Month: February 2012

ramblings

What I do

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I have been working in the Interactive space since I graduated from college, which is longer ago than I’d like to admit, and my job title has always been either producer or project manager, which means that most people in my life do not understand how I actually earn an income. Usually, when trying to explain my role to friends and family, I use a general contractor or a movie producer as examples.
For the general contractor example, I say, “If you are redoing a kitchen, you don’t care about the types of pipes being used, or the type of wires that are going into the wall. All you care about is what exactly is being done, how long is it going to take and how much is going to cost.” That resonates, especially with homeowners.
For the movie producer example, I say, “Think of the Oscars. Who gets the award for best picture, the most prestigious award of the evening? The producers. What did they do? Direct? No, that went to best director. Make the sets? No, that went to Best Set Design. So what did they do? Everything else, from securing and managing the budget and timeline to making the director and actor get along, when they really dislike each other.” That really resonates, because how doesn’t like movies?
Still, that doesn’t necessarily nail it and now, I can also refer these fine folks to the image below:
What does a producer actually do?
Via Kay

television

Cracking the Jeopardy! Code

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A few months back, Gawker posted about how one uber-geek named Roger Craig (no, not the retired San Francisco 49er) was able to develop a web app that modeled America’s favorite question and answer show’s question sequences so that he could win an insane amount of money and break their all time record.
Craig delivered this news to the New York “Quantified Self Show & Tell” where he explains how he developed a web tool and various supporting programs to analyze and effectively train himself on a database of past questions. Its a 14 minute talk and its worth watching if you plan to ever be on the show, like I do.
If you did not know, every year I take the entrance exam hoping / praying that this is the year I end up on the show. When I throw out of my many inane pieces of trivia and/or little known facts, I usually follow it up with the statement, “One day I’m going to be on Jeopardy!” to try to reduce my geek factor. That being said, my secret fear is that I’ll get on the show and get destroyed by my lack of opera and classical music knowledge. Having Mr. Craig’s app to help me identify my weak spots would be ideal.
As an aside, one of the best articles I ever read about “Jeopardy!” was written for GQ magazine and it was titled “Why is Alex Trebek laughing at me?” It came out in the late 90’s and I cannot find it online – I was hoping to link to it in this post. If you find it, please let me know!

humor

Top Auto-Correct Fails of 2011

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If you are using some sort of mobile device to communicate, you have probably experienced some sort of auto-correct failure. This is where you meant to say one thing but your phone/tablet/whatever automatically decided that you really meant to say something else, often to hilarious results.
Damn You Auto Correct is a very funny blog which features, you guess it, a collection of outrageous auto-corrected text messages submitted by readers. At the end of last year, it unveiled its top nine laugh-out-loud entries of the year, based on Facebook shares, tweets, comments and page views. For your reading pleasure, please see the list below. Enjoy!

  1. Intended word: “Monday,” not “Man boobs.”


     
  2. Intended word: “Clinic,” not “closet.”


     
  3. Intended word: “Mortgage payment,” not “MOTTSAPPLESAUCE.”


     
  4. Intended word: “Kissed,” not “killed.


     
  5. Intended word: “China,” not “vagina.”


     
  6. Intended word: “Dimples,” not “nipples.”


     
  7. Intended word: “Shirt,” not “shit.”


     
  8. Intended word: “Persian,” not “period.”


     
  9. Intended word: “Mistletoe,” not “cameltoe.”


     
art

From the "Art Imitating Life Imitating Art" Department

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This news is a few months old but just as funny now as it was then. A few hours after television producers set up a replica of Occupy Wall Street for the filming of a new episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the real Occupy Wall Street announced plans to occupy the fake one.
As Mother Jones put it, “It’s straight out of a Don DeLillo novel.” I frankly just love the speed in which this happened – further proof the “art-life-art” cycle is moving faster than ever.

humor

Funny numbers

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Let’s say you are bored and want to dial some fun. Why don’t you call 719-266-2837? I decided to press “3” for a little pick-me-up. That didn’t make you smile? Then try 772-257-4501.
Still not smiling? Then, you should try 212-660-2245 because I’ve got nothing for you. Single men and women – you might want to write that last number down…

Uncategorized

Geeky Love

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In honor of Valentine’s Day, when hundred’s of thousands of geeks feel lonely and unloved, I suggest that you cut and paste the following equation into a Google search box:

sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01, sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.

If that didn’t make you smile, then what about a guy dressed as Bender proposing in binary code? Not good enough? Then how about a custom made proposal Pokemon card that another Geek used to pop the question to his girlfriend? Still not good enough, then look around my new favorite site Geekologie.
UPDATE: I had already posted but an infographic propopsal is something not to be missed. Any graphic that says among other things, “Wait a minute, that equals 0.48 total women on earth as perfect as you” screams romance to me.

art

The Patternizer

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Ever need to develop a pattern as a place holder, filler, background and didn’t know how? Well then, the Patternizer is for you.
From the creator, who happens to be a co-worker of mine:

“All patterns are saved with the URL patternizer.com/username/pattern , and each time you save, it creates a new version /1 or /2 or /24. For you extra-techies, this site is a front-end (or UI) for the patternizer.js < canvas > script I wrote. So the patterns you make on the site can be used anywhere with the code it generates.”

Good job Matt.

Uncategorized

5BX

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A little while back I read about an 11 minute exercise routine that both Prince Charles and William engage in each morning that is or was mandated by the military at some point and now they just do it to get in tip-top shape, or something like that.
In case you didn’t know, I have had a on-going fitness regimen parade, chock full of of starts and stops, marching for years now. My baton is now directing the parade to this time saving / good enough for royalty routine because among other reasons, for someone who lives and dies by the clock, where one minute really matters (i.e. being one minute late for a train might stick me in Hoboken for 90 minutes), it is especially attractive. So, I decided to find out what they were doing and do it. And it really didn’t take too much effort.
I learned they are using the 5BX (Five Basic Exercises) Plan, which is an exercise program developed for the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) by Bill Orban in the late 1950s, first published in 1961. That explains the dated but awesome artwork, font and tone and voice in the original pamphlet that I saw.
I read it three times to get familiar with the exercises and then used a scan of the original 5BX Booklet to work out tonight for the first time, and am happy to say that I got C’s, B’s and an A on Chart 1 which means there is only room for improvement (one can go from chart 1 to 5). I just need to buckle down and exert will power over my bad self. Easier sad than done, but I’m optimistic.
For instance, I will easily run the slowest 5k of my life this coming Saturday but I’m going to start and finish the damn race because its Valentines Day and giving myself a better physical shape is a good present. Plus, the race is my town’s installment of the Cupid’s Chase, which is a pretty cool charity race. Not only is it a race that raises money for charity (in this case one that develops homes and employment for people with developmental disabilities) but its held simultaneously in 25 different cities in 10 different states. The home page features a video of the race last year in the Rock, and that because a Real Housewife of NJ actor ran it. Yay Jerz!