TIDE CHART 08/28/09

Is the ocean half full or half empty?



HIGH TIDE
1:45 PM
Elevator conversation is usually uneventful, awkward, and most times leads both parties to an agreeable conclusion about some unimportant topic or another, where the tail end of the dialogue is along the lines of: 'you are so right...I've always preferred a cold day to a day like taday..ugh its gunna be rough huh?' And that's it. End of story, go back to your own life and remember this meaningless conversation for a follow up should we ever fall into this situation again. Well today was different, for some reason or another, I divulged to my co-passenger that my last blood pressure reading I did at the longs robot was pretty high. I think the double-shot of espresso was making my conversational attempts bolder too. She beamed. 'Oh I have one of those electric machines upstairs!' and preceded to tell me how she was hypertensive and needed to monitor her bp regularly. Although a little creeped out, I was happy to get somthing real out of someone from the elevator. After lunch I was invited up to the partnership office for a free screening from my new nurse. Turns out the guy next to her has diabetes and has a blood sugar needle, (he was kind enough to give me a fresh one) and so i got a two-fer one special. Although my results were less than stellar, it wasn't as bad as I'd thought, and now I have 2 new friends and a personal clinic right upstairs.



LOW TIDE
10:30PM
I always try to give punk kids that come into the coffee shop (night job) the benefit of the doubt. I remember how it is to be young, dumb and nowhere to hang out, so when they came in as a crew, and helped themselves to water cups and plopped their baggy asses down on the couch without buying anything, I let them be. As an adolecent, I remember being yelled at by some old know-it-all or another for somthing that was stupid and harmless, like hanging out in a park after hours, or tossing beer bottles up into the air in an empty parking lot. The old man in me was getting older as I watched them, and I was tempted to just give'um the boot, but I figured I'd just wait until they did something stupid enough to get eighty-sixed. After the last rush of the evening, i checked the lobby to lock things up, and found a sculpture of trash, and 2 water cups filled with cream where they were sitting. Ahh, this destruction of faith is what makes grumpy old men who they are. I realized that I I deserved every scolding I'd ever gotten, and I actually let a 'bah!' slip out of my mouth as I cleaned up the mess.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

One last thing

On the subject of media's transormation, and my recent paranoid rants, well apparantly the subject at hand is called Net Neutrality and has been a big deal fer a while now, and as we suspected (me and my other selves), its all coming to a head.

see the following from our comrades at tech liberation.com:

http://techliberation.com/2009/04/19/internet-openness-net-neutrality-and-beyond-event-in-nyc-april-21/

Knock On Wood - for the internet (a continuation of yesterday's rant)

I've been thinking about the whole media-convergence thing all day, and I have to put it out there, just so I can get it off my paranoid mind. This TV merger between our two local stations has got me thinking about the shift from TV to the internet. The bottom line is, that marketing geniuses are collecting data on our clicks, and following the channels that we follow online, in an effort to see where and when they can effectively advertise, thereby increasing the effectiveness of online media Monetization.

Before, there were less obvious ways to follow our consumption habits (TV ratings and surveys), but there were also less options. Even with the 300 + channels to choose from, content on TV was geared much more linearly, than say the surfing habits of a web driven consumer. The reason online media may be so hard to predict, is the 'openness' of it all. The kind of openness that network television is probably VERY freaked out about right now. Imagine having an ad for the Simpsons during a prime-time show on NBC. never gonna happen. Or a view of other news perspectives on a network news broadcast? silly right? That's just the kind of thing that drives us to Google news, or You Tube for that matter, what makes them so much more engaging, thorough, and well, maybe self-destructive.

We can look at our own internet surfing habits as the new 'channels' that advertisers are desperate to try to find. They need to know where their consumers are, and now that we are so diverse, so 'free,' that makes things very sticky for media providers that depend on these advertiser's success to keep producing the information we need them to produce. What's the reaction?

Don't be suprised if we see more restrictions on the internet. The easiest way to find us as consumers, is to keep us somewhere. That means exclusivity to links, the very foundation of the world wide web. The idea (for them) is to keep us on 'channels' or 'structured surfing habbits' that the media can control in an effort to get advertisers to maximize their returns. More legislation, and less freedom is what I fear. Kiss google news goodbye, and look forward to the linear browsing style of of MSN.

IDK just a thought.

A Map to The Cave?

Well it seems that times have been pretty tough for 'old school' journalism. Media as we know it is going through some incredibly tough growing pains as it attempts embrace the digital era, and it's becoming more and more obvious, that analog anything is dead. first music, then newspapers, the print media, and today, like a scene out of a sci-fi movie, broadcast television.

If you haven't read or seen on the news (which apparently maybe we haven't), local broadcast journalism has started what could be interpreted to a political observer, as the beginnings of a socialist environment. In an effort to survive the economic downturn and avoid total shut down on a larger scale, KFVE, KGMB and KHNL are merging stations to deliver one MASSIVE media outlet here in the islands. This is good for TV news media's survival, but could be interpreted as bad, to those who may fear that a lack in competition in news journalism, will no doubt lead to 'newsy' journalism which in turn of course means we are a few paces away from a complete and total political propaganda machine. Goodbye free speech, hello Kim Jong Il.

I know that sounds worrisome. Maybe even downright bad. The fact is though, that as the media voice of traditional outlets like newspapers, periodicals, and broadcast television begin to shrink into one small whisper, the digital media outlets continue to grow, diversify, and expand into screams. Google, Twitter and even Blogs (mine excluded) have all proven to be as or more effective than the status quo, in delivering useful and relevant content to knowledge hungry users. We are in the midst of a media renaissance.

The only question then, Is what are we saying? And maybe more importantly, what are we listening to?? Where cable-fed media had us for a full 30 minutes, covering all subjects of a front page index, the bookmarks on a web browser lead users to subject-specific content as determined by that user. Netscape had it right, in that NAVIGATOR is the position we assume for our own news content. That could mean MANY different things in terms of the shaping of our information world. Will we take the opportunity the internet has to offer us to thrive in critical thinking? Will we season ourselves with the cornucopia of perspectives out there to become better informed? Or will we simply retreat to a more specific perspective, sheltering ourselves in in a cave decorated with video clips of dogs peeing on themselves, fat folks breaking furniture, and musically talented toddlers?

One thing is for sure: the dynamics of between the general public and 'journalsim' as we know it is about to become a whole lot more complicated. You excited?
Mee tube.

The Calm

There are rains coming, though from the ridiculously sunny weather this weekend you'd never know it. Apparently, a small storm system is on its way, originally slated to arrive today, has been now pushed back to Tuesday.

Here in Hawaii, this is very common. Tropical storm and Hurricane warnings come and go, and usually with nothing but a drizzle by the time they make landfall. The breezy winds and sunny sky suggested to me that this would indeed be a similar case. The weather has in fact been some of the nicest weekend weather I've seen. Beach-day and hike pics to verify via camera phone:



But the steady breeze that's been playing with my curtains all weekend just stopped dead.

And wave of humidity just followed suit.

Have we actually got some accurate predictions??? We shall see...

BEST GIFT EVER

I just got back from my 31st b-day celebration wih my buds. We had a world buffet, with foods from India, the Mediterranean, Italy, Spain, Thailand, Japan, Cuba, and Mexico. (Mexico was a large bottle of pitron). I had my fair share, and I'll leave it at that.

What I really wanted to blog about is the ULTIMATE gift I got. For all you creative nerds out there you understand what I'm talking about from the pic:


I have the BEST BUDS EVER.

TIDE CHART 08/06/2009

Is the ocean half full or half empty?



HIGH TIDE
8:45AM
I seem to have befriended the lady that works at L&L Drive Inn next to my work. On a breakfast run, she interrupted my order to ask if I was at a surf sample sale (where the surf industry gets rid of design samples to the general public for cheap - usually held at public school cafeterias or church halls) 2 weeks ago. I instinctivley said 'no' cuz its not really my scene, but had to recant, because my friend and I did indeed drop into one on the way home from the beach. She admitted to have tried to wave at me in order to say hello. It felt nice to have a stranger forge that gap between the register.



LOW TIDE
10:45PM
I'm making a spinach and garlic pizza tomorrow night, and figured I'd stop in at the market to get some of the stuff for it on the way home from the coffee shop. I couldn't find the spinach. I looked between the kale, the choy sum, the red leaf and even the radish bunches. I finally found the last bunch, the last shredded and beaten bunch, and reluctantly went for it. The underside of the leafy mess seemed to have lodged in it, a lumpy brown formation. Again with the instinct, I brought it up to my nose.

Driven

My brother is about to take the board exams for nursing. He just got back from a 10 hour study sesh this evening and was telling me about how worried he is about taking it. It's par for par for newbee nursing grads he says. Hair falls out, teeth crumble, and sleep neglected. He was telling me stories about classmates, and coworkers who've all experienced this epic moment, about a friend, who sat in her car catatonic for an hour after she'd taken it, and I could tell it's getting to him. He's been studying like this for the past two months, vacant from all conversations that have nothing to do with nursing. He's committed to this test, and has been since he started his journey into nursing two years ago.

The kind of passion I see in him I hope to someday find myself, in whatever it is I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life.

But how do people get there? How is it my brother transplanted himself from a world where he was ordering kegs to the backyard of friend's houses on weekdays, to becoming so serious and dedicated to a single personal vision?

I think about those two asian jouralists who were recently pardoned from a North Korean prison. How could anyone be so SURE the story they wanted to tell would be worth the risks involved? Is it somthing they decided to commit to? Something they just stumbled into? Where does the passion really lie? More importantly, do they think it was worth it now?

Im asking this because at 31, I still haven't found that 'thing.' I work in a coffee shop. I take reservations at a hotel. I'm a drumming instructor, a freelance designer, and a somewhat of a tech nerd. I've been a cook, recreation director, film coordinator, aquarist, marketing assistant, furniture mover, a leader, a follower, and an observer. Since I've had jobs, I've always managed at least two, sometimes three of them. The thing is, there are so many THINGS out there to get lost in, but the culmination of them doesn't add up to a single vision. Do i shave them down? Deny the curiosity? There's this saying that has always haunted me because a part of me knows it to be true: Do just one thing, but learn to do it REALLY WELL. I hate that saying. If I do ingnore the other urges picking just one, does that mean I'll finally find my path? Is that how it works? If I don't am i destined for mediocraty?

Good Morning

So its been a while. I admit it. This blogging thing started out strong, but has since devolved into a quick way to purge the events of my life: a literal journal, like all the other musings out there in the bloggosphere. What's worse is that even those notable events have become few and far between. Since my trip to the mailand last thanksgiving, I've found work again (plenty of it), but not the kind that stimulates, the kind that desensitizes.

Unsharpened, I have stepped into what feels like a creative and professional swimming pool. A swimming pool filled with cement. Athletic institutions would refer to this year as a 'rebuilding season,' but I have neither the financial backing, or athleticism to afford that kind of spin. I've become so used to the arbitrary and often times mundane act surviving that I've desperately consumed the creativity and curiosity for my own life: the hunger itself. With that said, I'm making an oath to go back to the root of this blog, to wade though the puddles of my own bile; to examine what most swallow without question; to find the morsels of this life worth savoring.

So I've wiped my ass, I'm turning around, and preparing to heave on my knees.

Good Morning.