Unleash the amateur naturalist in you. #6

And remember to keep your tool sharp

Hey friend,

a while back I brought home a plant my father was reproducing. It was sitting peacefully in a glass of water on his kitchen windowsill. It resembled something familiar, like it had always been there, in the house where I grew up.

As I potted it and took care of it, the plant started rooting and soon producing new, luscious leaves.

Excited by the plant’s beauty and how successful the genetic transfer had been, I snapped a photo and shared it with my family. Using the Pl@ntNet app (aka “Shazam for plants”) I was able to identify the plant as being a Maranta Leuconeura, or Prayer plant just by uploading the photo I had taken.

It turns out that my dad had “borrowed” a stem from an interior decoration salon more than 40 years ago. That plant is older than me, and its clones are already in my new house, as well as my sister’s. There are more in the making if you want to have one as well.

Having an organized source of information is also a way of growing something for the future. It’s memetics instead of genetics, but the same principle of “expansion for good” applies. Imagine a place where you can calmly read your favourite websites, news outlets or personal blogs all in one place and without being subject to a recommendation algorithm. Every post is shown to you, always.

The beauty of RSS feeds is the freedom they provide. Also, your buddy’s baking blog has the same relevance as the BBC. Podcasts are a special case of an RSS feed in which the content is audio instead of articles or posts, so you’re probably already familiar with that.

You can use Feedly to organize and read your feeds, but feel free to pick a favourite RSS client. Just make sure it’s cross-platform in case you do your reading on multiple devices.

In order to subscribe to a certain feed, you just need to find its link and add it to your RSS client (or application) of choice. Look for this icon on your favourite website:

Feedly is cool and it lets you search and add feeds they have indexed. Try adding the feed of articles I publish on fredrocha.net (copy / paste this link into the RSS application). In case you’re having issues here’s a more detailed explanation.

Besides reading I’ve been writing which is another way of reading (or is it the other way around?).

I once visited an exhibition of Rock & Roll’s most iconic instruments in New York’s Met museum. Tom Morello’s (Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, the Nightwatchman) guitar and rig were on display.

Above: Morello’s early guitars and amp. Bottom: his guitar pedals. A humble selection.

In his video interview accompanying the gear he shared the best advice he was ever given:

Practice an hour a day, every day, without fail.

It’s devilishly simple, pretty hard to stick to. Also, it works.

The video interview I could find from that exhibition is second-hand shaky, but it’s so good it deserves to be seen:

Nothing is more liberating than a good constraint. I’m sure Tom would agree.

Keep practising,

Fred