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When I'm writing a novel, I'm dealing with a double life. I live in the present at the same time that I live in the past with my characters. It is this that makes a novelist so eccentric and unpleasant.
-- John Phillips Marquand
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Tamara really liked the first two Mummy movies. This one? Not so much. I liked Maria Bello in Shattered (aka Butterfly on a Wheel - surprisingly good movie), but she has zero chemistry with Brendan Fraser. I missed Rachel Wiesz, who wisely passed this flick by. The dialogue is that bad, and while it has its moments of campy fun, it's forgettable. Coming on the heels of my viewing of The Dark Knight, it felt like watching a late night TNT ripoff of Indiana Jones IV. The only person who comes out of the movie with any bona fides is Michelle Yeoh, who manages to convey real depth in an otherwise paper mache production. |
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I don't know what genius is. I've never really thought about it. But I like this description, by Willam Blake: Improvement makes straight roads
But the crooked roads without improvement
Are roads of genius It's from a poem entitled Proverbs of Hell. In the first stanza you'll read this delicious line:Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity. Ain't that the truth. Conventional wisdom is often the myopic lean of the herd, too scared to deviate much. Don't want to make a mistake, you know.(I think "oops" may be the most powerful word in our vocabulary in its potential for change.) I also found this, and it makes sense to me. The genius, disturbed as he is, makes errors and wrong turns that the ordinary person avoids. Still, these madmen, "despising and overcoming obstacles which would have dismayed the cool and deliberate mind - hasten by whole centuries the unfolding of truth." Which says to me that anyone can be a genius - you just have to be inquisitive enough and impatient enough to travel unprepared where others won't.The word "genius" comes from the Latin word "genere," which means "to produce." "Generate" would also be a derivative word. So I'll take the liberty to suggest something... If we want to make a difference in life, the only way to get there is to seek out error and wrong turn, wherein we can unearth the "roads of genius." Incapacity? Not a chance. Action, man, action! Genius doesn't wait for others. It's too busy foraging, trampling the unknown underfoot in the excitement of fearless discovery. |
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Got me a new job today. Just development, but more money and likely more mobility. I start in a couple of weeks. Felt pretty much like I wasn't going to go anywhere at my current job, though I liked the work. But you gotta feel like you're growing and making a difference. While my immediate management appreciated and encouraged my thinking, the management above didn't get me. No problem - I move on. And make about 1/3 more money. I also expect that I'll get no hassles about my little web site here or my work on 247, both of which became issues, unfortunately... Yesterday, I received a call from a friend of mine who is signed up here for the gated playground. That person too, who works for the same employer, was hassled about blogging. There was nothing threatening about that person's writing nor my own, and yet our blogs became an issue at work for us. More reasons for me to fight very hard to make 247 successful and achieve the freedom to do as I wish. I don't want to be governed. |
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I'm spending the week working on LocalsGive.com, which is going well. I'm almost ready to test the submission process. Once that's complete, next week will be spent getting Sherry (the woman who told me that she wanted to do this) what she needs to manage submissions and pledges. About that time, she would be ready for a test drive with real people. I brought in a new QA person, someone with whom I've worked before. He hadn't seen Paragon247.com or LocalsGive.com prior to this. After giving Paragon247 a thorough look, he had this to say: Brett, the site is a work of art. Everyone here agrees, it is beautiful. It is so fast, clean, simple, easy, straightforward, etc. that it is impossible to criticize. When I couldn't find a particular link it was a) at the bottom of the page, and b) it turned out I didn't really need to go there in the first place. I've been working on this for a while, as you know. Hearing that gives me a boost. Seeing LocalsGive.com and Paragon247.com go live in the next month will do so even more.And lest you think Chris' nice comments went to my head, he also sent me a list of 18 to-do items. I'll work on that next week as well. (Chris will get 5% equity in this if he continues working on it as he has. I'm not afraid to share what I've built - I just want people as committed as I am to it. Passion - the number one attribute in anyone I want to hire.) |
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I bought the book, Generational Housing: Myth or Mastery, for some research I'm doing for work. Get this: Over the past 20 years, there has been an increasing disparity in the distribution of wealth [emphasis mine]. In 2001, those in the top 20% of the population had 86% of net worth in the country. They have on average over 500 times as much as those in the bottom 40%, whose average total net worth was $2,900.Income [emphasis mine], however, is not nearly so unequally distributed, with the top 20% having only 10 times the income on average of the bottom 40%. What they don't say about income, as they do with wealth, is that the disparity between high and low is increasing. But we always hear about the wealth disparity as an argument for higher income taxes. Remember: it's income tax, and not wealth tax.Got that? |
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Something I like to do now and then is look up the meaning of words. I think that's healthy, because other people try to game engineer my understanding of some words. Consider the word: "govern." Here's its definition: - to rule over by right of authority
- to exercise a directing or restraining influence over; guide
- to hold in check; control
- to regulate the speed of
- to have predominating influence
So I ask you...Do you expect others to rule over you?
Do you give them the right of authority to do so?
Do you want them to have a restraining influence over you?
Should others have the right to hold you in check?
Regulate your movement? This is why those who founded this country wanted government to be limited in its powers. Personally, I don't want anyone governing me. |
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I've uploaded the ability for registered members of the beatcanvas gated playground to post content. If you go to the main page, you should see a link for the Gated Playground. By accessing that, you can create new articles and edit those that you've written. One fun thing: you can select the template to change the way your post appears. Choosing nothing gives your post the default look. I'm still messing with all of this, but it's getting there. If you run into an error, let me know. |
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The Experience, not the Product |
On my way back from Minneapolis yesterday, after visiting my son who is soon to attend college there, I mused on building web sites. I did this while I listened to a seminar by a Google business manager on innovation. The fella who gave the talk said that Google doesn't care what language a programmer knows. Google never hires a .NET programmer, or PHP programmer, or a Java programmer. That's irrelevant to their search. They just want to know if you can program. That hard skill aside, they then want to know how creative you are. The language can be learned. The creativity can't. I think far too many people, skilled in a trade, focus on building the product, but not on creating the experience. Said another way, it's not about whether it works (functional) but whether it's intuitive and empowering (presentation). The best route between A and B is not the shortest, but the one most easily remembered. Efficiency can come later... Do we lose the best fit for our purposes when we pre-bias our selection criteria with hard criteria? Do we forget the purpose of what we're doing when we focus only on arriving at the goal, and not in remembering that we are often leaders who need to communicate to others how to follow behind us? |
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My family and I saw The Dark Knight at the midnight showing last night. Best movie of the year. A bit long, but understadably so. The movie had perfect acting. Every actor was flawless. But Heath Ledger crystallized the movie. It would have been a great movie without him, but his performance was so memorable and so unexpectedly right that if they were to give one Oscar this year, it should be his. Aaron Eckhardt cemented his place on big marquees. Maggie Gyllenhaal showed Katie Holmes to be the high schooler she is. And the fact that it wasn't CGI-laden was refreshing. Wonderful, wonderful. |
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