Category Archives: My Reminders

In search of a biz monkey (why bother?)

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Andrew Chen coins a great term. A biz monkey is a replaceable, Powerpoint toting, suit wearing, acronym-spewing middle manager business dude drone. They are quick to comment and sneer, slow to actually ship.

When something is scarce, it’s valuable. MBA’s with buzzwords and the ability to raise a million dollars around some web idea are not scarce. They are fungible.

People who understand technology and are willing to bend it to their will, on the other hand, are scarce. They can’t be found with a classified ad on Craigslist or in a blind project ad on eLance.

The job of the smart business person isn’t to fish in waters where coders are cheap. It’s to have enough initiative and vision that the best coders in the world will realize that they’ll do better with you than without you.

Business people add value when they make things happen, not when they seek to hire cheap.

TC Bank – Dream Rangers

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[iDevice Link] <— 2,490,544 Obviously - the power of this advertisement would increase 10 fold had someone just randomly re-created this "based on a true story" story of 5 Taiwanese friends who spent 13 days traveling around Taiwan in memory of their lost friends But then it wouldn't be an advertisement - and we probably would watch it. Genius.

Live Your Childhood Dreams

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[iDevice Link] <— 12,985,313 I came across this Randy Pausch lecture while YouTubing today... and what a reminder it was to live life to the fullest. It sounds cheesy, but if you are having a hard time comprehending what the point of life is - this lecture will help you. I remember when Randy passed away in 2008 and shortly following I spent a good amount of time consuming his thoughts and lectures and found him to be truly inspirational. I'm glad I ran into him again on the internets... and this time have a bloggish video reminder memory bank tool to share and remember his story forever.

The quick history on Randy:

Randolph Frederick “Randy” Pausch (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) was an American professor of computer science and human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Pausch learned that he had pancreatic cancer in September 2006, and in August 2007 he was given a terminal diagnosis: “3 to 6 months of good health left”. He gave an upbeat lecture titled “The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” on September 18, 2007, at Carnegie Mellon, which became a popular YouTube video and led to other media appearances. He then co-authored a book called The Last Lecture on the same theme, which became a New York Times best-seller.

Pausch died of complications from pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008.

[Facebook]
[Wikipedia]
[Carnegie Mellon]
[Randy Timeline]
[The Last Lecture]

Randy’s last speech – May 18th, 2008.

[iDevice Link] <— 1,302,675

HYDLE – The Doug Smith Show

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I have a gift for you regarding a recent completion to a very inspiring project.

Don’t click the links unless you have time to consume…
[HERE] <— is written proof. [HERE] <— is Hydle RAW proof.

I Can’t Think!

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I intentionally left my iCommunicationWithTheOutsideWorldDevice at home for a two day snowmobiling trip somewhere outside of Nowhere, Colorado.

No internet – No texts – No calls.

I was forced to focus on the relationships of who was actually there.
Never felt so good in my entire life.

Need proof of what is becoming of our brains ability to function in social overload…?

“Trying to drink from a firehose of information has harmful cognitive effects. And nowhere are those effects clearer, and more worrying, than in our ability to make smart, creative, successful decisions.”

“The research should give pause to anyone addicted to incoming texts and tweets. The booming science of decision making has shown that more information can lead to objectively poorer choices, and to choices that people come to regret.”

“If you think you’re a maximizer, the best prescription for you might be the “off” switch on your smart phone.”

[READ FULL] <— I Can't Think! - Newsweek

TOTD – Life Without Love

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“This is really about ‘making-up’. When you are just at the edge of the ‘it’s too hard’ precipice, look down and think about life without love.

It’s easy to be cynical about love. But when loves leaves your life, you realize that everything is better with it. The Friendship, Partnership, Warmth, Connectedness, Support – it all makes life just a bit more worth living.

Don’t be cynical, don’t be flippant, try your heart out, you don’t have to settle – strong back, open heart – it’s worth it.”

Get Hugh MacLeod

In and Out

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That’s one of the most important decisions you’ll make today.

How much time and effort should be spent on intake, on inbound messages, on absorbing data…

and how much time and effort should be invested in output, in creating something new.

There used to be a significant limit on available intake. Once you read all the books in the college library on your topic, it was time to start writing.

Now that the availability of opinions, expertise and email is infinite, I think the last part of that sentence is the most important:

Time to start writing.

Or whatever it is you’re not doing, merely planning on doing.

3:2 Pull-down

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Performing a 3:2 Pull-Down
The most common approach to distributing film’s 24 fps among NTSC video’s 29.97 fps is to perform a 3:2 pull-down (also known as a 2:3:2:3 pull-down). If you alternate recording two fields of one film frame and then three fields of the next, the 24 frames in 1 second of film end up filling the 30 frames in 1 second of video.

As shown above, the 3:2 pattern (actually a 2:3:2:3 pattern since frame A is recorded to two fields followed by frame B recorded to three fields) repeats after four film frames. Virtually all high-end commercials, movies, and non-live television shows use this process prior to being broadcast.