So here I am hanging out near the Como pavilion of Lexington in St Paul and there is a group ride for boosted boards. helicopter just flew over head. I’ve only been to one other group ride and it was a mixed experience. I am going to greet the situation with an open mind. I may never go to another group ride but I’m not sure yet. I’m almost at 2,000 mi right now and that in and of itself is an accomplishment of a different type that’s difficult to pin down. only the boosted community will understand what I’m talking about easily. it’s basically the only community I’m a part of at this time and I used to be a part of a few other communities. I took a few photos. I visited a local bike shop called bike chain and that was interesting. I gave myself a bit of time off for today so I didn’t have a plan. I have to admit that doing a voice entry is very very smooth at this time. I can sit and watch the text go into the post.
It #2 and memory for sale
I got out of work a little early after getting a decent amount done during the week. I figured, why not go catch It Chapter #2 and order a pizza and a beer and see if it is any good. It was not what I expected but it was definitely too long. Maybe they are trying to copy Japanese film editors from the 90s or something. I find that the concept of selling a sequel on parts of the 1st movie really applies to this film. It must have sold well enough for people to ask, how can we pull that off again. They didn’t space it too long after the 1st one and they were able to add footage of younger actors as they have not aged much since the 1st one.
I actually did like the idea of blurring magic and sci-fi. I don’t know Stephen King’s work that well but what I do know is that he wrote both sci-fi and horror. He actually had a cameo in the film. Interesting scene. He wore a Neil Young “Harvest” T-shirt. It is the only Neil Young album I own and it is pretty good. Also, as a side note, Rich, the character played by Bill Haider had a Santa Cruz skate/surf sticker on his T-shirt and that is one of the few stickers I have on my Boosted board.
I feel a sort of pity for Hollywood. This movie isn’t the only one that brings this about. They are so incredibly outdated now. They just keep on going too and squashing all forms of innovation. Youtube is the only saviour at this time. At least there are some seriously talented people on Youtube or I would have a lot of disappointment for passive 2D video media in general. That’s not to say that people should make another Imax or 3D film. Those are getting increasingly embarrassing too.
I can understand the dynamics of the characters and how they could be stretched out to the ages that they are in the sequel, 27 years later. But, the 1st movie did such a good job with quick flashes of childhood experience, I didn’t really want them to rehash it and water it down. But, that is what sold the 1st one so they went balls out doing just that.
Let me just quickly return to my embarrassment with Hollywood. Stadia is coming out this fall and that will up the ante. What Hollywood is lacking is audience participation. This does not have to mean less work for all the people that would be involved in a feature film. But, they are so small minded and paralyzed with fear, they will squash innovation because they think their bigass casts and crews won’t be able to get their pumpkin spices. They can still have their pumpkin spices and innovate. I will give you one example and if I am not lazy, I will paste in the link to the independent effort to add audience participation(got it>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renga_(video_game) ). It involves pointing lasers as a group of watchers at specific points on the screen and having that be a type of group controller(not movie but video game but you get the idea). Anyway, this technology is at minimum about 20 years late. Let’s just postpone it another 10 years or so because we just love the emotional impact of 2D.
seeing some live tunage
I decided to head out for the evening instead of playing MTG Arena like I have been doing. I am currently at Platinum 4 Constructed Rank and Gold 4 Limited Rank. You can play the game just for fun but there are opportunities to play it in a ranked way. Really, it is not that much of an accomplishment because there are 2 main age-old methods of ascension, either you put in the time or you put in the money and statistically it is almost impossible to fast track. As far as latitude for strategy, the game is a lot more fun than chess though. There are a few hundred things that you must keep in mind during play. You can almost quantitate them and I am sure many do, mostly in-house developers though. ok.
At this time I prefer not to hint at how much time I have put into this game. Let’s just say, it rivals the average yippie yuppie gen-zy Netflix consumption. I did manage to get powder-puff, kid-glove recertified in Advanced Google Analytics last weekend so I guess I do more than just play that game. I slam the certification because I know when I have walked away from something and felt like I have learned it. In this case, I am not using all aspects that i am studying so I don’t feel like I have learned it as well as I could have. This isn’t really their fault, I just want practical value for everything I learn. I am forever attention frugal in that sense.
I just started the audiobook of Google’s origin. I was pleasantly surprised at the writing in the beginning but I do not need to learn how to create a company at this time. I tried that before and I misunderstood tactics of competition. Now, it is about 20-25 years later and the only patience I have for running a company would be to operate like Michael Douglas in Wall Street. I cannot say enough how great both the Wall Street movies are. Maybe someday I will throw in my 2 cents on them.
I do plan to finish the audiobook. I am just being a little ciritical of the first part of it. My recent audiobooks have been pretty good, actually. I have dipped into tea trade history by Sarah Rose, and the exciting natural world by David Attenborough. I had to move over to “How Google Works” because my library loan of “Main Street” by Sinclair Lewis expired and all the copies were out. I will definitely go back to it because it was pretty good.
Joshua Tree Pic
I just switched my splash page image. I am going to upload the previous one because I like it so much and as usual, no one understands the beauty of a 640×480 image because everyone expects the newest and best images. I will just remove the kettle from on top of the wood burning stove and reminisce about the good ole Thoreau days of 320×240.
winter commuting
this was an interesting time and an interesting book
At the Mousetrap bar, Eau Claire
training on…
I have a couple of points to mention tonight. Some like to use the term “thought experiment” and I really have never had the opportunity to use it so I might as well give it a shot. Imagine if you will a competitive person B that would like to compete with competitive Person A. Person A is older and has shown the world an established set of skills. Person B is just starting out. Person A has an undergraduate degree, which implies a certain set of skills as well as athletic abilities and maybe a foreign language ability to a 3rd grade level of proficiency. Person B is just starting their undergraduate coursework, is quite athletic and has gotten down a musical instrument to the level where he could earn enough to eat if he were to busk on a busy street corner.
A variable is added to the mix, Person B has been tipped off that Person A is someone to “train oneself on” in order to achieve fame and fortune. Just hold on here and don’t jump to conclusions. The master apprentice relationship is very very old and even exists today. Why is it that the master always has to know the apprentice and why is it that the apprentice has to gain knowledge from the master through direct interaction? Both are unnecessary. True masters might even welcome multiple apprentices learning from them simultaneously with none of the apprentices required to be physically present.
So, in sum, we have Person B, the deadbeat, trying to steal seasoned skills from Person A. If there is one thing I have learned in philosophy, it is that no philosophers throughout history really hated anyone making attempts to learn from them. They, of course, did not approve of plagiarism of their work but a person intent on learning what they may have already learned is almost encouraged. Academia is wrought with many people all trying to say that what someone said before them is “great, but…”. It is hard to break free, to approach a subject or discipline from a new angle. That spot is usually reserved for a seasoned professional that sees the opportunity before the newbie can get a chance to get his act together.
Philosophy, if employed properly, can destroy this entire thought experiment. There can be no competitive endeavor. Philosophy can lay bare sentential structures that are indisputable so any act of competition in skill acquisition is ridiculous, as in worthy of ridicule. It is one reason why I like philosophy and almost the same reason why I dislike it. It feeds itself. It, by its very nature is as objective as you can ever get, beyond even science. One could say, “Well, if that is the case, why doesn’t everyone study philosophy?” And that, my friends, is the reason why I did.
not much has changed in IT
I pretty much dropped out of the tech world in 2005. I had a nifty little job that could have been huge but the manager I was working with at the time chose to stay local. I don’t blame him and I don’t blame many people for not wanting to think in terms of scale of business when they make an ecommerce site. From 2005 to 2014 I played with tech but never sought to make a living off of it really. In many ways, I am glad that I have done this. I am not rich, by any means, but I have been able to live with myself. There is incredibly so much BS out there these days, it is almost impossible for an executive that is in budgetary control of IT hiring to weed through it all. The same was the case from 1998 to 2005 too when I was actually “working” in tech. If you type in “wordpress” for job search keywords it comes up along with all the acronyms for the underlying programming languages and technologies. Not many hiring managers think about how wordpress can be optimally fit into an organization. If it is used properly, it is a very powerful tool. Really, what managers should be looking for is the ability to fully control all aspects of cPanel. Then, after that, you ask the person what he thinks of wordpress. Each non-hired moment leads to waste and each hire that engages in bad decision making leads to waste. Well, people love waste. It staggers the mind to think of the amount of money in flux each day regarding these personnel decisions.
why democritus.biz?
It is so painfully easy to write here. When I think about writing in Facebook, I think about Facebook itself and how others always use it. It probably makes Zuckerberg cringe the way the average person uses it but at the same time, it is the average that generates so much money for the company.
I have held back from writing in here as a “permanent location” for a number of reasons. For a while I was looking for good software. Then, I was spending time thinking of structure or content. Now, I guess I have decided on making the main journal side of my site a subdomain so I can leave the main domain open for other reasons.
Concerning the domain name… I was just bumming around and thought I would go into ancient Greek figures that I was relatively unfamiliar with. I have studied a few guys from Ancient Greece but not so much Democritus. Now, as time rolls on and if the site gets any sort of attention that seems like hits, I will have to fulfill a promise. To my “subs”, if you will, a YouTuber word for subscribers. The more popular the site gets the more I will have to justify the name of it. In other words, you will make me study Democritus more the more you visit. I may reference content from him from time to time but there is no plan in relation to this figure.