Thanksgiving 2008 short documentary

** This is a guest post by my brother **

The film was made using windows movie maker.  I imported the images and video from my sony cyber-shot camera.  The voice-overs were recorded with my iriver mp3 player.  This was my first short documentary and I learned quite a bit.  First, my laughing was too loud and a bit obnoxious.  I’m right next to the mic, so I need to tone my voice down quite a bit.  Next, lighting is important to consider.  The footage in the kitchen with my mom is too dark, since the lighting is in the background instead of the foreground.  Last, it’s important to get close to the interviewee without making them feel uncomfortable.  Some of the shots are from a bit too far.  I’m no Spielberg for sure, but it was fun nonetheless!  I think it will be fun to continue making short documentaries like this about random events in my life.  I’m glad I learned the capabilities of movie maker.  It was sufficient for making this type of video, although it did freeze up on me once and I had to start over again 🙁

Next up….Christmas 2008…coming soon to a computer near you.


Thanksiving 2008 Short Film from robotchampion on Vimeo.

My Autumn Safari through mopey Montrose park

As a self-proclaimed hater of the seasons I am starting to come around. There are minutes and sometimes whole days where I enjoy them (the rest of the time they just annoy me).

Today was one of those days. I am a naturally mopey emo person and so this time of year delights me. The leaves are dead or dying. The trees are starkly dark, bereft of colour and beauty. Yet, many of the vibrant colors of the last falling leaves remain richly colorful.

Today I found all of this in colors of purple, fire, red, yellow, neon, green, and orange. Great day and the weather was in the 60s.

Today I like the seasons.



Autumn 2008 Photo Safari from steven mandzik on Vimeo

Documentation 2.0 – or how to fire your employees

A colleague and I recently had a chance to visit an amazing government office.

Among the many things we were shown, which included an office of the future, prediction markets, and collaborative strategy rooms, we were shown a simple little tool for documentation. Documentation is important in the government because employees are only let go for proper reasons. Most companies provide this documentation when they fire you to avoid lawsuits and the like. Governments require even more documentation, which is often so hard to acquire that many bad employees skip by for years.

How to solve this?

RSS Documentation. Put the data flowing out of our work into a personal file for each employee. Review that file during performance reviews. Whammo, you have an auto-documentation system for firing (and promoting) people.

The key here is that our work needs to be in programs that have RSS feeds. Some of the newer technology has this (like this blog) but many of our old programs don’t. There does seem to be a trend to move our daily business work into programs that can have RSS feeds.

Once you have these feeds that represent actions taken by employees. You will need a program that parses the data to recognize the name of the employee. It will then go into their file. If you want to get crazy you could also parse it by project, roles, or duties. Then you would have a running record of the actions taken for each project.

Gaming.

Ya, I know, the system can be gamed. Anything can. I really don’t know how to solve that problem. I can say that having tons of data documented is a huge step. Remember most are coming to the table with no data other than a bi-yearly review.

With tons of data you could start to perform trend analysis, comparison analysis, independent review. You could even establish milestones and deadlines and allow the employee to meet or not meet them. Imagine having that happen several times and auto-tracked in your personal file.

You could also do team analysis. This is something we viewed during our tour. The manager in charge would find a successful team and see what happened when those folks left the team. Did they also improve another team and did their current team see a drop. Imagine how powerful that is, you could find dead weight and determine powerful pairings.

Well, this seems so perfect for performance reviews and firing people. It has to be only a matter of time before this happens. Management is going to know what i am doing all day long, at specific times, and going to be able to call me on it 6 months later…

Scary.

Don’t deny it, Obama is all Web 2.0

I have been telling friends this for a while: Obama (his campaign) is the most powerful and far-reaching Web 2.0 business in the world.

The fact that he has gone from a virtual nobody to a near land slide presidential victory (typing this at 10:45 EST on election night) is absolutely transformative. He is reported to have raised 150 million dollars in one month. Which includes 632,000 new donors, added to his three million established donors. These are transformative feats, game changers.

An article in NY Times explored this issue by interviewing some of the Obama campaign officials.

“Mark McKinnon, a senior adviser to President Bush’s campaigns in 2000 and 2004…”(this) year campaigns leveraged the Internet in ways never imagined. The year we went to warp speed. The year the paradigm got turned upside down and truly became bottom up instead of top down.”

That’s right, hyper speed and bottom up. Sounds a lot like the Wikipedia cycle and a lot less like the cable/news cycle. Though, to be honest, Obama charted a road in the middle. Able to reach voters where they were are give them what they want. For me it was my cell phone and youtube. For others it was door-to-door, and still others was on tv and through debates.

Most of the time it seemed as if the McCain campaign just ignored this sound advice “reach voters where they were and give them what they want”. As if the Internet and its various capabilities is still a side show. Even after months of Obama turning the tide first against Hillary Clinton and then John McCain, they still refuse to accept.

Accept it or not. It’s here and its happening.

Gadgets Porn

After listening to the first of two episodes on Real Deal about gadget obessiveness, I decided to rummage through my collection. Turns out I have little to nothing in gadget porn. I guess my minimalist strategy is working well. Here it is:

Despite there only being 8 items on the list I don’t feel deprived. They are awesome and my favorites. Mostly expensive and catered to my individual hobbies:

  • Movies, Internet, & Podcasts

An interesting note is that as recently as 6 months ago, I had way more stuff. Due to a combination of craigslist, amazon, and ebay, I’ve offloaded all my old stuff for a good return on value. Which in turn has allowed me to purchase more, creating a sort of tech-geek life cycle.

2008 Xmas Wish List

I love gadget dreams. I was looking over my old dreams from Jan of this year (2008) and realized how much I have changed in the last 11 months. Of the 7 things I was dreaming about, I only got one!

  • Media Center PC
  • A Robot
  • Wireless iTunes Sync
  • 5 Wireless Devices (already had 3: iPhone, Lappy, Bluetooth)
  • New Laptop
  • High Def DVD
  • Xbox 360

The one dream that I satisfied was a new lappy. I’m typing on it right now, my MacBook Air. Of the other dreams only one carries over, but it has changed from a media center PC to a Mac Mini. I think the new list represents a change in my dreams: basic gadgets –> gadget hobbies: movies and music.

Here is the new list for Xmas 2008:

Well, that’s it. I am super stoked about the list. I can’t wait to go browsing and learning about which ones I want, and then add them to my Amazon Wish List. Yay!

My Amazon.com Wish List

Computer Troubles

Is it possible that computers are just too hard. That they are just so complicated that it requires a degree to understand them. Yes.

Is it also possible that we have been turned off by computers. They prevent us being outside and experiencing things. They make things harder instead of easier. They are just not that important to our lives. Yes.

Those are the two most important problems I see in our culture. We are afraid of computers and turned off by them. It goes deeper than that though. They challenge our basic beliefs about the value of things like books, one on one encounters, and more.

Most believe its just not possible be into computers and have a healthy lifestyle with a balanced family and outdoor activities. In our minds computers and technology have ceased to make things easier and become a burden on us.

Most of us take a half-n-half approach. We will invest some time in computers to get our jobs done and then go home and stay away from them. Yeah we know email, but when we get home email is business and we want to play. News is easy to get on the internet but we still like the paper. We want to have keep a sense of nostalgia and intimacy with our world that computers just can’t provide.

Its too bad really. We can have the best of both. It is possible to be completely invested in computers and have the life we want. The trouble is that no one’s really doing it. Not that it can’t be done, just no one’s doing it.

It takes a new approach to our thinking and our methods. It takes change. Not dramatic, deep change like a political campaign would spout off. Just tweaking of your lifestyle. Subtle tips that can make it happen for you and even bring you back to the simple lost traits of our culture:

  • Community – technology is now social and you should look to friends and family for new tools, tips, and uses. Ask friends what they like and don’t like. Share with them what you have learned.
  • Fresh Perspective – not every new tool is amazing and a good dose of skepticism is good, but that can quickly cloud your judgment. In today’s rapidly evolving market new and amazing tools that can make your life better are constantly coming out. Your skepticism could prevent you from finding them or being open to the ways they could improve your life.
  • Research – research is one of the basic fundamentals of learning in our lives. Learn how to do research on the internet. Start with search engines like Google. They are so advanced at this point that your query can simply be your question. Then take some time to browse the answers/results. Learn how to differentiate quality from conjecture. After a certain point you will notice patterns and can develop routines that allow your research to be fast and effective (and on any topic you want).

Finally, its all about fun and making our lives better. I recommend that everyone look to their future and notice our impending alliance with technology and computers. They will be a part of our lives, forever.

The best thing you can do is enjoy it. Watch a cute video on YouTube, laugh at silly photos of cats, form a “fan of Indiana Jones” club on Facebook, or just post pictures of your Halloween adventures.

Thanks for reading and please share any subtle tips you have found.

internet pop culture 2

*Update: this is an update to the original internet pop culture post*

My pop culture is the internet. I love its news and information. I enjoy watching its tv channels and free movies. I do my research, I attend school, and I hang out with my friends.

The internet enhances my life in so many ways. Read on for my favorites of internet pop culture.

First, lets start off with the current slang.

  • Common terms for the internet are: internets, interweb, and intertron.
  • Abbreviations: ur, omw (on my way), OH (overhead), RT (retweet), btw (by the way)
  • Plurality everywhere: jut add “s” to everything, srsly do it, its fun
  • Making up words: like i told a friend the other night, i pretty much mastered the english language 15 years ago, now its time to have some fun with it
  • 80s are back: rad, my favorite word
  • Meme: means something that is hot on the intertron

Next, my top sites. Pulled from the newest version of Firefox (FF3) which captures that data for you:

  1. Gmail
  2. Concord (my online law school)
  3. Twitter
  4. Google Finance
  5. My Life (this site)
  6. Facebook
  7. E-Trade (my bank)

Now, here is how I get my news. My favorite tech news site in the whole world, techmeme. I check it pretty much everyday, multiple times a day. It has a magical algorithm, popularized by google news, that finds popular items through links and then pulls them together. On any given day you can find the best story on a hot new topic as well as the next best articles and all the discusison around them. Truly a cool agreggator of news, much better than RSS in my time starved day.

Beyond that I use google finance for my stock news. NY Times for editorials by thomas friedman and news on the war front in Iraq.

Seems kinda lacking doesn’t it? That is because I get my information from twitter. As of today, Oct 19, I am following 394 people. Except some of them aren’t people they are direct news feeds delivered to me, wherever I am (home, on the go). Then there are my several hundred friends who constantly post the latest news. They select it for me, they are my filter and my RSS feed.

So far its working out really well. I get what I want and my scope is constantly expanded (thx twitter friendses).

Finally, and most importantly, my tv/movies. If you haven’t heard, hulu, is the hottest tv site on the internet. It has free shows/movies/cips. There are commercials but just one and if its a long episode then it’s one every 5-10 minutes. Lately, I have watched:

  • TV: Heroes (season 3), Burn Notice (all seasons), and House.
  • Movie: Groundhog Day, Karate Kid trilogy (go 80’s!), Sleepless in Seattle, Spy Game, and Men in Black.
  • Clips: SNL (saturday night live), Colbert Report, Jon Stewart, Sesame Street.

Well, that’s not everything. I know I left out large sections of the poppy culture but I hope anyone reading this can comment on the stuff I forgot. Thx!