I just watched a DVD of just Pixar short films. They were wonderful, but the best moment came in the documentary about Pixar’s early history. John Lasseter was an animator from Disney. He joined a group of PhDs in computer science in a small room. They bounced ideas off each other. The interaction between them…
One idea about a leader is that someone does things that are worth following. This does not mean they actually have followers. For example, Van Gogh lived his life in mostly poverty and isolation, but people have followed his lead in art a million times over since then. Leaders in this sense do something different…
A very early web WIN for me was Thanksgiving 1995. My father had asked during during dinner conversation, “How old is Kiri Te Kanawa?” Today, finding the answer is simple. You go to Google and misspell her name go to Kiri’s Wikipedia page and do the math. If you are bad at Math, you can even just…
On the radio I heard a person say, “I’m glad the mayor is thinking of housing as the solution for homelessness.” (Editor note: duh!) She wasn’t being sarcastic and making a joke. She was being a talking head that stays on message and tries not to say anything controversial. I recently interviewed a candidate that also…
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring except for the loudest three little monsters you ever saw. My goodness, my 3 boys were a terror today. I should have made them run a few miles in the park. They were wound up and fighting like crazy. If they weren’t…
I love holiday lights. They are bright and festive and make the cold dark times of the year more fun and bearable. One movie that really inspired me was National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. He decked out every inch of his house. Growing up a family had put blue lights all over their house and it was…
Imagine you received this letter: Dear [You], I am about to graduate high school and have been accepted to several good colleges. However, I believe that the cost and the potential benefits of the college life are no match for real world experience. Drinking, partying and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on books, room/board…
Worst Remake Ever. Previously, this honor was held by Willy Wonka with Johny Depp; what an abomination. However, my current winner of the prize was the recent remake of The Karate Kid with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith. The plot shifted from a 16-year old New Jersey kid moving to Southern California to a 12-year…
make-work [meyk-wurk] –noun work, usually of little importance, created to keep a person from being idle or unemployed. Origin: 1935–40, Americanism ; n. use of v. phrase make work Sadly, I see this every day. The building I am in just had the outside repainted. It wasn’t in disrepair or dirty. I looked at it before and looked at it after. Looks the same to me. Oh wait…the pinstripe used to be red, and now its black.…
I had several interesting experiences yesterday. In all of the cases, the subject of my work was much more or much less complicated than what I initially thought. Some examples: Case #1: I was working with an engineer who had a problem with CSS. He is only loosely familiar with CSS, so he was freaking…
Imagine that Toyota (or some big car manufacturer) came out with a standard interface to the stereo system. It looked like a tray above the center dash that could hold your cell phone or ipod or small device. At the bottom of the tray was a removable interface. You could plugin a iPod adapter or a Zune…
It’s not everyone, but there are alot of people who have particular phrases that they say all the time. Some examples: Kevin, a guy who used to work for me, said “Essentially” about 20 times per sentence. Another variant was “Basically” which several people I know say in every sentence. At least 1 in 40…
Google ranks pages according to really strange algorithms. I don’t do any active SEO on my blog. However, Google ranks me very high for certain searches. They often distract me from understanding my traffic. See illustration below: You can see all the traffic in the middle was when my posts on Windows 7 and Office 2010…
Check out this sneak peak at what Rock Band 3 will be like: A real keyboard, more realistic drums and a guitar that is a real world guitar. This takes learning music to a whole new level. I am very excited to get this for my kids. Currently, only the drums are a close analog…