Today we (we meaning Jenny ;) painted our bathroom. Twice. It's almost impossible to tell what a room is going to look like as a new color before you paint it. Sometimes you just have to do it then find out what it looks like afterwards and hope for the best. Well, we found out pink isn't the best...
I think it would be great if painting companies let you submit pictures of your room as one color then returned a photoshopped the image showing the room as the new color. Of coure there are all kinds of problems inherent to that process, the biggest being that even if they did a perfect job you're still only looking at a tiny picture and not actually in the room, but it would make it a little easier.
After all is said and done, we're very happy with the new color and this old house continues to become more of a home to us.
Lately at work we've had some "issues" trying to figure the best way to get content from the hands of content developers (the people who write the tech manuals) to instructional specialists (the people who develop training or other courses) to the Flash programmers and Graphic Designers who are developing multimedia training pieces as the final product.
Currently, there are no existing tools (that I'm aware of) that allow you to "storyboard" content to hand over to a Flash (or Director or Authorware) programmer and have them be able to recognize what interactions need to take place and what content needs to go where.
Depending the size of the course we're developing, this can go from being a minor inconvenience to a show-stopper. There needs to be a way for the content to be organized and easily retrievable, but at the same time easy to input and provide some way of previewing what the final output might look like so the instructional specialists can get a better idea of what they're working on.
We've developed a tool in Microsoft Access which does basically what we need, but leaves much to be desired due to the inherent flaws in Access (trust me, there are lots of them). I'm interested in learning more about what other people are doing to solve this problem, or if there is a tool out there that had been fine tuned to this process.
A few useful links to sites that will help you decide on a Content Management System. I used these today at work.
· OSCOM - Open Source (free) content management information.
· CMS Review - "The mission of CMS REVIEW is to give you the resources you need to choose the best content management system for your organization."
· CMS Matrix - Allows you to view the features of, and compare, several top Knowledge Management systems.
· Cylogy - Cylogy is a company that specializes in CMS consulting. These are the people to pay if you're willing to pay big bucks for both a recommendation for a CMS and the CMS itself.
· CMSWire - CMS Wire provides commentary, news and product information on several content management systems.
· CMS Watch - CMS Watch is a site that provides analysis and reports about web content management solutions.
Most of these sites link to other, similar sites, so if you're in the process of researching content management, better create a new folder in your bookmarks.
It seems like there is hardly any time for just sitting around and visiting anymore. With work, family and the Internet and everything else that seems to come up, it's a rare moment that I find time to relax and get to know someone better.
Tonight I had the opportunity do so and it was great. I met a guy about 55 years old, into Cadillacs. His wife recently broke her shoulder and was recovering. Nothing extraordinary, but it really felt good to just sit down and have some time to talk to someone without everything else getting in the way.
Try it sometime. It's nice.
You've probably never thought about how it would be to deliver papers, or the details of what goes into it. Today is your lucky day. I have a first hand account of exactly what goes into getting that paper on your doorstep each morning. This is an IM conversation I had with a friend who wishes to remain anonymous. I've taken the liberty of highlighting the especially good parts in purple. I'm (obviously) Marcus.
Paper Deliverer: I'm shooting for waking up at 1:30 to set up my inserts since they decided it would be funny to make me deliver 2 inserts on a single piece paper day
Paper Deliverer: tuesday is just ONE section that I have to worry about
Paper Deliverer: grab, fold, stuff...
Paper Deliverer: well I can fit 2 full size sections in the front seat of my truck...
Paper Deliverer: then it's (from door to center) grab, slide onto next stack closer to me, fold, stuff
Paper Deliverer: not hard enough to even think about...
Paper Deliverer: well with inserts, some are full size, some aren't, depends on the company advertising, and they're going to be thin (think one sheet of paper) so if there are 2, and one's a 3x5 booklet and the other's a slick sheet of card stock, then that'll make it 10x harder at least
Paper Deliverer: think grab from floor, grab from far side of seat, slide onto main sheet, fold, stuff
Paper Deliverer: usually it's step one) first delivery: **** dental's dumpster with ads...
Paper Deliverer: step 2) fold single piece paper
Paper Deliverer: but I'm going to try to put it all together to deliver everything that they want me to deliver
Paper Deliverer: since they're giving me like 2 bucks for it
Marcus: do you seriously dump the ads in the dumpster?
Paper Deliverer: 1 penny per insert I believe which at 2 pieces times 320, that's like 6 bucks
Paper Deliverer: whoopty doo
Paper Deliverer: and yeah, if they give me an ad on a tuesday, into the dumpster it flies
Paper Deliverer: unless it's easy to roll with the main sheet (on a single insert day)
Marcus: why? are tuesdays no-ad days?
Paper Deliverer: it's a single piece, I rest my hand on the stack and fold the top paper in half and in half and stuff it into a bag
Paper Deliverer: don't even have to think going down the road
Paper Deliverer: now think trying to gauge a single piece of card stock off
of a pile with the light off going down the road and grabbing one off the top
and then putting it on another one, and then putting both of those on top of
a newspaper and folding it into quarters and then putting it in a bag and then
chucking it out the winder, knowing that you have to be somewhere more important
at 7:00
Paper Deliverer: at least monday, wednesday-friday, while being 2 piece newspaper
days, are 2 FULL sections, easy to grab a single one off of the top
Marcus: heh... the minutia of delivering papers
Marcus: i would have never even thought about it
Paper Deliverer: oh I know, me neither
Marcus: can i use those quotes if i don't attribute them to you?
Marcus: ?
Paper Deliverer: and think, the newspaper carrier knows exactly what you drive,
where you park it every day, possibly which light you leave on, etc
Paper Deliverer: even though you don't get the paper
Paper Deliverer: brb, I smell a carbonization smell ((insert name here)'s cooking... )
Paper Deliverer: what do you do with someone who tells a bold faced lie and then acts like they don't know they're lying?
Marcus: depends on who they are
Lately I have been thinking a lot about this life and its real purpose. Sometimes it seems that even though the purpose of this life is to test me to determine where I'll be for the rest of eternity, I spend a very little time doing the things that matter eternally.
This life on Earth is like the 6 months you spend dating someone before you decide you'll marry them and be with them for the rest of your life. It's like the moment you decide what you're going to major in and what the rest of your life's career will be, but instead of being for the rest of this life, it's for Eternity.
There's a Built to Spill song my wife pointed out to me that puts eternity into perspective:
every thousand years
this metal sphere
ten times the size of Jupiter
floats just a few yards past the earth
you climb on your roof
and take a swipe at it
with a single feather
hit it once every thousand years
`til you've worn it down
to the size of a pea
yeah I'd say that's a long time
but it's only half a blink
in the place you're gonna bewhere you gonna be
where will you spend eternity
I'm gonna be perfect from now on
You can just imagine how he's feeling when he sings "I'm gonna be perfect from now on." It only makes sense to try. What else can we take with us after this life? The things that really matter are really pretty simple and apparent. It's just a matter of doing them.
In a previous entry, I mentioned Your Mac Life, an internet-only live radio talk show. At the time, I was contemplating the marketability of such an effort. Recently, I came across some others who have taken the concept and added a twist--one I really like.
Steven, at Acts of Volition, has produced and DJ'ed several 45 minute radio sessions available for download in mp3 format. For each one, he's taken a different theme and picked several songs that fit it. I think it's great--the shows are entertaining--much more entertaining and informative than having someone just recommend a few songs.
It looks like a couple other sites have done the same thing. Mathcaddy just came out with a show and there's a new site, LugRadio where four guys produce a downloadable talk show on open source software.
This type of entertainment--informative and fun at the same time--is almost destined to success. It's something that's not too hard to produce but could potentially generate a wide following. The only obstacles will be 1. bandwidth (at least for a lot of people), and 2. the RIAA or their equivalent in whatever country you might be. Personally, I feel that if it came down to the artists themselves, most would be in favor of this, but unfortunately in the backwards world that is corporate music, that is not the case.
Kudos to those of you producing radio in this format (Incidentally, what’s it called? iRadio?), keep up the good work and if you need bandwidth... well, maybe I can help.