Disqus - Latest Comments for danlatorre

Re: The NBBL Files: Weinshall Got Randy Mastro Before the Paint on PPW Was Dry

danlatorre — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 21:57:42 -0000

If you want to know why Streetsblog rocks, it's because of stuff like this. Makes the NY Times seem like Pravda in the 1980s. The urban revolutions will be blogged my friends.

Re: Quick vids for bike newbies

danlatorre — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 11:54:49 -0000

Yeah, I know what you mean, part of having a bike is the freedom you have in an urban environment. I guess the issue I see, at least a lot here in NYC is that bikers will often ease into the crosswalk, generally annoy many pedestrians who are trying to cross. So the concept here isn't stopping at red lights, but better phrased as "yield to pedestrians". (Then again this may be a local cultural issue here in NYC which has a lot of me-first impatient people.)

Re: Quick vids for bike newbies

danlatorre — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 11:40:32 -0000

This would be so useful, especially well done videos with some visual style. There are many on YouTube but they are generic and lack production value or unique character/style. On a group ride yesterday we were talking about some of these, would be great to see:

* Setting your seat height for best comfort & efficient riding (see too many people with low seat height, they want to not get off when stopped, but bike is not made for that type of ride).
* Riding with traffic (see too many people on bike lanes or car-only streets going the wrong way, against traffic.)
* Stopping at the street crossing; being nice to pedestrians & sharing the streets with them. Good etiquette with pedestrians is huge factor in avoiding alienating people against cyclists/commuting.

Re: FWD Thinking - So this is officially the coolest thing ever: The...

danlatorre — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:29:06 -0000

Didn't know about this feature since I only get news on Twitter during the day. Thanks for sharing, you are a total blogging success.

Re: Multi-Tasking While I Multi-Task, I Pause, to Multi-Task

danlatorre — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 17:39:00 -0000

I've been looking around for research on this myth of multitasking. Some research on projects seems to show that depending on the nature of your work one has an optimal amount of concurrent projects, beyond this there's large cost for excessive interruption (see this nytimes article http://is.gd/2ktV ).

Also there's neuroscience work looking at this too, nicely summarized in the book Brain Rules. Our cognition is more sequential than parallel so interruption has a huge tax, some tests have shown that your error rate goes up 50% and it takes you twice as long to do things. (see http://www.brainrules.net/a....

This has led me to focus more on the value of planning my time and tasks, and checking email as few times as possible in the day given my day to day context. Finding a good task tool and method seem the key, to line up what I'll give exclusive focus to, and I'm still not optimal at it. (Currently I find Things as the best tool, along with a very slimmed down/agile-like GTD method, still not up to speed on this tho'.)

In our hyper-reaction-addicted world, there is a cultural expectation one needs to deal with, like a torrent it always wants to suck you in. A certain friendly stoicism seems needed to stick to one's practice in order to deliver good results that you're happy with.