Aug 2013 23:35:27 +0300", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "116", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": true, "links_required": [], "og_images": [] } }, { "id": "84", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/all\/tomorrow-does-not-begin-at-midnight\/", "title": "Tomorrow does not begin at midnight", "content_html": "

    What I hate about all calendar and reminder apps is that they think tomorrow starts at midnight. I mean, come on. Not everyone goes to bed before midnight. Even if your office hours end at 6pm, it doesn’t mean you never touch a computer before going to bed. And for many creative professionals midnight is time when they (and by “they” I mean “we”) actually work<\/i> sitting in front of their computer.<\/p>\n

    It’s very frustrating to see 15 reminders come up on the screen at 00:00 saying that today<\/i> you have such and such appointments and things to do. No, stupid, it’s not today<\/i>, it’s tomorrow. The day starts when I wake up.<\/p>\n

    It’s quite misleading when you see an email you got at 11pm get labeled “Yesterday” in Mail. No, stupid, it’s not yesterday<\/i>, it’s just an hour ago. The day ends when I go to bed.<\/p>\n

    The Notification Centre behaviour drives me nuts the most. Here’s how it works. Some reminder appears on the screen at daytime. I have no time to deal with it right now (obviously), and so I want to postpone it. NC only lets you postpone for 10 minutes, which is useless, so I alt+click the NC icon to shut it up (it’s a shortcut for Do Not Disturb). At 00:00 all the notifications reappear, but I don’t want to think about them at midnight, so I alt+click NC again. NC says that “alerts and banners will resume tomorrow”:<\/p>\n

    \n\"\"\n<\/div>\n

    By “tomorrow” the stupid machine means “the next time it’s 00:00”, so in reality I will see no reminders tomorrow. Well, until just before going to bed. And I will just alt+click it, again.<\/p>\n

    I think there should be a system-wide setting of when “tomorrow” begins like there is a setting for when a week begins (did you know that in Russia Monday is the first day of week?). And this setting should default to something like 4am. For those who go to bed at 10pm or 11pm this will work fine: they will still see all the reminders when they wake up. And for people who are like me, this will make computers much more useful.<\/p>\n

    I should submit this whole post to Radar, I guess.<\/p>\n", "summary": "What I hate about all calendar and reminder apps is that they think tomorrow starts at midnight. I mean, come on...", "date_published": "2013-02-06T23:21:59+03:00", "date_modified": "2013-02-06T23:36:21+03:00", "tags": [ "interface", "life" ], "image": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/nc-tomorrow.png", "_date_published_rfc2822": "Wed, 06 Feb 2013 23:21:59 +0300", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "84", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": true, "links_required": [], "og_images": [ "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/nc-tomorrow.png" ] } }, { "id": "75", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/all\/everyone-designer\/", "title": "Everyone is a designer", "content_html": "

    Life does not present you with a choice to be or not to be a designer.<\/p>\n

    Everyone always has to make design decisions. There’s no escape: whatever you do, other people will interact with your product or service. Your design decisions can be good or bad, but they cannot not exist. You have to make them, or you are stuck.<\/p>\n

    To make these decisions, you have to be competent. That’s why design is a basic discipline, as language is. Saying you don’t want to learn design is like saying you don’t want to learn to write. It’s bullshit. Kids should start learning design in primary school: it’s for everyone.<\/p>\n

    You can’t just make crap and say “hey, I’m not a designer”. There’s no such thing as “not a designer”. If you make crap, you’re just a crappy designer. Fix it.<\/p>\n", "summary": "Life does not present you with a choice to be or not to be a designer", "date_published": "2012-09-03T16:13:15+03:00", "date_modified": "2012-09-03T18:50:29+03:00", "tags": [ "design", "life" ], "_date_published_rfc2822": "Mon, 03 Sep 2012 16:13:15 +0300", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "75", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": true, "links_required": [], "og_images": [] } }, { "id": "42", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/2012\/04\/09\/2\/", "title": "The beauty of silence", "content_html": "

    Breaking news:<\/p>\n

    \n

    A law was passed that in order to drive a car [...] in Britain, there had to be a person walking in front of the car, waving a red flag and blowing a horn.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    OK, this is not news, this is history<\/a>. But, wasn’t it ridiculous? Waving a red flag and blowing a horn! Like an idiot!<\/p>\n

    Now, to the news. Electric cars are beautifully quiet, but can be dangerous: people don’t know the car is approaching and get killed. And so car manufacturers are making the cars produce artificial noise<\/a>. Like idiots.<\/s> The article even says that “recent legislative efforts in the US are making it mandatory that companies add artificial engine sounds to electric vehicles”. Here’s an Audi video about production of such sounds:<\/p>\n

    \n