

How I find ideas in trivial details. The guy who stares at screws. - nate
http://ninjasandrobots.com/i-like-screws

======
pwpwp
That Kudos shit even fires if you come close to it, not only if you actually
move over the kudos shit circle.

Sorry, but I find this highly annoying and indecent.

~~~
roryokane
That kudos circle is a feature of the blog platform, Svtble. I agree that it
is terribly designed. Svtble’s creator wrote an unconvincing defense of Kudos:
<http://dcurt.is/unkudo>. See discussion of Kudos on Svtble’s original
announcement story: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742654>,
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3743125>.

~~~
nickgeiger
I didn't know what you were talking about until I went back and accidentally
kudos'd the post myself. The creators "defense" sounds more like an FU or
maybe that the whole thing is really more of a joke. In the end, I'm not upset
that I accidentally kudos'd since to me it's pretty clear that the whole
feature is meaningless anyway.

------
mrgreenfur
Why is this valuable at all? Has nothing to do with anything... Is this what
people think is good blogging?

~~~
adam
Why the snark? There is much talk on HN and elsewhere about how new ideas are
generated, how companies try to be "innovative," etc. This is just his take on
one way he comes up with new ideas. I don't have the same fascination with
screws, but he obviously didn't mean it to be literal for everyone to do the
exact same thing. It certainly made me think about both the physical things
and processes all around me that I constantly take for granted. Questioning
these things is how we are always evolving and improving. I'd say reminding
people of this is valuable.

~~~
dthunt
I'm with GP on this one. Most HN articles these days are fluff. These aren't
bad bloggythings for the most part, but I'd just as soon see these things show
up on a more general aggregator. (This is, in part, my failure to recognize
the HN audience itself changing over the last year and a half).

Fluff isn't necessarily bad, in that it's a discussion point, but it is very
bad for this format of site.

------
jerf
For some reason, traditionally, this sort of observation is made about
pencils. <http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html> is one of the
more famous examples.

~~~
nate
Thanks for posting that jerf. Someone sent that to me this afternoon as well.
I've also had a couple people mention this book Mezzanine of a similar ilk:

[http://www.amazon.com/Mezzanine-
ebook/dp/B003OYIG1O/ref=wl_i...](http://www.amazon.com/Mezzanine-
ebook/dp/B003OYIG1O/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2K47A7OT719FI&coliid=I2SFWRK17RGK2N)

Richard Feynman also has a neat bit (the whole interview is awesome) about
teaching his kids. He mentions a game he'd play with his son where one person
would pretend to be miniature and describe the experience. The other person
would need to guess the miniature person's location.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXiOg5-l3fk>

------
zafka
I can relate. I believe that this ability to think about mundane items, is the
root of creativity. I am still fascinated by a story my uncle told me about a
man who had a little metal casting setup in his garage, and made lug nuts for
semi-tractors. Who would have thunk it? Since then I have often thought that
this would be a way to start a business. Pick one small part of a piece of
machinery and develop a way to make it. Then keep adding parts until you
"owned" an entire vertical market.

------
astrodust
The amazing thing about screws is how they're made. Imagine you were tasked
with producing them. Where would you even start? Making a nail seems like an
easy process in comparison, it's basically a bit of wire with one end blunted
and the other sharpened, but a screw is an entirely different beast.

Deconstructing objects and imagining how they are constructed is an important
exercise for anyone serious about their craft.

------
Mz
I can relate to the first part, the part about being a kid in his dad's shop
with nothing better to do but examine the small details of things around him.
But I didn't wonder at the long journey a screw took to wind up in a hinge. I
created imaginary worlds where the crack in a bathroom floor tile was a cliff
on an alien planet where all kinds of drama unfolded before me.

Maybe that bodes well for me to have a future telling fictional stories of
some sort.:-)

------
jsilence
I can relate. Ever so often I think about how effortless my life is. Someone
picked the coffee beans. Someone fed a cow. Someone roasted te beans. Someone
drove a truck. Someon build a factory where the beans are made into instant
coffee. And so on.

All I did was drink the coffee.

------
nodrama
"One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that a lot of things interest me.

I’m not entriely sure this is a thing that can be taught."

All kids have this curiosity; the parents are the ones that kill it ("don't do
that!", "behave!", "you are not allowed!")

------
dhughes
I wonder if I should ask him about Robertson (square)screw heads versus
Phillips (star or X) screw heads or will I dredge-up the Canadian versus US
war?

It reminds me of Shelbyville turnips versus Springfiled lemons.

