Viva la Passion
One of my neighbors in the apartment complex where I live is the executive director and founder of this non-profit organization. It's a small music studio in the local Boys and Girls club, where middle and high school students can go after school to get free lessons and use the equipment to record music. The community has been generous; lots of local musicians have donated their time to tutor students, and several people have donated...
Strengthen the Signal
A repeater is a cheap piece of commodity hardware. As far as computer components go, it doesn't do anything particularly fancy. Its job is not to produce a signal of its own, but to take an existing signal, strengthen it, and then send it on its way. This enables it to travel further over network lines. Most of us are repeaters. We're a whole lot more creative than repeaters, and we like to apply our...
Let 'Em Push A Button
A lot of intersections have "Push To Cross" buttons for pedestrians trying to get through them. At a few of them, I've noticed the signals don't change if you don't push the button. So if you don't bother to push the button, the little white man won't appear and you're stuck with the orange hand, with no indication of when to cross. But at a lot of intersections, the walk/don't walk signals toggle even if...
What You Heard
We don't always remember everything exactly as we heard it. News articles, Facebook statuses, and Tweets all flow in, as an endless digital river of content. There's value in a lot of it, but most things don't stick over the long term. A friends posts that he just saw a really terrible movie that he hated. "Don't see [Film X]." I read it, it sinks and disappears into the gray matter between my ears. Six...
Awe and Wonder
Watched a ten-year-old movie a few nights ago called Wonder Boys, which stars Michael Douglas as a college professor who teaches a writing course. The film loosely revolves around a few students who are aspiring writers and are trying to get their books published. Watching this movie now seems a little strange to me, because all I could think was, "Why don't all of these students just self-publish? Or start trickling their book onto the...
The Best Defense
I don't just read in order to absorb new ideas that I didn't know before. As a matter of fact, a lot of things I spend my time reading don't tell me anything I don't already know. Part of this lies in the value of the obvious; if my parents taught it to me, it's probably important, so reinforcing it can't hurt. But it's also about learning to phrase what I know. I've learned a...
Starting At Zero
The multitude of movies that feature a post-apocalyptic setting seem to have grown with a geometric progression over the past couple of decades. Start with the end of the world, then develop the plot from that point forward. One of the classic "end of the world" novels is Stephen King's The Stand. But even King himself mentioned that the germ of the idea had its roots in story lines that preceded him. George Romero's Night...
Price Scanner
I was walking around a major department store yesterday, slowly collecting an assortment of items from clearance racks. At the store I was at, merchandise tends to be disheveled, so I was taking my collection of items to the price scanner to make sure all of the ones I had were, in fact, 75% off. There was a couple small problems with this. First, I had to track down the location of the scanner in...
Faking Social Proof
Early last year, I read an old blog post by a fellow named Clay Shirky. In it he talked about the role of hard liquor during the industrial revolution of the 19th century. Consumption of copious amounts of booze, he says, was an outlet for people's frustrations at the way their lives were changing at the time. He then went on to say that television in America was the 20th century equivalent. As a nation,...
Nail It
I was at a small gathering of people about a month ago. Presenting to us was a gentleman covering the life cycle of your average start-up. He broke the life of any organization into four segments: 1. Innovate - come up with a brand new idea and develop it.2. Nail It - test the idea with potential customers and refine as needed.3. Scale It - grow the company; produce lots of widgets and lower your...