Thoughts on Turning 28

I turn 28 tomorrow. This really isn’t a big deal on the surface, but with any birthday I think you get to thinking about certain things and thus, in the great spirit of Digg and the like, I present to you:

The Top 10 Things a Geek Thinks About When He Turns 28

  1. I am significantly more physically fit than I was at 18, which I find ironic. I also weigh less. Doubly ironic.
  2. Amy just turned 29, and now that we’re edging toward 30, we are seriously discussing when the time is “right” to have kids. I don’t think any time is “right” per se, but I think we are ready, whenever that time is.
  3. High school seems like a long, long time ago. The scary thing is: my undergraduate and graduate years are starting to feel the same.
  4. When I was a little kid, maybe 8 or 9, I used to wonder what I’d look like as an “adult” (adult in this case being my late 20’s). I don’t know how accurate I was, but I like to think I was precognitive 20 years ago.
  5. Having a mortgage, two pugs, a cat and a wife makes you feel more “adult” than age ever will
  6. Why has Douglas Coupland written two books with a character named “Ethan” that are very different in situ, but oddly similar to myself? (I speak of Microserfs and JPod) In Microserfs’ case, these similarities are much more apparent now than they were even two years back.
  7. Its sad that as you age, things around you seem to age that much faster. This especially applies to animals that you grew up with. And people.
  8. I’m starting to feel a lot less detached from people because of age. I’m no longer the young one among a sea of adults, but moving toward the MOR, which is very different indeed from what I’m used to.
  9. As we all get older, the age difference between my sibling (and sibling-in-law and pseudo-sibling, my uncle, five years my senior) starts to mean exponentially less.
  10. My favorite band in the world just celebrated their 27th anniversary. Their lead singer turned 28 when I was just getting into the band. This somehow makes me feel old, but not as old as Michael Stipe must feel sometimes.

I think in the end, age doesn’t mean so much as what you make of the years you are given. Each day ultimately is closer to your end, and for me, the most depressing thing about life is the way that each can slip away unless you focus on each minute of it.

I turn 28 tomorrow, but does it really mean much? At 6:19PM on April 10, 1979, I was born unto this world. On April 10, 2007, I’ll go out to dinner with my wife, raise up a glass and toast to the years since, the years ahead and maybe in that little second of what amounts to a little day, find something to drive me toward the next minute. And next minute. And the next, etc.

2007
04/09
CATEGORY
life
10 comments
    • Grant
    • April 9th, 2007

    Congrats on turning 28, fellow Aries. From a person who just turned 28….7 days ago!

  2. Happy Birthday. Now people will stop referring to you as “too young” or “still young”. You are officially old. Mainstream advertising is no longer targeting you!

    #9 surprised me a little. “Age doesn’t make a difference” is just taking hold? Talk to younger people like they’re your age and talk to older people like they’re your age and everyone will respect you.

    And don’t forget, when you’re twenty, a year is only 1/20th of your life, but at thirty it’s 1/30th. So time does “go quicker” as you age. Savor every moment (sans the time it took to read this comment).

    • Elisabeth Nortje
    • April 10th, 2007

    Happy Birthday, Ethan!

    • Paul Booth
    • April 10th, 2007

    Happy Birthday from a fellow Murman (Murmurperson?). Im 38 on the 11th.

  5. happy birthday mate – from an aussie who’s been reading this blog for some time.

    You’ve done some amazing things so far – and there will be many more to come I don’t doubt.

  6. Hey, happy belated birthday! Mine is today and I was just catching up on my blog reading when I saw this. You’re dead on with these thoughts. High school was 12 years ago! Holy crap! I have to get new stories!

    Anyhow, I enjoy what you post here, and just thought I’d chime in. Take care!

  7. Happy belated birthday! I’m turning 27 very soon as well…

    Time is moving faster than ever…

    • Maya
    • December 4th, 2008

    I guess I am waaay too late to say happy b-day, I just happened to find your blog on the day of my 28th b-day…and I am actually feeling a little down…I have a happy life and everything…I guess it’s just the fact that on your birthday you go back to those old years in which you thought you were going to be so far in life at this point…and I still feel the same…I guess it’s hard to admit it…but as a woman…i am starting to think about how nice it would be to get married…I’ve been going out with the same guy for 2 1/2 years…so i’m just hoping he surprises me soon….
    ;)

    Thanks for letting me post my thoughts on this day!

    • Martin K.
    • December 19th, 2008

    I turned 28 today. My girlfriend of 7 months dumped me 6 days ago–she did it 1 day before I was due to fly 5,000 miles to visit her. I wouldn’t feel as old if she hadn’t left me. I thought, what a great holiday season this will be; I’ll be able to visit my girlfriend, whom I hadn’t seen in 4 months, and I’ll celebrate my birthday, christmas, and new years with her. Then, life came all of a sudden. Also, everyone here needs to shut up about their age, we are too age focused in many parts of the world. Think about how many young people die, while old people continue to live. Age is certainly not the only determinant to a lifespan. So, obsessing about your age even for a fraction of a second is stupid;if only because you might die in a car crash tommorow, in which case 28 was very “old” indeed. (Sorry about the run-on)

    • kirra
    • January 8th, 2009

    Happy b/days for all that turned 28yrs. I just did myself in december 27 and I have to say for some reason I felt soo depressed on that day than any of my previous bdays. I felt like I had not done anything important in my life. I am a regular 28yrs woman with 9-5 job, no boyfriend. I think I had it in my mind that I would be married by this age and with kids and maybe with a bigger job but I guess not. I guess it’s just life -the grind of life!
    Maybe I have to lighten up, if only people would stop asking me if I am married or have a boyfriend, right?

  1. March 26th, 2008
    Trackback from : Is 28 the New 18?
  2. April 12th, 2008
    Trackback from : blackrimglasses.com » Blog Archive » Thoughts on turning 29

Asides

    Andreas Schlegel currently lives in Singapore. He likes to write programs that generate audio, visual, and physical output. He enjoys doing projects with syntfarm.

    via sojamo.de

    Posted via web from ethank's posterous

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    ["Five measures prove to be useful: A, the area of the isovist, which gives us a measure of size (in 3-D this is a volume); P, the perimeter of the isovist, which gives us a measure of the boundary length (in 3-D this is an area) excluding the horizon and excluding Q, which is a measure of the length (area) of the radial, component of the isovist boundary; M2, which is a statistical measure of the variability of the boundary’s distance from x; and M3, which is a measure of the asymmetry of M2." From Benedikt]

    If we dimensionalize the data from any given social framework online, could we apply isovistic theory to the quantification of perceptual awareness around a user in this textually augmented reality we now find ourselves?

    - #

    Infra-mince, Duchamp declared, cannot be defined, but can only be described by examples, such as the difference in displaced volume between a clean shirt and the same shirt worn once, or the taste of one's mouth lingering in exhaled smoke.

    Infra-mince was a new way to think about physical and temporal dimensions (decades before Mandelbrot discovered fractals). Holes in some of Duchamp's artwork link the 2nd to the 3rd dimension. Sometimes he shot the holes out with bullets, echoing infra-mince again in the delay between the sounds of the shot and the impact.

    via everything2.com

    Add this to the isovism concept and you basically describe a social network.

    Posted via web from ethank's posterous

    - #

    A single isovist is the volume of space visible from a given point in space, together with a specification of the location of that point.

    via en.wikipedia.org

    Isovism is an interesting concept when applied to the creation of a website. Quantifying the perception of space in a given point. How far can you see from your homepage for instance into the larger n-dimensional world a site creates?

    Posted via web from ethank's posterous

    - #

    The new iPad has lots of space. The screen offers 1024x768 pixels.

    via tuaw.com

    What excites me the most about the iPad, I think, is that it takes paradigms and approaches and lets us expand them. Good art, whether visual or interface, comes from working against constraints imposed by the medium. The iPhone imposed very strict constraints and amazing new paradigms of interface design came out of that. These new approaches have bled their way into Mac OSX apps, Windows 7, etc. I expect the same to happen with the iPad.

    Posted via web from ethank's posterous

    - #

    The funny thing is, if Adobe does not take the steps to make tools to address a future with HTML5, what we'll be left with is tools others create. And chief amongst those others will most likely be Apple. Flash's stance here reminds of Microsoft's during the creation of Blackbird and later their migration toward Visual Interdev and Frontpage. When you build the walls so high around your garden, the fall will just kill your plants.

    [From Flash, iPad, Standards – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report]

    - #

    Rest in piece little buddy.

    [From xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe]

    - #

    Idiotic. Copy paste wasn't missing because of an ideological reason. It was missing because it wasn't ready. Same with an SDK and an App-Store. Multitasking presents a usability challenge that I wager they are nearly set in addressing. I bet the camera is supply chain related (same with the iPod Touch). WIth Apple products, what is MISSING is the interesting part, as it usually leads to exposure to ideologies, challenges or works in progress.

    [From What We Learned About Apple Yesterday]

    - #

    I wonder if they are also seeing concurrent apps running from the same device, and that's how they know? I imagine the Tablet will be able to run multiple apps in a grid of some sort, given the screen size.

    [From Apple Tablet: The Second Stage Media Booster Rocket ]

    - #

    A pretty big deal I think, especially considering the move from entertainment companies from "impression" based metrics to revenue.

    [From Boxee Blog » Coming soon: Boxee Payments]

    - #