My latest post is up at myGermanyMove.com. Read the whole article at http://mygermanymove.com/?p=272
I guess wall paper is pretty common in the United States. I have never really wanted it in my house. I always thought it was just a mess to install and couldn’t compare with just painting the bare wall. I was a little surprised when I learned we would have to wall paper our flat before we could paint it…
My thoughts of the Pacific Ocean while I was in California earlier this month.
View my thoughts along with some pictures I tool at http://mygermanymove.com/?p=46
Nature provides breathtaking vistas almost anywhere you go. Yet few places I have been provide the diversity of California. Being from the Midwest portion of the United States my daily life consists of farm land to pastures to small mountains such as the Ozark Mountains in southern Missouri. The nearest body of water would have been my neighbors’ pond or the relative vastness of Lake Michigan in the Great Lakes…
My first long(ish) posting on myGermanyMove.com
I realize my situation is pretty Utopian compared to those who have lost their job in the current economic down turn. I am doing this by choice, because of love. I cannot think of a nobler reason to venture down my current path. Yet I still have questions. Wondering whither I will ever find work again. What the coming months will hold. Questions I cannot answer right now. I couldn’t presume to know my future other than I have a plan to eventually accomplish. read more…
I would normally think anyone who cannot post to one website should not start a second site. Except that is exactly what I have done. With virtually zero activity on this site since August it leaves the impression that I just did not care anymore. Hopefully soon I can write more about the last year of my life, but until then please (also) visit my new blog at myGermanyMove.com. I will be posting there about my adventures during my upcoming move and new life in Germany. I will provide more details very soon.
The twit.tv network has a new podcast called This Week in Google (TWig) which focuses on Google and other cloud computing news. This has been the most interesting content on the podcast network in the last month. Even though I am a little biased toward the online realm, this show has really captured my attention beyond mere intrigue and interest.
In TWig 4: Filers Versus Pilers they discussed Google’s attempt to include more social components into Google Reader. That made me think about a TED video by Clay Shirky on How social media can make history. It has been a while since I watched the video, so this is probably a very loose connection.
I find it interesting that Google is putting efforts into socializing something as mundane as an online RSS reader. It does make sense from a interactive perspective. People, no matter who they are, want to feel connected with someone else. Even if outwardly they reject human contact, there is still somewhere within the human subconscious that longs for interaction. As we become more exposed to new topics and concepts online other aspects of our lives will soon dive into that world.
I am not an RSS person. I don’t necessarily want a list somewhere with updated information from the sites I frequent. I like visiting the pages to see what is new and to revisit what is old. I don’t want to fathom the time spent clicking random on xkcd while browsing through the back catalog of comics.
Yet, lately I have realized that I’m spending less and less time looking for new sites/topics online. I am in a website rut so to speak. I visit the same few websites every week without putting much thought into anything new. This evening it dawned on me that perhaps I have been viewing things like Google Reader completely wrong. I am not an RSS person because I could not see the value in maintaining a list somewhere. As if somehow I was going to remember that website I read that interesting article about social media or jquery. There is no way I can do that. I cannot remember what I ate earlier in the day. Let alone the website I visited once two months ago instead of folding my laundry.
With that realization it makes perfect sense to me why an application like Google Reader needs social features. Just yesterday I embedded an entry with a video from another site. Specifically to share it with people who come across my site. I want to support websites I enjoy and I don’t see any reason why a tool shouldn’t help me do just that.
Maybe I should setup my router to shut my internet off after midnight. The allure of freshly gained knowledge is just so intoxicating. Especially when it comes to the newest RT Short…. Err… Did I just write knowledge?
Sooo… I found this extremely amusing. Not merely because I find it comical. Not only because fresh content is irresistible. Just a little bit because it makes me wonder if there is a “hidden” meaning behind some of the videos at roosterteeth.com. Can a bunch of guys who make video comics from Halo really be reacting to things they notice around them? Sometimes I hope so.
Some people might think I don’t really have a creative process. That things just appear into my head and then happen to work out or not. From my point of view, things rarely work out being creative. Yet, in the end, perhaps that is really just my true creative process shining though. Ideas that need to develop over time can’t be constructed in a day.
I found this video of Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity at PvP Online. I am unfamiliar with who she is as a writer. However, I do find her discussion about the creative process very revealing to the work I am currently doing. My takeaway is we each have our own demons in our own creative processes. Each of which are dealt with in unique and varied ways.
I struggle with creativity and expanding my boundaries of work beyond where they exist today. Not only because of time considerations, but also because of the items I choose to work on from moment to moment and day to day. Sometimes I feel like my job doesn’t present the challenges I need to feed my creative demons. Forcing them to devour other parts of my focus. Perhaps this is the root cause of my desire to see “shiny things” around me. My creative demons reaching out for something to draw inspiration from.
The truth is even in the mundane I should see the creative. Transferring PDF content into a web page focused toward an electrical engineer is not the most exciting work in the world. Yet is my objective not the finished product? Would it not be more appropriate to see my creative desires as an accumulation of the whole project, instead of the individual piece in front of me? I would have to say YES! Each detail is the beginning of the final piece of art. And my block is sometimes I cannot see the forest for the tree in front of me.
A detail I work on overcoming everyday. A detail I strive to consume in the production of continually evolving work.
Just a little message about love. A message to someone special to me. I’m just a heart beat away my love.
I played two games of Ultimate Frisbee tonight. My team hasn’t done that well, but I played quite a few points. Which is great for removing what belly I have. I wish we could win a game, but either way I am having fun. I really do miss playing Ultimate. I wish life afforded me the same time as when I was only working part time. It is amazing how much you can play around when your responsibilities only cover half the week.
Anni played her first games of Ultimate tonight. It was amazing to watch her improve over the course of a couple hours. I find Ultimate Frisbee difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t witnessed a game before. The mixing of football, soccer, and basketball concepts into a sport with a flat disc don’t seem to leap out to some people. I attempted to explain the 10 simple rules the best I could, but for someone whose sports while growing up consisted of rowing and the like concepts such as sidelines aren’t natural. Before we completed the second game there was an obvious difference compared with the first. I am very proud.
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