Chaos Tamer
Geeks are looking to the future by their very nature
As a long time fan of Star Wars, I delight in my discovery of this video. A fan montage, it really does a great job of taking the “The greatest teacher failure is” phrase of Yoda’s and reinforce it well. It really adds some interesting insights into The Last Jedi.
I appreciate considering the importance of failure, not only in the lives of fictional characters but also in ours.
I just stumbled upon this video with iJustine and Marques with MKBHD from 2018. I don’t know where they found an unopened iBook G3 in 2018, but that’s particularly cool to me.
Anyway, what’s particularly fun for me: I had one of these! I loved this! And I enjoyed the odd stares from my techy friends. That was especially true when I used the handle. Though that was convenient, especially when I was moving a short distance (didn’t need/want to load it into my backpack), in hindsight, it was rather weird.
Kinda weird that I’ve lived so many of these historic tech moments. I’m not old!
This is part of my morning musical focus. Ambient, triphop, and such are styles I’ve long delighted in. From back in the early days of electronic music. I find the graphics accompanying this to be cool, too.
Saw this thread today:
“Death Star” is the perfect brand ID.
You can update it every day. “The Trump Death Star has killed 74,773 Americans…”
Or
“Trump has so far caused 74,773 deaths, and when you’re a star, they let you do it”— Tom Joseph (@TomJChicago) May 7, 2020
My mind immediately pictured the scene in A New Hope where Obi-Wan senses the destruction of Alderaan. Doesn’t seem like a positive message about a candidate to me. Anyway, I whipped out this meme in response.
A little cheesy and amateurish, but thought “what the hell”. I might regret it as there possibly will be an explosion of crankiness. Or maybe not. Might be one person who likes it and it fades into oblivion. In the end, I thought this silly little meme sums up my feelings succinctly.
May the Force be with you All.
Jerry “Barnacules” created an awesome video with some hyper-useful shortcuts and hotkeys. I’m a junkie for shortcuts and stuff, and there’s a bunch of these that were new to me.
In my Human Relations class we’re discussing corporate surveillance. In one of my responses I brought up my concern about how companies, tracking their employees, are then responsible for securing that data. In response, one of my classmates shared this video with me that’s quite relevant. As he described it, it’s a 20-minute Socratic exploration into data security and social surveillance. Some very interesting discourse, for me at least. Powerful questions to ask as technology’s ability to track our every move grows daily.
I have really enjoyed the final season of Star Wars: Clone Wars. The animation is amazing, and the stories, well, for me at least, perfect. I’ve reconnected with the characters enough that it’s going to hurt when Order 66 goes down.
Last week’s episode, The Phantom Apprentice, was powerful. Part of that was bringing back Ray Park, who performed Maul in the Phantom Menance, and an exceptional martial artist. The team used motion capture to create this dynamic, engaging piece of film (can I call it film if it’s only digital?).
Below is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the episode. Well worth watching if you’re fascinated by the production of movies and tv.
Several years ago Google’s Creative Lab came up with this video to showcase Google. So often I see people get caught up in the technological minutia of video production (or any other creative initiative), of any aspect of storytelling. Insecurity about their camera, their editing software, lighting…on and on. And here’s a video, needing none of this, just a bunch of text typed into a browser, and a few other shots of Google pages. I’m pretty sure all that was needed was a browser, OBS, and an editor (iMovie might’ve been powerful enough to create it).
The tools don’t matter. Only the story has value. You can tell a story with the most minimal gear. And, to be blunt, if you can tell a compelling story with the most basic tools, you’ll be more likely to be entrusted with bigger and better tools.
So, go, create! Tell your story with whatever you have. Your audience, your tribe awaits.
As both a Star Wars fan and space geek, this video from StarWars.com explores the real science that is inspired by the film.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Just over a month ago, I learned I was being let go from my current role. I’ve wandered this path before, so I, initially, wasn’t terribly concerned. However, the more I thought about it, the more concerned I became. Mainly, I’d been laid off twice in less than a year. Thinking further, since 2009, I’d been laid off 4 times. I’m a bit tired of that. Yeah, even being a tech-savvy executive assistant/project coordinator, that work is too easy to outsource. Plus, with digital assistant growth, the lessening of friction for scheduling, the ease at which most folks can book their own travel, and you see the recipe for a dying career. I’m ready to be, shall we say, more essential.
Pretty much all of my life I’ve had a fascination with technology. As a young boy, my love of robots and radios (I had a particular fascination with shortwave radios), evolved into space and aviation, then into computers. Early PC games and BBSs then morphed into a vocational certificate in Information Processing (mainly databases and spreadsheets). Looking back, my biggest contribution to most of my past roles has been digitally based. Whether it’s my ability to fix a copier, 90% of PC issues, set up and manage a network, use things like Photoshop and AutoCAD, or build a website, those were the things that added the most value to the world around me.
I believe that the web holds our future. We will interact with most systems and data with web tools. SaaS models are already driving there…in the fast lane. Web development is a fast-growing path (projected 27% growth over the next 10 years), with decent salaries to boot.
So, it looks like fun, and there’s a need, which seems like a great combination. Thus, off I go.