"But sing not for their final outcome; sing a song of how they tried.
We live amidst a violent storm; leaves us unsatisfied at best,
So fill your heart with what's important, and be done with all the rest."
Courtesy of La Dispute from the album Somewhere At The Bottom Of The River
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Breaking The Rules
Throughout my life I have always been a rather rigid and steadfast kind of guy. This has worked both for and against me to varying degrees. One of the rules that I have always stuck to since the Cyrix Computer Chip fiasco is to never be an early adopter of technology. Always wait a period of time and let the bug reports start rolling in and then make a better decision.
Well, over the next two weeks, I am going to break that rule not once but twice. I am going to be the first person I know* to get AT&T U-Verse. I am simply bored and feed up with the lack of HD content on Comcast.
Well, before my U-Verse gets installed on the 7th, I will be spending the 6th at a Verizon store getting myself a Verizon/Motorola/Google Droid. Will this signal a new more care free me?
Of course it won't. It's simply a phone and a cable provider. Calm down people.
* In Memphis anyways
Well, over the next two weeks, I am going to break that rule not once but twice. I am going to be the first person I know* to get AT&T U-Verse. I am simply bored and feed up with the lack of HD content on Comcast.
Well, before my U-Verse gets installed on the 7th, I will be spending the 6th at a Verizon store getting myself a Verizon/Motorola/Google Droid. Will this signal a new more care free me?
Of course it won't. It's simply a phone and a cable provider. Calm down people.
* In Memphis anyways
Monday, October 26, 2009
Maybe I am OCD
I can't seem to stop thinking about the new Android phone from Verizon. I am constantly pondering it's abilities, what calendar support it will have, how it will sync with my Linux boxes, and oh so many other things. The thing I have probably spent the most time thinking about however is the ad campaign.
I am far from a marketing guy. I find lots of things about the field to be somewhat evil, but on occasion people make what I would consider art, or at a minimum something that is very interesting and is worth of critique.
Last night I am watching baseball with a close friend, and we starting talking about the various adds we have seen a 1000 times now.* So during one of the breaks my friend and I get to talking about the android phone. We start ripping into the details of a 45 second add spot.**
Now my friend contends that the add doesn't actually tell you what the phone does. However, I have to disagree with him. I am the first to admit that I drank the open source Kool-Aid a long long time ago, but I don't think this is my blinding love of all things Open Source effecting me here. Can we go to list form for a minute? I want to just rattle of some points about why this add is amazing.
1) In the first part it nails the entire asthetic that Apple has been using for their branding.
2) It uses that branding to mock apple at the same time.
3) Then out of no where they take that entire look, and turn it on it's head.
It's awesome. I couldn't be happier with the add.*** They tell you several things the phone does by pointing out the short comings of it's supposed competitor. It's genius.
Now, here is the REALLY REALLY cool thing that the fine folks at Verizon did to promote the phone to the media.
That's right, the gave out some R2D2's. That's just sweet marketing. Sure you should give out some C3PO's so that his feelings don't hurt****, but I can live with this.
Now, look I have no belief that this will hurt apple. Their brand is so powerful right now that it's scary. There is a HUGE culture of people who buy into it and all it's trappings. That's a great job by them. I will however say that the fine folks about RIM should be really worried.
*When you watch every playoff baseball game you get beaten down by the same products over and over and over again. I'M LOOKING AT YOU FRANK TV!
**You'll be shocked to hear this, but we don't have girlfriends and not a single girl hit on us during the game.
***Here I will admit to a bit of fanboydom. Though the add is good.
****He is rather sensitive after all
I am far from a marketing guy. I find lots of things about the field to be somewhat evil, but on occasion people make what I would consider art, or at a minimum something that is very interesting and is worth of critique.
Last night I am watching baseball with a close friend, and we starting talking about the various adds we have seen a 1000 times now.* So during one of the breaks my friend and I get to talking about the android phone. We start ripping into the details of a 45 second add spot.**
Now my friend contends that the add doesn't actually tell you what the phone does. However, I have to disagree with him. I am the first to admit that I drank the open source Kool-Aid a long long time ago, but I don't think this is my blinding love of all things Open Source effecting me here. Can we go to list form for a minute? I want to just rattle of some points about why this add is amazing.
1) In the first part it nails the entire asthetic that Apple has been using for their branding.
2) It uses that branding to mock apple at the same time.
3) Then out of no where they take that entire look, and turn it on it's head.
It's awesome. I couldn't be happier with the add.*** They tell you several things the phone does by pointing out the short comings of it's supposed competitor. It's genius.
Now, here is the REALLY REALLY cool thing that the fine folks at Verizon did to promote the phone to the media.
That's right, the gave out some R2D2's. That's just sweet marketing. Sure you should give out some C3PO's so that his feelings don't hurt****, but I can live with this.
Now, look I have no belief that this will hurt apple. Their brand is so powerful right now that it's scary. There is a HUGE culture of people who buy into it and all it's trappings. That's a great job by them. I will however say that the fine folks about RIM should be really worried.
*When you watch every playoff baseball game you get beaten down by the same products over and over and over again. I'M LOOKING AT YOU FRANK TV!
**You'll be shocked to hear this, but we don't have girlfriends and not a single girl hit on us during the game.
***Here I will admit to a bit of fanboydom. Though the add is good.
****He is rather sensitive after all
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Second Best
I shall not refer directly to the Pedro the Lion song, but please know that it's a great song on a truly amazing album.
No today I am second best because I am lazy and didn't bother to write down or talk about a thought I had the other day.
During this years post season baseball games on Fox I noticed something that I had never really thought about before. Fox has been showing the speed at which the ball leaves the pitchers hand the speed at which it crosses the plate. Now, without every thinking about this I knew that there was no way the ball was the same velocity out of the hand as it crossed the plate.* However, I never went to the next logical point. Which pitchers lose the least velocity on their pitches when they leave their hand? Which pitchers lose the most velocity when the pitch leaves the pitchers hand.
I think we can all agree that a fastball that stays as close to it's peak speed as possible when coming out of the hand is the better fast ball.** However, what about breaking ball that loses a ton of speed? Is that why Knuckle ball can be so hard to hit? Is that why a really good 12-6 curve will make you look silly?
What I would love to see is a list of pitchers who's fastballs hold their velocity best from release to home plate, and the start and end speeds of all their breaking pitches. Maybe we could learn something here. Sure I could do this research myself and become a baseball research rock star, but frankly I am to lazy to do such a thing. Someone please get on this.
* In case anyone didn't know the velocity of a pitcher is judged by how fast the ball is moving when it leaves his hand. Not when it crosses the plate.
**provided the fastball isn't to true
No today I am second best because I am lazy and didn't bother to write down or talk about a thought I had the other day.
During this years post season baseball games on Fox I noticed something that I had never really thought about before. Fox has been showing the speed at which the ball leaves the pitchers hand the speed at which it crosses the plate. Now, without every thinking about this I knew that there was no way the ball was the same velocity out of the hand as it crossed the plate.* However, I never went to the next logical point. Which pitchers lose the least velocity on their pitches when they leave their hand? Which pitchers lose the most velocity when the pitch leaves the pitchers hand.
I think we can all agree that a fastball that stays as close to it's peak speed as possible when coming out of the hand is the better fast ball.** However, what about breaking ball that loses a ton of speed? Is that why Knuckle ball can be so hard to hit? Is that why a really good 12-6 curve will make you look silly?
What I would love to see is a list of pitchers who's fastballs hold their velocity best from release to home plate, and the start and end speeds of all their breaking pitches. Maybe we could learn something here. Sure I could do this research myself and become a baseball research rock star, but frankly I am to lazy to do such a thing. Someone please get on this.
* In case anyone didn't know the velocity of a pitcher is judged by how fast the ball is moving when it leaves his hand. Not when it crosses the plate.
**provided the fastball isn't to true
Friday, October 2, 2009
Your computer lesson of the day
So let's say you finally bothered to get your VPN connection to work going after a year or so of not caring. Let's say you finally get it working. Let's say you can't figure out why your remote desktop software won't work. Let's say over the course of a day or so, and very little effort mind you, that still don't get it working. Let's say you realize it's most likely a port issue. Let's say you look up what port your rdesktop client is listening on. Let's say you decide to try and ssh to your home box and then connect work via VPN. Let's say you do this. Let's say that you forget that by doing this none of your proxy's are set at home and more over this now breaks your ssh session. Let's say that your VPN connection will never disconnect b/c it's a LINUX box and does VPN the right way. Let's say all of these things just happened and that you are now unable to connect to your home machine. I'm just sayin that some of that stuff my or may not have just happened.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
I do think about other things
So it seems I talk about bikes a lot lately. I promise other things are on my mind as well. However, this video should be seen. This is anything but the type of bike riding I wish to do, but the old skateboarder side of me couldn't respect this more if he tried. Also the music ain't half bad.
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