Random Observation about the Digital Era

This, the 13th day of my NaBloPoMo experiment, finds me musing about the ability for individuals to proliferate media in this day and age.

If you're reading this blog, then you're quite aware that I am the proud new owner of an iPhone. Downright giddy, actually, but that's not the point. While happily perusing the Apps Store, and wondering what should be loaded onto my new slice of electronic heaven, a realization dawned on me. To be truthful, an ember of this realization has been smoldering in my brain for a while, but it erupted into a brilliant clarity today. This incredible, amazing, and completely written and talked about by many others realization is this: there is an enormous magnitude of avenues for a person to project themselves out into the public consciousness.

Take my new iPhone, for example. Some of the applications I've downloaded over the past 24-48 hours include Audioboo, a way to record bite-sized chunks of audio and then upload them to the Internet, where they can be then consumed by others or broadcast to other Internet portals; Twitpic, an app to post photos to my Twitter feed; Twitvid, similar to Twitpic, but for video files; Twitterific, so I can read the 'tweets' of all the people I follow in Twitter; and a Facebook app, which should be self-explanatory. All of these applications have a very distinct commonality, which is they allow the user (in this case, me) to broadcast their media to the Internet. The irony is not lost on me, by the way, that the very blogging website I'm using to discuss these applications performs an identical function.

What it all adds up to is an almost mind boggling ability for people to be heard nowadays. Before the rampant spread of viable, inexpensive Internet access, the ways and means for people to be published, heard, seen or read really were much more limited. This new ability to 'broadcast' yourself is absolutely incredible, and as with nearly everything in real life, there are upsides and downsides to this new paradigm. Tool around on the Internet for five minutes and you can, and most likely will, be exposed to some brilliant examples of video, pictures or prose, but you will also be bombarded by the most heinous dreck and drivel. There are some people that shouldn't be allowed such free access to express themselves (maybe I'm one of them!). Before, when it was difficult to get something published on a large scale, and nearly impossible to have your voice heard by a global audience, much of what we see now would not come to light. Now, even a monkey can post something to Youtube with only a little help, society is bombarded with cute cat videos, horrible karaoke renditions, and people doing unimaginable things to themselves, all in the name of a short window of Internet fame.

Having said all of that, I don't want to remove the ability for people to be read, seen or heard. To me, it feels like a necessary evil to suffer through the deluge of garbage to possibly find the hidden gem, a true talent struggling to be discovered. Even I have aspirations of turning this outlet into something more than what amounts to a digital diary, but they are held firmly in check due to family and professional commitments. Taking away my 'chance' to be discovered would be disheartening. Who knows? Maybe someday, after learning on the fly, and honing a style that appeals to people, maybe I could produce something that gets me discovered. The chances are admittedly slim, but for me, and for many out there, that slight chance is all it takes to continue to write, take photos, generate video, perform music, make art...The list goes on and on.

There, I feel like I've rambled long enough for today. As always, if you have any comments or thoughts on this topic, please leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you!

Not My Finest Entry

The 12th installment of my quest to complete NaBloPoMo finds me with...well, not much to say.

Today wasn't a great day. The recipe of being up before 5am, on the road before 6, nearly 2 hours of driving to a 5 hour meeting that I didn't want to attend, followed by 2 more hours driving home comprised my work experience. Coming home, I wrassled with the little ones from 3 until around 7 and then spent some quality time with my beautiful (and sadly uncomfortable) infant while my wife got some needed time out of the house. It all adds up to a day with basically nothing interesting to talk about.

On the iPhone front, I spent time hand entering the contacts from the SIM card on my old phone that weren't saved in Outlook. There was also some time digging through the app store, and adding a few new free apps, and the $0.99 purchase of the game Flight Control. A simple yet fun 'line-drawing' game, should be exactly what I need to kill time at the doctor's office or when I have a free moment to spare. Ok, ok, I'm dancing around the fact that a fair amount of my free time involves me being in the restroom. Don't judge me, I'm a father of three. It's the only place I can achieve true peace. :)

Another big move was to sync my podcasts and music onto the iPhone, which allows me to reduce the number of electronic gadgets I need to carry and not lose (from the old iPod and cell phone, to just the iPhone now). It may seem silly to others, but there was a level of aggravation in having to stuff my pockets full of these electronics, knowing that there was a single piece of gadget goodness that would do everything that I wanted to do in one neat and shiny little package.

With all of this optimism, and I haven't even yet scratched the surface of all the stuff I can do with this thing, there is the nagging concern about battery life with the iPhone. I hear not-so-great things about needing to charge all the time, and this is from folks who don't even use it as an iPod, which I will be doing on a daily basis. Hopefully my experiences are better than theirs, but something tells me I'm going to need a lot of charge cables to make sure I have one wherever I go.

That's all for tonight, but I hope to be back here tomorrow with something not iPhone related. There's been no time lately to play any games on the PC, where they all wait sadly for me to return. That's the plan anyway, unless the my little heathens...err, angels have other plans tomorrow. :)

It. Has. Arrived.

NaBloPoMo day 11finds me almost forgetting to post. It's not exciting, but it's honest.

The title of this particularly pathetic and sad post says it all, really. Upon arriving home from work today, what did I find as I opened up the door to the entryway but a small package. To the naked, uninformed eye, this package would not elicit much awe, or even a second glance. For me, however, it is the culmination of at least two years of envious waiting, yearning, wishing...Yes, that's right, my new iPhone arrived!

For this reason, and for the fact that I have to be up incredibly early for a remote business meeting, today's post will be relatively short and uninformative. My hope is to find some time tomorrow evening to talk about my initial impressions and experiences with this latest embodiment of technological joy. Tonight was not a good night to explore the functionality, as the kids needed a lot of extra attention and I did my best to give my wife a break from the baby. Tomorrow is another day, hopefully one marked with childlike wonder and unbridled electronic glee. Until that point, it's off to sleep and travel to visit an ornery client that's never happy with the product we produce. See you all tomorrow!

Sunday Thoughts

Day 10 of NaBloPoMo! Unbelievably, especially to me, the streak is still alive and kicking, although today's post was difficult to come up with. Sundays, as they are usually wont to be, do not provide many blogworthy topics, so I dug a bit deeper for this one. The thought, as many of those I have, started down one path and went in a direction I couldn't have foreseen. Hope you enjoy it.

I'm not quite sure when it first happened, or how many times afterward it occurred. At some point in my childhood, probably when denied the opportunity to do something that I wanted to, or didn't have the money to buy something I just couldn't live without, my young self thought, "Boy, I can't wait until I'm able to buy whatever I want and do whatever I want, without having to ask anyone!" Now, this wasn't a thought unique to me. It's quite possible that every young person thinks this thought, or some variation thereon, during their formative years. It refers to that mythical time in their lives when the stars align and they can do whatever they want, whenever they want.

At some point in my own life, this might have been a reality. My soon-to-be wife and I did live together in relatively modest accommodations for a time, both earning professional salaries, prior to being saddled with the debts we now struggle to pay. There were no sleepless nights making sure our children got to sleep, no mortgages (or second mortgages) to pay, no fears that we aren't doing the right thing to raise our kids. Not to sound cliche, but life really was simpler then. The big problem with that situation is this: we didn't know it! If I could go back 10 years and tell the younger version of me anything, it would be to appreciate those times and not to take them for granted, because they would soon change, and never be the same again.

Let me be clear on this one point: I wouldn't trade my life for anything, because I'm proud of what we've accomplished as a family. It's just that I would want to impress upon my earlier self to not waste a second of freedom, and to enjoy those freedoms of youth and careless abandon, to the fullest. There are so many things I now realize that I thought about doing, but never did simply because I always thought there would be time later. The earlier me could never have come to grips with the amount of responsibility, worry, joy, concern, fear, doubt, and love that having children would bring. Even as I struggle to be an individual, and maintain my own hobbies and interests, it's clear that those come second to the needs of my children and family. The moment those beautiful little creatures sleeping above me in their cribs and bassinet took their first breaths, my purpose in life became one of protecting, nurturing, teaching and guiding those little souls, simply to have the opportunity to be the best people they can be. That awesome responsibility is something I wasn't prepared for, and couldn't honestly fathom until it was thrust upon me.

Going back to my very young self and the wish for unlimited money and freedom, I'm sorry to say that it really didn't happen, and if it did, I guess I blinked and missed it. What I can say is that I have something far better. I have the unconditional love and adoration of small children. Even now, I'm stunned by the fact that my kids think I walk on water, and it will hopefully be some time before they realize I can't. By my estimation, that's worth trading unlimited freedom for any day.

LTTP - Harry Potter 6 Movie Review

Day 9 of NaBloPoMo finds me at home with the kids, so not much chance for a tech topic today. Instead, I focused on our Saturday evening entertainment, a movie we finally saw, only about 6-7 months late.

Today was a Saturday and, as most Saturdays are, it was a blur of diaper changes, mini-tantrums (the kids had a few too) and endless circuits around the first floor, picking up a menagerie of stuffed animals, a shopping cart full of fake plastic food and tripping over wooden train sets. One of the highlights of my day? Escaping the house for a peaceful hour of grocery shopping. Yes folks, banging carts and fighting over deals with the old ladies at Shaws ranks up there on my list these days.THE highlight of the day, however, was the viewing of the movie version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince my wife and I shared after the twins went to bed.

Now I've long since given up being disappointed with what nuggets of story or scenes from the books that I felt should have made the translation to the big screen. It was a losing battle that ultimately made me think less of some pretty well done adaptations of source material that would have been impossible to cram into a movie. This movie clearly carried the ominous and 'this isn't kiddie stuff anymore' atmosphere directly from the book, which made for a rather sad experience overall. There were some brief moments of levity, mostly focused around the inevitable teens discovering the opposite sex and the joys of snogging all the time, but not enough to lighten the mood at all. In my opinion, they handled the entire climactic scene very tastefully, capturing the essence of the mood and characters well. I will give a specific nod to the actors cast to play young Tom Riddle. Even though I knew it was just a movie, the intense looks they gave the camera in their scenes gave me the creeps, and that's the mark of good casting and framing the scene.

The only part of the book which didn't make the screen version, and I wished had, were the scene where Harry and Ginny kissed for the first time. In the book, it was after a Quidditch match, and it felt probable, as harry was on such a rush from the victory that he just 'went for it'. It felt believable, and most of all (at least for me), it shined a ray of good feelings and hope through the dark cloud of impending doom hanging over the rest of the book. This movie could have used that hope and good feeling, although to be fair it's dealing with very dark events.

Long story short, I enjoyed this movie. It will be interesting to see how the material in the final book is handled, because let's face it, there's not a lot to be happy about there. It could be tough to ask audiences to sit through two multiple hour installments of dreariness and death without some levity. We'll find out later this year.

So, with that off my chest, I'm off to bed to dream about iPhones and dirty diapers. Leave a comment on what you thought of HP6, if you'd like. I'd love to hear what others have to say.

Could Be a Rough Weekend

Day 8 of NaBloPoMo...Wow, have I really made it this far? I'm quite certain that there's never been a time in my existence that I've blogged for 8 consecutive days. Too bad it feels like I'm running out of things to say. This turns out to be a hodge-podge of unrelated topics that just jumped out of my head onto the screen.

After a rather uneventful but tiring day at work, which included multiple morning meetings followed by a trip to a job site that was over an hour each way, I arrived home to find my poor wife in the early throes of a cold. Normally this would be a simple inconvenience, but in a household with two adults and three young children, it becomes an emergency. The primary caregiver (let's face it, I'm borderline useless without her) could be out of commission soon, leaving me to hold down the fort. This is analogous to the Hans Brinker story, where the little Dutch boy plugged up the dyke with his finger, averting a catastrophe? Now imagine, in the Grant family, the little boy represents me, while the dyke is the relative balance and operation of our family unit, and hole to be plugged, representing the chaos that will ensue if Mom goes down with a cold, instead of being finger-sized is something large enough for a semi to pass through. Yea, it could get ugly...

On the upside, there's the chance that we'll bundle up this family of ours, throw them into the minivan, and troop them to my office sometime this weekend. It may seem strange to say that, or even be something to get excited about, but the twins have been there a few time and have an absolute ball there. There are so many new things to explore and look at, and what must seem to them to be endless hallways to run up and down. One area of our office hasn't been built out yet, and might as well be considered an arena for their antics. Here's to hoping we don't disturb any people there trying to do some real work.

The first of the final three episodes of Dollhouse just ended, and the only question I have is this: Why did they save writing and drama like this for the series as it ends? If only the writers had been able to pull together some story lines with the impact of the type we're seeing now, maybe the series wouldn't be ending. Hopefully my frustration comes through when talking about this, because the series had such potential, with a cast and characters that I cared about, and a premise that offered such promise. It's just too bad to see it end, but at least it's going out with a bang.

I'm somewhat ashamed to admit this, but it was difficult for me to sleep last night thinking about the fact that I would soon own an iPhone. It's been easy to downplay how much not having this shiny little technological bauble bothered me, when there was no real possibility of having one (due to financial reasons). Now that the dream is about to become a reality, I'm like the little boy waiting for Christmas day to finally arrive. The e-mail confirming my order and the shipment of the unit came this afternoon, indicating that the iPhone shipped from Texas today. With any luck, it should be here by Monday. You know what? Having been primarily around toddlers for the past couple of years, and seeing the unbridled and guilt-free joy they experience, I've vowed to try to grab onto feelings like that as much as I possibly can, because (as we all know) once you become an adult with real responsibilities, those feelings and moments can be hard to come by.

One last item of note, as least for me anyway. While packing up to leave the office and come home, my mind was humming away about how to approach the creation of standardized design documents, a task I've been wrestling with for a while. Just as I was walking out of the office, an epiphany hit me, one that I hope to follow up on. It has the potential to be just what we've needed for some time, and I'm ashamed that it hadn't come to me before this. The reason why I'm writing about it here is that it felt so good to come up with it, after agonizing over the same issues for so long, I just had to share it with someone else.

Well, there you have it, a veritable brain dump of the scary mess that floats around in my oversized dome. Feel free to leave a comment about anything you've read here, and hope to see you here again soon.

Joining the iPhone Masses

Day 7 of NaBloPoMo finds me excited about my soon-to-be received technological upgrade.

After what feels like waiting forever, I can finally say that I am the proud owner of an iPhone. Well, at least I can when it arrives in 3-5 days. After examining my options in the company cell phone policy, I felt it was time to opt out of the company's plan and try to have a personal phone reimbursed. This move will allow me more freedom in choosing my phone hardware, and protect my privacy better, since the company no longer will have records of my phone calls. Mind you, I have nothing to hide in that respect, but you can never be too careful these days with who has access to your personal information or records. I had also been told that by accepting a reimbursement to pay for personal cell phone use for work purposes (a flat amount every month, with no regard to how much you pay for minutes or data), the company financial burden is reduced. If this choice allows me the freedom to choose the tech I carry around, and it saves the company money in the process, both sides win.

There is the potential for me to incur overages if I happen to have a particularly busy month of business calls, but as my wife is adding me as a line to her existing plan, I should have access to her stash of almost 3700 unused rollover minutes (at least, I think that's what will happen). All in all, it feels like a good move.

And I get to have an iPhone! It's definitely an impulse buy, and it wasn't necessary, but I've had gadget envy for so long, the urge just couldn't be resisted any more. Before long, I'll be able to play in the world of iPhone apps that I could only read about or listen to people talk about. Here's to hoping it's all I think it will be, because there will be one disappointed tech nerd if it's not. If anyone out there has any recommendations of cool apps and/or games that they want to pass along, I'm all ears. It's a big ocean, and I haven't even dipped my toes in yet.

With that, I'm going to sign off for the evening, to go and let visions of iPhone games and apps dance in my head. Maybe it will get delivered early, maybe it will come over the weekend, so I'll have something to play with, maybe...I'll just have to wait until some time next week to play with my new toy. Sigh...