Facts versus Meaning

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There are two main types of thinking in this world. Fact based and meaning based. The fact based people look for evidence to ideas. If they find that evidence they now have support for those ideas. If not, they reformulate the idea. Hypothesis if you will. They could also find evidence that leads them in a direction wholly different than their idea.

These people see the world around them and they enjoy the splender of what is. They may enjoy the idea of deeper meaning. But they don’t need deeper meaning to enjoy what is plainly on the surface for all to see.

The other group of people are meaning based people. Evidence is more subject to these people. They will find evidence in whatever supports their claims for meaning. This thought process is probably the same process that is used for all kinds of things from religious or spiritual experiences to alien abduction stories, ghost stories, witch hunts, government or secret society or corporate conspiracies. Not to mention urban legends and hunts for big foot or whatever. For these people it all starts with trying to find meaning. Usually it goes something like this:

“Wow look at these foot prints, they’re huge.”

“Yeah I wonder what made these?”

“Have you ever heard of that half-man half-ape-like creature that is supposed to live in the woods? ”

… and it goes on from there. They will come to whatever conclusions they come to in order to bring meaning to their discovery. Much like a fact based person might do. The difference is usually that the fact based person will not jump to conclusions based purely on imaginative ideas drummed up in a conversation.

We’ve all been meaning type people. When we were kids especially. A way of flexing our imagination. Hey it’s fun. It’s also usually harmless, except when it’s extreme and forms unhealthy beliefs and fuels harmful actions.

Examples of the extreme are everywhere throughout history. From witch hunts to human sacrifice to appease the gods. Even in the modern era we have people that would stop certain legislation simply because of their beliefs that are based purely on meaning and not fact. Idea that may not even be their own, but ideas passed down to them generation to generation.

For a lot fo these people, the older it is the more meaningfull it must be. They don’t often stop to question it. Instead they march on and often look for whatever they can find to back up their already set bias while dismissing whatever may conflict with it.

To me that is what is most interesting about the meaning based people. The fact that they have a bias and will even dismiss other meaning based claims that do not support or conflict with their bias. Sometimes they will dismiss another claim until at a later point they can be convinced that it does not conflict with their bias and maybe even supports it. At which point they may adopt that claim themselves. They same is true for facts with these people. If a fact conflicts with their bias they won’t support it and may even go so far as to look for ways to dismiss the fact as unfactual entirely.

An example of this may very well be the theory of evolution. So many religious people dismised evolution because they felt it conflicted with their bias. It’s only when some figured out a way to make it work and not conflict that they accepted it. Yet there are many who will still dismiss it because they are not convinced that it doesn’t conflict.

Another example is alien life. While unlike evolution there is no evidence of alien life visiting our planet this is an example of one claim either conflicting or not conflicting with another. if their religious persons bias allows for alien life they may also then adopt a belief that aliens have been visiting our planet. However if it does conflict they will pass that off and make the truthful claim that there is no evidence while still holding another claim without evidence as being true.

How fluid we are as people that we can do such things. Hold one unsupported claim in high regard and another as completely false. What deception we must lead ourselves into.

Deeper meaning is often what we bring into something that is otherwise plainly plain. It’s not that it has deeper meaning in and of itself. More often it just is what it is. We make more of it than it really is. Like listening to a song that was written to really mean one thing, but to us it means something else entirely. Most likely because the artist themselves never disclosed their meaning and left us to figure it out on our own. What the artist really did was masterful. They figured out how to sell us mystery. They gave us a start and let us build on it ourselves. Either alone or as a sommunity shooting ideas back and forth between us. People love mystery because it sparks our natural urge to find meaning it in.

We’re all in a sense detectives when it comes to mystery. Most of us are bad detectives who have no training in detective work. We don’t follower proper proceedure. Instead we jump to conclusions hoping to get lucky. We’ve all seen too many movies where the hero going on gut instinct alone is rewarded by a payoff. But in reality that doesn’t usually work. Sometimes we do get lucky but it depends on what the odds are to begin with. If you’re looking to land on red or black you’ve got a 50/50 shot and your gut instict might pay off. But when it comes to most things in life it’s not a 50/50 shot. There are way too many factors at play. Many of which we aren’t even aware of. In which case it’s better to follow proven proceedure and hunt down the facts.

What doesn’t help when hunting down facts is bias. It tends to get in our way and cloud our thinking.

Facebook comments

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Facebook has a commenting system you can install on other websites (like this one) that allow people to comment on those websites using the familiar facebook comment box. See the comment box below this post.

I’ve decided to give it a whirl on this site. I had previously been using the Disqus commenting system, but I’ve noticed on other sites that do use Facebook comments, there tends to be more comments and more interaction. Plus there is a certain amount of kickback to the site, because most people who leave a comments do not uncheck the box that says “post comment to my wall” which means their comments gets posted to their wall and their friends see it. That means more exposure for the article itself.

How do you feel about facebook comments on other websites?

Idea Stealing

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What about people stealing my ideas and making a boatload of money off them?

That certainly can and has happened to people. But how often? Honestly I don’t know the numbers so I’m going to make an assumption. It sounds to me like one of those rare occurrences that happen that are so scary they make for larger legend than common occurrence.

For example, people are all afraid because of these mass shootings that happen. But in reality mass shootings don’t happen that often. On average, mass shootings actually account for a very small fraction of all shootings. But when they do happen they get a lot of press and they scare a lot of people. For that reason people believe they happen more often then they actually do.

I think the same is probably true about idea stealing and making millions of bucks. It’s probably happened a small fraction of times and gotten enough press to scare everyone away from sharing their ideas openly. Let’s face it, everyone has an ego and everyone thinks that their ideas are worth a million dollars. But are they really? Maybe they are in some people hands and not in others.

Personally I think the biggest boundary to idea stealing is laziness. Just because people have your idea doesn’t mean they are going to do anything with it. They may love the idea but never lift a finger to make it happen. I mean if it’s such a great idea why haven’t you? It was your idea afterall. What is your excuse? If it’s time, money, lack of skilset, lack of help, maybe you need to remember that most other people are probably going to face the same boundaries as you. Even if they have the time, money and resources to make it happen it’s possible they just don’t care enough to do anything about it. It could also be as simple and them just not wanting to steal the idea. I’ve had friends tell me stories that they were sure would make great films. They knew I made films. They ran the risk of me stealing those ideas and cutting them out completely. But even if I thought they were good ideas I wasn’t as passionate about those ideas as they were. Plus I was a good enough guy to not want to steal it from them.

Aside from laziness, resources and capabilities are probably the second biggest reason people aren’t going to steal your ideas.

From what I’ve learned, it’s usually not the idea that makes the big money. Ideas are a dime a dozen as they say. It’s a certain implementation of that idea that does. That implementation usually comes down to resources and capabilities. The Apple iPad is a perfect example of that. There were plenty of tablet computers before the iPad and none had the success it did. The success of the iPad came down to a number of factors, including available techology, timing and design. Who would want to use an tablet computer in the 1990′s that was two inches thick and not as responsive? Previous tablets used Microsoft Windows, an operating system designed for a desktop computing environment. Most tablets also used pen(stylus) input rather than finger tips. It took a perfect storm of technology, design, style and who knows what else to make the iPad a success. A certain implementation of the tablet to make it a success when all other implementations failed for all the reasons above.

So the moral is that even if you have a killer idea, maybe it’s not the right time for it. Maybe you yourself don’t have the resources and capabilites to make it happen and maybe others don’t either. How would the movie Jurassic Park have turned out if they made it five years prior when they didn’t have the computer animation technology to make such realistic looking dinosaurs? They had planned to use stop-motion animation. It would not have had the same affect.

Another capability is fame. Think about Stephen King as an example. Stephen King can keep writing best-selling books because Stephen King already has a name out there that’s well-known. So all Stephen King has to do is write a new book and chances are it’s going to be a bestseller or least make enough money that he can live off of it for a while. Even if it’s a terrible book he’s still going to sell X number of copies to loyal fans.

On the other hand Joe Blow may not be able to make any money off of his first book as he doesn’t have a well-recognized name. Even if the story is better than a book by Stephen King. Maybe Joe Blow doesn’t have a publisher or the right publisher or the right kind of cover art to get people’s attention.  

So lets pretend a different scenario in which Stephen King came along and took your idea and made a million dollars off of it. There was no guarantee that you were ever going to make a cent off of it, because you are Joe Blow and he is Stephen King. He has the capabilites and resources. He’s already a freight train in motion and you’re still looking for a way to get on the track. Would Stephen King steal your idea? Probably not. Even if he did it’s just an idea and remember what I said already about implementation. It’s still possible for you to show up later with a better implementation of that idea. Remember that Stephen King sells books, complete as they are. Not ideas by themselves.

Last but not least we have to face the inevitable possibility that your idea just sucks. Maybe that should be the first reason why you shouldn’t fear it being stolen instead of laziness. But be as it may I left it for last. Like I said before, everyone has an ego and thinks their idea is way cool. Why? Because it’s their idea and they like it, so why wouldn’t other people like it as well? Right? People tend to think they are more in tune with the masses they they are. At best they serve a niche audience which could be incredibly small and not profitable enough to be a million dollar bread winner. At worst, their idea has already been done to death and even that niche audience is sick of it, no matter its implementation.

The point is, people freak themselves out all the time with their own paranoia about their stories and ideas being stolen. I’ve even heard people say that ideas have energy and if you tell someone about it, then it loses some of that energy. Come on! What kind of crazy superstition is that? The truly creative people usually have a million ideas and they throw them out there left and right and see which ones stick. They aren’t afraid to practice their idea fostering by bouncing off other people or even throwing some out there to see what others would do differently with it.

Cameras I’ve owned

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Because I’m a geek and I get bored sometimes, like tonight, I’ve decided to write a blog entry about the cameras I’ve owned. Maybe it’s also because part of me wants to document this knowing that my memory is only bound to get worse as I get older.

I wasn’t actually interested in photography as a kid. i became interested in video when my partents bought their first Video8 Sony Handycam. I think i was maybe nine or ten at the time. I would run around with that as much as I could. My parents took me to Disneyworld at age 12, the year MGM Studios opened. That’s when I became fascinated with filmmaking and animation. By the next year I was using the handycam to shoot stop motion movies of G.I. JOE figures and clay models.

By the time I reached high school I was seriously interested in being a filmmakers when I grew up. I was making short movies with my friends all the time. But my highschool didn’t offer a video club or class, only photography. So I took it, thinking it was close enough but not realizing how valuable it would actually be. I enjoyed the photography but not the class assignments, so I failed. This was sophmore year.

To take that class I had to have an SLR camera. I had found my parents old Minolta XG9 they had bought in 1979, (the year I was born) at the top of the bedroom closet and asked to borrow it. They said it sure, but it was broke, that’s why they hadn’t used it in years. Turns out it just needed new batteries.

Even though I had failed my first photography class, I was still interested in photography itself, so I continued to use the camera over the course of the next year. Even spent $100 on a brand new Quantaray (Sigma) 28mm f2.8 lens to go along with the 50mm f1.8 that camera already had.

By senior year I asked the photography teacher if I could take her class again. I had to get her signature because I had failed the first time. She signed my paper, but told me the only reason she was doing so was because she didn’t want to teach English and needed more students for the class.

We had three levels of photography, beginner, intermediate and portfolio. It’s possible there was an advanced between intermediate and portfolio but I don’t remember. What I do remember is that I started as a beginner, within a week I was bumped to intermediate. By my second semester, I was portfolio. I still wasn’t fond of the assignments themselves but my skills had improved after a year or two of practice. Plus being a senior I think my teacher realized this was my last year, I needed to prepare a portfolio for college and I did my best work if she just let me do my own thing.

As a result of that I was the only student to win a nationl photography award in my entire school district, plus a local award for another photo and had several of my photos used in school publications. I had come all the way from behind to the top of the class in a matter of months. That second semester of photography my senior year was a great time in my life. I had also met my first true love in that class and we dated for four and half years.

By the end of that school year, having graduated and gotten out I became obsessed with autofocus cameras and wanted to get my hands on one. So I saved my money and I bought a Canon Elan II.

 

I believe I paid $500 for it and bought it from Beach Camera in NYC over the phone. It came with a 28-80 kit lens. Nothing special. But my choice was between the Canon and the Nikon F70. I actually kind of wanted the F70 more because it was a Nikon and was all black. I had a bit of a lust for Nikon back then. But I bought the Canon instead because it had more bells and whistles, the autofocus was faster , it was a litte cheaper if I remember right and my girlfriend and friend agreed that it seemed like the better buy overall.

I don’t remember how long I owned the Elan II, but it was maybe only a year or two. I had a hard time with it. I had taken it with my to Europe for a couple weeks and when i got back I wasn’t thrilled with my photos. All the exteriors turned out decent by none of the interiors did. I wasn’t used to a zoom lens with a slower aperture at the time. I had ventured into a whole new world of photography that was no longer about old 1970′s cameras and developing your own black & white film. As a result I didn’t really understand photography as well as I thought. I still hadn’t become a gear geek by that time. I was mostly operating on intuition and luck. Apparently those two things were what got me through high school photography and winning a couple awards. But I didn’t realize that yet, I just though the Elan II wasn’t a very good camera. Plus I didn’t care for the silver color anymore and didn’t like the overly plastic feel of the thing. I was longing for the good old mechanical cameras again and had developed an obsession with getting the sharpest optics i could find in my price range. So at this poiint I made one of the stupidest choices I could have made. i traded my Elan II at a camera swapmeet for a used Contax 167MT with a 50mm Zeiss. My Elan II was still in like-new shape and I think I even paid an extra $50 to make the swap.

It’s not that I ws swindled on the deal. At the time I certainly didn’t feel that way. But looking back I wish I would have kept the Canon, learned how to really use it and stared buying other lenses for it. Still, the Contax was a beautiful camera and that Zeiss lens was the sex. At some point I also picked up that Tamron 28mm Yashica mount lens to go with it. To be honest I don’t even remember owning that lens until I dug out the picture above. So I probably didn’t use it too much. I think I owned the Contax for about a year or so, eventually realizing that I could afford any other Zeiss glass for it. At least that I was willing to afford. So I sold it and bought a Nikon FE with 50mm series E lens and eventually a couple cheap Quantaray zooms.

At some point in this period I also picked up a used twin lens Yashica medium format camera and shot a few rolls. Never went to far with that camera though.

 

I still own this Nikon FE. In fact it’s sitting on the desk in front of me as I type this. But the only lens left is the 50mm. I’ve now had it for eleven years or so. Out of all the cameras I’ve owned, this one I’ve owned the longest. Partly because it ended up suiting me best out of all the film cameras I tried. Partly because it’s a great camera that keeps ticking, partly because it’s the last film camera I ever bought and partly because once digitla hit, the value became so low that it wasn’t worth it to sell. I figured that even if I never used it again, it would still look pretty on a shelf.

Ever couple of years I run a roll of film through it, just to have that taste of film again. But ultimately it’s a decoration. Although I’ve had serious consideration running a roll of Velvia through it next week to get some fall colors. But when I consider what it’s going to cost me to buy the film, develop and scan it, I have second thoughts.

The Digital Era

My first digital camera was actually a video camera. A Sony TRV900 that I bought brand new from B&H in NYC for $2000. That was in 1999 and I had bought it by saving my money from driving tuck around the country. I was 20 years old and still passionate about being a filmmaker.

The TRV900 had a PCMCIA slot on the back of it and came with a floppydisk drive that plugged into that slot. That was you could take 720×480 photos with it. About a third of a megapixel resolution. But because it was a 3CCD camera, the color wasn’t took bad at all. I had a blast shooting photos with it. Because it was right around the time we started to use the internet more and I learned HTML and started building my own web pages. So it was great to be able to share some digital photos and begin messing around with Photoshop for the first time.

A couple year later I bought a little Canon S20 point and shoot digital camera. It expanded my digital photography fun with it’s 3 megapixel quality and small size. But I’m not going to get into all the point and shoot cameras I’ve had or even all the DV cameras I have owned over the years. I’ll save that for another post. Let’s just say that between digital video cameras and still photo cameras i spent way more money on DV cameras at this point in my life (199-2003) than I did still cameras. Because my interest was still more with film/video. But I mention the TRV900 here because it really was my first real introduction to digital photography.

My first digital SLR camera was the Canon Digital Rebel (300D). I would have perferred a Nikon because I owned my FE and a couple other Nikon lenses. But the Nikon DSLR’s were still way out of my price range. The Canon 300D was the first affordable digital SLR and even then I bought it used about a year or two after it came out.

 

Owning the Digital Rebel was sort of like owning the Elan II again, becuase it was a Canon, it was plastic and it was silver colored. But by this point in my life I had warned up to Canon a little more having owned a Canon Video8 camera, a $3000 Canon XL1 DV camera, the Canon S20 point and shoot digital camera and realizing I had made a mistake selling the Elan II years before. Plus this was a digital SLR, the first time I really got to take quality digital photos with real control over depth of field.

The digital rebel did more than just let me take great photos though, it really opened me up to learning photography even more. It was the first time I really experimented with going full manual with a camera. Up until this point I was mostly shooting aperture priority on my film SLR’s. I never got too risky because film was expensive. Although I did own a light meter and used it for 16mm movie film and super 8 film, I didn’t shoot either one of those formats more than a few times, so not enough to really practice manual exposure. But the rebel let me take SLr quality photos, see the results right away and manipulate them in photoshop. So I learned a lot quicker.

I owned the rebel for at least a good three years. But I hit a tight financial spot in my life around ’08-’09 and ended up pawning the rebel to get some money, my intention was to go and get it back after a couple weeks, but I actively made the choice at the time that I just couldn’t afford to. I don’t remember the details, but I’m sure if I had managed my money a little differently I probably could have easily gotten it out of the shop. but at that point i knew the camera was getting a little old and outdated and would realized what I had gotten from the pawn shop was probably about what I would get selling it to an individual so I just let it go.

I went about 6 months to a year without a digital SLR after letting go of the digital rebel. My finances got a little better and I bought a used Nikon D40 body off someone on Craigslist.

 

I really liked the Nikon D40. Although it was the same resolution as the digital Rebel had been, it was an upgrade in overall design, with a larger screen on the back, an all black body which I prefer and that great Nikon feel to it. I shot a lot of nice photos with this camera, like I did with the the rebel. But just like the rebel, about a year later I hit financial hard times and decided to sell it along with that Quantaray 28-80 lens in the picture above. Which is why my Nikon FE only has the 50mm now.  Strantley enough, the whole time I owned the Nikon D40 I never used the autofocus on it because I never owned an autofocus lens that would work on it. my 50mm is all manual and the Quantaray in the picture, while being an AF lens, is the older tpye of AF lens that requires the camera have an AF motor built into the body, which the D40 didn’t. Nikon sadly enough decided to reserve their in-body motors to only their more expensive cameras. I would have needed to buy a Nikon G style lens that has the motoer built into the lens itself.

About another year or more passed without me owning a DSLR because of finances and desires to buy other things. But at this point 2009-2011 DSLR’s were changing big time. They were now shooting video! Something I had been waiting for and I had imagined would be coming eventually. Now my two worlds of photography and video were colliding into single cameras. On top of that they were producing video quality that was very cinematic looking and high definition.

In January of 2011 I came into a few thousand dollars. Legally of course, but unexpected money. My first thought was “camera” and I proceeded to purchase a brand new Nikno D7000 with kit lens, 35mm f1.8 lens and Nikon Speedlite. About $2000 total.

I keep the camera for about three weeks. Generally loved it, but realized that there were better DSLR’s out there for shooting video. Not to mention I felt really bad about having spent $2000 on a camera like that. I should have just kept it, my girlfriend told me I should keep it and remember thinking she is probably right, I should just keep it. Not only would be be a solid camera to own, but also an investment. But I didn’t keep it. I returned it. Then took the money and bought a bought a Panasonic GH1 kit brand new for $400, shipping included direct from Panasonic.

 

 

The GH1 had multiple thigns going for it. I realized when owning the nikon D7000 that I wanted to shoot my video than photos. I wanted a flip out LCD screens because I had to used to them when shooting video with traditional video cameras and I the GH1 was hackable and highly regarded in the video community. Not to mention I was saving myself a ton of money and I could buy cheap adapters to use my Nikon 50mm and my own Minolta lenses on it.

I still own the GH1. I’ve owned it for about a year and half now. It’s a great little camera. But I’ll be honest, when I first got it, I hated it. It felt little and cheap and I really wanted to keep that Nikon D7000, just not at the price or the lack of video functionality compared to the GH1. Eventually I got used to the GH1 and I adore it. That said, even though I’ve shot some great photos on the GH1 and have learned to use it really well, it’s not the best photo camera. It lacks the overall sharpness and the beautiful color that Canon and Nikon cameras have and I find myself desiring to pick up one of those brands just for photography alone. It’s a subtle thing, but enough that I see it.

I should also note that back in March of of 2011, after having returned the D7000 and buying a GH1, I also bought a Canon 60D. This was back when the GH1 was still new to me and I was still coping with the smaller size and not sure where I wanted to be in the camera world. The Canon 60D seemed to me like the best of breed between the Gh1 and the D7000. Bigger body and sensor, but still teh flip out LCD screen. Better video than the D7000 but not quite as expensive, also not built quite as well though. I thought the 60D was great for photography. But at this point I already owned the GH1 and knew I wasn’t letting go of it because of how cheap it was to buy. The deciding factor was when I took both camera to my nieces wedding shower and shot video of it. The Canon proved to be more headache with bigger files sizes, record time limitations and no reeal autofocus during video recording. The GH1 was solid all the way though. At the time, my choice was based a lot on the idea that a buddy and I were going to start shooting wedding videos on the side to earn a little extra cash. That ended up fizzling out in a matter of months. So it was difficult to keep the 60D in light of that plan. I knew my momney would be better spend on an audio recorder, some extra gear and possibly a second GH1. But by the time I went to go buy a seond GH1 they had already sold out on that $400 deal and I had other bills I needed to use the money for.

Now and into the future

As I said, I still own the GH1 and the Nikon FE. Like the FE, the GH1 will probably stick around long term mostly because I paid so little for it and it’s value isn’t great enough for me to want to sell it. So it will probably end up being the digital SLR* I always have and can fall back on. But I have been getting the itch to buy a better photography camera. I can count on the GH1 for video work when I need it and to be honest, the way things are shaping up you really can’t count on one camera doing both equally well. There are newer large sensor video cameras on the market now that are far better suited for video/filmmaking, like the Black Magic Cinema camera and possibly the GH3.

I was kind of hoping the new panasonic GH3 would have better photo quality while keeping the great video quality and hackability of the GH2. It’s not released yet to the public and the intial photos I’m seeing don’t look as fantastic as I would hope. But I don’t really know for sure yet. Still I don’t think it’s going to match what Canon and Nikon can do with stills. As I said above, best of both worlds in one camera is a little unrealistic. But I have been eyeing it as a possible upgrade option, even if just for video.

However I’ve also been considering picking up a Canon or Nikon for photography. But these days it’s a hard sell for me. I love photography but I’m not getting paid to use my own photo gear for client shoots and I don’t do as much photography as video. Most of my photographs are personal snapshots done on my iPhone where its easy to manipulate, upload and share with friends. So unless I’m shooting clients or going out for a dedicated photo walk, I’m hard pressed to pull out a big camera. Maybe it’s because I’m 33 now and not 20 anymore. I work full time. I do video work for a living with some photography scattered in there every so often. I use the companies gear for my pro work and my GH1 here and there if I desire a certian look. So when I get home I’m not itching to go do what I do at work. But part of me would still like to own a nice still photography camera. Something like the new Nikon D600 or Canon 6D and stockpile a nice primes to go with it.

I’ve been kicking myself for years for not keeping that Canon Elan II and leanring how to use it and building up an arsenal of Canon glass over the last 15 years. If I would have stuck with that one system, focused on shooting more photography and buying more glass, I wouldn’t be writing this blog entry now and I would have been prepared for the DSLR video revolution by already having a  stockpile of great lenses. But I had to be a gear geek and try out a whole bunch of cameras over the years.

Well as much as I can kick myself I can also say it was a good thing how I did it. I got to try out a bunch of stuff and see what I liked and why. I may be anemic on lenses right now considering I’ve rebooted every so many years, but that’s ok. I could argue that I’ve had my Nikon FE for over a decade and still only managed to keep one lens for it and never bought any others that were more than $100 a piece. So obviously I’ve never been a big spender on glass. The most expensive lens I ever bought for a still camera was a Tokina for my Digital Rebel for $350 and that was sold off as well. So why kick myself for what I should of or could have done, because obviously I didn’t.

Moving forward though, I can see the benefit in being more stable with my cameras. Now that stills and video cameras are using the same lenses, it’s a lot more of an incentive to for me latch onto a single system and build up a collection of lenses. It would probably be a good investment as well. You never know how things are going to go. Having a kit you can rely on for doing freelance work should something happen, is a good backup plan.

It’s late, this post has been droning on and I probably have a ton of spelling and grammar errors, not to mention want to add or edit some content here. So I do declare this post to be unfinished and fluid, count on it to change in time.
*Yeah I know it’s not technically an SLR, whatever. It works similarly.

Apple philosophy finally emerging victorious

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Rememeber back in the 1980′s and 1990′s when the desktop computer revolution was really taking off for most of the American population? Back then Apple actually started the personal computer revolution. Their philosophy was to control the whole widget. They wanted to sell you a computer, the operating system that went with it and even the software that ran on it. But computers were expensive. When Microsoft came around with all those less expensive peersonal computers that were open to running software anyone could build for them, people started picking those up. It was really a lot about price, performance and rapidly evolving market where Moores Law was in full effect. Soon Apple found itself in a bad place, without the vision of it’s original founders and nearly bankrupt by the middle of the 90′s. People were flocking to where the market was and the market was interested in rapidly developing, lower priced commodity PC’s running Microsoft Windows.

Fast forward to the 1998+ Era of Apple. The return of Steve Jobs and the philosophy of selling you the whole widget. So what changed? Well, Apple started putting more emphasis on design and building a premium product. But even then they didn’t gain a ton of market share. What they were gaining was a lot of mindshare as begain trendsetting the look of modern computers and a modern operating system.

It was the release of iTunes for Windows and the iPod that really gave Apple its second breath. It introducted a lower cost Apple product to the masses of windows users who either hadn’t even considered an Apple product before or felt they couldn’t justify the extra cost and migration to an Apple computer.

But something else started happening around that time as well. By the mid 2000′s desktop computers were becoming less important as laptop computers were gaining in speed and shrinking in price. More people began to shift to laptops; not needing the full power of a desktop machine. People found themselves doing more simple tasks, like watching movies, listening to music and browsing the web. Consoles like the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 began to take over computer gaming, so even the desktop gamers were shifiting their computing priorities somewhat.

It wasn’t just one thing that brought Apple back from near obscurity. For as brillant as Steve Jobs might have been as a product guy and marketing guy, there are always other factors involved. It just so happened that the stars lined up in favor of Apples “whole widget” philosophy. Even though computers continued to get faster and more powerful, the people using them were doing things with them that hadn’t changed much in a 4-5 year period. The internet was really the biggest draw for using a computer and that didn’t really require a new more powerful machine two years.

The period of late 2006 to mid 2007 is where I pinpoint the paradigm shift actually happening. That’s the point in time where Nintendo released their game chaning console the Nintendo Wii and Apple released the original iPhone. These two products proved to the market that “more power” was no longer the answer people were looking for as they had been for the last two decades. The shift was all about new ways to interact with your devices.

Now Apple had fully evolved the successful iPod into a personal hand held computer. The ability to subsidize the hardware cost through cell carrier contracts also helped bring the cost down and put the iPhone in more peoples hands. It was the first really substantial touch screen cell phone that proved to teh market that touch screen devices were a via option and the way forward. But more importantly with the release of the SDK (software development kit) for the iPhone, Apple was the first to market with a truly next generation computer platform that developers could build applications for.

It’s been five years now since the first iphone was released and few years since the release of the iPad. Apples larger tablet computer based on the same operating system as the iPhone. These two products have sealed Apple into the market, making them the largest most valuable publically held technology company as of this year. But what’s most interesting is that these two products more any other have stuck to the philosophy of controlling the whole widget. Even Mac OS for as closed as it is, can be ported to run on other generic PC hardware, and have software sideloaded onto it without any hacks. Whereas iOS requires apps that are purchased from the guarded Apple App Store. This means that Apple finally controls the whole widget, the hardware, the operating system and what apps can and cannot be run on the devices.

So is this philosophy any good?
Yes and no, depending on who you are. If you are like the millions of people out there that just want something that works without any fuss, then this is a philosophy you want to buy into. However if you’re one of the more geeky among us that wants to tinker, customize and brave a world that may not be so secure, you’re probably better off with Android. There are definitely benefits to both.

In the Android realm you get the most choice of hardware, you can tinker with your software and customize your Android setup till your heart is content. But you’re living in a realm that may cause you to fall victim to software exploits, you’re living in a fragmented world where the hardware you choose may not be supported with the latest Android releases and you’re stuck with a limited number of third party accessories for your device. Simply because there are so many different Android devices it’s hard to support them all with third party products.

In the realm of iOS your hardware choices are limited to whatever Apple releases. Their hardware is beautiful and powerful, but if you were like me and looking for a larger screened iPhone, you’re out of luck until Apple releases one. On the up side, the operating system, while beginning to look and feel a little dated, is also incredibly polished for what it is. It’s designed to just work and it usually has all it’s i’s dotted and t’s crossed. The upshot to all of Apples devices running the same OS, and very similar hardware in limited choices is that developers can easily develop apps that will work on all of Apples iOS devices and the do. Often releasing iOS apps before Android apps. You also get the most third party accessory support as the iPhone and iPad have a huge eco-system of products available for them. It’s this huge eco-system of apps and third party products that really set Apples iOS devices ahead of the rest.  This wouldn’t be possible if Apple didn’t control the whole widget. If they let the kind of fragmentation that runs rampant in the Android world happen in the iOS world we wouldn’ have such a wonderful eco-system.

So today we live in the age where the “whole widget” philosophy actually pays off for Apple. The philosophy of the market has changed. It’s no longer a rat race to the bottom for the lowest price. handheld computers like msartphones and tablets have evolved into powerful, affordable handheld devices that can do amazing things and best of all different things than desktop computers.

As of the last couple of years Apple has been shifiting the things they have learned in iOS back into their laptop and desktop market as well.  The additional of a Mac App Store, multi-touch track pads for all their machines and beautiful hardware, along with a market more open to Apple products as a result of the iPod, iPhone and iPad have given them a true second wind. In addition the public has finally come around to the mentality that they just want a machine that just works. The time for the whole widget is finally here. The question is, how long will it last?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

God

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The only way in my mind to understand the concept of a monotheistic God is to view it through the lens of computer technology. Specifically video games. So I’m going to try this and if you find any holes, please reply.

For starters lets define the concepts of omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent and put them in the context of this argument.

Omnipotent = All powerful – Having control over everything in this universe
Omniscient = All knowing – Knowing everything in this universe
Omnipresent = Everywhere – In this universe

“In this universe” is the key phrase here. When any one of us play a simulation video game we too are all those things. Even more so if we are the creator of that game that can tweak it as we play it out.

Now imagine a God who is playing a simulation game. Something akin to The Sims for instance, but way more detailed.
The ability to play the game having already programmed its basic laws and tweaking it as they go. Adding expansion packs, levels and so on.

Would it be so difficult for this God to be everywhere? The ability to fly over everything and hone in on different things at different times. The ability to reverse or pause time to go back and see things that might have been missed without affecting the course of play.

Would it be so difficult for this God to know everything that is happening in the simulation? The ability to have key events pop up as alerts. The ability to know where characters are going or what they will aspire to do. The ability to let them make choices given a set of predefined options. The ability to know what choices those characters will make based on a variety of predisposed criteria/programming.

Would it be so difficult for this God to be all powerful in the simulation? The one who created the simulation, created all the options, created all the boundaries, created all the laws and created all the outcomes. The ability to reprogram and tweak the simulation at will.

Would it be so difficult for this God to play as a character (or many characters) in this simulaton themselves?

What about morality? If this God created the morality of this simulation and then did something against that morality, does it make the morality invalid or the God immoral? Is a programmer wrong if they change the code or hack something to work a certain way at a certain place even when it doesn’t jive with the rest of the code base they’ve already created? Is it wrong for this God to create the base morality and then play against it from time to time? From our perspective down here the answer is yes, from outside the simulation its probably not any more offensive then any one of us sending a lemming to their death. We don’t have to follow the morality we defined for the characters of the simulation. It’s not our morality, it’s theirs. Yet we assume that our morality is the only morality and that it must apply the same to the creator as it does to the created.

Admittedly, sometimes the universe seems to me like those out of bounds areas in video games. The ones that you will either never get to because nothing is programmed beyond them or you need to level up to access.

When God is often talked about it is said that we cannot know God or see God completely. Is this not like a character in a simulation being fully unable to see the programmer/player?

Of course like a simulation we play, how much does this God really care about each of the characters? Surely we would have no problem spiting the characters that backtalked to us or rewearding the ones that did as we bid. Likewise we could reward the bad characters or spite the good ones, just for fun.

What evidence does a character in a simulation have for the existence of a programmer/player from their perspective? None. Yet the programmer/player does exist.

What motivation does a programmer/player have to prove their existence to the characters in the simulation? Any one of use could tell our simulation characters that we exist outside of time and space and created everything. But why would we care to do that? What does it benefit our own ego to do that? When we want accepance we go to our peers or authority figures to gain it. We do not ask for acceptance from our creations. At best we USE our creations to gain acceptance from peers or authority figures.

The biggest question is, where did such a God come from? Since I’ve been playing guessing games throughout this whole post, I make no apologies about doing it here as well. Perhaps it doesn’t know. Remember that I already defined its omniscience to “this universe.” Perhaps trying to understand anything about its state of being is as difficult for us to understand as it would be for one of our own simulation characters to understand our state of being. It’s just beyond the ability of our imagination.

Like I said, to me, this is the only framing of this argument for a monotheistic God that works for my mind.

While this is just a thought, it begs the question, is it reality? Does it matter if it is or isn’t reality? Would we ever even know? Some could believe it if they want to believe it. But it seems to me that people only believe concepts like this when it benefits/rewards/scares them toward some motivation. The problem with this concept is that its such a perfect framing for a monotheistic God that it shows an unpredictable side to such a God that gains an individual human nothing of benefit, reward or fear to motivate such a belief. It’s an idea of how a monotheistic God might actually be, not how a monotheistic God might be of benefit/reward/fear to humans.

SOPA / PIPA In A Nutshell

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Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act are two bills that are designed to restructure the internet in favor of large media companies who don’t want to change their ways of doing business in the modern internet age.

That’s what all of this really comes down to. I think most of us would agree that content creators should be paid for their work. That’s not even a debate.

What this is really about is the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) wanting to stop people from pirating their movies. Their solution is not to find a better way to sell their movies, hell no! Instead they want the government to pass bills that will allow them to shut down any website without trial for even mentioning where someone could find these illegal downloads. This is a big deal because it means any website with a comment section or blogging system or social network capability would have to monitor everything being said by everyone around the clock for fear of one rogue comment that might get them shut down.

What the motion picture industry needs to do instead is get creative and offer people new ways to easily purchase their content at decent prices and greater portability. But these guys are greedy. They’d do anything they can to keep the old system in place. They want you paying $10+ for a theater ticket and then another $15-30 for disk purchase later on.

Warner Brothers recently increased its delay on new video release for Redbox, Blockbuster and Netflix from 30 days to 56 days. Why? Because they want people to buy their DVD’s and Blu-ray disks. Hey that’s their right, but it only hurts them. More and more people are discovering that they don’t want to spend $15-25 on a disk they’re probably only going to watch once or twice.

If these companies got with the program they would release immediately on the internet at $1-4 for an HD movie rental depending on how new it was. They would allow multiple services to offer these rentals in multiple platforms (TV, desktop, phone) to maximize portability. They would allow multiple ways to pay for it. There would be no delay between disk and download.

The result? Piracy would go down dramatically.

But instead they want to burdon our legal system by giving the government draconian laws to shut down websites on a whim just because someone mentioned something illegal in common speak.

It’s the wrong way to do it. Then of course you have to ask yourself, if you give the government the right to do this, how will they learn to abuse that in the future. What new and creative ways can they find to limit our freedoms based on this law?

Search First!

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I’ve been a messageboard user for well over a decade. Dating back to the late 1990′s. I love messageboards or forums as they are also called. They are a wealth of information and community. They are the precursor to modern day social networks even though messageboards are still around and thriving. But they are often not talked about on tech blogs because they aren’t new and exciting. They aren’t run by silicon valley startups with millions of dollars in venture capital or angel investors. Most of the time a messageboard community is run by a single individual who does it as a hobby and will elect certain other community members to act as forum moderators. While there are a few successful generic message forums, they mostly tend to be niche communities that focus on a given subject, such as filmmaking, religion, e-cigarettes and so on. They then break that subject down into individual forums and sub forums as a way of organizing and categorizing content.

Successful messageboards suffer from one particular problem more than anything. Repeating topics. As messageboards are often used to ask questions and get answers, community veterans find themselves answering the same questions over and over again. They get sick of it and start yelling “search first” in the comments.

I have been a member of more forums than I can count. I have also been an administer of a handful of messageboards. From my experience, people yelling “search first” tends to produce a negative effect on the members being yelled at. It makes them feel unwelcome in the community. Most of the time that message is given to new members, some of which have never used a messageboard previously. It can be a real turn off.

But what’s an even bigger turn off is that messageboards are anti-search to begin with. On one hand you have members yelling “search first” and on the other you have messageboard software that does everything in its power to prevent you from searching.

The software often buries the search form on another page which has a ton of check boxes and text areas which can immediately confuse a new user. Then after entering a term they may be returned with an error that tells them they must enter more than three characters. Upon entering more than three characters they are then returned with another error, that they must wait 30 seconds before submitting a new query. Some forums even rub salt in an open wound by making them fill out a captcha (those crazy unreadable letter/number images) before submitting their query.

Imagine if Google had all of these restrictions. Would you ever bother searching for anything? Wouldn’t it be simpler just to hit the “new post” button and ask your question in the way that you want to ask it? I bet it would.

The Solution
Forum search needs to be dead simple, limitless, powerful and looking you in the face the whole time you visit that community. Like a big long search field at the top of the forum, stacked right where all the sticky posts are. It needs to return results in real time as a member types. It needs to be limitless in the minimum number of characters or how many searches can be performed in a given period of time. Last of all, it should NOT be a process that requires a captcha.

We no longer live in an internet that is starving for resources. Today we have virtual servers, cloud hosting and nearly limitless bandwidth, even on the least expensive hosting providers. Database sharding and smarter software on more powerful machines makes search queries less painful than they used to be. Couple that with most users today being on broadband connections and there is no justifiable reason to fear extra database queries on an already niche community.

The logic is pretty simple. If you have a small community with a small amount of active users then you will have less search queries to begin with. If you have a larger community then you should probably view yourself as startup and find ways to monetize your community to pay for the extra resources you need.

Upon doing these things I think we’ll find that people will be more inclined to search first and as a result, annoy vetrans less and create a more welcoming environment.

Fashion Ad

Jeans & Shit

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Fashion Ad

Spoof Fashion Ad

I’ll be honest. The fashion world confuses me. Every time I see clips of runway models doing their walk, the first thing that comes to my mind is “what the fuck!” I’ve seen better fashion from drag queens on Jerry Springer. Thank god this plastic wrap shit doesn’t end up in stores where we commoners spend our money.

Now I know this is the new world and this blog is supposed to be all open minded and pushing the boundaries of how to approach things. So let me take this negative stance toward the fashion industry and put a positive spin on it. The one thing I do like about the fashion industry, there are no patents. That’s a beautiful thing. It means that anyone can take someones design and rework or improve upon it. This scares some. But in reality it hasn’t hurt the fashion industry. Fashion is everywhere, including those knock off designer handbags you can find from street vendors. But it doesn’t stop people from throwing down big money for the real thing, if even just for gloating.

If only we could carry this over into other industries, we might just live in a better world where innovation moves even faster that it does today. Even if some of that innovation shows itself in the form of a model in plastic wrap looking like a space villain from a low budget sci-fi flick.

Google Logo

I don’t fear Google+

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Google Logo

You would think that because my partner and I are developing SocialMore.com we would be hesitant and a little fearful of today’s announcement of Google+. This is after all Google’s answer to Facebook and social networking as a whole.

Google+ shares a few things in common with SocialMore in terms of grouping people and sharing things. But then, every new social network is going to have those things in common. So that’s not really a big concern. No doubt Google will have a lot of people wanting to use this new service of theirs. They have a good shot at dethroning Facebook or at least knocking it down a few notches. Which means we could see a whole new shift in the social networking landscape over the next few years. If history is any sign, people will become disinterested in Facebook and try out new services like Google+ and SocialMore.

So why don’t I fear Google plus? Why am I not just packing up shop and stopping development on SocialMore? The reason is simple. I think people are going to be burned out on social networking in the next couple years. That doesn’t mean it’s going to go away. No, instead it wil just become part of the fabric of the internet. In fact it always has been. People have been connecting and sharing stuff with each other since the dawn of the internet. That’s the entire point of the internet. Social networking is really just a buzz word and a set of tools that make it easier to share with people. The real power is in what those tools can do. Simple things like organizing your friends and family into groups and putting Like buttons on your stuff is just the beginning. What we intend to do with SocialMore is expand into what really matters; your content. It’s one thing to pass links around, but it’s another to get your content out there and seen by the right people.

SocialMore offers something different. Even if it doesn’t grow to be the size of Facebook or Google+ it wil certainly have its place. We’re building SocialMore because it’s something that we want to use ourselves. Something that solves a problem we’ve had for years. I know I’m teasing you right now by not telling you what that is, but there are some things we need to keep close to our chest for the moment. But I do fully believe that if you have passion and what you’re building solves a problem, it will find its place.