Compressed Shirt, originally uploaded by vincenthorn.

I received a shirt from Rackspace today, and it was packaged in 30-ton compressed plastic wrap. A nice small package, but am I going to be able to get the wrinkles out of this puppy!?

Shoot the Fruit, originally uploaded by vincenthorn.

A shot of Duff drinking some sort of herbal concoction (maybe Gogi berries?), and Lion with his back to the camera. We were hanging out at Tonic Oxygen Bar where we’ve been holding a conscious networking event, called Shoot the Fruit.

We haven’t quite figured out what a conscious networking event is, but we suspect it has something to do with inspiring people to connect with their deepest purpose and to come together to support others in fulfilling that purpose. Doing it while sipping on a Kava Chai or inhaling herbally infused oxygen is kind of fun (if not a bit over the top).

Falling Fruit is a Mac House, originally uploaded by vincenthorn.

I haven’t been blogging lately. Hell, I haven’t really been doing much lately beside help Falling Fruit TV get off the ground. We now have around 10 people working in our offices, including the recent addition of my fellow co-worker from I-I, Casey Capshaw. It’s good to have you on board dawg!

We are about 6-8 weeks out from our public launch, and things are coming together beautifully (and super-quickly). Having never started a company (well, at least not one of this magnitude), it has been a phenomenal learning experience. Business lingo, project management, and communication have been some of the keystones of what I’ve been taking in recently. Surprisingly the principles of business were easy to grasp, it is just connecting that with a particular and specific language that has been challenging.

As you can see from the picture above we are a nearly %100 mac-house. When we get together for meetings we’ll often have black Macbooks on one side of the table and white on the other side. Good vs. Evil all over again… And of course I’m on the Evil side.

Lashley Ln., originally uploaded by vincenthorn.

My last post was at the end of May. I guess a little catching up is in order.

Well, let’s see. Drove 1,600 miles, from North Carolina to Colorado, with two car-loads of stuff. Same two car loads we had at the beginning of the year when we thought we were leaving Boulder. Well, Boulder brought us back. Now we’re living in South Boulder (the view from our front porch above), while I help start an amazing conscious media company. Looks like it wasn’t quite time for us to go back to our roots. Not to mention, it’s hard to leave 3 years of momentum and friendships behind.

Vive la vida!

Emily-Cookie.jpg, originally uploaded by vincenthorn.

It’s not everyday that my partner, wife, and friend gets a year older. But when it does happen, you know it’s a special occasion. And she has been reminding me of that fact for the past month! Yes, May is the official Emily Worship Month. By the end of the month, when her actual birthday happens, it is almost anti-climactic. Even so, I can still blog about it!

I hope you enjoy the Carrot Cake I got for you at West End honey.

Bit Literacy, originally uploaded by vincenthorn.

This is no longer the industrial age, the atomic age, or the space age. We are now living in the age of bits. Those who know how to work with bits wil master the age; those who don’t will be left further and further behind in every profession and creative pursuit that bits infiltrate. - Mark Hurst, Bit Literacy

I just finished Bit Literacy, and I can honestly say this book has already doubled my personal productivity. Just taking his suggestions on how to manage e-mail (bringing your e-mail box to zero once a day–meaning that your box is completely empty!) and using a todo system that is able to hibernate todos (meaning that you can set todos to be done on a specific day in the future) has already revolutionized the way I’m getting stuff done.

That he has a particularly cool tech-slant to his productivity message, and that he actually defines bit literacy as “the constant attempt, in a world of infinite bits, to achieve emptiness” makes it even cooler. Now, I definitely won’t argue that he is talking about the Buddhist notion of Emptiness (sunyata), but there are some interesting correlations that might be work exploring some other time.

Now I’m moving on to Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek, and after that I think I’ll get around to reading Getting Things Done (by David Allen). I never knew business could be so fun!

, originally uploaded by vincenthorn.

Spirit Rock that is. After 8 weeks of intensive practice we are back to North Carolina, slowly easing our way back into “normal” life.

The time on retreat was very fruitful. Looking back over the past 4 or 5 years, I realize I’ve spent over 6 months of that time doing intensive practice and hundreds, if not thousands of hours practicing in daily life. It has been well worth the effort.

May we wake up to our true nature, and be of service to all beings.

P.S. - I must also say that I was very impressed with Jack Kornfield and the teachers who taught with him on the 2nd half of the retreat. I would recommend all of them unconditionally. They are the real deal.

Golden Gate Bridge, originally uploaded by vincenthorn.

It’s our last full day in San Francisco, before heading out to Spirit Rock for 2 months.

Yesterday, Emily & I traipsed around the Sunset area of SF, exploring various shops and finally making our way into the Golden Gate Park. I have to say, Golden Gate Park beats the pants off of Central Park, especially in the Winter. Everything here is in bloom, and the trees are massive and green, and everything is terribly alive.

Today we are heading out to the Haight-Ashbury district, which apparently, was central to the drug-addled hippie revolution of the 60s. Pass the bong dawg!

Bonsai Baby, originally uploaded by vincenthorn.

I’m in San Francisco this week, spending a few days relaxing and exploring the area before going on retreat for two months. I started taking pictures yesterday and noticed that there were several pictures I hadn’t yet uploaded to flickr from a trip we took to the Bonsai Exhibit in January @ the NC Arboretum.

The Bonsai exhibit was unique in that it wasn’t just made up of trees from Asia, but also had miniature trees that are local to the Appalachian area.

“The world of bonsai is miniature, but the natural world that it evokes is boundless.” - Arthur Ioura, Bonsai Curator

Van Stuck in Snow, originally uploaded by vincenthorn.

Looks like the day we had planned on leaving for North Carolina, also happens to be the day that Mother Nature planned on dropping a mean ass blizzard on Colorado. After finishing up my last exam we drove out to Denver (barely made it) where we’ll be staying in a hotel until the storm passes. After that it is on to North Carolina. Hopefully we’ll be able to leave by Friday.

P.S. - The picture above is from outside of the Radisson where an airport van was stuck in the snow. It’s wicked out there.

UPDATE - Looks like I-70 might re-open either tonight or tomorrow. As soon as it does we’ll be heading out through Kansas (fun!). Props to my pal Paul who just got home after being stranded at the Denver International Airport last night.