Can We Handle a Historic Voter Turn Out?

For the last few days I had been wondering why the Obama camp has been really pushing for people to go and participate in early voting, yesterday I went to do it myself, and now have some idea what they may be worried about. By percentage, this looks to be the largest turnout at the polls in 100 years, by sheer numbers, this looks like it could blow away any election in history. On the surface, this sounds fantastic that so many people would participate in the process, in practice, this could turn out to be a nightmare.

I’m going to assume two things, a) if you are reading this, you more than likely will, or have, voted, b) you value your time, and in some respects are a very “busy” person (perhaps not so busy if you are reading me.) How are you going to feel if you get to the polls to find a 2-4 hour wait in line? How do you think most people are going to react? How do you think the poll workers are going hold up under those conditions? What will these places look like at 5pm, after quiting time? In states that use more “modern” polling equipment, could people be held up even more by people not knowing how to use the equipment, holding up people even more?

All said, my experience of early voting was not horrible, but the whole process still took about 45 minutes though. I know in past presidential elections I’ve walked in, grabbed a ballot, voted, and was out of there in under 10 minutes. Yesterday there was already quite a line, and it looked to me that they also might  be using this process to train people as well, so perhaps it’s not as smooth as it will be on election day. The fact that I had to wait longer for this then on election day worried me some though.

Each year our ability to wait for anything shrinks and shrinks, and I’m worried that many people may be so frustrated about having to wait for any length of time, much less hours, they may simply walk away. In other cases I’m worried the numbers may overwhelm the workers, mistakes could occur which could lengthen the wait even further, or worse, cause errors. Finally, I worry some about cooping up two very polarized sets of people in a tense, frustrating, tedious line for potentially hours on end….

I’d like to thank the Obama camp for having some foresight, or paranoia, to point out this option to me. I also recomend, if you have the means, you take advantage of this as well.

What I love about “Wall-E”

I’m not sure this is the best venue for a pseudo movie review, but I wanted some avenue to write what it is I loved about this movie. Don’t worry there are not plot spoilers ahead, but a tiny bit of things to be aware of as you watch. Of course, if you haven’t seen the movie and want to make it as fresh as possible, come back here after you see it and then compare notes.

In my opinion Pixar, as a studio, has done more for the movie making than any other studio I can think of. The stories will be as timeless as Walt Disney’s first films, the technology and art involved is unreal, and gosh darn’t, it just makes the family movie going experience fun!

What is personally impressing me with Pixar is how I’m actually learning things about movies from watching these films. Each time since “Finding Nemo,” I would have this nagging feeling something was not right with the movie. What I came to find is that, in each instance, they were adding something to the animation that I would just take for granted in a “real” movie. For example, in “Finding Nemo,” they added the waves water would create in a normal underwater world. Normally I wouldn’t notice it, but in an animated feature you don’t expect it, so in some subconscious way my brain said, “hey something is going on here that isn’t typical.”

In “The Incredibles” it was how the Supers powers fit the role they would have in a typical nuclear family; dad is strong, mom is flexible, daughter is shy, son is hyperactive, etc. In “Cars” the thing that really caught my eye was in the scene where they turned on all the neon lights in town. The way the lights were reflecting off the cars was stunning. “Rattitouille” was an amazing leap in “set design” for an animated film. You could really tell they took the time to create France.

Now having this fixed in the back of my brain as I went to see “Wall-E,” I had to fight the urge to try and pick out what they were working on this time. It did not take long for me to get that little tickle in the back of my brain that something was not normal about this film. My attention was immediately drawn to the use of focus in the movie. I’m going to have to go back and check on some other movies, but I can’t recall an animated film where the use of focus so closely mimicked a “real” movie. I’ve never studied film, but I’m near certain that was a new attention to detail used here.

In the scenes where Eve is being retrieved and Wall-E is trying to catch her ship, it really clicked what I think I was noticing. The camera angle following Wall-E almost looked hand-held. Obviously in an animated movie there is no true camera, so this would need to be a deliberate technique. For the rest of the movie I kept noticing what I think was the introduction of a new use of camera angles for animated films. Along with the use of focus it seems that Pixar is working on giving the animated films a more “hand-made” look.

Again, I’m no movie buff and am uncertain if this technique has been used before, but once again I have to believe the Pixar has really pushed the boundaries of what is possible in this genre, and I am overjoyed that they keep me believing in movie magic!

Note: After writing this I did a quick search to see if I could find anything out about my suspicions of the camera usage and came across this short from Pixar http://pixarblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/wall-e-camera-direction-featurette.html. It seems they actually hired a Director of Photography to consulte on the animated camera angles. I truly love that Pixar is making these leaps in production value that even a casual movie goer can apprecitate!

Moving on up to the 2.0 side, or what I’m wanting to do here.

Right now my Firefox toolbar is taking up half my screen real estate , my Twirl blinks every two minutes, I’m also both Dug and del.icio.us. I occasionally Stumble if I’m not careful, and sometimes I just gotta take a Wizz. I listen to too many Podcasts, prune my ID3 tags to a degree anyone with OCD would appreciate,  Yes, obviously I have moved on up to Web 2.0. Trouble is I still have very little idea what the heck that means…(Excerpt from what was originally going to be my first post.)

I was asked by someone, who seems a bit particular about why someone chooses the Blog title they do, what mine meant. I guess she thought perhaps that there was a “Going 1.0,” but the reference is more like Going Internet 2.0. I’ve been using the Internet regularly since the early to mid 90s, but only recently started using it to reach out to the randomness of the social networking scene. Going 2.0 was a title to journal that process, but has so far just been a forum for what ever clarity I can manage in a few paragraphs. In reality, the title was what came to mind in a pinch.

I had wanted to start a space to practice finding a writing voice. I feel I converse well with people, but have trouble putting thoughts down in a well organized, written fashion. This blog was designed to help me work that out while still attempting to be insightful, charming, witty, and entertaining. I originally thought I could focus the writing on my travels through the myriad of internet 2.0 apps, but in reality, just the exposure to all these new inputs has given me so many new areas of interest, that I haven’t stopped to contemplate what place these applications have actually had.

The byline is a bit less esoteric. “The Early Majority is Here,” refers to the Everett Rogers Diffusion of Innovations theory. My mere presence in the Web 2.0 space is a canary in the coal mine, and that the Early Majority (i.e. main-stream) is imminently right behind me. I have an early adopter attitude with an early majority pocket book. So when I show up at the party, it usually isn’t long before everyone else starts to trickle in. (Twitter, you better settle those scaling problems, ya know what I’m sayin’?

I suppose I didn’t fully realize to what degree these social applications were going to influence me. In the end what it has done has given me the giddiness of my early experiences of the Internet, and has reinvigorated me to once again begin exploring its endless corridors. This time, with a bit more perspective, a bit more maturity, and a whee bit of healthy skepticism.

Humanity has never had this opportunity for open communication like this before, and the path this puts us on gives me an excited optimism I don’t recall having since my childhood. (O.K. this is not flying cars, alien contact,  and time travel, but is still pretty darn cool.) So please check back here to see how it’s going, and please share with me your own experiences!

#twit2fit

Just a quick little something for those of you I just started following on Twitter, and who may wind up here wondering why. More than likely it was from finding you on @JasonFalls post for his #twit2fit challenge. For those of you finding your way here for other reasons, this link can get you caught up on what I’m talking about. http://tinyurl.com/5gh387

For various reasons I’ve put on almost 30lbs. in a little over a year. I’m currently at about 245lbs. which is probably been about my average weight for most of my adult life. I had a good run until the afore mentioned recent weight gain, and would certainly like to get back to that again.

Having spent the last few months peeking around Twitter I can certainly see the advantages this type of group support, and, or peer pressure can have. I had been considering looking in to “fat blogging,” but “fat micro-blogging,” really suits me better. One reason I like this Twitter idea is how quick you can get things out there and back to you. If one of your troubles is finding time for exercise and planning out your diet and such, then Twitter should be a time saver in getting you feedback and answers to questions versus traditional blogging, or researching on your own.

I’m also curious to see how this takes shape (o.k. pun intended.) People have such a hard time explaining Twitter that trying to explain it as an aid for getting healthier should spur some interesting conversations. I’d like to applaud Jason for giving something new a shot here, and wish us all well(ness) in this experiment.

Freddie Mercury is DJing My Ipod From the Beyond

The past two days my Ipod had “randomly” selected no less then five tracks off of “News of the World” by Queen. Now there is nothing very remarkable about this, but it has lead me on a little walk down nogtalgia lane, and led me down to Ponder Street.

“News of the World” came out when I was six years old. That is roughly the time (perhaps add a year, or two) that I remember sitting up stairs in my bedroom with my “portable” turntable going through my parents albums. Again, none of this is very remarkable, but I do recall that it was this album where I started threading the songs together in to a story, or as it’s more commonly know now, in to a concept album.

It’s not that at that young age that I suddenly was able to decipher the artists poetic musings, and start seeing the hidden meaning of the songs. It was that damn robot’s eyes, and the drops of blood on his finger tip. In other words, the album’s cover and sleeve art work played a very central part in my personal scripting of the albums “story.”

Music has always been a very important part of my life, and now as a father of a four-year old, I struggle with how best to foster that love in him as well. Now, with the specter of Freddie Mercury apparently controlling the shuffle on my Ipod, I’ve come to realize that one of the major influences on me, the album artwork, has all but been lost.

I know that every generation feels that the one after them has lost something compared to their own, but in this instance I truly feel this is the case. It would only be a short time after my sojourns to my room that those albums would be replaced by CD’s, so the next generation would have been less able to make that visual connection to the music then I would have. CD booklets were great for additional stories, or paragraphs of what brands the band members wanted to endorse, but there is something to be said for a picture being worth a thousand words. A near poster size piece of album artwork could say more about the musical vision of the album then a whole CD booklet could, and that was being lost.

In the days of digital downloads, the liner notes and album covers are still there, but minimized to Ipod screen size, it is more used for identifying what’s playing rather than any kind of artistic stimulation. I personally no longer “need” visual cues to come up with my interpretation of the artistic vision for a piece of music (assuming there is one of course,) but I wonder how much those crazy kids today might be missing out on without a little nudge here and there. Perhaps this could explain why 2007’s best selling album was “High School Musical 2.” Music videos might help out here these days, but then again who really makes, broadcasts, or watches those anymore?

I’m not sure if they had this problem back in Mozart’s day, and perhaps I am being just a bit to nostalgic, but when “All Dead, All Dead,” came on the computer, and my son asked what the song was about (at least I’ve got him thinking that way already) I told him I’d show him. I found a picture of the album cover and immediately he started getting that boo-boo lip face. Just like his dad thirty years ago, he was feeling sorry for that robot. The meaning of the song was no longer important; he had made his own connection, and I became certain that I was right.

Twitter as News Source

I’ve spent roughly the last two hours following the breaking news from China of a 7.5 magnitude earthquake, not on CNN, or Fox News, but Twitter. I’ve skimmed the news stories from the NY Times and CNN.com, but mostly I’ve been following the links being intermediated by Robert Scoble (@scobolizer.)

I believe the main reason I’ve stayed tuned to Twitter, instead of the traditional news outlets, has been the immediacy of the information, along with some first had accounts from people inside China. Typically news of this kind takes a little while to hit the airwaves anyhow, and this being an international story, that can further delay the dissemination of the information as well. Watching the links Scoble has provided has led me to first person accounts, the first posts on the USGS site, the stories as they broke on the media outlets, the first pictures, and so on.

To me this is where Twitter really shines. We can sit around and talk all day about what movies we saw, the cheese sandwich we ate, who’s posts are flooding the timeline, but when real stories are breaking, it is hard to beat this medium with its immediacy. The fact that Robert Scoble has over 20,000 followers, and attempts to follow each one back, makes him uniquely qualified to mediate this information.

I’m sure this is where we could have the discussion about whether or not this is “professional,” but in this day and age I’m caring less and less how polished my information is. I much prefer this immediate unfiltered access to information. I understand there is the danger for misinformation and outright lies from unverified news, but I think that is a fair trade-off for the chance at getting information before it goes through the broadcast news filter. Along with that, you can get a much more humanistic feel, following people that are tweeting from the scene.

I’d be surprised if being a Twitter news anchor is a job Robert Scobel would want to hold down full time, but his roll in doling out the information certainly shows that there is room for a reputable news personality to do the same. If a journalist wants to take on the task of following thousands of conversations at once, when these stories break, they would be on the front lines of the “broadcasting” process. I’m just glad Robert was up late tonight to do some trailblazing.

Twitter at its best

“It’s like, only the regular people still Tweet on the weekend.” @PaulJManoogian

Quick take on twitter this weekend. I must say it was odd watching the action during the Twitter outage. My take on it was that it was mostly the users who have a high number of followers that were not being seen. The folks that I follow with under roughly 250 followers I was able to still see fine. The Scobles, Arringtons, LaPortes, Winers, Pirillos, Calacanissses??, even Tom Merritt, silent. Unless you found some temporary work around like unfollowing then refollowing various folks you could get little spurts of posts. Most of those, of course, were in the vein of “can you see this,” or “Twitter still down?”

This did start little mini-discourses, with those that I could still see, about how those folks are using Twitter. Seems that most of them use it to drive traffic to their respective web-sites and blog postings, some actually have something to say, a few let us know what boring conference is on hand today, yet others clue you in what wine(s) went with dinner, and still some just say “look at me!” I’m sure if you’ve spent any time with Twitter, who is who here, is clear. The great thing is that this is all O.K.; there is something to be gleamed from all of this.

I’ve kept my follow list relatively short right now, while I still get used to the flow. I’ve tried to get followers from every continent, (still looking for a genuine Antarctica tweeter) as many various counties, and regions as possible, and a good cross-section of backgrounds. I follow the A-listers down to just completely random folks that probably wonder why I showed up. What emerges is a Kundalini effect with information and memes traveling up and down the Twitter chakras. The important thing is that it can start at any point, and travels both up and down then back again in a ripple effect.

The best example I’ve seen of this recently was the Midwest earthquake that occured late last week. I had just happened to have sat down at the computer when it hit. It was mild enough here in Northern Indiana to question if it was indeed an earthquake, that I tweeted it to see if anyone else felt it. Within minutes I saw the information flying around before the USGS had it posted, and well before any news outlet was reporting it. It then expanded from a “did you feel it,” to others calling on people in the region to check on them, and then reporting back, and then people posting links to which news outlets were covering it.

I believe this is Twitter at its best, when something is actually going on. Imagine what twitter will look like the nights of the Democratic and Republican conventions, during the presidential elections, during the next G8 summit (or similar) protests, during the next Katrina, or even the next WTC.

Its during these down, or if you want to call it slow, times that it is best for you to start deciding who gives you substance in their tweets, not just promotion (and yes, you can effectively do both.) This is so when the real need for good information comes up, you don’t fall into being duped with misinformation by those just trying to echo what “they” said. This is a great time to assess who is giving you original thoughts and meaningful links. Wine tips are great, but sometimes I like to just sit down to a good plate of meat.

Quick Thoughts: A Weekend Without Fuel

Since I feel a need to write I’ll share something I’ve been kicking around my noodle. We’re  coming up on that time of year where you’ll no doubt get that e-mail telling you to stick it to the oil industry by boycotting gas stations for one day. I’ve always doubted the claims these e-mails make; the oil industry would feel no pinch since you’d just have everyone either fill up before, or after the target date. I think the only ones that might actually feel a pinch would be the gas station owners and tobacco companies. You’re less likely to make that impulse buy at the convenience store, inside your gas station, if you are not there.

While these e-mails are well intentioned, I think what would be a fantastic idea would be for everyone to plan for a weekend spent near home, aiming to minimize travel. I don’t mean this in a shut yourself in kind of way, but quite the opposite. What would be novel would be that this weekend would be for spending time with, initially your family, (remember them?) then your neighbors, (ever meet them?) and then your entire community.

To start, Friday would be, like it is for many homes, family night. You could watch movies, play board games, (remember those) bake cookies, plant a garden, even playing on a WII; whatever it would take for you to spend quality time with your immediate family. Surfing the web, talking on  your cell phone, emailing on your blackberry, or keeping up with your peeps on the social network du jour would not be acceptable uses of this time.

We then move on to Saturday, this could be set aside for a day spent with your neighbors. I’m not sure if it’s the community I live in now, but I sure do remember good old block parties. While I don’t really think it’s my block as much as the condition of our insulated society that we just don’t get to know everyone on our block anymore. I barely know my immediate neighbors, much less those down a few homes. This would be a wonderful opportunity for planning a large scale project like cleaning up a local park, a recycling drive, or something of that nature. You could then move on to organized events for kids, (or the big kids,) and then top it off with a good ‘ole pig-out BBQ.

That leaves Sunday which would then be an event for your entire community. Since the objective of this weekend would be to promote community interaction and environmental concerns, any number of projects could be planned around this day. The weekend would end much like the block party with more food, and perhaps this time local artists and entertainers.

I’m not sure what environmental impact a weekend like this could have, unless that ’s part of your communities plan, but the human impact that time spent like this could be invaluable. Getting out and taking part helps you feel ownership for your community so at the very, very least it would make for stronger neighborhoods, and communities. Wouldn’t it be a silver lining if the high cost of fuel today becomes the catalyst for bringing many of us out of reclusive tendencies, and helps us remember the joy of being neighborly?

What do you think? Am I just dreaming?

The Contension of My Content

Before I begin, I would like to propose a homework assignment for the comments. For a casual computer user how would you propose to fill a 1TB hard drive? You should take out of the equation video editing and general business use. I’ll contend that there is not 1TB of quality content out there to warrant this size drive, and would like to be proven wrong, but first, please read on to see how I got to this pondering.

I’ve been spending the last few days porting myself into a new Dell desktop computer and have come across some interesting observations along the way. It seems that moving your data from computer to computer these days, is fairy analogous to moving to a new home. The last time I bought a new system I believe I just took some CD-ROMS to back up and transfer my files. This week however I have discovered how drastically my computer usage, and computing in general, has changed in the last five years.

I was to cheap to purchase the Belkin cable that would have made transferring the bulk of my data simple. Instead, I pulled out an old Netgear router and set up a simple network for kicks. When I found out I was one ethernet cable short (again, being to cheap and impatient to run out and buy one) I instead used an unused  wireless USB adapter from my old Tivo, to finish off the network. This in itself is a far cry from just burning some CDs and popping them in the new computer.

A week later now, and I finally feel comfortable that all the data is indeed in the new computer. In getting a new system I have also switched from XP to Vista so I’m also getting myself accustomed to a new interface and thus decided it’s time to really go through my files, and start tossing stuff out just like you might do when you move.

What I have come to realize is that I have more content then I know what to do with. Between my music, audio books, e-books, videos, and photos, I have enough content to keep a castaway content for years. I- tunes alone tells me it could run for 90 consecutive days before it would it would run out of new material, and that doesn’t include the new content podcasts provide on a daily basis there. I then came to realize that’s just what’s on my computer. When I add in my boxes of books, hunderds of DVD’s, multiple seasons of television shows, and cartons of unorganized photos, I’ve come to realize that I’ve outpaced my ability to keep up with my own content. No amount of cataloging, tagging, or general organization, is going to allow me to effectively use all of this content.

What this has left me to ponder is how, in the future, am I to decide what content I’m interested in keeping, or God forbid, actually view. My choices for input have become so wide and varied, that content providers better stop worrying about who is doing what with their materials, and begin to realize that the real problem is quality of content issue.

I’ll stand tall and admit that I have downloaded my share of movies and music over the last few years, but here’s my excuse: I don’t want to pay for crap! There has been numerous time that I thank the Internet Gods that I didn’t have to pay for the crud I just watched, but at the same time I could name a dozen movies that we watched “illegally,” only to run out and purchase them the day they came out on DVD. The same certainly applies to music as well. The bands I loved from the 90’s are still making albums, but some are crap, (“Zeitgeist” by Smashing Pumpkins comes to mind) some are brilliant (Flamming Lips “At War with the Mystics” comes to mind there.) I’m more that happy to purchase music that I care for, but I want to be spared purchasing a turd as well. Downloading the music beforehand gives me that heads up.

Perhaps that’s what the record and movie industries fear most, the ability of the average consumer to be in a state of content overload with the ability to easily access and screen new content for quality. They then no longer are able to trick us with slick trailers and ad campaigns. In theory then this can only benefit the consumer since, if they have to focus on quality, we should get more Junos and Superbads and less sequels and television remakes.

As hard drives get larger and MP3 and media players become more portable with larger capacities, human nature begins to take ove,r and you begin to obsess over filling those players. My hope is that the next time you are starring at the Best Buy ad, contemplating if you should pay up for that 1TB HD, ask yourself is there really 1TB of usable content out there for you? So the lesson learned here is never buy a new computer and stay up until 5am writing about it. (i.e. I’m tired, but wanted to get that stuff out there.)

Thanks for hanging in there with me. Now please go and try the comments homework.

My Dearest Regan Memory

Something Barack Obama certainly has going for him is his superb ability as an orator. His ability to inspire through the spoken word has, for me, brought to mind another “great communicator.” About fifteen years ago I found myself in Arizona inside the learning center at Barringer Crater. Playing on a monitor, was the address Ronald Regan gave the nation on the eve of the Challenger shuttle disaster. Within that speech was, to this day, the most stirring thing I’ve ever heard a public official say:

“And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle’s take-off. I know it’s hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them.“

I stood there in public, openly weeping.

This was in the early 90s when political correctness and the culture of hypersensitivity was getting a firm footing. If there is anything that I believe has dulled the razors edge of our nation it is the notion that we must spare everyones feelings, and that a human life is to much to sacrifice for any outcome. Feelings based educational outcomes are noble in principal, but the fact is, not everyone is intelligent enough to be a doctor. Don’t hold back more able students to spare the feeling of those not as capable. As much as I feel for anyones loss, I cannot see loss of life in the pursuit of exploration a tragedy. If nomadic tribes stopped migrating every time an untimely death befell a traveler, our species could not have left Africa. The same thing applies for the early sea travelers, astronauts, skyscraper construction workers, test pilots, human medical test volunteers, even firemen and police officers.

I have not doubt that today there are men a women who, like countless other pioneers before them, are willing to apply their complete dedication to their chosen field of exploration. it doesn’t matter if it is stem cell research, environmental studies, experimental medical techniques, deep sea research, or human space travel; the whisper of exploration calls to us as a species. It is inevitable that these avenues will be well traveled, but will it be by our nation? Perhaps the best we can do is get out of our braves’ way and let them claim their future.

Ronald Reagan – The Space Shuttle “Challenger” Tragedy Address (text & video)