blahgKarma

BLAHGKARMA HAS MOVED

2006-01-15T07:44:00.000-08:00

I've moved blahgKarma to www.blahgkarma.com/wp, and although I'll be in this old site harvesting some info and maybe very infrequently posting on a subject or two, please redirect your attention the new site. If you're viewing via RSS/reader, the proper feed address is http://www.blahgkarma.com/wp/?feed=rss2.

Many thanks!

Chris

Merry Christmas, Big and Little...

2005-12-24T23:40:00.000-08:00

Not sure how I missed it, but I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and only today, while preparing another post, did I realize I never posted it!

Today (10 December) was a great day – got to do something we did last year for work, which was deliver Santa Claus to the second annual Big Brothers Big Sisters of Martin County Big and Little Christmas Party, an extension of the BBBS Santa Claus Open golf tournament. What a hoot!

You see, last year we got a call from Santa Claus that his sleigh was in the shop for its annual pre-Christmas tune up, but that he had this committment to drop by this very special Christmas Party, and that the Martin County Sheriff’s Office Aviation Unit could bring him by, but their helicopter is green and white, and with ours matching Santa’s red, white and gold color scheme perfectly, would we consider helping him out. Are you kidding… pass on a chance to help Santa and Big Brothers Big Sisters at the same time… you betcha!

Santa arrived at the base around 11:30, posed for a few photos with Capt. Blank and Flight Medics Sorrells and Gordils (a great team, by the way), checked in on the radio and then was off for a quick aerial tour of Martin County while we staged the kids and prepped the landing zone at The Grace Place on Salerno Road (big thank-you to Grace Place, who for two years now has been kind enough to let BBBS use their facility for the party, which drew around a hundred folks this year).

With the Bigs and Littles all outside, “Santa One” made a couple of recon/vanity orbits around the site, called inbound, and then landed, delivering their precious cargo. Seeing the kids’ excitement and reaction was awesome, and the adults loved it too (who wouldn’t?). Santa visited outside in a sea of kids of all ages, then posed for a few photos and headed back to the north pole.

Besides helping out Big Brothers Big Sisters (disclosure: I’m on the board), this kind of community event has to be the most fun and one of the most rewarding aspect of associating with LifeStar and Martin County Fire Rescue. Providing positive exposure to public safety personnel and careers helps everyone and the community at large, but putting a smile on a child’s face is so easy, but something we don’t always have the opportunity (or take the time) to do.

Thanks to Fred, Jim, Chuck from LifeStar, Bill and Ed Bee and Gigi Suntum and all the other folks from Big Brothers Big Sisters, and most of all our Bigs, who really make the rubber meet the road in BBBS by mentoring Littles that are all the better for it.

Great way to start of the holiday season, if you ask me…

Last Post on Blogger...

2005-11-28T15:34:00.000-08:00

OK guys, even though I’m not quite done with my theme/presentation configuration on WordPress, I’m cutting off the Blogger version of blahgKarma. I’ll post here ocassionally over the next two weeks asking you to please subscribe to the feed for the new WordPress version, where you’ll still find all the blahgKarma goodness you’ve come to know and love, but I’m not going to parallel post any more.

The new and improved blahgKarma, complete with a totally new look and a bunch of new features, is located at http://www.blahgkarma.com/wp. If you’re reading by browser, please come here to read. If you’re subscribing via RSS, i hope you’re already on the FeedBurner version of the feed, which is http://feeds.feedburner.com/blahgkarma. Let me know via comments if you’re using this read and you’re having trouble with it (read the post below on Bloglines’ trouble with FeedBurner first). Also, autodiscovery should be updated, so if you’re NOT reading via RSS, you should be able to browse over to the new site and have your reader/browser subscribe you.

Bloglines Sync-ing Issue...

2005-11-28T15:22:00.000-08:00

After a couple of days of back and forth with Sandy Kemsley regarding my FeedBurner feeds not working properly in Bloglines, I’m confident the problem is on the Bloglines end. As noted in a bunch of web references I Googled-up on the topic. And since you don’t really want to go through all the troubleshooting Sandy did, I thought I’d make a quick reference here.

One of the behaviors is Bloglines not displaying or catching updates on the feed. This, amazingly enough, is because in this case their RSS retrieval system stops retrieving info on the feed. Not a handy feature when you’re an RSS reader.

The other behavior is errant information in the feed. In my case, I updated my FeedBurner feed to use a different source URL, and when BlogLines was reading the feed, some of the info, like the URL associated with the blahgKarma header displayed for the feed in Bloglines, was incorrect – as it was an artifact from aged info from an earlier incarnation of the feed.

I can only conclude that Bloglines is doing all sorts of caching in their system when it comes to RSS reading, and that its not all working right. A few of the articles I read indicated they’re good about fixing the problem on a feed-by-feed and user-by-user basis, so we’ll see if they respond and correct the issue. Maybe one of the triggers for the issue is updating the underlying feed address in a FeedBurner feed (i.e. the address FeedBurner burns from).

Thanks again for the help Sandy. I’m so glad you didn’t lose any data when you reformatted your hard drive during the testing (grin).

Permalinks Are a Bitch and a Half...

2005-11-27T20:37:00.000-08:00

Ran into a speed bump while implementing WordPress this weekend… well, two of them I guess. One having to do with feature/capabilities and configuration, one with docs and one with IIS hosting in general.

Feature problem first – permalinks. They’re a necessity, I think, and although every WordPress posting gains a unique ID, which in and of itself when handed to the proper URL serves as a permalink, I see two issues with them. One, they’re ugly and two, they’re search engine unfriendly – that is, they don’t help your posts get indexed by the search engines. So, off I go to mod the permalink structure (an easy thing to do, right? Just update the appropriate panel in WP Admin?), and man did I hit the wall. Long story short, you can change the structure all you want but the feature really just doesn’t work in a Windows shared hosted environment.

Which brings me to problem two – docs. There’s a huge wiki with WordPress info in it, and I’ve found it very useful. Unfortunately, the 50 or so articles/comments I read that took me down two different paths to try to resolve my issue were vague when it came to what environment the fixes applied to – in my case PHP running on Windows with IIS 6. The info on manually editing redirects, etc. doesn’t even apply in my case (guess I’ll never get those two hours back, will I). And, the need for making those tweaks on other platforms went away with WP version 1.5. I’ll ask a favor – if you’re posting detailed fix info in the codex (and many, many people do – and the info is generally superb in quality), please indicate what platform and version of WP you’re referring to. You know, so morons like me don’t make a bunch of unnecessary changes that don’t fix the problem anyway. Thank you.

For now, I’m blowing off permalinks that will help with search engine optomization, in favor of publishing the site. I don’t think this will bite me in the ass when I change the permalink structure later (assuming there really is a reasonable fix), since accessing a post via its unique ID should always work. I hope…

Next step, swinging the FeedBurner feed over to the new blogsite. Wish me luck…

WordPress Question...

2005-11-27T20:36:00.000-08:00

This is as much to remind me to look for a particular WordPress plugin as it is to see if anyone reading can help… in the past, I’ve used a service from www.blogrolling.com to maintain my blahgRoll. It was simple – no real coding required, just a copy and paste – and it had a cool feature I liked, which was the ability to flag the blogs I point to with an icon indicating new content. Now that I’m on WP, I have a dilemma… work to modify the theme I’m using to implement the blogrolling script, or find some other way to indicate “new”. I don’t really want to do either… what I want is another WordPress plugin to magically appear to solve my problem, like the one from Ron Heft for WebStat.

Anyone out there? The plugin really is the elegant solution, since I’m just as likely as not to change themes and would then have to re-implement blogrolling. Truth is, I’ll probably stop using the service (or at least paying for it – there are two versions)… the Links feature of WordPress is working fine, sans this one feature…

The Awesome Power of the Internet...

2005-11-26T17:38:00.000-08:00

I’m really starting to like WordPress. Have pretty much given up on the Movable Type install, as no matter how I describe the path problem I’m having to my ISP, they don’t have a solution for me (I know its a minor problem, and its one that SixApart has a technote on, but I’m worn out from trying to resolve it).

One shortfall I saw in WordPress right away was the lack of a WYSIWYG editor for creating entries. True, I’ll rarely use it, since BlogJet is chugging along posting to WP for me, but for other users this would be a real pain. But, through the process of researching posting, I came across the WordPress Plug-ins Database. WordPress is extensible, you see, and there are a gazillion plugins to extend it with (OK, maybe a gazillion is an exaggeration).

Browsed around Google, found a number of links to/mentions of WYSI-WordPress, downloaded and drag-installed it, and in less than 5 minutes I had WYSIWYG post creation. Haven’t figured out how embedding photos in a post works yet (its a feature of the plugin), but if I had to use the web interface to create posts, that would do it.

But that’s not the cool part, believe it or not. The cool part is how the Internet collapses time and space, and helped me solve another problem – tracking stats. For a year or so I’ve used the Pro version of WebStat for basic site stats management. Couple of weeks ago was lucky enough to get a Google Analytics account, and what do you know – there were several GA plugins available for WordPress. One of which is by a guy named Ronald Hess, Jr.

Ron wrote a very basic but very useful WP plugin called Google Analyticator that inserts the Google Analytics tracking code in the header of every page in your WP site. And, it has a feature to exclude your own administrative traffic if you’d like… its pretty slick. Installed via drag and drop, configured with two mouse clicks, and that was it. But then I got thinking… hey, what I REALLY want is a similar plugin for WebStat. Having manually altered my Blogger templates to facilitate WebStat tracking I knew it was only a couple of lines of code and I could insert it manually into the proper file(s) for my WP template, but what happens if I switch templates? Or update a template. Trouble, that’s what.

So, like the programming genius I am, I tried hacking Ron’s plugin. After a half hour of not getting the syntax right, I gave up and just e-mailed him, along the lines of “loved your GA plugin, will you make one for WebStat?”. Long story short, an hour later and I had the plugin and had it implemented.

Now I’m not saying you should all try to get Ron to write free plugins for you for WP (see Ron’s plugins page on his CaveMonkey50 site for more). But I really appreciate his work, which made mine easier and more maintainable. Great work, Ron… hope lots of other folks use the plugin too.

Finally, and to me this is the coolest part, Ron is a high school Senior. In Pennsylvania. Who I’ve never met. Now THAT’S the power of the Internet. Good on you, Ron, and restart that PayPal tip jar – cash is king! Or should I say, cha-ching…

Some WordPress-ions...

2005-11-24T19:05:00.000-08:00

A few early impressions on WordPress (the standalone version, not WordPress online…

Installation – WordPress is a snap to install. it literally took me all of 5 minutes, just like promised. This, I have to say, is a huge plus (in contrast, I’ve worked about an hour and a half so far to configure Movable Type, and I’m waiting for Support at my ISP to make a change for me so I can enable it). A point for WordPress…

Configuration – on Movable Type, the first thing I had to do was edit ten or so pages to point them to the Perl interpreter on my webhost. Can’t that be abstracted somehow, so you just edit/enter it once? Virtually no real configuration necessary to get WordPress up and running with the default skin/interface. Point: WordPress.

Importing from Blogger – OK, so this DIDN’T take 5 minutes, more like an hour and two or three tries. The point, though, is that there are a couple tutorials for doing this. It wasn’t clear to me that if I wanted to import from Blogger and HaloScan that there was a separate Blogger template you set up temporarily (i.e. there’s one Blogger template you implement for the stock “import from Blogger” action, and then a different one if you’re using Blogger and HaloScan). Not a big deal, though… I did a test import from a test Blogger blog, and then when I went to what I thought was the next step – importing the Haloscan comments – I found that the procedure is an either/or, not additive. Adapted, and the Blogger import seems to have worked like a champ. Point: WordPress (note - this is conditional… I’ve been reading up on importing from Blogger to MT and it looks more complicated, but honestly I haven’t done it yet, so watch for this to be rescinded if it works better).

Multiple Blog Support/Blog Hosting Services – I think Movable Type has WordPress beaten here, although it could be that I’m just more familiar with Movable Type’s licensing and provisioning models than WordPress’. WordPress seems to be set up for administrative aggregation for multiple blogs, and I haven’t found that capability yet in WordPress. Considering the Movable Type is down a couple of points, I’ll give them this one, conditionally. Point: Movable Type.

All for now. I’m playing with WP skins, slogging through the PlugIns, and making a few more test entries. I also have to wait for the www.blahgkarma.com domain to propagate. When it does, I make the FeedBurner tweak, give you a new URL for live browsing, and then we’ll see what’s up… still trying to get MT up and running – way more to do than to get WP running, thats for sure.

Breadcrumbs, Courtesy of FeedBurner...

2005-11-24T18:46:00.000-08:00

One of the challenges in moving an existing blog to another infrastructure/location is “what happens to the current readers”. For those reading a blog directly, as in going to the blog’s URL in your browser (hey, people still do it), a post on the blog is one method of redirection. Another would be to point the “old” blog at the “new” address by some means, so folks arriving at the “old” location are automatically redirected to the new location. And, I suppose if you had a closed community of users (i.e. where you knew everyone who was reading), you might contact them directly to advise of the change. Or, maybe do all three.

But what about folks that are reading via syndication? If you published your feed URL and its a component of the “old” infrastructure, how do you get the folks on the feed over to the new content/infrastructure. Posting a message on the “old” blog with the location of the “new” one would be one method, but the users/readers then have to take action. Will they?

Enter FeedBurner… FeedBurner is an RSS syndication service that’s separate from your own blog. With FeedBurner, you can create a feed for your blog which news readers can subscribe to (i.e. its a plain old feed), except that FeedBurner is picking up its own updates from the blog and then forming your feed. Why is this interesting – well, besides a whole bunch of cool features they also offer, FeedBurner provides a way to implement abstraction between the blog and the feed.

Here’s the scoop – when I publish a feed on Blogger, Blogger is forming the RSS feed. Users subscribe to it. Everyone’s happy… until I decide to dump Blogger. Unless I publish a note in the Blogger blog indicating where I’m going, existing subscribers don’t know where I’ve gone. When I do post an entry about where I’ve gone and the user picks it up via RSS, they’ll have to either go to the “new” blog and subscribe, or I’d have to include the “new” feed in the post. Either way, this causes work for the user/reader.

With FeedBurner, the location of the blog is an input to feed formation. That is, you tell FeedBurner where you want to create your feed from, they create a feed for you on the fly, and you publish the FeedBurner feed. If you change blog locations, guess what – you tell FeedBurner where you want it to look NOW for your content (i.e. update the blog’s inherent feed location), and POOF, it updates it behind the scenes. Meaning, no work for the readers who subscribed to the Feedb\Burner feed for your site.

This solution probably doesn’t scale well for the entire blogosphere – I’m sure some other abstraction solution will come along at some point, but for now, with FeedBurner being a free service and with blogging infrastructure being nascent as it is, I’d abstract my feed(s) if I were you. Why not?

UPDATE: If you don't already have the FeedBurner ATOM feed for blahgKarma, its http://feeds.feedburner.com/Blahgkarma. Thanks, Sandy!

Goodbye Blogger, Hello (Something Else)...

2005-11-23T22:17:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally reached the breaking point today – I officially hate Blogger and am kissing it goodbye. Last time I was this frustrated I wanted to do something about it but didn’t. This time, I’m doing something about it, starting today.

This afternoon I downloaded WordPress, and to install it on one of my shared hosting accounts took me – literally – less than 5 minutes. Of course, it took me a couple of hours to figure out the scripts and docs for moving my Blogger stuff over to WP, but that seems to have worked – at least at this point. Even got the Haloscan comments over, which was impressive. All this courtesy of tutorials from Justinsomnia.

Not sure if WordPress is the final solution – I’m looking at Moveable Type as well (I wonder what the migration options are) – but either of them are a huge step up over Blogger. Sorry Google… too many glitches in too short a time. Good luck with it.

Comment Hell...

2005-11-21T21:36:00.000-08:00

So something’s all funked-up with comments here at blahgKarma tonight. Not sure why, but comments aren’t showing up in Haloscan, nor necessarily in the blog, yet I’m getting e-mail notifications on them. Apologies to Robert, Geoff and Sandy for your thoughtful words being trapped somewhere between comment heaven and hell.

Hiring and Firing...

2005-11-21T20:40:00.000-08:00

Great little tidbit on a blog by Tony Dowler called Career Path, which I’ve not read before, on the topic of hiring better customers. I wonder if the author has any idea just how central this idea is to a successful and growing consultancy. If you’ve worked in consulting or system integration – heck, maybe in any kind of business – you’ve worked for and with customers whose checks cashed nicely, but who were just an utter pain in the ass. They may or may not have known this – some would be mortified to know and would change if they could, or maybe if you asked them to. But for others, what they are is just what they are – too demanding, too unfocused, too needy, too cheap, too slow to pay… just too darned problematic for longterm work. So either help them get better, or fire them.

In reading the piece – a little blurb, really – I was reminded of a few things I’ve written here before… in January on setting clients’ expectations, June on getting out, and one I can’t find at the moment about “What are you not doing this year”… hope that didn’t get lost in the Blogger void.

I also remembered seeing something in Inc. Magazine on a similar topic, and with a little looking, found an article from their October 2003 edition entitled “Getting to No”. Funny thing is, its not at the Inc. site anymore, but at an online service called KeepMedia, where with free registration you can read the whole thing (you can see the first 3 paragraphs without registering). KeepMedia seems kind of cool… they archive a few publications in whole, like 1215 of them as of today!

“Firing” clients is an important part of focusing and growing many businesses. Do it nicely, and sometimes the clients actually come back around later, appreciative of the action. And if not, cashing their checks isn’t the only and definately not the primary measure of value, now is it?

Nice work, Tony.. I’d keep the blog, but lose the hat (grin)

SPAM AND SPAM FILTERING ARE BOTH UNCOOL!

2005-11-21T18:23:00.000-08:00

ARGGGGH! I just logged onto my webmail and guess what I found. No, not a whopping pile of Spam, as you might have guessed, but a mix of spam (20%) and legitimate messages (80%) all sitting in the Spam Filtering folder. One hundred and fifty six of them, to be exact.

I’d like to say a couple of things. First, if you’re a spammer, stop. You’re sucking the life out of the Internet. Second, if you buy stuff from Spammers, stop. You’re encouraging them, and even with that miniscule return of one little genius in the million unsolicited GeTYourV!Agr@ HEAr message its worth it for them to keep crapping directly into our inboxes, so resist the urge. Third, if you’re an ISP, TELL YOUR CLIENTS BEFORE YOU START SPAM FILTERING FOR THEM! Fourth, if you’re writing Spam filters, please get better at it. Grabbing a hundred or so legitimate messages to grab the 50 or so that are truly crap isn’t even remotely effective.

Sheesh.

Thanks for the effort [ISP name inserted here], but do YOU want to return all the missing messages?

Faux blahgKards...

2005-11-20T22:15:00.000-08:00

Faux blahgKards… something I was playing with thanks to Hugh Macleod’s Gaping Void (Hugh’s the artist, and a very interesting blogger). I may have to get a handful of these – Hugh, not all the new designs are showing up in the card configuration window, and so you know I like the “I just started blogging” card the best, but for the sake of that “three times karma” thing, I don’t want to piss anyone (else/new) off.

Moore Blogs/More Blogs...

2005-11-20T18:38:00.000-08:00

Learned tonight, courtesy of Halley, that Geoffrey Moore has a blog (more than one, perhaps?). In his “Dealing with Darwin” blog, Moore has a smattering of posts on topics pointing at the evolution of innovation, technology, and the technology industry. The blog is named after Moore’s upcoming book of the same name… can’t wait to read it. Moore also has a Dealing with Darwin website – funny, the site and blog don’t seem to be linked.

To me, Moore is a giant. He certainly pioneered and advanced a variety of views on the tech industry that helped some separate the wheat from chaff particularly in software companies before, during and after the bubble.

I’ve written about Moore before. I’m also about 20 minutes into a 40 minute video tonight where Moore describes what he thinks the evolution of the tech marketplace may look like for the remainder of this decade, and perhaps the next. Funny thing – he spoke on the topic at Sand Hill Group’s Software 2004 conference and guess what… some of the industry shift he spoke of then is coming to bear today. For Moore’s read on Microsoft’s recent strategy shift, and in particular Ray Ozzie’s role in it, see his post entitled “Microsoft Meet Darwin: Again”.

Geoff, if you need someone to read galleys, do some part-time environmental scanning, or create an online community and blogs to support the cases and materials in, and readers of, the book, I could probably find the time and we could probably work something out… (grin)

Hey, in closing, if you’re not reading Halley’s Comment, which I refer to often here at blahgKarma, you should be. Its a load of fun, the topics vary greatly, and I love the writing style. Try it, you’ll like it!

Check out 'Blozzie'...

2005-11-16T22:00:00.000-08:00

Thanks again to Scoble, I see that Ray Ozzie is blogging. You can see Ray’s blog here.

I’m subscribed – even if he doesn’t have much to say, the initial post indicates he’ll be writing and interacting with readers a bit on the new Microsoft strategy. It will be worth much more than an ocassional read, I’ll bet!

War and Peace in the Wonderful World of Wireless...

2005-11-15T12:39:00.000-08:00

Not sure who’s reading that this might help, but what the heck…

At work, I have two separate wireless networks in adjacent buildings. For seemingly no reason, reliability problems began popping up on both networks – intermittent client connections, inability for clients to obtain IP numbers via DHCP, the appearance of the router(s) not being able to route upstream…

I nearly replaced one of the access points, and then had a thought… since the (physically) adjacent networks used the same network numbering range (which is allowable), and since they shared the same WEP key (which is also allowable in theory), what if the networks were interfering with each other in some way. BINGO!

Turns out both Linksys routers were using the same default WiFi channel, and with all that similar info between the networks, something was screwing up somewhere. Changed the default channel on one of the networks and everything automagically seems to be working again.

A better solution for what I was originally trying to accomplish would have been to simply extend the initial network for additional geographic coverage. Tried that, had trouble making one of the Linksys boxes act as a repeater, and then next thing you know the short term fix of “just set up another network” turns into “your networks are screwed up”. Easy to fix, good lesson to learn.

Hey, I DID BEAT THEM TO IT...

2005-11-14T20:04:00.000-08:00

I made a tongue-in-cheek comment in my FilmLoop post this afternoon about a few blogging A-Listers not having mentioned it, and whether I beat them to it. Well, it turns out I did! Scoble mentioned my blahgKarma post (I guess he’s subscribed)… and he commented that I did beat him, Halley Suitt and Buzz Bruggeman in blogging on it. Now THAT’s funny!

My crystal ball sees Halley making crazy FilmLoops of her son and sharing them with her friends any minute now. And who knows what Buzz will Loop… there’s no telling!

I’m sure I just burned up one more minute of fame with this. Only 11 minutes to go…

Funny FilmLoop Coincidence...

2005-11-14T19:30:00.000-08:00

Trying to catch up on my business reading, and Business 2.0 is one of my favorite magazines that’s been languishing in a stack. Got about half way through tonight when, in an article entitled “Tech’s Big Comeback”, I tripped over a comment about Prescott Lee, co-founder of FilmLoop, and how the company had moved into 285 Hamilton, the famous office building in Palo Alto and whose occupancy, according to authors Michael Copeland and Om Malik, has served as a kind of tech-health barometer, indicating the state of affairs in Silicon Valley.

Believe me, FilmLoop quartering up in 285 could neither be an accident, nor insignificant. It not only makes a statement, but might provide a little insight into what I expect the company’s mindset might be – something like “we’re big on the inside today, tomorrow we’re going to be very big on the outside”.

(In researching Lee a bit, I also found an interesting Podcast on ZDNet entitled “Building a Successful Startup” that he and Guy Kawasaki participated in. What better way to understand a principal’s views on building a business than to listen to the advice s/he’s giving others on, well, building a business. Can’t wait to listen…)

I have to say the article greatly encouraged me not only about the comeback of Tech, as the article is titled, but also about the tech industry’s amazing resilience and enormous elasticity. Certainly this is not an American phenomenon, but as juxtaposed against post-Apocalyptic reports of death and dying in the Valley, it was a refreshing read.

As “The Web”, whatever we consider that to be these days, marches on, it will be very interesting to watch the new dynamics and trends in Tech businesses. Today, smaller is better, IPOs are not only not a given but will be shunned by many, component and “part of the game/solution” as opposed to “lets build/own/deliver the whole enchilada” and having the public prototype and iterate your product/software/solution for you will all be parts of a Silicon Valley rebirth. Or, I should say, they already are.

Guy Talks - People Listen...

2005-11-14T10:13:00.000-08:00

This must be my week for cool new Internet “stuff”. Got the following e-mail from Guy Kawasaki late last week that started with…

I’d like to show you the coolest thing I’ve seen since Macintosh: FilmLoop...

OK, that got my attention, especially from Guy. He knows a little about the coolness of the Macintosh, having helped create much of it. Not to mention he knows a bit about startups, tech ventures, etc.

FilmLoop is a small client/server application that allows creation of online slide-shows, hosted at filmloop.com and organized and presented fim-strip fashion. To see one I put together in all of three minutes, click here and you’ll be prompted to install and register the player (that takes all of about 30 seconds), and then voila! If you’re already using FilmLoop, you can go straight to my loop by clicking here – its a bunch of cool helicopter photos.

Besides being able to create a Loop and share it with a couple of clicks (FilmLoop has a built-in invitation system, which works well), viewers can be granted privs to add photos if the owner so chooses, and there’s a catalog of public Loops, a couple of which I enjoyed including a Victoria’s Secret loop and a Skateboarder Magazine loop which I specifically did not enjoy for the models, but for the artistic expression and unique use of the product (grin).

The business model here is “free to Loop owners and viewers, supported by embedded advertising”. I hope they eventually offer some sort of paid model sans ads – I don’t mind them, but I could never apply the product in the business world knowing I was embedding the advertising along with the content.

I’ll post more when I’ve used the product a bit more, but my first impression is “very cool”. Its free, its unique, its flexible and it allows you to share Loops with the click of a button. Why aren’t the cool A-Listers like Scoble, Halley, and Buzz not blogging about this yet? Did I beat them to the punch? Maybe Guy e-mailed me INSTEAD of them? You think?(grin)

Go, FilmLoop, go!

FilmLoop Testing

2005-11-13T18:14:00.000-08:00

Opening Pandora's Box...

2005-11-12T08:54:00.000-08:00

Scoble mentioned his use of Pandora a few days back. I checked it out – its basically a service that lets you identify a song/artist you like, and then it sets up a personal streaming radio station with similar music on it. You can create multiple stations for different types of music, and if a song shows up that you don’t like, you can axe it from the station and it won’t be played there again.

Oh, and did I mention the service is free? Or that you can generate persistent and sharable links to your stations so you can share them with others (the link to my James Taylor Radio is http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh1554129)? Very slick…

Part of the Music Genome Project, this is a pretty cool use of personalization, not to mention the music is great. Who knew opening Pandora’s Box could be so cool?

Speaking Softly...

2005-11-11T16:56:00.000-08:00

Seth Godin writes a couple of interesting blogs (here and here for example). Used to read him all the time – even wrote about him a time or two like here, here, here, over here (that was a great one – lots of resultant link love). And then for whatever reason he fell out of my NewsGator settings and out of view. (Seth, in case you’re reading, sorry I misplaced you. I added you to the blahgRoll as penance).

Anyway… caught a quick note on Seth’s blog about his friend Ira Williams who wrote a new ChangeThis Manifesto “on Anonymous Generosity”. I read it – its great (if you’re not familiar with ChangeThis concept or what a Manifesto is, check out the website). Funny thing is, Seth missed the mark – the piece isn’t about anonymous generosity at all, but Humility. Anonymous generosity gets a brief mention but its not the focus. The piece is still very much worth the read, though… interesting ideas, and whether you agree with them or not, something to think about given America’s position in the world right now. (Don’t get your hopes up, Harry – I’m not softening up on my positions on the President or the war – grin).

Even though Williams isn’t big on “random acts of kindness”, I have to say I do this and really enjoy it. Its not particularly humble to say so, I suppose (I’m toying with you, Mr. Williams), but especially when I’m having a crappy day, and often when I’m having a good one, I’ll do some anonymous kindness, however small, and that makes me feel a bit better. Favorites include buying the person ahead of you’s coffee at Starbucks or wherever (and BTW – if you’ve heard something about them dissing our troops, its all urban myth), giving up a place in line for someone who looks like they really need to go ahead of you, offering to carry a package for someone else who’s struggling with it – you know, simple and very inexpensive or free things.

Try doing something nice for someone else, anonymously. You’ll like it, and I personally guarantee that giving a little good karma will get you some or your money back.

How Does He Do That?

2005-11-10T20:19:00.000-08:00

Scoble has a very cool feature active on Scobelizer… every comment string for a post has an RSS feed. That is, a feed specific to the comments on one particular post. Maybe this is commonplace, but I’ve never seen it. Very slick – it means its way easy to follow a thread you’ve commented in without having to remember where the heck you commented, etc.

As an example, the post I commented on in “Robert Scoble – Devil’s Henchman or Devil’s Advocate” has 40 comments including mine at this writing. I know this because after I posted I subscribed to the post’s RSS feed, and the additional comments have magically shown up in NewsGator. Obviously, forming the feeds is automated… I’d love to know how he’s doing that. Guess maybe its just a WordPress feature. Blogger is starting to feel both dated and limiting…

Robert Scoble - Devil's Henchman or Devil's Advocate...

2005-11-10T17:03:00.000-08:00

Early this year I posted something entitled “The Religious Wrong” about the ideological debate regarding Microsoft vs. Apple, and it got posted to Scoble’s link blog. That was fun. It was sort of amusing to see the reactions and see people railing Scoble as a way to vent their frustration with Microsoft. Guess that must be a recurring theme, ‘cause they’re doing it again, but this time not necessarily Apple vs. Microsoft – more “anyone vs. Microsoft”.

Microsoft is taking services seriously, just like they’re taking modularization and component combination as application seriously, and they’re turning up the heat. Whoda thunk it? Oh, I don’t know… maybe anyone who knows much about the company? And of course, because these concepts are being driven throughout the company, this must be the newest thing Microsoft is doing that they’ll either a) fail at, b) not really know what they’re doing with, c)steal from others or d) use to unfairly whack all those other companies that for whatever reason (undercapitalized, underinnovating, disorganized, generally screwed up) would have “won” but instead will “lose”. Give me a break.

The Microsoft material on their sharpening focus can be found here, if you’d like to read it. I actually found the beatings dished out to Scoble more interesting than the Microsoft material. I think its an excellent commentary on folks sticking their heads in the sand, wishing the world (and business) worked differently, and/or bitching and moaning when they see success coming and perhaps streaming right past them, not bothering to stop.

Here’s the comment I posted in reply to Scoble’s original post about the Ozzie and Gates memos, and the subsequent comment storm:

Wow - more religious wrangling with/against Scoble rather than focusing on the real issues at hand. Here are a few things to think about, like them or not.

One, Microsoft is the most influential company in the computer technology world, bar none. Most influential does not translate to “smartest” or “most innovative” on every topic, or every day, but by and large if you don’t think they’re the most influential, then fill the crack pipe again and smoke on.

Two, services make absolute sense in conjunction with a modular operating system, and/or modular applications, and/or modular components that make up applications. If you don’t believe that, see the point above about the crack pipe and join the fun.

Three, Microsoft has the wherewithal to win in the spaces they make “big bets” on. They’re incredibly well funded (hey, anyone else have $40B or so laying around, and how big a pile of cash is that, anyway?), their research organization is world-class, and they have a machine to move research to product to revenue to profit.

Bash Scoble if you like - I guess that’s kind of fashionable. But if you haven’t seen this focus coming you haven’t been paying attention. You don’t have to be there first to win, and in many cases not being first helps you win. In the game of sofware-as-service meets components-as-application, Microsoft will drive the market. Maybe THAT’s the definition of winning… ever think of that?

Microsoft will certainly continue to shape our computing world. Is that good or bad… both and neither, most likely – it just is. Grow up and smell the Starbucks, folks – when Microsoft makes big bets, they’re serious about them. Hate the game, not the player.

Get MIFF'd...

2005-10-30T11:22:00.000-08:00

Melbourne, FL - October 29th, 2005

Selections have been made for the 7th Annual Melbourne Independent Filmmakers Festival, MIFF 2005. Each year film fans, filmmakers and celebrities travel to Melbourne, Florida to see films with the enthusiastic Melbourne audience and this year is no exception. An energetic and enthusiastic supporter of independent filmmakers, MIFF is also a fundraiser that supports local charities with all its proceeds.

This year over 300 silms were submitted with 76 ultimately selected for showing. Films to be screened during the festival, held November 10th, 11th and 12th 2005 include 23 international films from countries including Canada, Costa Rica, Ireland, Japan, Korea, and Singapore. Sixteen animated films will also be shown.

A number of feature films will be shown as part of the Modern Classics program, including "Chance" directed by Amber Benson and starring James Marsters (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the delightful "Saving Star Wars" directed by Gary Wood, "Vlad" directed by Michael Sellers and starring Brad Dourif and Billy Zane, and a special screening "Karla", a controversial work-in-progress recently banned from festival showings in Canada, directed by Joel Bender and starring Laura Prepon (That 70's Show)

MIFF 2005 is particularly proud to present 28 films by Florida filmmakers this year. "We have so many great people who come out to help the MIFF," said Terry Cronin, program chairman, "and we're so happy to have celebrities like Jerri Manthey coming to help us this year." Manthey (Survivor-Outback, The Surreal Life) will be coming to the MIFF to support a special screening of her new film "Widowmaker". Other notable attendees include James Best (The Dukes of Hazzard), film distributor Mike Broder, director of the Burt Reynolds & Friends Museum Mike Daniel, and entertainment attorney William Whitacre (The Blair Witch Project, Bubba the Redneck Werewolf).

MIFF 2005 begins Thursday November 10th with a free outdoor showing of family-friendly films at Da Kine Diego's in Satellite Beach. On the evening of Friday November 11th the venue moves to Premiere Theaters Oaks Stadium 10 where two programs will run -The Modern Classics and the fun and ever-popular "Fright Night Friday".

A Saturday matinee at the Oaks features the Florida Expo, the International program and the Mafia Matinee. The matinee also features educational seminars and a chance to meet the filmmakers.

Saturday night is the VIP reception and screening at the Henegar Center for the Arts and features live entertainment with renowned musical duo "Robin & Eddy" and magician Scott Barhold. The reception also features cuisine from the finest local restaurants.

Cronin encourages everyone to come out for what surely will be MIFF's best year yet!

So Here's Why I LOVE IFC!

2005-10-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

OCTOBER 2005

THE COMIC-CON CHRONICLES - AN INDEPENDENT FILM CHANNEL ORIGINAL
STUDENTS OF THE UNUSUAL'S TERRY CRONIN AND PAT MARTIN FEATURED IN IFC DOCUMENTARY

In July 2005, independent filmmakers, comic creators and longtime collaborators Terry Cronin and Pat Martin made the trek from sunny South Florida to San Diego for the country's oldest and largest comic/media convention, Comic-Con. With a little luck and lots of good karma they met folks from TV's Independent Film Channel (IFC), chatted a bit and the next thing you know, are making a mini-documentary about their experiences at and their thoughts about the conference.

"The Comic-Con Chronicles" is an original, exclusive look at three teams pursuing Comic-Con success for their films, comics and websites. The unique 30 minute piece provides an interesting and entertaining look inside Comic-Con from the insiders' perspective, and contains footage not available anywhere else. Cronin and Martin were promoting Students of the Unusual, the original comic series they co-created along with Milkmaids (Pat's latest indie short and Jealous Dog Studios' initial film offering).

Cronin and Martin, who with Jeff Hall and Bob Lizek produce the Melbourne (Florida) Independent Filmmakers Festival (MIFF), found the conference an eye-opener. "Exhibiting at Comic-Con was an amazing experience" said Jealous Dog principal and Students of the Unusual co-creator Pat Martin. "We generated some great buzz, made great contacts and learned along the way. But the highlight of the show for us was definitely working with IFC.”

"IFC is redefining the intersection of film and television, and The Comic-Con Chronicles is a great example of that work" said Three Boys Productions principal and Students of the Unusual co-creator Terry Cronin. "Where else can you find such a unique, insider's view on one of the country's most interesting pop-culture events, and then have that piece viewed by such a large and diverse audience? Nowhere but IFC – that’s where."

The Comic-Con Chronicles features three Comic-Con teams in al. Chris Brandt of Bain Street Productions promoting his indie flick "Closing Time" which shows at the American Film Institute's AFI Fest in Los Angeles on November 7th and 9th. Amber Mitchell and Tim Leong pitched and promoted The Comic Foundry, an educational, resource and community site for up and coming artists and writers.

"Without IFC, we never would have learned the importance of getting your name out and presenting your ideas clearly" said Comic Foundry co-founder Tim Leong.

The Comic-Con Chronicles will debut November 15, 2005 on IFC, which reaches some 40 Million homes and has been bringing uncut and commercially uninterrupted films to the public since 1994. To view The Comic-Con Chronicles online now, visit the IFC Website at http://www.ifctv.com/ and click on The Comic-Con Chronicles or view the piece directly here.

For more information please
contact:

Students of the Unusual
website - contact

Jealous Dog Studios
website - contact

Bain Street Productions
website - contact

Comic Foundry
website - contact

Independent Film Channel
website - contact

Opportunity Masquerades as Hard Work...

2005-10-19T19:58:00.000-07:00

Back in July I wrote about Pat putting the wraps on his new movie Milkmaids, and about he and Terry, their families and a bunch of other folks packing up and heading to Comic-Con in San Diego. Well, we heard this week they caught a huge break as a result… they’re starring in an Independent Film Channel (IFC) documentary called “The Comic-Con Chronicles”.

I’ll post the news release for later, but the short version for now is that these guys are going to be featured on national TV, on a channel that pumps into 40 million homes in the US. You can’t buy that kind of publicity…

I’ve often commented on the vision, dedication and plain old hard work it takes to pursue any creative venture. Like Thomas Edison once said, “The reason a lot of people don’t recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around looking like hard work”. So true in these guys’ case… hard work translates to opportunity, and I’m really happy for them!

Captain's Blog...

2005-10-18T07:26:00.000-07:00

Added “The Captain’s Blog” to the blahgRoll this morning. I’ll blog more of why later, but for now, if you’re interested in independent film and/or emerging media and TV, you have to read it. Written by Evan Shapiro, EVP and GM of Independent Film Channel, this blog is one part what the hell’s going on in independent film, one part IFC directly connecting with the community (their readers, film makers, etc.) one part viewers offering feedback and suggestions and some days a couple of parts Evan being roasted for (fill topic here).

To get the skinny on why Evan’s blogging, and what IFC hopes to accomplish doing so, read his initial post from May 2005. Interesting stuff.

I’m often skeptical how about how blogs are making connections for companies, and then I trip over a blog like this, or get a personal e-mail from someone like Dave Sifry after having posted a comment on his blog. When the Captains of Industry are blogging, like these two are, I think we know that business blogging is here to stay!

Now playing: James Taylor - Enough to Be on Your Way - Hourglass

I'm Moving...

2005-10-16T19:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, I’m not MOVING moving, I’m just moving what seems like my life from one computer to another. I wish I’d bought a Mac laptop (for what I do there’s really NO maintenance), but its PCs for work and I do have a couple of Windows-only apps and projects, so I have a new Sony Vaio laptop thanks to grant funding for an aviation and EMS-related grant I applied for and got over a year ago. Cha Ching!

Moving data and apps between machines shouldn’t be this hard anymore. The pain is compounded, of course, when the first of the new laptops you spend a day moving stuff onto turns out to be bad (USB really is a handy tool when it works, which it did not on that machine).

Before I slipped into moving hell, I had a hard choice to make… do I or don’t I replace my TabletPC. I’ve really enjoyed the Tablet experience, and very nearly bought another but they seem to have become something of a novelty these days, and I decided, for this project, to sit it out and see where the products go. Its not like I won’t be buying another laptop for years and years (I have another grant funded that needs another one this coming year). The Tablet has real advantages – and still needs to become more “mainstream”, which I guess I didn’t help it do when I bought a regular old XP machine.

One thing I regret not having done with the Tablet, and probably something I’ll keep the machine around just to try is making mindmaps. As people who know me know, if I’m explaining a concept or relating a story, chances are I’m drawing something, even when the drawings are very, very simple. I only figured out recently that some folks don’t like that – they somehow take the drawing and the act of drawing as a comment on their abilty to grasp the concept, or their intelligence. Never saw that coming – the drawings generally help ME. Anyway… I’ll post more on mindmaps when I’m actually using the tools – given the way I think and explain concepts, I think it will be a great fit, and certainly the tablet is uniquely suited to the application…

Link Love...

2005-10-16T18:41:00.000-07:00

I was going through some stuff I wrote last month expecting to blog it tonight and then got distracted. Looked a bit at my stats, and found a new referrer – a blog called From the Beach. A bunch of nice photos, and whoever’s writing it put me on their blogroll. I’m flattered, but I’m also curious what draws people to a particular blog once, makes them a return viewer, and then most of all creates enough affinity to have a blog make the blog roll (or blahgRoll, in my case).

Whoever “beachlady” is, thanks for the link love… I appreciate it.

Blame Dem Democrats For a Change...

2005-09-23T19:21:00.000-07:00

Jeff Raikes for President...

2005-09-22T05:38:00.000-07:00

Caught a Ziff Davis news alert about a Microsoft reorganization this afternoon. Jeff Raikes, former VP of Microsoft’s Information Worker and Business Solutions group, will be one of three group presidents under the new plan, and I think he got the juiciest piece of the pie. This is a good thing. Raikes has a solid vision of what Microsoft is and should be (notice these are two different things) to businesses and users who employ what we used to call “office automation” software and systems to drive their jobs and businesses, and giving him more power to close the “should be” and “is” gap should accelerate more success in this arena.

Microsoft is growing up in a variety of ways. I caught another headline the other day about prominent departures from Microsoft. That doesn’t bother me – the company is evolving, they’re still highly profitable and are sitting on a literal mountain of cash, so what’s to worry about? I do wish the stock would do something positive, though. It was flat on the news and has generally been a lack-luster performer of late… and certainly more folks have taken to everything from whining to taking some (purported) dirty laundry public to predicting doom and gloom.

The PC market and PC software markets as we have known them are becoming very mature, I think, and innovation will be one of the key engines that drives any of the current tech players forward. Look at Apple (whose stock’s performance has been anything but lack-luster) – anyone who still wants to sing the old tune of “but they have a tiny piece of the market ” is looking at the wrong sheet of music. What the company is executing very well on is targeting and exploiting niches they can and will continue to win in, grabbing both mindshare and what I’d call “heartshare” with products that blow the consumer and competition away, and they’re doing it the old fashioned way. Hell, Scott McNealy’s even praising Jobs… but then again, his real beef has always been with Microsoft.

I think Microsoft will benefit from a new executive leadership structure, and will also place a series of big bets that will yet again realign vendors/ISVs and consumers, albeit not along OS lines. I’d watch for electronic forms and structures like them, automation of business process and then managing those systems become much more prominent in their messaging and product offerings. It should be an interesting ride, if bumpy for some.

Politics, From (A)bercrombie to (Y)oung...

2005-09-18T17:36:00.000-07:00

I spent a good part of my day today doing something I’ve never done before – writing my elected officials.

Representative Mark Foley (R – Florida) had an OpEd piece in the Stuart News today on separating FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security and moving it to Cabinet-status. He’s sponsored a bill to that effect in the House… Its not a new idea… he originally suggested the move some time ago, but his resolve to do so has been steeled by issues related to Hurricane Katrina. “FEMA may be stuck and trapped in the bureaucracy," Foley was quoted as saying in the Palm Beach Post in April 2004. "That may not be helpful if we get a natural disaster.” To which I say… “You think?”.

In articles here, here, and here, the distinguished gentleman from Florida highlights his issues, as below:

Wednesday, September 7, 2005
WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Mark Foley (FL-16) announced today he has introduced legislation separating the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“This is not solely a response to the tragedy in the Gulf; it is the result of the increasing evidence that FEMA should not be hindered by a top-heavy bureaucracy when needed to act swiftly to save lives,” said Foley. “After suffering through three direct hurricane hits last summer and watching my friends in the Gulf weather Katrina, I have seen one consistent problem—red tape and bureaucratic obstacles getting in the way of saving lives.”

Foley added, “Decisions that were once made quickly and efficiently at FEMA now have to go through a web of paperwork, authorizations and releases before they can be made -- adding further risk to people. We need to make FEMA the gold standard of emergency relief. Our goal is to turn that agency into the rapid-response and long-term response disaster agency that FEMA wants to be.”

Without going into the details, friends of mine literally spent the past 10 days on the phone with FEMA while the agency tried to figure out where they wanted them, and never really did make up their mind. The result was a lot of hungry first responders and FEMA personnel not getting hot meals during those 10 days, which is absurd. It wasn’t the GSA contracting officer, it was his chain-off-command, we expect.

Less Federal bureaucracy during a time of crisis would be a good thing, I think. Don’t get me wrong… DHS has an incredibly wide and important mandate, and I think they’re generally doing a great job. But FEMA is too large and has too discrete and critical a mission to be under the DHS umbrella, IMHO. Moving the agency to Cabinet-status, in addition to this week’s appointment of R. David Paulison, former director of the US Fire Administration, should help focus the agency on quick and effective response.

I hope Congressman Foley’s idea gains steam. Maybe the 539 letters we’re mailing tomorrow on that subject will have an impact… I hope so. Yup, we printed, folded, and stamped a letter on the subject to every US Senator and Congressman. You’d like to think the American political system responds to pressing needs, and to the will of the governed. I’m sure a lot of people feel like I do on this topic – I hope they speak up too.

Make a difference… write your Representatives and Senators today…

FYI - The Honorable Don Young represents Alaska in the House, and the Honorable Neil Abercrombie represents Hawaii. They're the senatorial/representative bookends, by name...

Hurricane Activations...

2005-08-30T19:02:00.000-07:00

I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in the Gulf states tonight. We got a taste of hurricane damage last year with Jeanne and Francis, but nothing like the devastation Louisiana and Mississippi are dealing with. I think where its taken a year for things to basically get properties back to normal here in South Florida, it will be years before the recovery and relief efforts wrap up for Katrina along the Gulf and beyond.

There are two local impacts I thought I’d share tonight, both having to do with friends helping with Katrina. First, my friend and our local Fire Chief Tom Billington is one of the Florida Fire Chiefs Association representatives for ESFs 4 & 9, (firefighting and search and rescue) and was activated on the weekend to pull duty in the State of Florida Emergency Operations Center (EOC). I’ll bet they’re scrambling up there to identify needs and task resources to support multi-state search and rescue, assessment and recovery missions. One of the great things about coordinated and integrated emergency management is the ability for command personnel and activities to occur in a “unified command” arrangement, where subject matter experts collaborate to prioritize and focus resources where they’re needed. Hope his work is going well…

On another front, my friends at Eventmakers have a disaster relief and recovery contract with Florida Power and Light, under which they mobilize resources to provide tents (they have the largest portable tent inventory in Florida), tables, chairs and other support gear along with catering and staffing to provide food for FPL’s massive storm response teams. Its a huge and very highly specialized job, but they’ve done it for years and are probably the best in Florida at it. Before the storm hit land, Eventmakers was already staged for deployment, with all the gear and food they needed to support FPL ready to go. FPL pulled the chain today around 10 am, and by 6 pm Eventmakers was serving hot food in Homestead. Unbelievable.

Its hard to imagine the magnitude and significance of impact from this storm. Personal, professional, commercial and economic impacts are huge, and in my opinion won’t be fully understood for a very, very long time.

Hurricane Hell...

2005-08-28T19:42:00.000-07:00

Thoughts and prayers are with friends and acquaintances in Gulfport, New Orleans and Pensacola, and all who lie in the path of Hurricane Katrina. Obviously the hurricane is huge, severe and is hauling hell with it. If you’ve not evacuated by now, I suppose you’re probably sheltering in place. If you haven’t done so as yet, seek shelter. Now.

Progress in Site...

2005-08-28T19:02:00.000-07:00

Still playing with a new layout for the Jungle Rules website, but we’ve put a new look and up a few new pages including one with a video/slideshow of August’s trip. More photo galleries, another (downloadable) slideshow, and screensaver download or two are all planned, along some background on the boat, the crew, etc. Probably some background/info/photos of the Marriott and marina in Los Suenos, and the same for the Flamingo Marina Resort (which, ironically, no longer has a marina), which are the places we typically stay.

We’re also going to add a “getting ready” page so Keith can have a reference for his guests, friends and family that might use the boat. You don’t have to know a lot to come to Costa Rica and have a good time, but a little planning in terms of what to bring and what to expect will go a long way. We’ll probably also point to or incorporate content from some other sportfishing-focused sites, so if you know of worthy candidates, feel free to make suggestions.

Trying to talk Keith and Jamie into a little blog action to serve as the Jungle Rules fishing report. Don’t know that either of them will have the time or motivation to keep it up, even if I get it all going. We’ll see – maybe Jamie can phone in reports when he’s in-country and I can post on upgrades/updates to the boat (several are planned, although the Gamefisherman is awesome the way it is). Seems like it would be a good way for Keith to keep his boating friends and family up to date on the Program.

Anyway, more to come. Check out the Jungle Rules site if you have minute, and as always, constructive criticism always appreciated.

More Nextel Sucks-age...

2005-08-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

How does Nextel stay in business? This hasn’t gotten any better since the last time I ranted about it… Maybe the radio aspect of the system works in some places, but it doesn’t seem to work reliably anywhere near me. I’ve just about given up on the whole thing and am ready to move my number – hmmm, move it back to AT&T (which doesn’t really exist anymore), or to Verizon (they have a push-to-talk feature, but I only know three people on it), or go somewhere else.

Wish I’d never left AT&T, given that the main reason for doing so was the convenience of the radio. Now I find that a) I’ll start a conversation on PTT or someone will start one with me and we’ll wind up on cell anyway since it doesn’t work worth a crap, and b) people have a tendency to try to reach you on the radio, and when they don’t they don’t follow up with a cell call and leave you a message.

Bah hum-bug. Nextel sucks… still.

Farewell to Another Friend...

2005-08-27T10:03:00.000-07:00

Three weeks ago we lost our faithful pure bred Yellow Lab, Dakota. His health started declining about two years ago, but he was comfortable with medication and lived a pretty normal life until July, when his maladies started to compound. All it took was the vet’s comment “he’s in pain now and it won’t get better”, and we had to make the decision to put him down.

Dakota was the best dog I’ve ever had, and one of the smartest I’ve ever met. Our vet, Doc Smith at Hobe Sound Vet Clinic commented once that he was probably started in the Guide Dog program when he was young… he had some very particular and somewhat peculiar behaviors that indicate he was trained for and that mimicked Guide Dog skills, but this isn’t something his previous owners passed on. We got him when he was two, from a family that got him from his breeder about 6 weeks before (the breeder was moving out of the area and couldn’t take him along). Unfortunately, the short-term owners found out their toddler had an allergy to dogs, which made for a tearful farewell for them but good fortune for us.

When you have a pet its not like you don’t know from the start that its not forever, but its not something you think about much, and certainly not dwell on. There’s nothing like coming home from a hard day and being greeted by a friend that’s always just as glad to see you tonight as the first time, wants to play, and gives back as much as he gets or more. that’s all hard to find in people, and so easy to find in a good pet. We all miss him, but we’re really grateful for having him choose us as family in the first place…

Looking Through the Lens...

2005-08-20T12:34:00.000-07:00

Broke down and bought the Tamron 18-200 Canon-mount lens this week for my Digital Rebel XT. Its awesome… much better than the Canon kit lens. I do business with Dennis and the gang at Stuart Photo on these kinds of items – I might spend a few dollars more than buying online, but the customer service is amazing. If I have a question or concern, or want a hand sorting out what to buy and what not to buy, I always get honest advice. They’ve been in Stuart forever (since the early 70’s, at least), and have an amazing reputation – way beyond the small amount of business I do with them. If they don’t have it they can get it, and the price never seems to be more than a few dollars above the cheapest online price.

This lens should be a great asset on the next Costa Rica trip, but also for my work and for all around shooting. With an effective range of around 28–300 mm, I don’t expect it to come off the camera very often.

Off to do a little testing, run by Lowe’s for some home project supplies, and then I can see a cerveza and pool duty in my near future…

Adios.

On the Rebound...

2005-08-14T07:42:00.000-07:00

Keith’s headed back to Flamingo for Labor Day weekend – he’s bringing his 10 year old daughter for her first ever daughter/dad offshore fishing trip. I may join him with a kid or two of my own if I can get away and the flights are not horrendous. Either of mine would really enjoy the trip for their own reasons, but I don’t know that a trip with both of them over just a couple of days will offer enough variety to please both, so we’ll have to see how that goes.

It would be awesome if I can work it out… Leeann’s probably the better candidate, since she’s taken 4 years of Spanish and we could see if it pays off at all (grin), but she doesn’t have a passport and that could be a problem. Jonathan would freak at the waves and the fishing, all in a good way.

The lodging should work out better cost-wise this time – we met a family from Minnesota that owns two condos at the same place we stay at and the cost renting from them is at least a third lower than taking a place through the Resort, with all the same amenities. And, there are a number of good house rental options within a 5 minute drive from the boat. Buena suerte there, for sure…

Back from Costa Rica...

2005-08-12T10:06:00.000-07:00

Trip to Costa Rica was AWESOME. I didn’t have any real Internet access there, so I did up some postings in BlogJet and now will post and backdate them for the days written. It will be a little funky, but you’ll get the drift…

While I was gone, news reached me of a tragic accident involving a friend from the local FD. There was a freak boating accident involving some firefighters, and one of them, Battalion Chief Chip O’Hara was killed. I’ll post on it later. What a tragedy. I’d like to offer my condolences to his family and friends, which include over 250 members of Martin County Fire Rescue.

I thought about Chip this morning, and then this afternoon read the following piece regarding FDNY release today of transcripts of 911 calls and firefighters' oral accounts:

STATEMENT FROM THE NEW YORK CITY FIRE DEPARTMENT REGARDING SEPTEMBER 11TH RECORDS RELEASE

“Pursuant to a ruling issued by the New York State Court of Appeals on March 24, 2005, the Fire Department today is releasing additional records related to the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. In accordance with this ruling, these materials are being released with appropriate redactions provided for under the court’s decision. Prior to the court’s ruling, the Fire Department voluntarily provided numerous materials related to the attacks. The Department believes that the materials being released today – including oral histories and radio communications – will serve to further confirm the bravery and courage of our members who responded to the World Trade Center. It is the Department’s hope that the release of these records will not cause our members and their families any additional pain or anguish.”

I’m sure these materials will cause at least a little more pain for those most intimately affected by 9/11, but I hope there are still lessons to be learned from the events. I’m interested in the first-hand accounts as reported to the FD’s own folks, which I think will have a different flavor than media-captured events. No info yet on how to obtain the materials, but I’m sure its a load of stuff, hopefully already in an electronic form.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow...

2005-08-07T17:08:00.000-07:00

Here we are… its Sunday morning, and we’re steaming out for the last outing of the trip. Its a bright sunny day with just a bit of morning cloud cover in spots, which will probably move on and burn off before long. The seas are calm, and we just passed the rock outcroppings that ring Bahia Portrero, where the town of Flamingo is. We call the rocks “Seahenge”, since they look a lot like Stonehenge when you pass them.

On my first trip to Costa Rica, a couple of years ago, we spent a few hours riding around the bay and got close to the rocks. They’re huge - one of them looks just like a mountaintop sticking 300 feet or so out of the sea. Which, when you think about it, it is. The other rocks are smaller and dispersed over a half mile area, and when you’re close you can see all manner of caves and cutouts, some cutting all the way through the rocks, and big enough to drive a tractor trailer through.

The last day of a trip/vacation is the hardest, I think. Its hard to keep thoughts of “the world” from creeping in and stealing away part of the fun. Back to work thoughts, the stuff to do at home, touring colleges for Leeann… its all waiting for me when I get back. The travel day never seems as bad to me for some reason - maybe because I expect to be thinking about all those things. But, the trip doesn’t end until tomorrow, so today I’m taking photos, editing a slideshow of stuff I’ve already shot, and working on redesigning the Jungle Rules website. Should be a fun day…

Saturday Night Special...

2005-08-06T16:27:00.000-07:00

Its Saturday 6 Aug, and our second to last day of fishing for this trip. Our usual Flamingo routine... anglers up at 6 (crew up at 4:45 and heading for the boat by 5:15), coffee at 6:45 and on the beach waiting for the water taxi by 7.

While waiting we saw the fueling operation in action. A fuel truck parks on the road next to the beach, and stretches several hundred feet of hose over the beach and out to the boat to be fueled, which idles around during the procedure. Something to see - one of the things that makes fishing Flamingo all about the logistics. When they’re working, they work well. If you’re not prepared and they’re not working, you’ll get your ass handed to you. Needless to say, Jamie was well prepared and it was smooth sailing for us, so to speak. Logistics is one of his real strengths - thanks Jamie.

Pacific Sailfish

The day’s fishing log…

Ran up to the northwest about 20 miles, lines in around 8 am. Jamie ran until he saw a couple of Pacific Sailfish swimming around on top close to the location he was looking for. Tried them – couldn’t coax them to bite.

At 10:15 a nice Blue Marlin came up in the spread. Piled on the left long teaser, sniffed around Keith’s bait for a few moments, and then took off. We teased the fish back into the spread once, but no bite. Jamie estimated the fish at about 200 lbs. Nice fish.

Lazy Sailfish bite around 11:30. Its plenty hot by now (about 98 degrees without the heat index), but the fish wasn’t… just sort of slid into the spread, chased the left teaser a bit, but then took a look and turned his nose up on the ballyhoo. Didn’t come back.

That was pretty much all for the day. But, that’s fishing. I took advantage of the time to start putting together a slide show as a prototype for one Keith wants once we’re home, and to edit some logos he’s had for the boat for awhile. Passed the time, and was a productive effort at the same time. Nothing like a fully air conditioned salon and 110 power, brother

All for now. We’re on the water hose mooring in Flamingo, the sun’s setting and the crew’s in washdown mode. Keith and I will hop off in a few minutes, hit the grocery to re-provision the boat, and then I hope its a leisurely evening and a good sleep before fishing our ever loving asses off tomorrow - our last fishing day for this trip.

Das Boot...

2005-08-05T18:35:00.000-07:00

In case you’re curious what we’re fishing on, this is the Jungle Rules. Built in Costa Rica, the boat belongs to Keith and Lauren Carroll of Stuart. Very pretty boat – great to fish from. Much more comfortable and practical for sportfishing than Keith’s previous Costa Rican ride – same manufacturer, but it was a few feet smaller in length, and laid out entirely differently.

Jungle Rules - 42' Gamefisherman in Flamingo, Costa Rica

Its an operation to get a boat from Florida to Costa Rica. From Palm Beach the boat went to Fort Lauderdale, where it was floated onto a specialized freighter for the trip down. The freighter is outfitted with ballast tanks that allow its deck to be sunk, boats floated onto it, secured to the deck through welded supports and then refloated, drying out the deck/hold. Sounds freaky but I guess it works. A couple of weeks passage down to and then through the Panama Canal and the boat winds up in Golfito, Costa Rica, where the deck is again flooded, boats are floated off, and the freighter back on its way. Would have liked to have seen that maneuver…

Now that its down, Jungle Rules will stay in Costa Rica for a while - as much as two years, perhaps. Since the boat is privately owned and American flagged, it won’t be chartering in Costa Rica, but Keith will send down a few guests – he knows a lot of people through the insurance agency. Can’t wait to go back…

Mi Casa, Tu Casa, Picasa...

2005-08-05T07:33:00.000-07:00

Been playing around with Picasa from Google lately. Its a photo editing/photo organizing program. Also playing with Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 3, the eval of which for some reason likes to crash when I launch it about 70 % of the time.

Photoshop CS is overkill for what I do, I think, even though I’m using it for some things too. If I could find one application that would let me do my basic editing and composition and also database and organize the photo files, I’d be a very happy camper. I think either Picasa or Elements can do this, and with several thousand photos on the HD and another thousand from this trip, organizing, logging and being able to find all this stuff is going to be a challenge if I don’t start right now.

I wonder if either of these apps has an offline storage capability, where I can archive photos to a CD or DVD but still have the thumbnail and an indication of where the master is within the app/DB. Had a program for the Mac many, many years ago that organized media like that – don’t know what that is in the Windows world.

I found my favorite Picasa feature this morning. Select a handful of photos, click two buttons and *poof* out spits a photo collage like these. Great little gimmick… I’m sure I’ll tire of it before long, but what a great way to summarize and idea or trip with very little work. Pretty slick!

Black and Blue...

2005-08-04T16:59:00.000-07:00

Its Thursday evening, and its been an exhausting but exciting day. All I can say about the fishing is “Wow”!

Today, as in our past trip to northwestern Costa Rica, we hoped to have an opportunity to do something many will never do. In sportfishing, catching a Grand Slam on your own boat can be a once-in-a-lifetime deal. The species vary, but in Costa Rica, an offshore Grand Slam is catching three fish of differing billfish species. The candidate fish are Sailfish, Blue Marlin, Black Marlin, Striped Marlin, and theoretically Swordfish, but they’re apparently pretty rare here.

So we start the day off by catching and releasing a Blue that Jamie estimated at 250 lbs. What an amazing bite - the fish’s whole head basically came out of the water, slashing Keith’s pitch bait and it was game on. After about a half-hour fight the crew brought the fish to the side of the boat, cut the leader and the fish swam off healthy. Got some good if not great shots of the fish jumping near the boat once hooked, but no really good release shots. Maybe next time, I figured.

Then, fishing slowed down like it has a tendency to do through the Noon hour. Saw a few sailfish, a couple came up on the teasers and we caught one or two. Then, around 2:40, all hell broke loose.

“Fish on the left teaser, left teaser! Its a Sail!” When billfishing in Costa Rica, spotting the fish early is imperative, as seeing the fish drives what rod & reel combo and more importantly what bait will be “pitched” or presented to the fish. With Pacific Sailfish running up to 150 lbs or so but Blue Marlin running up to or over 1,000 pounds for the luckiest of anglers, you can’t very effectively use the lighter tackle on the heavier fish. It can be done, but its much harder…

So, Keith pitches a bait to the Sailfish as it moves from the left side to the right side of the spread, bill and dorsal fin plainly visible. We’re trolling teasers at about 20 feet and 40 feet from the transom, so when the fish shows up, you know it. Its actually sight fishing, which is one of the reasons I love it.

As Keith is setting up for the strike on the Sailfish, two more fish show up in the spread, all over the teasers. Two fish are hooked, both on light tackle - Shimano TLD-20 reels and 20# mono. Having a triple on is a dance at best, and during the fight one of the fish was jumped off, the line retrieved and the rod stowed. Keith finishes up with the first sail, and then starts fighting what he expects is the second sailfish. All that went by the wayside when the fish breached fifty yards or so from the boat. “Its a MARLIN!” was the call, and it was game on.

Got lots of photos, but the fish stayed away from the boat if it was up top, and sounded about a dozen times. We were fortunate to have been fishing in only 300 feet of water, so the fish couldn’t go down where it normally would - like a thousand or more feet down if it could get there.

Marlin Motoring

Long story short, Keith fought the fish for an hour and a half, and on much lighter tackle than you’d normally use for Marlin. And, the fish turned out to be much bigger than originally thought - over 600 pounds. Got the fish to the boat, leadered it up to the transom and then released. Its hard to describe how big the fish was but I’ll give it a shot. First, from the tip of the bill to the tip of the tail I’d say the fish was 10 feet long. Around its shoulder, maybe 4 feet, and with big dorsal fin and bigger tail. Simply amazing.

Funny thing is, this might not have been a Blue, but a Black Marlin, given its markings and the way its pec fins looked in most of the pictures. It doesn't really matter since we didn't have time to catch a Sailfish, which would have given us the Grand Slam. Next time...

Candid Camera...

2005-08-03T17:34:00.000-07:00

Man, do I love my Canon Digital Rebel XT camera. Its been an invaluable tool on this trip. I have to admit I still have a lot to learn about it, though. Like many tools, you can pick it up and use it without a lot of research or reading, but to understand its capabilities I really have to stick my nose in the book.

This trip I've been exercising the “Sport” program setting, which puts the camera into a fast shutter speed/multiple shot mode. Its worked well for shooting fish up for the bite or jumping - got some great stuff that way. And, I played with the Macro program a bit in Los Suenos, but I have to admit the manual features still largely escape me. Been years since I’ve had to do any “real” photography, so I think I’ll bone up on theory and practices as well as the camera’s features. Maybe even get back into the zone at some point.

Next trip down I’m going to bring some backup gear. I’m sure there are a load of guides on the Web about how to provision for a trip to nowhere, but here are a few of my thoughts. One, if you’re solely going to shoot photos, you need a backup plan. In my case I just threw the Rebel, the kit 18–55 lens, a UV filter, battery and charger into a bag and off I went. Not thinking to bring the 75–200 lens or D30 body I lent to a friend a couple of months back (for his Costa Rica trip, coincidentally), and not having enough time to get a circular polarizing lens (but thanks for trying, Leeann).

Next go around, I’ll bringing both bodies - the D30 just to back up the XT and probably to let others shoot with - and the 75–200 unless I invest in in the Tamron 18-200 lens (which I think nets out to around 28–300). A circular polarizing filter would have been awesome for in-water shots (the couple I got were OK, but they would have been awesome sans glare). Extra lens caps or a tether (lost the cap yesterday), maybe an extra XT battery. Couple of extra UV filters (in case I bang the filter/lens on the boat – nearly done that a couple of times). Probably covers things unless I think I can get away for a day, and then I’d add a light tripod to the mix.

All in all I’m very happy with the Rebel XT. I have a calendar project coming up at work that I used the D30 for last year, and I’m really looking forward to shooting it this year with it.

Bad News Reaches Costa Rica...

2005-08-01T17:07:00.000-07:00

This morning before we headed out from Los Suenos for our 4 hour run up the beach to Flamingo/Guanacaste, I received some bad news. There was a freak boating accident in Stuart on Sunday where a personal watercraft was struck by another boat, killing the operator of the watercraft. He was a friend from the Fire Department, and it turns out some other firefighters were on the other boat involved in the accident, including one of our Flight Medics who was apparently injured as well. All this reported in the local paper (Stuart, that is).

What a shame. The person killed was a good guy, one of the FD’s Batallion Chiefs; someone who had grown up in and with the Department and was very well known. The Flight Medic was flown to the trauma center by a neighboring program. All in all, I can’t imagine what that call was like.

Thoughts and prayers are with the families directly affected by the tragedy, and also with the Fire Rescue family. If you’ve not seen or been a part of it, I don’t know of a more tight group of people who work and play together, help each other or who watch out for each other like Firefighters. When one hurts in a department they all hurt; I’m sure there’s plenty of that going on right now while people struggle to process what happened, understand it, and then wrestle with the “why” of it all.

So sad. A young life cut short, and many others affected.

Wishing I was home to comfort my friends…

Sweet Dreams...

2005-07-31T16:06:00.000-07:00

Los Suenos (translation: "The Dreams") is a seaside resort community on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast. The community consists of homes, condos, marina and the Los Suenos Marriott, which I have to say is one of the nicest places I’ve ever stayed. We’re staying in double rooms at the Marriott for a few days while we provision the boat and get all the Costa Rican paperwork for it done (fishing permit, permit to move the boat to Flamingo, etc.)

Los Suenos is about 5 km from the town of Jaco (pronounced “ha-co”). If you’re bored at the resort, Jaco has the local bar/club scene, plus stores, shops, etc. The cab ride from Los Suenos should be about $4 US with tip, although I heard of a cabbie charging as much as $20 US (can you say “ripoff”). If you don’t know what a cab ride should cost, ask the bellman at any decent hotel; I’ll bet if its a well-known destination they’ll know within a couple of bucks.

On the main floor of the hotel there’s a huge lobby area, awesome veranda and bar that each have amazing views of the huge pool, golf course, marina and the bay. Spectacular at dusk… The Marriott has a couple of restaurants, including one that has a breakfast buffet every morning and a different buffet offering every evening. We liked the breakfast offerings but hit the menu for dinner for a couple of nights - better value. The marina also has a bar/restaurant called “The Hookup” where we had a couple of good breakfasts and lunches.

All in all, Los Suenos is a pretty amazing place. If you go for the pampering, the fishing or the golf I’m sure you’ll have a great time. For us, its a convenient stopover, a place to meet the boat, and a place to keep it when no one’s in-country. If you’re headed to Costa Rica its well worth the stretch from San Jose (a beautiful hour and a half drive over good roads) just to see it. Call Chilli - he'll take you there.

Costa Rica, Here I Come!

2005-07-29T08:40:00.000-07:00

Its really happening – I’m on a plane headed to San Jose, Costa Rica. Got, it feels good. July has been a month of Mondays – something like 27 days of the month, regardless of their Calendar days, either started out as Mondays, were Mondays all day, or ended up as Mondays. You know the feeling… maybe I’ll post another time about that.

Two and a half hour flight on American from MIA to Juan Santamaria airport in San Jose. Keith’s already there, our driver, Chilli Willy (yes, that’s what everyone calls him) should have picked him up a couple of hours ago and they’re killing time until I get in. Then we drive from San Jose to Los Suenos (not sure how long that is) where we should meet up with the boat, assuming its trip up from Golfito has gone smoothly. Can’t wait to get there, and to see it. The “new” Jungle Rules is a 42 foot Gulfstream sportfisherman, originally built in Costa Rica but transported by specialized ship “back home” from Palm Beach, and we’re breaking it in.

Last time down, we had an awesome trip, with two chances for double grand slams (didn’t close the deal either time – short two blues the first day, and the second time around we couldn’t hook a sailfish to save our sorry ass). Making a single slam on the boat would be great, a double is almost unheard of so just having the chance is amazing! But then again, that’s why you fish in Costa Rica.

Looking forward to the fishing, but I’m also looking forward to exercising the Rebel XT on and off the boat. Might sneak away for a day or so, maybe just a couple of evenings after we’re off the water. Got some great landscape and seascape shots last time with much less of a camera. The Rebel is so much more versatile, higher resolution, way better glass. Picked up a Hitachi 6GB microdrive so storage shouldn’t be an issue – haven’t really had time to exercise it but it seems like it works. Wish me luck.

Getting Hitch-ed...

2005-07-29T07:30:00.000-07:00

Don’t usually watch the inflight movies, but the Will Smith movie Hitch was on. There’s nothing like watching an otherwise pretty-good movie on the crappy entertainment system on the average commercial airliner. Ours was a little worse than normal, but not unwatchable. The color only went out a couple of times every few minutes, minimal screen roll, average amount of ghosting.

OK, so really, it sucked. The movie was good, though. I’ll have to rent or on-demand it again…

Brrr... its Chilli...

2005-07-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

Ahhh… one big travel leg down, one to go, but not as long as I thought… I’m in Costa Rica!

Got to Juan Santamaria airport after flying through a nasty little storm. I didn’t’ care – lots of folks on the plane didn’t like it, including the mother and daughter sitting next to me, who were petrified! Plane landed on time, breezed through Customs and Immigration and poof – there were Keith and.

Guillermo – “Chilli Willy” Arias

I’ll pause here for a moment to tell you… if you’re going to Costa Rica and need some local info, ground transportation, a box of Cubans (just to smoke there, of course, not to take home Terry), a canopy tour or trip up to Arenal, Chilli is your man. He’s honest, he’s smart, his english is better than mine and he is Hooked Up with a capital “H”. Can’t go wrong there… E-mail Chilli at chilliwillycr [at] racsa [dot] co [dot] cr, call him at 011-506-382-6816click here. Sorry for the crappy encoding but maybe it will save Chiii from the freaking spammers.

And, some great news… where the road trip to Guanacaste/Flamingo was 4.5 to 5 hours depending on the wind, number of road washouts, overturned trucks and wandering livestock, the drive to Los Suenos is only an hour and a half over good highway the whole way. Sweet! We’ll stop about half way for a cerveza and lunch and then finish off the trip, getting in around 4 local time, I’d guess. Just in time to meet up with the Captain and mate (more on them later), see the boat and plan the next steps, which for tonight I hope will involve some local rum, maybe a cigar for some and a few fish stories for all.

Its a Wrap-per...

2005-07-05T22:48:00.000-07:00

Milkmaids DVD Cover
Left to Right – Aimee Keeble, Katharine Leis
Tonia Kerr and Jonathan Charles Doyle

Well, Pat Martin’s latest film, Milkmaids, has gone to production. Lots of long nights over the past week getting final edits done, sweetening the sound, designing the packaging and then producing it all. I don’t know how he does it – editing 10 hours of raw video into a 16 minute short film over the course of a year seems like an agonizing way to direct one’s creative efforts and make a (partial) living, but its what he loves… how can you argue with that?

Pat, Terry Cronin and their families are headed out to San Diego for Comicon – “The world’s biggest comic book convention(tm)”, where the movie will be offered for sale for the first time. I think Pat’s bringing something like 100 copies, which isn’t many for such a big show, but I guess he’ll see how they sell and go from there. Of course they’re bringing the Students of the Unusual comics as well – I think they’re up to 4 issues now. Look for a Milkmaids plus Students of the Unusual promo if you’re out there… or ask for one if there isn’t one!

I like how the movie came out. I was asked by a friend recently to describe the plot without spoiling it, which was tough, but I’ll try to do it here and sound like a movie critic:

“Three college co-eds spending the summer at a remote country house. The good looking boyfriend. Things that go bump in the night. The axe-wielding neighbor… the cat. But its hard to describe the film without spoiling, so I’ll just say this. Milkmaids is a taut psychological thriller, delivering a big bang for the buck in just 16 minutes.”

Besides the movie, the DVD includes a brief slideshow of stills showing both action and behind-the-scenes stuff. If you can find a friend who has a copy, watch it. Or buy one at Comicon. Or go to the 3 Boys Productions website for details on ordering. Either way, don’t miss it – its a labor of love with a nasty plot twist. If we’re lucky, 3 Boys may post a snippet via streaming media on the web, or maybe eventually post the whole thing in a small window size. After all, no one would want to screw up the movie’s long tail which you can read about here and here.

Great Weekend...

2005-06-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

Another great weekend after a crappy week at work. Lazed around on Saturday – a few honey-do’s here, a couple of margaritas there… great day. Cooked up some sea scallops to top a field greens salad with a balsamic peanut sauce dressing and a good time was had by all. Tonight it was chicken on the grill and fresh quasi-caprese salad with tomato, mozzarella, basil, onion and capers. Very easy – very good.

After dinner, Jonathan and I spent a couple of hours working with Pat to wrap up post-production on his latest project, a 15 minute short called “Milkmaids”. Milkmaids is reminiscent of a classic “B” horror flick, filmed entirely on location in Hobe Sound and with an all-Florida cast.

Pat Martin directing Milkmaids

Comic-Con 2005 is coming up in San Diego in less than two weeks, and the movie will be offered for sale there for the first time. We’re mostly done save a little more sound sweetening and fixing a couple of little glitches if we have time. We’re editing in Final Cut Pro and producing the DVD with DVD Studio Pro on the Mac, and its going pretty well. Tonight was a pre-flight on output to DVD and testing some of the DVD menus. Jonathan’s credited in the movie now, having filled the coveted job of “Gopher Boy”. He had fun – we all did…

Raining like an SOB at the moment… kind of nice with the lightning light show. Tomorrow morning brings an hour-long telephone interview for some promotional stuff for my real job, followed by an afternoon of meetings. I can’t wait… NOT!

One Week Closer...

2005-06-25T23:22:00.000-07:00

One week closer to Costa Rica. Hope it works out…

2005-06-25T23:21:00.000-07:00

Rescue Me...

2005-06-20T16:43:00.000-07:00

I only caught a few of the first season episodes, but the FX series Rescue Me got good reviews and the few shows I saw were interesting. The cast and story lines both seemed strong, and many aspects of the plotlines were believable - beyond just plausible (OK, maybe not the drinking on the job and talking with dead people parts). The first season on DVD came out on 7 June, and I got it as a Fathers Day gift yesterday. Cool.

Denis Leary is the central character, both in and in support of the show. He's no stranger to either the job of firefighting or the social framework that firefighters, their families and their departments form in many towns. In December 1999, 6 firefighters lost their lives in a Worcester, Massachussets warehouse fire. Leary lost his cousin (Jerry Lucey) and a high school pal (Lt. Tommy Spencer), and formed The Leary Firefighters Foundation in 2000 in response. Since then, through a couple of regular fundraisers (I'll write on those another time), the Foundation has collected and funded Fire Department needs in New England and for FDNY to the tune of several million dollars. Here's the Foundation's mission statement:

The mission of The Leary Firefighters Foundation is to provide funding and resources for fire departments to obtain the highest level of equipment, technology, and training, as well as to provide resources to the families of firefighters who have perished or been injured in the line of duty.

This kind of "putting your money where your mouth is" support for firefighters is right on - more celebrities should do it. Leary is very active in Fire Rescue circles, and is turning two of his personal assets - an affinity for firefighters and his name recognition - into a plus for the community. And I like what I see as a "bookends strategy" in their focus - to paraphrase, I think they're about helping to fund investment in protective and lifesaving technologies at one end of the spectrum, but also provide resources and comfort to those families and departments affected by Line of Duty Death (LODD) at the other end.

LODD is something folks outside of Public Safety circles don't think a whole lot about. Unless it happens to your friend or neighbor or local department. Aside from the military and other Public Safety organizations like Law Enforcement, I can't think of too many lines of business where folks go to work every day with the possibility of losing their own life while trying to save another's. Selfless work, to be sure; and unfortunately, every year over 100 of those firefighters don't go home at the end of the shift, as you can see at the US Fire Administration firefighter fatalities page or at the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation site.

If you're interested in the Leary Firefighters Foundation, check out their website, or read their 2003 Annual Report. I guess its not all that uncommon for an actor's on-screen performance to intersect with his or her personal mission, but appreciate that Leary's doing it, and in a way that can really help a bunch of people. If you're interested in the show, the second season premieres tomorrow (21 June) on FX.

Rock on, Denis Leary.

Life is good...

2005-06-19T07:55:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, I received a great t-shirt as a gift. It had a logo of a fish on the front, and a little logo saying “Life is good” on the back. I’d never seen the line before, but loved the shirt. Over time, Life is good has grown into a company, a product line and a state of mind.

Bumming around in Stuart a couple of days ago, I saw another great Life is Good t-shirt with a cartoon of a guy grilling. I thought… “I’d like to have that”, and then two hours later by total coincidence, I’m standing in front of it in a storefront. I bought it… its the same great quality as the original shirt. I’m gonna wear it today while grillin’ and chillin’ on Fathers Day.

Life is Good has an awesome website. Besides supporting your local retailer, they have a really wide selection of shirts, mugs, caps and other cool stuff. If I’m shopping for a birthday present for you this summer, you might get some of this… check it out at www.lifeisgood.com.

Weber Rocks!

2005-06-17T18:20:00.000-07:00

I like to cook – its relaxing, and its rewarding when you make some thing others enjoy. And I especially like grilling – haven’t always been very good at it, though. One of the running jokes in my house is about my famous “Three Alarm Pork Chops”, named after an incident when I was a paramedic in Jensen Beach and literally burned up the pork chop dinner I was making for my partners and my wife. It wasn’t pretty…

I’ve gotten a little better… with a little help from friends and the occasional “ah ha” moment. Like the one I had a week or two ago when I cooked ribeye steaks exactly as one of my cookbooks dictated. Best steaks ever, my guests said. The book? Weber's Big Book of Grilling. Got it as a Father’s Day gift maybe 5 or 6 years ago. I’d occasionally pulled a recipe out – a rub here, a marinade there – but I’d never really read the grilling instructions. Scary – grilling over very high heat, with the lid closed… never done it. But, I can tell you first hand – it works!

Tonight it was burgers. Make burgers (however), heat grill to 500 degrees, turn the gas to Medium, put the burgers on and close the lid. In 4 minutes, turn. In three minutes, put the cheese on for a minute, then take them off. Check for 160 degree internal temperature – and perfect burgers! How easy was that?

Costa Ricanese...

2005-06-17T08:11:00.000-07:00

Jungle Rules – 40 foot Gamefisherman

Sounds like I might have an opportunity to go back to Costa Rica this summer – early August, I expect. I love it there. Of course, its especially sweet to have a friend with the fishing boat there. My friend Keith Carroll is having a new boat built and it will ship to Los Suenos soon, arriving before the first week of August. Can’t wait – had a blast the last time and can’t wait to go again.

Keith, fighting a Pacific Sailfish
on the fly…

Here are a few pics of the “old” boat (called Jungle Rules), fishing and whatever… world class catch-and-release billfishing, about 30 miles south of the Nicaraguan border on the Pacific side. Amazing…

Jungle Rules on the way to the fishing grounds…

A Little Samba, Anyone...

2005-06-06T10:16:00.000-07:00

Got to meet up with my old friend Harry Pierson, and meet his teammates Norman Guadagno and “the lovely Tanya” from the Microsoft Architecture Team who are in Orlando for TechEd at an invitation-only shindig they threw at Samba Room. I had an awesome time, to say the least. Its always great to meet up with old friends and make new, but besides that, the event was amazing! I had heard of Samba Room before and knew it was a latin-focused concept restaurant. What I didn’t know was how well they’ve executed the theme.

First, the restaurant is finished with dark polished wood – all over the place. Floors, walls, you name it. Second, its nicely lit. Third, its really well decorated… capturing and delivering a real latin feel. The food was great, service excellent, the cocktails better and the company awesome!

The restaurant hooked the Microsoft folks up with Sosa Cigars, a family owned and operated cigar shop with a location near the Virgin Megastore (I always get a kick out of that name) in Downtown Disney. I got to meet one of the principals, and had a chance to see one of his folks hand-rolling cigars. Great fun, and a great smoke, although I don’t often indulge. Samba Room sits right on the edge of a lake on Sand Hill Road, and that provided a great atmosphere for a drink and a smoke. It was a BLAST.

I’ll definitely return to Samba Room and entertain there. And, I have to hand it to Tanya, who organized the event, for pulling it off. Its tough to get over a hundred folks with similar interests but many of whom have never met to coalesce into a party. But, it worked. I learned more about what Harry and his team do, had a chance to talk with a couple of experts in areas I’m interested in, and even offered a little advice to one of the System Integrators that attended who’d dealing with company growth issues.

It was great to dip my foot back in the Tech world with this event. It was another reminder that Microsoft has not just the money but also the talent to do many things well. Whatever you think about the company or the products, they did that last night…

Return on Customer...

2005-06-03T07:06:00.000-07:00

Got a galley of a new/soon-to-be-released business book called Return on Customer. Its written by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, who are pretty much the parents of “One-to-One” marketing. The book should be interesting. A company picking its customers is in many ways more important than customers picking the company, as divergent customers in divergent markets with divergent needs are a death-knell for many organizations, or at least the small ones.

Customer Service is such an easy thing to say and such a hard thing to do – I think many if not most organizations need at least a little help here. And I’m very curious whether Rogers and Pepper differentiate or discuss internal versus external customers, like some organizations do so well. I see this kind of trouble – not understanding who the internal customer is, or not being understood as the internal customer, frequently.

I’ve started a Technorati Watchlist here, if anyone’s interested – you can subscribe to it with your newsreader/aggregator and will receive updates on blog postings from all over – if there are any. I did a title search but nothing showed up – don’t know if the search was faulty or if the blogosphere isn’t discussing/posting on this yet.

I’ve heard there are some links pertinent to the book and its concepts, too… I don’t have them handy, but will post them once I round them up. In the meantime, if you’re familiar with the book either leave a comment or post thoughts on your blog – lets get the conversation started.

Some Days Have a Theme or Two...

2005-05-21T19:22:00.000-07:00

I swear, while browsing and blogging around it seems like some days have a theme. Today the two themes would have to be “innovate or die” and “stick to your guns”. As part of the former riff, read Jim Carroll’s rant on what he calls the “Masters of Business Innovation” degree. I wish there actually was one of these, particularly since legions of MBAs are choking the life out of so many companies.

Anyway, Jim’s tongue-in-cheek post highlights a couple of very important points about creativity, innovation and having and delivering vision… here’s the short list:

see things differently
spur creativity in other people
focus on opportunity, not threat
refuses to accept the status quo
bring ideas to life
has the skill to learn and unlearn
refuses to say the word "can't"
accepts challenges with passion and enthusiasm
embraces change rather than shying away from it
listens to people who are different then them
lives for the opportunity to have ideas challenged and debated
instead of saying "it won't work," asks the question, "how can we make it work?"

Don’t read the piece if if you’re a status-quo lover – you won’t like it ‘cause you’ll get another perspective on how you’re killing companies/organizations. Whatever you do for a living, I guarantee you the pace of change is quickening, and if you’re wear the status quo like a dirty old blanket, I’d say you either get with the program, or that blanket’s gonna smother you.

Getting Out...

2005-05-21T16:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve written before about Guy Kawasaki, someone from my business past. Great guy – no pun intended – truly a visionary. He’s a wuss, though, since he’d be a natural at blogging, and blogging would be an awesome vehicle for his thoughts and ideas. But, I digress…

Saw this interesting post on partnership agreements, and why you should include an “out” clause in most/all, and why you shouldn’t necessarily have to give up your first born to do so. Partnership agreements are only as good as the intention that helps form them, paper they’re printed on, and the collective law departments of the parties involved. Guy is quoted in the post from The Art of the Start…

Not having been present when such an agreement is struck can present a down-the-road dilemma – “yes, I know what the agreement SAYS, but what is/was the INTENT? And what does the other party expect this actually MEANS?” Not a happy place to be, particularly when one party wants to press an issue. But I guarantee it will happen if you do many deals…

An excellent indicator of relationship trouble between a customer and consultant is whether anyone has their nose in the details of the agreement at any given moment. This has proven an excellent bellwether in all sorts of partnership and alliance situations, too. If you’re reaching for your copy of the contract to figure out who’s supposed to be doing what or to interpret terms, give yourself a subtle warning that things are already going wrong.

Circular References...

2005-05-15T14:06:00.000-07:00

If you’ve worked much with Excel, you’ve probably screwed up a formula so it somehow refers to itself – a circular reference. One variable that you try to change references another, which in turn updates the variable you’re trying to change… that kind of thing.

I’m writing about a different kind of circular reference – more of a circular trip, really.

When I first started working with the Apple IIc (this following TRS-80 hell), I needed a way to capture and manage information in a structured format. There was some little app or another that did some of what I wanted – PFSFile, maybe – but I was frustrated in that the way the data was structured was the way you had to report it. Which didn’t work for me.

In switching to the Mac just after its release, I played with a variety of approaches to this problem to support a Medical Billing company I had started. Still, no real luck. Structure and presentation were quite tightly linked.

Until one day after an early Macworld show in San Francisco and I get a package in the mail with a pre-release version of an application that would eventually be called FileMaker (who the heck was the initial publisher – Forethought or something?). What a great little flat-filing database. Easy to develop in – easy to use - easy to abstract either screen or report presentation from the data structure.

I used FileMaker as a hammer to pound software and business nails, screws, nuts and bolts equally well. And as the app grew and became more powerful, I stuck with it. Truly an excellent application and company – then Claris/Apple bought both and things got even better. Its only real competitor was 4D from France (support and customer service aligned with the stereotype of how the French love/hate Americans), and it was pointed at a slightly different space.

Until I started working with Windows. I needed to do some of the same things on Windows that I’d done on the Mac, and whether it was not finding a direct map for FileMaker or a Windows-compatible version of the app, I eventually started drifting away from the platform. Even to the extent of joining a company making the (ugly, painful, arduous) jump to Windows. It had to be done, mind you, but it wasn’t pretty. Windows was/is where the money was/is, remember?

Its funny how things have a way of coming full circle. Lately, I’ve been working on a prototype of a little data analysis/management reporting application for work, and I’ve been frustrated that I haven’t been able to get Access to do what I wanted. Yes, I know Access is the neatest thing since sliced bread, is relational, and everyone in the world knows it/is writing in it. But I DON’T LIKE IT. Its cumbersome, the interface is [bad], and most of all, it doesn’t seem to know what I’m THINKING as opposed to what I’m TELLING IT TO DO.

As I scratched my head and pondered who I know that I can get a couple of Access favors out of, I realized there might be another way. Sure enough, I had clipped an InfoWorld article on FileMaker, which has been a true cross-platform app for years, and the review was good. I’m wondering whether the interface is still as easy as it was, and whether it might be a good alternative to Access for at least prototyping what I’m up to. Eventually, I may need a corporate-type to host the database so I may have to move back off of it and onto something more “mainstream”, but I’m going to give it a go. Have to dig up my last disk – probably three or so years old – and see if there’s some sort of upgrade pricing available.

Wish me luck, and if you’re working with FileMaker and have good and/or bad experiences and want to share them, use comments below…

Seven Deadly Sins...

2005-05-15T09:22:00.000-07:00

From Mike McLaughlin at the Guerilla Consulting blog, a great post on “The Seven Deadly Sins of Proposal Writing”. It amazes me how many firms in so many different sectors of the economy don’t know how to write a good proposal or bid response or grant application. One big mistake is thinking the proposal does your selling – that’s not its purpose. The purpose of the proposal is to confirm and document what you’re selling, not present the ideas to the client for the first time.

Besides this mistake, there are a number of other faux pas that otherwise smart and savvy firms – of all sizes – for some unknown reason beat a well worn path to. Here are Mike McLaughlin’s Seven Sins…

1. Lack of focus on the client's business problem and industry dynamics.

2. The "we, us, and our" syndrome. Does your proposal talk more about your firm than about the client's business?

3. No basis of differentiation. Focus is on weak differentiators such as quality service, price, responsiveness, and your firm's pedigree.

4. The expected value of the project isn't quantified so you can't use it as a baseline for justifying the proposed fee.

5. The proposal is laced with jargon, difficult to read, and doesn't include an issue-focused executive summary.

6. Reliance on a boilerplate resume.

7. Errors: misspellings, poor grammar, wrong client name, or inconsistent formats.

I’m in a deal at the moment with a well-known competitor who made at least four of these seven mistakes. Not that we were perfect – we weren’t, and perhaps never are - but we definately fared better on points 1, 3, 5 and 7. It was almost like the competitor didn’t want the business (maybe they didn’t), but if I were rating the firms and approaches, the proposals would have set the pace right away. Whether the competitor could have done the job or not – they likely could have, in my mind – they did not position themselves for success and once that train starts rolling... Good for us – not so good for them…

Hey Mike – I’m enjoying your blog. I think I’ll have to buy your book…

Great Consulting Website...

2005-05-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

I have to thank Technorati for again unearthing an interesting place to spend a little Internet time. I have a watchlist related to a couple of management frameworks/topics, and one of them yielded a link to a blog called “Guerrilla Consulting”. Its written by a guy named Mike McLaughlin who’s also co-written a book called “Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants“ with Jay Levinson (author or co-author of something like 10 or more marketing books). The 15 or so posts I read seem to deliver solid if simple advice for consultants.

I especially liked one post on ideas as intellectual property/capital. Here’s an excerpt…

Some consultants resist sharing their ideas and the products of those ideas (AKA intellectual capital) with clients before they're hired to do a project. They fear that clients will take their work and try to complete the project on their own, or worse, give it to another consultant.

The world is awash in information and ideas. If you're stingy with yours, it will show. Besides, client aren't buying your methodology, tools, or your point of view. They're buying your expertise, and that can't be pilfered by poring over proposed workplans, preliminary recommendations, or your perspectives on how to solve a problem.

If you’ve done much consulting or hired many consultants, you’ve seen this. A related flavor is trying to apply intellectual property constraints – trademarks, copyright, patents – to every little thing you produce. If you’re a budding consultant and you’re doing this – stop. Today. It makes you and your firm look like amateurs. Here are a couple of examples…

I think both of these scenarios are the result of “scarcity mentality” – rampant in small businesses and perhaps more so in small/one-person consultancies. I’ve written about this before – its viewing the world thinking there’s a lack of everything… clients, ideas, capital, whatever – rather than believing resources are abundant, and that one must seek them out and then marshal them to good use.

If you’re good at what you do, there’s no reason to try to build what is essentially a see-through intellectual property fence around your ideas, or to be afraid that someone else will “get it” and overrun you. Maybe you don’t want to share the intimate details of how you’re tweaking the latest methodology because you feel (and maybe rightly so) it provides you with a slight and temporary competitive advantage, but c’mon. Believe in your skills – sell results. Its easier, and far more lucrative. You don’t become known or engaged for expertise or problem-solving by keeping your ideas in your head or under a rock.

The Buffett is Open...

2005-05-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

Read a snapshot of The Intelligent Investor, a book by Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing. First published in 1949, this book is touted as a favorite of Warren Buffett, the billionaire investment guru behind Berkshire Hathaway. Shouldn’t be a surprise… Buffett studied under Graham at Columbia. I’m going to check it out… the most interesting part is on determining the intrinsic value of a stock, or a company.

Gaining insight on the basics of buying stocks that are inherently worth more than you pay for them would be a good thing, since this would seem to be 180–degrees from the way many stock market investments work…

Boutique on Budget...

2005-05-14T08:52:00.000-07:00

Read a great article in April’s Fast Company magazine entitled “Boutique Hotels on a Budget”. With the proliferation of smaller, higher-service hotels, someone (actually more than one, as it turns out) was bound to try to define the low end of this high end marketplace. Funny thing is, if the definition of high-end is part service and part price, at least three companies/chains are shaking up the mix.

EasyHotel Photos

EasyHotel is EasyJet’s budget-but-boutique offering. First property in London, small rooms (only 60, 70 or 80 square feet) and minimalist, but definitely boutique. Rooms are supposed to range from $10 to $115 or so a night. Wonder what a $10 hotel room looks like? There’s a photo gallery on the site – if orange is your color, these folks are for you.

Yotel Photo

Yotel is another European offering, spawned by a successful restaurant chain called Yo Sushi. They’ll also open first in London (2006), the rooms are 100 square feet and will cost around $135 a night, but have a high amenity factor, including flat-screen TV’s and special lighting to help with jet lag adjustment. Their press release emphasizes high design and function at a budget price.

The only offering noted to be starting in the US is Cambria Suites, offered by Choice Hotels (Comfort Inn, Clarion, EconoLodge) who plans to open in Miami and Chicago this coming year. Rooms will be around a hundred bucks a night, offer separate work and sleep areas, plasma TVs, and WiFi (I assume the other hotels will offer this, too. How can you not these days? Here’s a partial description from the Cambria Suites press release:

Public spaces at Cambria Suites brand hotels will be open, contemporary and inviting. Lobbies will include club lounge seating and a large screen "media wall"; a lounge serving liquor, wine, beer and non-alcoholic beverages; and a coffee bar serving premium coffees. Food and beverage options will also include a paid-for hot and cold breakfast buffet and a 24/7 convenience store stocked with food and sundry items. Each hotel will also include an expanded fitness facility, an indoor pool and more than 1,000 square feet of meeting space. Additional business services include onsite faxing, copying and printing as well as multiple lobby power/Internet ports and high speed wired and wireless Internet access.

If you’re travelling around and are tired of the 500–room behemoths that are charging more than these rates, maybe one or more of these are worth a try. You’ll probably be in Europe when you try them… I’ll probably check out the one in Miami. Having a cool place to crash in or near the hub of the Latin universe would be a good thing…

Watch Me...

2005-05-08T11:15:00.000-07:00

Seiko Sportura Duo Display Chronograph

Who doesn’t like a cool watch? I was browsing around the thousand or so RSS blog updates I’m behind on and found a reference to the new Seiko Sportura watch series. Very slick – several configurations, including one I’ve kind of been looking for – analog and digital with an alarm feature. Not sure I like the price, though – retails around $700 although I found it online at Amazon for about $350 plus a few bucks for shipping.

While hunting around for the feature list and the user guide, I figured going to Seiko would be a good start. Not so much. Their site is nicely styled, but the section on the Sportura has some weird bugs – like you can’t really drill into the photos of the watches and get anywhere, and there’s no real feature list. Seems odd for a company that spent so much money on their design, and then the execution – at least from a shopper’s perspective – sucks.

"Reconnecting with Old Friends" Week...

2005-05-06T19:24:00.000-07:00

What a crazy week. I literally drove nearly a thousand miles this week, between my regular stuff, a trip to Orlando and back on Weds. and then a trip to Tampa on Thurs. pm and back tonight. Whew! And who says it isn’t fun to drive (OK… ME!).

Got two phone calls from old friends this week and had a chance to catch up a bit. Nicholas Eisner, one of the guys I got to know best but also enjoyed working with the most at Shana called, and he’s coming to Florida on business next week. NASA was one of our oldest, largest and most loyal clients, and believe it or not, Nicholas is still working with them, albeit now for FileNet (knowing just a little about what FileNet is and isn’t doing with our technology makes this amazing to me). Nicholas is a very interesting guy… one of the most talented customer-facing folks I’ve ever met, and the customers just love him for it. I’ll slide up to Cocoa Beach or thereabouts on Monday night and we’ll catch up a bit. Nicholas is coming down from Ottawa, and just in time for the start of our “summer” weather. Can’t wait to see him!

Bill Kalmbach, AKA “Clueberg” at the Hacienda

Then tonight the phone rings and its Bill Kalmbach from Motorola. Or I should say from FreeScale, since Motorola spun off the semiconductor business. I have to say Bill is one of the hardest working guys I know, and he’s a whiz at all sorts of electrical, electronic and communications stuff. It was Bill’s vision that saved Motorola from a terminally incorrect view of bridging e-mail and paging in Austin that led to the opportunity to build our paging gateway solution.

Then, Bill was truly a visionary in terms of how alternative communication devices like alpha pagers would be applied in business, but more importantly he bucked the (uncharacteristic for Motorola) bureaucracy, got decisions made and then helped architect a solution that’s still transmitting over a million internal paging messages a year. I still can’t believe that software works (grin), but it does, and that project was the springboard for my little consultancy and also for building business confidence. Thanks for everything, Bill. Good to hear from you, and can’t wait to see you and the family in late October when I come out for AMTC.

Congrats Harry & Jules...

2005-05-06T18:00:00.000-07:00

Miss Rileyanne Elizabeth Pierson

Congratulations to Harry and Julie Pierson, the proud parents of Miss Rileyanne Elizabeth Pierson, their healthy brand-new baby girl. Riley was born on 05.05.05, and her birth appointment was at – you guessed it – 5:00. From Harry’s personal blog Blue Blazes Irregular Harry Pierson (as opposed to his business blog DevHawk), sounds like things went the way they’re supposed to. Can’t wait to see you guys – sounds like July at this point, except I’ll see Harry in June for business in Orlando.

Amazon Is At It Again. Not in a Good Way...

2005-05-01T20:06:00.000-07:00

I swear the Amazon and the Harvard Business School Press Online people are in cahoots. If I don’t get a highly targeted mailing from one of them, I get one from the other…

The mailing tonight was from Amazon, and its an e-book, which surprised me ‘cause I didn’t know they did that. The trouble is, I bought the “book” for six bucks, and when I downloaded it I found the title of the solicitation was totally misleading, and rather than content on the topic advertised, I essentially had paid for a press release (albeit reprinted in some Photo Marketing magazine).

Homey don’t play that.

So, I tried to return the item. The return process seemed to work fine – indicate the order I’m returning from, indicate the item and quantity, indicate the reason. No worries. Until I get to the physical address I have to return the item to, so that Amazon can then credit me the six bucks.

There’s a lesson here. First, Amazon, if you’re going to get into the e-book business, do it with, say, e-books rather than crappy magazine articles. Or maybe the citation was supposed to lead to the book – either way, the system sucks. Then, if the user doesn’t want the content, let them return it. You know, electronically.

Sheesh.

Back in the Saddle. Sort of...

2005-05-01T19:13:00.000-07:00

Back in town after a week’s worth of business travel. I was in Wheeling, West Virginia for 6 nights, then Pittsburgh for a night and then home. Except for Friday, where I was had virtually no Cell service (Yay!), although it worked well enough one evening for me to get bad news about a friend’s son who passed away. That’s a shame.

I think I now have over 1700 items in my e-mail inbox, and probably have 10 VMs to return (including yours, Harry). It was great not to be so plugged-in, especially this weekend when I intentionally ignored both phone and e-mail. I’ll pay for that this coming week, I’m sure…

Internationally Renowned...

2005-04-19T20:31:00.000-07:00

I looked at the blahgKarma stats tonight and found that in the past month or so many more of my visitors are from “away”, as in out of the US. In fact today is a great example of the reach of blogging – international visitors exceeded US visitors, with folks checking in from far-flung places like Rotterdam, a couple of places (I’ve never heard of) in the UK, Bombay (capital of Bollywood), Toronto (hi Sandy!), Tokyo and New Zealand. The last month includes Estonia, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey, Italy, Brazil and a bunch of others. Pretty cool!

The “viral” aspect of Blogging is certainly amazing. I don’t promote the blog, don’t really tell anyone about it, and don’t do anything of note to attract traffic to it… and yet the topics I write on are discovered and read by folks literally around the world. I do comment on other interesting blogs, though, which gets me a few ocassional readers, but which also validates the “extended conversation” theory of blogging.

Amazing.

Another Minute of Fame...

2005-04-19T19:59:00.000-07:00

Well, it was bound to happen. My blog is being found, and has me well on my way to more fame and fortune.

Maybe just the fame. And just a little bit…

I have a Technorati scan for references to BlahgKarma and found an entry in it tonight. Seems I got a mention in the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Blogosphere”, which is a pretty cool honor. Only 10 blogs have been mentioned so far including mine. The site is a new effort of Troy Worman of Orbit Now! fame and Steve Sherlock. Thanks for the mention, guys. That gets you an entry on the blahgRoll for Hitchhikers Guide…

Middle Class America On The Edge...

2005-04-16T12:01:00.001-07:00

For my LEADERship class, a team of us are working on a video homework project to project the effects of this year’s hurricanes on “working families”. You wouldn’t believe what we saw/found.

Our format will be news interview-style, with on-camera interviewers (our team) and the subjects interacting, back and forth. All the subjects were good sports; we’re addressing a hard set of topics to ask or answer on, but so far it looks good.

One of our subjects is a single dad, running his own business and just making ends meet. He chooses to work for himself and have a business because it provides him maximum flexibility to be with his daughter, who is elementary-school aged. He is bright, articulate, and socially conscious – but has no insurance or benefits of any kind for himself. So while he makes ends meet and is able to afford to live here in Martin County where he likes the community, feels safe and sees a great educational system for his daughter, he worries about that next job or the next unexpected bill like most of us have, I suppose – but its the constant, nagging kind of worry, not just the fleeting kind of worry. Doesn’t own a home – doesn’t expect to have the means to for some time.

Our second set of subjects was a family of 6 with two breadwinners. Who have nearly the same set of practical and financial issues as the first subject. The mother in this family is a child care provider, and got into that line of work so she could afford child care for her own child. She’s pursuing higher education, but even pays direct child care costs for her son who accompanies her to work (and the employer can’t comp his/her employees for bringing kid to their school/daycare based on income?). The father is a tradesman, working in the electrical trade, but job security is not a word often used in that arena. He’s going to school nights to study to be a barber, which he figures he can make at least the same money and maybe more and have some actual job security. The kids were adorable, and well behaved. Which is absolutely freaking amazing since this family – these 6 folks – have been living in a 400 square foot FEMA travel trailer since the hurricanes. Sheesh. Oh – no medical benefits for the family, except the kids are covered by a State program so they get some medical care. Home ownership is not even on the radar for these folks… making monthly bills work is.

Subject three is an articulate, 40–something mother of three who works as an admin at a family member’s construction company. Her husband has a small excavating business; she studies for a masters degree online nights. Between her three jobs she works about 65 hours a week (plus the school time, of course). Their excavating business was building and profitable before the hurricanes – now, not so much. With the lack of telephones for almost 30 days the pipeline pretty well dries up, and with their type of work (site prep for new construction) not being the priority when everyone’s recovering from having their roofs blown off, etc., little income today. These folks seems squarely middle class to me – two working parents, an educated mom seeking higher education, etc. – and yet because of an unforeseen medical crisis they’ve got a bill for $50K from hospital and they have no idea how to pay it. What do you do – mortgage/lose your home to pay for your ruptured appendix? Come on…

I’ve always seen a gap between what I’ve perceived as “the have’s” and “the have not’s”. These folks would seem on any other day like “have nots” to me, but they do today. I hope it all works out for them. Maybe in some small way our project will help them, or the scores of other folks like them I that I bump into or walk right past every day.

Definitely makes you think…

Middle Class America On The Edge...

2005-04-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

For my LEADERship class, a team of us are working on a video homework project to project the effects of this year’s hurricanes on “working families”. You wouldn’t believe what we saw/found.

Definitely makes you think…

You say "Tomato", I say "Tomahto"...

2005-04-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

Interesting article in Intelligent Enterprise magazine (print and web) called “Prime Time for Real Time”. Crappy headline – good content. One part of the article tries to distinguish flavors of BPx like Business Process Management (BPM) and Business Process Automation (BPA). I say – whatever.

What I liked about the article was the way the author abstracted Process (with a capital “P”) away from technology/development/systems. He does so via a virtual fourth tier – like shown in in this graphic:

I like this approach. Too many folks wrangling with process integration/management/automation are focusing on the technology and how to mash it around to fit this model or that without having a conceptual framework to fit to. I think the opportunity is in harvesting the best pieces of the existing infrastructure and applications (web services-enable them if you can, I say) and melding them into the improved process. This does not mean you do one little part of the process with this toolset/user interface, then have the user switch gears/systems/mindsets and do this little part of the process THIS way, etc. It does mean hiding the spaghetti of existing systems, data, protocols, etc. from the user and presenting them with a rational interface to the (virtual) process/application.

If you’re working on these kinds of projects and want to learn something from someone who REALLY knows what she’s talking about, as opposed to me, try Sandy Kemsley’s blog at www.kemsleydesign.com.

Being a Kid...

2005-04-13T20:55:00.000-07:00

Quarter till midnight and just got home from a 16 hour workday (6 hours of it was driving – which you know I LOVE – and maybe 2 of that making phone calls – woohoo!), and sitting down to go over the 15 or so e-mails that came in since I left my last meeting place and organize things for tomorrow, when I finally just say ‘F*** it’. Its been a very weird and tiring week with random shit happening all over the place – some good, some not so great but could have been much worse. And its only Wednesday – or I guess almost Thursday early morning. Time to trudge off to bed and start fresh tomorrow, I figured.

Then the most amazing thing happened. When I took Dakota out I was pondering all the week’s meant and all the work that tomorrow will bring, the smell of fresh jasmine reached me and stopped me dead in my tracks. And in the blink of an eye, I’m wondering when we all stop being kids and marvelling at the simplest of things, and when I did so – I guess it happens in both big and little chunks as we figure out the world, and then moreso I suppose as we figure out there’s no figuring out the world. I don’t think the inner child ever goes away – he just busies himself with all the seemingly “important” stuff and the “fun” and “amazing” and “holy shit did you see THAT!?) stuff kind of gets displaced, slinking off to a corner to gather dust.

If I could bottle both the smell and experience of my encounter with the jasmine tonight, sky black and crickets chirping, I’d do it and become rich beyond my wildest dreams. God I wish I could. It was awesome.

Of course, it wouldn’t remind everyone of being a kid burying himself in that endless sea of stark white and bright, bright purple lilac bushes. Knowing no one would or could find him if he didn’t want them to, and even then it would be a chore. Peeking out and thinking how the Maine sky was blacker than tar that August night with the stars just whiter than white, and a million of them. Wondering what that all looked like on the other side of the world, and what he looked like looking back at it, eyes big as saucers I suppose.

It probably wouldn’t remind everyone of letting go and having the vast tranquility of nature reveal itself – so silent on the one hand and bustling with the sounds of a crisp summer night on the other – ever-so-thankfully devoid of machines and people and tension and stress and winners and losers and good and bad, the soothing sound of salt water gently lapping the shore of that boyhood dream. A gazillion fireflies dancing the jig – obviously they hadn’t a care, they just flitted on with reckless abandon. Maybe they had to – who knew how long summer would last? Who ever does?

Or stopping to wonder a bit whether he’d always find that comfortable place if he wanted to… then wondering just a little how he’d find it when he really needed to, when he had to, ‘cause he’d already guessed that would prob’ly happen from time to time even though he didn’t want to believe it… And pondering whether he could or would show others the way to it when they needed it worse than he did – which he worried might happen some day – even though it was his place. If he only knew…

I don’t think everyone would feel that way, do you? But they might, if just for a moment. And if they did – hell, if I could – it would be priceless, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it?

What a glorious feeling, being a child again. Even just in that moment. However fleeting.

Perspective...

2005-04-12T21:05:00.000-07:00

Before you flame me, and in case you need a reminder that the rants and raves in this blog are mine and mine alone, here’s the blahgKarma disclaimer:

The views expressed here are my own - not my family's, not my friends', not my dog's, not the President of the United States', and certainly not my employer's.

With that said, this tragic story from from today’s EMSNetwork News:

Ambulance Hits Mercedes, Kills Driver

Shortly after 11:00pm, officials say an EMS ambulance was responding to a call, heading west on south plaza trail, when it crashed into a two door Mercedes headed north on Independence Boulevard.

The impact was so hard that the Mercedes was knocked off the road.

The driver of the Mercedes, 34-year old [name removed] of [city removed], was rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries and died overnight. [name removed], of [address removed], was the only occupant in his vehicle. No one in the ambulance was hurt.

Police say their preliminary investigation indicates the ambulance had its emergency equipment activated at the time. According to authorities, the ambulance had a red light as it approached the intersection.

Officials say Brandon was not wearing his seatbelt and was on a cellular phone as he entered the intersection.

I feel for both the driver and crew of the ambulance and the driver of the vehicle and his family. No matter how you slice it, a tragedy. If you know someone related to either side of this accident, please accept my condolences.

But where’s the outrage? Shouldn’t the public be screaming about “the horrendous and sharply rising rate of ground ambulance accidents”? Why aren’t the national media outlets covering this?

I’m using this story and these comments to hop up on a soapbox about the media flogging the aeromedical industry’s accident rate this year. Many refer to a Wall Street Journal article on the subject as authoritative, but I disagree. Some like to say (incorrectly, I think) that the pace of accidents has risen sharply. But has it – lets say – as a function of the number of patients transported or patient miles flown? I don’t think so. But that’s not news now, is it?

So if ground ambulances are crashing – very - regularly (you really don’t want to know how often) and those crashes tragically kill folks ocassionally, where’s the WSJ article on that? The answer is – there isn’t one. Why? In my opinion because motor vehicle crashes occur literally every minute of every day, but aircraft crashes (thankfully) happen very ocassionally. But, granted, are much more sensational. Which, I suppose sells more newspapers and cereal ads and the like.

Our emergency services workers, in the air or on the ground, do their best every day to safely and securely discharge their duties to the best of their abilities, and society gains as a result. And, I think we can always improve safety and patient care, every day (see my post on “achieving” excellence) – in my experience, the industry is working hard on this. In the end its a risky business and a dangerous job, but it has to be done, and the folks I know that do it are truly called to it, excel at it, and bust their collective asses, all the while subordinating their personal risk to the greater good.

Don’t get me wrong – ONE accident is one too many. But if its rational to be incensed over recent air ambulance crash rates, then get ready for a march on Washington on ground ambulance accidents, sister. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Connecting the Dots...

2005-04-11T20:10:00.000-07:00

Its funny how blogs sometimes help the reader connect the dots on this or that topic – you know, an idea pops into one’s head, you’re reading BlogX and catch a little glimpse of what you’re interested in, then the topic or something related pops up on BlogY and…. well, you get the drift.

An interesting twist is when blogging itself helps the blogger connect the dots… consider my previous post on doing the right thing. Little did I know when I posted it this morning how pertinent it would be to one of my business conversations today.

It turns out in one of the organizations I do some work with, a person recently did right thing when it certainly would have been easier for them to have done something more popular, or easier, or just ignore an issue altogether and hope someone else might deal with it. I was really proud of this person’s decision and actions, and not only applauded them, but held them and their situation up as an example of individuals making a difference in a large organization – one decision and one issue at a time. After recognizing them, I also took the time to help reward them – something they certainly didn’t anticipate or expect when they made the decision – because that was the right thing to do, to.

The pursuit of excellence is just that – a pursuit; a never-ending journey, however often confused with a destination. Making good choices (even when they’re tough) is at the heart of excellence, so I’ll offer a word of encouragement for those of you faced with such a situation today; do the right thing, feel good about it however unpopular it might be, and know it will work out. Doing the right thing really does pay off – not just for you, but for others too; I’d even say it can be contagious in an organization. And sometimes in the most amusing or amazing way…

Doing the Right Thing...

2005-04-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

Browsing around and generally cleaning things up on my computer when I came across this tidbit – thought I’d post it. I think it offers good general guidance on doing things you might otherwise not want to do, or wish you didn’t have to. Good way to start off a Monday, I suppose.

I wish I could remember where I saw this...

Always do what's right - you've got to live with the consequences

"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right." -Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) Baptist minister and civil rights leader

Recently a client of mine mentioned that he didn't like the way a certain colleague treated staff members. I asked him why he hadn't done anything about it. The question caught him off guard. He didn't have a good answer. Upon further reflection, he realized that he was contributing to the problem by letting it occur. He ended up speaking with the guy. And later he told me that though the conversation felt uncomfortable, it eventually improved the situation immensely.

Consider this… It isn't always easy to do the right thing. Sometimes it can feel like the weight of the world on your shoulders. In these situations, use your conscience as a guide. Don't look for the "easy way out." What looks easy at first is often tough to live with in the long run. Always remember that you have to look at yourself in the mirror each day. And it's a lot easier to do if you're proud of what you see.

Something to try:

1. Start noticing where you don't stand up for what's right (however you define right).

2. Develop some ideas on how you could take action.

3. DON'T TAKE ACTION RIGHT AWAY - chat with others to get some perspective.

4. Choose your course.

5. Take action.

How has doing the right thing paid off for you?

Martin Luther King was quoted elsewhere saying the day a man starts to die is the day he stops doing the right thing. Kind of an extreme view if you ask me, but food for thought.

UPDATE: I found the original reference! It was a Fast Company Now article/blog entry from 15 March, located here. Sorry I didn't credit you guys the first time...

Hey, Poolie...

2005-04-10T13:53:00.000-07:00

Big day today at the hacienda – first dip in the pool in the new year. Not much of a milestone if you’re here in FL, but for those of you who aren’t and are still dealing with winter/spring (you know who you are!), I’m officially rubbing it in.

I have to laugh, too, ‘cause our visitors to Hobe Sound think we’re nuts that we don’t/can’t swim year round. Of course, compared to where I lived in Maine and Vermont, our weather/water is always warm; of course we could swim all year, we just don’t ‘cause we don’t have to!

Gorgeous day – sunshine, warm with low enough humidity so you can still breathe. Not many of those days left here until September…

Something to Learn...

2005-04-06T20:19:00.000-07:00

Are any of you out there using Mind Mapping techniques, or even better MindJet’s MindManager software for TabletPC?

Mind Mapping is a skill I’d desperately like to learn… friends and business associates know I can hardly talk without having a pen in hand and paper at ready to draw a picture. And don’t stand between me and a whiteboard – you could get hurt.

I think I just think and work better visually. And while I have my own crude manner of expressing and relating thoughts on paper (you don’t want to see it), having a structure/method to the madness would be great.

Trouble is I don’t really know where to start. I have a TabletPC and will be replacing it soon with an updated/upgraded model, so I’ll even have a similar tactile experience to pen and paper, but where the heck do you start to crack the nut on the methodology, much less the software. Any suggestions greatly appreciated, and the more visual, the better. Oh, and please don’t suggest the "MindManager for Dummies" book – I don’t go out of my way to spend money while I’m being insulted.

JAVA = IT Job Security? SI's = Perpetual Projects?

2005-04-04T19:11:00.000-07:00

I still don’t get why CTOs and CIOs let systems integrators sell their organizations ground-up development on stuff they could have up and running in less than half the time with twice the functionality if they used a product to do the same thing. Do these folks do any research at all? Do the SI’s run IT now? Sheesh…

Sandy Kemsley from Kemsley Design posted in her BizBlog about a project like this… a good out-of-the-box fit for our COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) e-forms software that an SI preferred to build from the ground up. Having been an systems integrator I know why this is attractive to them as a service provider – its all about billables, and getting the client to sign up for the annuity – er, I mean renew the contract. But it doesn’t make sense.

When I was doing integration, I was happy to blend third-party products into the mix, but then again, I also worked to work myself out of engagements… that is, find the best fit, deliver the best value and then train the organization to sustain and extend it. Since we were largely a product company that offered services rather than an integrator at my last tech gig, this worked great. And some of the integrators we worked with HATED it. They never learned that the quicker, less complex solution is the more VALUABLE solution, and hence commands a higher price – higher billings with less effort? With happy clients? Who doesn’t want more of that? Many integrators…

Call me old fashioned, but I still think its better to show the client you can solve problems and promptly than to get the mother-of-all continuing contracts and keep a tight grip on their wallet. In the end, the former of these models is always more profitable, as the C-level executive’s problem sets are ever-changing, and becoming a trusted advisor to them is not only infinitely more scalable, its also infinitely more interesting.

Oh well… guess all those folks who love Java or have lots of folks working for them that love Java have to have something to do. What the hell – business needs lots of wheels. Guess some clients will happily pay to have a few reinvented…

BTW – if any of you old-time SIs are reading out there, there’s a ton of money to be made in delivering solutions to your clients’ business problems (notice I did not say ‘technology problems’) using off the shelf software. If you need to read something on how to unlink your billings from the amount of time you spend on a project, read Million Dollar Consulting or Value-Based Fees by Alan Weiss. And if you want/need help getting the hell out of the technology business and into the problem solving/delivering business value business, call me.

Culinary Delight...

2005-04-04T18:33:00.000-07:00

If you’ve been reading here for a while, you probably know by now that I love to cook. Almost anything. But sometimes its the dumbest stuff that’s the most fun – like Chex Mix. I made a batch this weekend with my son, which was fun… he knows better than to fight me for food, but he’s smaller and faster than I am, so he got some. As Napoleon Dynamite would say… ‘GOSSSSSHHHHHH!’

I think I first remember having this culinary delight sometime around 1980, maybe, while living in Burlington. There’s a store-bought version of it now, of course, but its loaded with all kinds of crap that has no place in a proper Chex Mix, like bagel chips and malformed pretzel-like objects that have no food/nutritional value whatsoever and bagel chips I’m certain are stamped from particle board.

For a good recipe (leave out the damned pretzels and that other crap, though!), you can check out www.chex.com of all places. I doctor mine up with a little more butter, between a teaspoon to a tablespoon of Tabasco or the like (who knows how much really goes in – I just shake the bottle until it seems like it might be enough), and this time threw some Goldfish in along with a cup of peanuts.

I wonder if there’s a Chex Mix cookoff anywhere – I’ll bet my boy and I could kick some serious ass…

"Great" Friday...

2005-03-25T05:54:00.000-08:00

Today’s not just Good Friday in the religious sense, but Great Friday in a roof sense. At 8:30 sharp a troupe – gaggle – SWARM of guys showed up in two trucks and started tearing off the roof. With a vengeance. Must be 15 guys working away it it. Bet they have the old shingles off by noon…

I’m psyched!

The Power of Persistence...

2005-03-21T23:01:00.000-08:00

Two excellent posts about Persistence with a capital “P” here and here on Joe Krauss’ Bnoopy blog. I started to write a comment and then it turned into three pages of a Word document. Joe’s stories are very cool, and whether you’re a budding businesswoman or a seasoned entrepreneur, you should take a read. Actually, the second post is more about not taking “no” for an answer then mere persistence – these are two very distinct things to me.

My story is about one of the most amazing things that I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of in business, and an excellent example of shared vision and teamwork. David beating Goliath, if you will. I’ve been thinking about these subjects a lot for the past week.

I’m not sure what to do with what I wrote – pare it down, certainly, but its way too long for a comment. If I don’t decide to trash it, maybe I’ll take a chance and post it here as installments. Tonight was the first time I’ve thought about it in a long time, and I have to say it stirs the most fond memories of my past partnership, and certainly was one of the pinnacles of achievement for our company – we all benefited from it.

If any of you guys from Shana are reading, I should thank you again for all the opportunity you presented me with. Your collective strength of character, your sacrifices and your personalities (frustrating as some of them were at times) all created fertile ground in which to plant the seeds of greater success – for you and for me. Not everything we planted were roses, to say the least, nor tasted good, but we grew the company, grew personally and professionally (and certainly financially), and did some good for our customers, shareholders, partners and employees along the way. The Boeing deal was one of the most difficult things we ever did, but had great rewards. We calculated and took our chances, we did it well, and we stuck together doing it. There’s a lot to be said for that…

Reaching the Goal Line...

2005-03-21T11:27:00.000-08:00

Over at the Bnoopy blog, serial entrepreneur Joe Krauss (co-founder of Excite, if you remember it) posted recently on goals, goal setting and measurement for startups – and the fact that most goals in business are never achieved. I’ve written a bit before about the Fast Forward MBA in Business Planning and Growth – if you’re struggling with integrating goals across the organization, melding them into a coherent plan (or ideally, setting the goals as the stepping stones of tactics to execute your vision), you need to read this book.

We’ll start an exercise on vision, goal setting and planning very soon in at least one of my endeavours, if not three of them. In order to grow an organization in such a manner that all stakeholders can know and see the direction, buy off on it and then smile as it wends its way toward further success, planning is a necessity. But its also big thinking in many ways. It will make people nervous – like any change typically does. With enough support from the execs who drive the business, though, this should be somewhat easier. Although like any change-management exercise, benefits have to be evident to all involved. THAT will be a challenge.

I’m looking forward to this project. I’ve applied the methodology before to differing degrees and also use it in some of my business mentoring; once an organization understands and buys-off on the process, its very effective and brings quick results. Guiding the cultural change in this organization – helping move from the reactionary nature of the business to being more proactive, making plans and measuring progress – will be a tough job, although I expect lots of folks are incented to help. I hope so.

Fame Here... Will Fortune Follow?

2005-03-19T08:24:00.000-08:00

Wow. A blahgKarma post on religious wars in the tech business got an entry in Scoble’s link blog. That makes one think. That stream has to be read by everyone on the Internet by now (OK, maybe not EVERYONE…).

I had posted on a topic that involved Robert Scoble and someone else and a bunch of comments on the subject, and the next thing you know, *poof*, I’m on the link blog. I wasn’t looking for or expecting this (as opposed to Hugh shamelessly begging for a link to English Cut, the world’s only blog on bespoke tailoring) but I like it. Thanks Robert.

And BTW, Robert – keep doing what you’re doing. There are a lot of voices in the blog world (is the term blogosphere starting to sound corny to anyone else yet?) – yours is one that sparks thought, and lots of us enjoy reading it. Even the ones who don’t can’t say you don’t highlight interesting issues (generally, they like the issue – they don’t like your point of view. They don’t have to read or agree with it, either… just like they don’t have to read or agree with mine. Isn’t America great!)

Hi Sandy!

2005-03-18T21:06:00.000-08:00

An old friend popped up on the radar tonight. Sandy Kemsley, a former exec from FileNet I had business with, sent me a change-of-email-address form and we reconnected a bit by e-mail. Sandy’s one of the folks who “got” the whole electronic forms thing at FileNet, and her forward thinking was largely responsible for the attention our solution got there (thanks Sandy) and also helped moved FileNet to buy us before we could pit them and Microsoft against each other (you bitch!).

Sandy is one of the most forward-thinking and knowledgeable tech executives I know. She’s an entrepreneur at heart, having founded and run a couple of successful businesses in addition to cracking the code at FileNet (she worked directly for the President. Business Process Management is one of her areas of knowledge, although she’s also a great system and business architect (you reading, Harry?) and is equally fluent in the language of systems and the language of business. An extraordinary woman, and she has a sense of humor like you wouldn’t believe. Truly a joy to work with. She’s consulting on her own again, through her company Kemsley Design. Good for her.

I remembered tonight that Sandy was the first person I knew other than Harry that had something like a blog. It wasn’t called that back then, but she travelled extensively and put travelogue entries and photos up on a website and updated it often. That’s what a blog is today. Wonder if she still does/has that?

Good to hear from you, Sandy. Lets keep in touch.

p.s. just make your trip to Miami a couple of weeks instead of one and drive the convertible down. By the time you reach Georgia you’ll stop freezing your ass off!

Fruit of the Day...

2005-03-18T06:45:00.000-08:00

Apple got flamed today in an article by CNET senior editor Molly Wood entitled “The Strong Arm of Apple”. The article was designed to spark controversy (good articles often do, don’t they) and Ms. Wood did a good job in that, but I was amazed by some of the comments. I’ve written before about the religious war that still seems to be present in some minds between Apple and Microsoft, and the comments again prove the battles are still raging. Here’s how the article started:

Poor Apple. It must be exhausting having to constantly run around threatening and even filing lawsuits, developing new schemes to get money out of iPod accessory makers, convincing Motorola to delay the launch of its most hotly anticipated phone since the Razr, and convincing would-be Shuffle imitators to dump their product or face--you guessed it--"legal options."

Apple is growing up – it has been for some years now. With the return of Steve Jobs, the company has very successfully added a lucrative line of business, and not just hardware, but great services – some would argue the iPod' target=_blank>iPod and iPod' target=_blank>related stuff ARE the business of Apple today. But some long for the “good old days” of the Apple club/cult (hey, I was a member – still am in some ways) rather than the reality of today.

Here’s part of what I wrote:

Its interesting that as Apple works harder to monetize the iPod phenomenon and to better protect their secrets, which many (including shareholders like me) expect makes it a BETTER company, they get lambasted for being a WORSE company. C'mon. The article was slanted to get a rise, and it clearly did.

I don't recall anyone forcing the accessory manufacturers to sign up for the iPod program. If they're not using the logo or other Apple IP to promote their product, who cares? If they are, they have the choice to stop infringing and gain permission (some will do this), ignore the issue (some will do this) or sign up for what will very likely be a lift in their revenues and profits by better riding Apple's coattails, and having the direct not indirect benefit of Apple's well oiled marketing machine.

Grow up, folks. Its a business, not a knitting circle. In business you pursue profits, build channels and protect your brand and your intellectual property.

I like what Steve is doing with the company, I like seeing the diversification, and I love the stock price. He’s smiling in this picture because he can hear the sound of the cash register ringing Keep up the good work Steve Jobs.

And the Winner Is...

2005-03-17T21:08:00.000-08:00

The winner of the 2005 Bloggies “Best American Weblog” category I sponsored is…

Dooce. Congratulations, Heather. Your $20.05 is on its way…

Runners-up in this category were Go Fug Yourself (apparently a fashion blog, or blog on ugly fashion), Eschaton (blog by Florida Congressman Allen Boyd), Tequila Mockingbird (I’m not going to try to describe this one) and Wonkette (a very popular gossipy political inside-the-Beltway blog). Of these, Dooce is the only one I’ve read and that only occasionally so I can’t recommend them (I voted for Halley’s Comment, but she didn’t make the cut). But a bunch of other people must have liked them… Internet democracy being what it is.

Dooced also won the Most Humorous Weblog and Best Tagline of a Weblog Bloggie categories. That’s like $180 total. Rock on, sister – but don’t spend it all on that crazy “girls going wild” outing or you’ll be sorry.

p.s. before I get flamed for allegedly taking credit for someone else’s work I should point out I was only one sponsor of this category – eventually The Blog Herald and Julie also piled on. I wonder if they’re taking credit for MY work?

Good Evening, Mr. President...

2005-03-17T20:00:00.000-08:00

OK, I’ve finally given in and added the Bill Clinton Daily Diary blog to the blahgRoll. I laugh my ass off every time I read this thing. It took me two posts when I first read it to figure out its a spoof. Its funnier than a three-legged dog.

Whoever writes this thing has captured the essence of what I think Clinton’s writing would be like if he did author his own blog. Which is absurd in and of itself, since he’d never do it (if the former president did have a blog, I’ll bet there would be loads of editors involved).

His politics aside, if you didn’t get enough Clinton Comedy while he was in office you have to check this out!

p.s. if you’re reading, Mr. President, I’m sorry. I know its cruel but the devil made me do it.

Speak Up, Why Don't You?

2005-03-17T16:57:00.000-08:00

These Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 2.0 desktop PC speakers got a stellar review and “Editor’s Choice” designation from PC Magazine Online today. Great user reviews on Amazon, too. I’m always leery of the sound quality of PC speakers – unless you’re up at the high end, over $150 range they’ve all tended to sound crappy to me. But these look promising – good sound quality at a sub-$100 price according to the reviews. Might be worth checking out.

I Found a Joint Today...

2005-03-17T11:38:00.000-08:00

Like Robert Scoble, I am, in fact, a “fat white guy”. And, I love to eat.

Driving around today looking for a bite, and I stopped into a place I used to frequent for breakfast years ago. Changed hands a couple of times – a little hole-in-the-wall place. Which, as it turns out now, makes an AWESOME burger and fries.

Check out the Whistlestop Cafe in Port Salerno if you have a chance. Its a tiny burger and sandwich joint on the west side of A-1–A just south of Salerno Road. Great eats – I had a hard time deciding between the sausage and peppers and the burger until I saw one. It was great!

Higher Learning...

2005-03-16T06:02:00.000-08:00

I’m all for continual learning, and was happy to hear a friend telling me about his entering a Masters of Public Administration program at the Wayne Huizenga School of Business. Good for him – it will be a lot of work, and he’s doing it for the right reasons – knowledge first, piece of paper second.

Seth Godin recently posted on the topic of 30 business books that having been read equal an MBA. Tongue in cheek, of course, but you get the point. I’d certainly put a book on business planning from the prolific Fast Forward MBA series on the list. The book is Fast Forward MBA in Business Planning and Growth by Philip Walcoff, is 240 (small) pages short, and is the most effective resource I’ve seen on bridging the all-too-common gap between what I’ll call planning for operations, strategic planning and the “traditional” (i.e. “we’re looking for money and need one”) business plan.

One of the key tenets of this book is that strategic planning and action planning/ops can’t really be separate endeavours – they have to be integrated. I agree. During the Tech hey-day, companies thought they could write a couple of points on a cocktail napkin and *poof* get funded. Some in our company thought it was that easy (to be fair, they had a very vocal outsider in their ear whispering that point). And, to be fair, a few companies DID get funded on cocktail-napkin business plans. Which didn’t do a damned thing to help their business, their employees or their investors! With the plan you can easily generate from this three-step methodology, you’ll have a tool to help you better manage and grow your business, and if you need something to raise money from, this will be way more helpful than that cocktail napkin!

The planning methodology in this book is very simple to understand, and not much more difficult to implement. The concepts can apply to businesses of nearly any size, and I’ve seen it effectively implemented in two small businesses. If you’re interested in the topic, spend the 15 bucks or so and give it a read.

Summer's Here...

2005-03-15T12:18:00.000-08:00

Summer arrived today in South Florida. Early summer, granted, but summer. The way I know is that today is one of the two significant weather days of the year I’ve written about before – the day when the humidity returns. Oh, sure… we’ll get the tease of a few more nights with the windows open, maybe even one more cold front, but its so humid right now that it HAS TO BE summer.

Bummer.

I hate having the AC on with the house all buttoned up for months at a time. Doesn’t seem right… must be my New England upbringing. I want that fresh air, but not when its so thickly-humid I can cut it with a knife…