Author: <span>Jay Torres</span>

Obvious travel advice

By Jay Torres

I love lists. Some good tips on traveling.

30. Time seems to speed up as you get older. And you wonder—is it biological, or is it because life had more novelty when you were a child? Travel partly answers this question—with more novelty, time slows way down again.

31. My favorite part of of travel is the perspective it gives on “regular” life. Why do I live the way I do? Is the stuff I do for work what I want to be doing? Should I blog about a “topic” instead of whatever shiny object last caught my eye? These thoughts seem healthy but also… not particularly related to traveling? If you designed an experience to create this kind of perspective, what would that look like?

43. Travel reveals the value of stability, roots, routine, community, relationships, and cooking at home.

Number 43 is so true. After a few days away, nothing feels better than coming home.

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Vitsoe vs USM shelving

By Jay Torres

Fatih Arslan has a Vitsoe 606 set up and talks about the differences between Vitsoe and USM.

Someone asked this question on Twitter recently. Both are great brands with great products that have been used for decades. They are iconic and still used after so many years. This is a subjective comparison; obviously, they are very different regarding looks and usability. I have an extensive Vitsoe 606 setup but plan to extend certain places with USM. Some friends use USM, and I’ve seen them as well.

Come for the information, stay for the beautiful pictures.

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The Technium: 101 Additional Advices

By Jay Torres

Kevin Kelly with another list of great bits of advice.

Six years ago I celebrated my 68th birthday by gifting my children 68 bits of advice I wished I had gotten when I was their age. Every birthday after that I added more bits of advice for them until I had a whole book of bits. That book was published a year ago as Excellent Advice for Living, which many people tell me they read very slowly, just one bit per day. In a few days I will turn 73, so again on my birthday, I offer an additional set of 101 bits of advice I wished I had known earlier. None of these appear in the book; they are all new. If you enjoy these, or find they resonate with your own experience, there are 460 more bits in my Excellent Advice book, all neatly bound between hard covers, in a handy size, ready to gift to a person younger than yourself.

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East Coast quakes are felt farther than West Coast ones

By Jay Torres

The reason? The rocky underground east of the Rocky Mountains is generally hundreds of millions of years older than the subterranean formations east of that range. Being older means that those rocks are harder and denser, and the older fault lines have had more time to heal.

All of that means that seismic waves travel much more easily across the eastern U.S. The reverse is the case in the West, where the much younger faults absorb more of the seismic wave energy, which, as a result, doesn’t spread as efficiently as it does in the East.

I had no idea.

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Smart Words From Smart People · Collab Fund

By Jay Torres

Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money and Same As Ever collected some very enlightening quotes. Some that resonate with me.

“I would say the most dangerous thing in the world with a 12-year-old is to try to be his friend. But the worst thing with a 40-year-old is to try to be their parent.” – Chris Davis

“Happiness is that feeling you get right before you need more happiness.” – Don Draper

“People with very high expectations have very low resilience.” – Jensen Huang

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California Today: The best-loved bridges in California

By Jay Torres

The NY Times has a great California-centric newsletter. They often pose questions to readers to then reply and then share those results. They recently asked readers, what was their favorite bridge in California? Of course, people replied with the Bixby Bridge or the Golden Gate Bridge. My favorite bridge? The San Mateo-Hayward Bridge.

I lived in the Bay Area for almost 10 years, and the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge is the best. It’s so long, you feel as if you’re alone on a large body of water. And at certain times of the year, the commute home often had amazing sunsets.

I can now say I’ve been quoted in the New York Times. Oh, and here are some sunset pictures from the bridge that I took through the years.

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