It’s Time to Go

Today was my last day of class at Pratt Institute. I sat through a final session of “Methods of Cultural Analysis” (Meth’ Cult’ Anal’ for shorthand and humor purposes) and turned in my final assignment. Whew… three years of work, time and money, all signified by turning in a research proposal; weirdly enough turning in my thesis didn’t have the finality that I expected it to.

After I left class and called Jackie and then my sister Meg, who finished her first year of classes today I decided to walk the perimeter of campus as a way of finalizing the transition out of my college career.

I’ve never actually walked the entire campus in that way before today, it was a really thought-provoking walk, mostly along the iron fence that surrounds Pratt. In the first half of the walk I started sensing that God was telling me “It’s time to go. It’s time to go. It’s time to go,” but I couldn’t figure out why He kept repeating it and what I was supposed to do (leave campus now? Go to Texas now?). Then in the second half of the walk I realized how many times I had doubted my purpose at school and considered dropping out. Every time I doubted God would take me aside and tell me that I wasn’t going anywhere until He said it was time. He opened the doors for me to attend Pratt and He would close them when he was good and ready.

You’re probably  putting 2 and 2 together faster than I did. God was finally telling me that it was time to leave Pratt. My time was finally at an end. In my wake? Lots of lessons learned, a good share of tears and strained relationships as well as new relationships forged. On my horizon? A wedding to the love of my life. A woman who has put up with more of my selfishness than anyone. Jacqueline has pushed me when I wanted to stop, even as she yearned for me to be with her. Her cost has been highest.  I’m ready for the next phase of growth, of learning to cultivate a healthy marriage and step into the responsibility of a husband.

I heard something on the radio about how Toyota and Honda have always pushed the idea of self-reflection and self-improvment “never take your success seriously” as summed up by the commentator. I’m keen on that idea, that excellence is not a place you arrive at, but a skill that should be constantly honed. That’s my new motto… a motto for the rest of my life, my marriage, my writing, a way to stay dynamic.

I’m ready. “It’s time to go.”

…a little embarassed

Ok, so I’m not really the kind of guy who fawns over baby animals (sorry the pun was unavoidable), but now that I’m an enthusiastic dog owner I’ve changed my attitude. This photo actually made me say “awwww” and now I’m sharing my embarassment with you. Although, in defense of the impulse that allows people to look at ferocious predators and want one for a pet, I think that we see ourselves reflected in them. Some semblance of humaness that causes a moment of self reflection. I mean heck, even criminals get sleepy and have mommies… Not that I’m implying that this bear is a criminal. Just pointing out the common ground, that’s all.

Brown Bear taking a nap

Cool Website Service

Maybe I’m just way late in the game, but I was doing some research about free website hosting services last night and I found something called wix, which seems to be pretty incredible, especially because the basic service is free.

Anyway, I’m trying to put up a website that can serve as my portfolio and online resume, so I’ll keep you guys updated as I make progress.

Apparently some +600,000 people have already made websites with it. It’s a starting point anyway, better than trying to code an html site from scratch and make it look like I built it in 8th grade.

In the Garden of Technology

In this post I will link you to yet another article from Slate Magazine. In this article, which was written by Farhad Manjoo, you will find more references to struggling publishing companies as well as apparently successful web businesses. You will probably realize that you could just subscribe to Slate’s RSS feed and stop reading my blog altogether.

I hope you don’t actually do that last thing. I promise that I’m not deliberately sponging off better writers just so I can say that I publish a blog. I know it’s frustrating to always navigate to some other article in order to understand a post. In light of that I’ll try to provide more self-contained content as a balance.

Whether you read the article, in this case, is almost irrelevant. Manjoo presents a provoking fact: YouTube doesn’t make money. That’s right, based on current projections YouTube is losing almost half a billion dollars a year.

Let’s talk about that from a web-business perspective. I just assumed that YouTube was making bank. How could you have that many users and visitors without hauling in cash by the barrel-ful? Relatively speaking they are, 240 mil. USD is not insignificant, but they’re also paying it out by the boatload, accounting for the net loss.

Here’s what that means to me, especially when conflated with the plight of newspapers: web business needs quality standards. Actually, what I’m thinking is more complex than that. The larger context for this discussion is the principle that there is already such an expansive body of information posted to the web that people don’t really need more options, they need new ways to sort and access that information.

Google already plays the largest role in this respect. The importance of being the top hit on a Google search cannot be overestimated. But Google doesn’t provide reliable exposure to new things. Google is also a neutral player, allowing popularity to dictate relevance.

Frankly, popularity is a fickle way to judge quality. Understand that I am not hopping on the anti-pop band wagon, I’m just saying that at one point it was popular to paint your house with lead-base paint, or to bleed people in hopes of curing disease. Thus popularity is a function, not an independent force, it is inherently quantitative not qualitative.

There is a great deal of opportunity for businesses to provide qualitative services. Think about iTunes. That’s not a browser-based business the way Google is, but it’s still a business that depends wholly on the internet. They do two things, make a wide variety of music widely accessible and they also make recommendations on what they think is good. Netflix operates on a similar idea, recommendation is a primary tenet of successful sales, remember word-of-mouth? The internet has simplified word-of-mouth into a combination of five-stars and relevance algorithms.

I suspect that this aspect of web-based interaction will change as our needs and desires change. But the real question for dotcom entreprenuers is how to develop an audience that trusts you. Who do you trust? Why?

Popularity isn’t exclusive to quality, I’m just suggesting that it’s worth thinking about who you trust for your information and your entertainment.

Do you like big butts and ukulele music? Of course you do

There really isn’t anything to say about this video other than it is pure awesome. As awesome as the sign I saw in Trader Joe’s today which showed a woman wearing a hat with a compact flourescent lightbulb and a chipmunk eating a pop-tart on top. I almost took a picture but they don’t allow photographs in TJ’s. Enjoy the video.

We are fragile for a reason

I don’t spend much time thinking about death. I have to be reminded by things like this article from Slate Magazine’s Meghan O’Rourke. And when I am reminded, I’m not just sobered in that “oh yeah people die” way, but in a “death and grief are valuable and important parts of life” way.

I lay some claim to a powerful imagination and when I read Meghan’s article I started to tear up. I cry; I’m ok with needing to experience my life through tears. Grief is part of that experience. And before I get too carried away trying to write a meaningful “blog post” that compresses death and grief into a 250 word blurb, I’ll cut to the chase.

O’Rourke’s article was a story, not a fabrication, but a story. A space in time where my life was suspended in someone else’s and in that moment I wound up thinking about my own life. Story is best when it helps us escape to our lives, not from them.

Also I just finished a final draft of my thesis, final meaning that I’m done generating fresh content and have moved onto the heavily editorial phase. I’m not ready to distribute it for wide consideration (soon, I promise), but I’ll say that death is an critical theme and I tried hard give it relevance as a topic.

Much of my recent life has revolved around lessons of self-lessness and sacrifice, both of which I think are integral to death and grief. O’Rourke found herself able to accept her mother’s death easier when her mother accepted death. What’s the deeper inference of that statment? O’Rourke’s mother made a choice that equipped the rest of her family to engage the process. Death may seem like the ultimate moment to focus on yourself, especially when your body has turned against you, but I am struck by how even quiet, little humane deaths can serve as sacrifices on behalf of our loved ones.

A way to make our fragility mean something. A way to be broken well.

Think hard folks

Please read this article. I blogged about the new Kindle a few weeks ago, but Slate Magazine’s Farhad Manjoo has got me thinking a little harder about the current situation in publishing.

I think this issue is important for more than just prospective authors and people who are interested in the publishing industry. I hadn’t really considered the inherent nature of the physical book market, the buying, reselling, and sharing that occurs is an incredible aspect of our culture. What happens when we can no longer inscribe ourselves on our cultural moment without the permission of a corporation?

Understand that I am deeply concerned with how to protect my work as I try to publish it. I don’t want to see my efforts being co-opted by individuals or organizations that I don’t approve of. But I’m beginning to see that perspective as an outdated mindset. Haven’t we seen how this kind of protectionism crumbled the recording industry? Now I’m not a musician so I don’t know if this was really a bad thing, seems to me that it’s put more power into the hands of individuals and it’s really the executives who are losing the most, but I’d love for someone who is in the know to address this phenomenon(hey musicians, whadda ya think?).

Back to the topic. I really think that what we need is a format that enables different levels of control. I think the format that Justin Fike is using with Equus Information Services has a ton of potential. Mostly because it creates an e-book that can act as a surface for interaction. Books need to be about conversations and if it means that we as authors and publishers lose control over our work… maybe that’s a necessary sacrifice in order to keep the cultural potential of written work alive.

Much as the prospect of losing authorial control rubs me the wrong way, I suspect growing pains as the cause, not some deeper value system that is being violated. And even if some of my values are being violated, I’m sure they could use a re-examination. What if we as a generation of authors were to push out the idea of a book as a conversation? What if books literally had space to grow and morph based on the way readers re-inscribe them? What is there to be afraid of? Just make sure you keep the originals somewhere safe and let your audience loose. Wow, part of me kind of hates that I just wrote that. Another part of me is cheering, like I just broke out of an old snake-skin.

Of this I am sure, no one has ever won using yesterday’s strategies on today’s battlefield. Let’s work on developing today’s strategy. Think hard people, this is about you too. What are your values?

How does he do that…?

Actually, the more pertinent question is why does he do that. Here’s the latest video from Jonathan Thain in which he gives some perspective on what drives him to push the limits of his body and physics:

By all means, comment on his videos and rate them too. He likes to know that people are enjoying what he’s passionate about. Also, his abilities are pretty competitive in terms of the parkour/free-running community, so he can use all the exposure he can get.

Enjoy!

Hold the rest, like music

This is a ten horse pose. This volcano is my daughter. The terrified sovereign of Araby. A close flyer on the bicycle wing. Crown wheels in the deep sea, a force of rising faith. Here bully tightrope flowers, cover me quarter-ounce at a time. Calluses like heels on hands. An eel-wound like cords or cuts. The down-file cuts a rigid heap. The grain is met by soft doors of the boiler. A terrace, wide ground for healing. Coil me in your joy basket and whistle like the dickens. But I have found a resting place.

~Zac G.

I love breakfast

Turkish figs of Smyrna

As stated in the title, I love breakfast. In fact I love breakfast so much that I will eat  breakfast food at any time of the day, as long as it’s my first meal. So this morning I decided to make myself some oatmeal, which is not all that exciting, but I spiced it up a bit and I think the result was pretty fantastic. So here’s the recipe.

Coconut Fig Oatmeal-

1/2 C. of coconut milk

1/2 C. of water

1/4 C. of steel-cut or Irish oats (if using rolled oats, use 1/2 C.)

3 or 4 dried figs, coarsely chopped

A dash of ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon of salt

Honey to taste

Combine the water, coconut milk, figs, salt and cloves together in a pan and bring to a boil. Then add the oats and simmer until thickened, probably like 5 minutes, but keep an eye on it and stir occasionally. Then add however much honey you like. Walla! You have incredibly simple tasty oatmeal for one.

If you want to make enough to share, just remember that the ratio for steel-cut oats to water is 1:4 and rolled oats is 1:2.