Technical Journal Travel Log
Apr
16
2013
Someone at work pointed to me this TED talk on changing the healthcare model. Some very good ideas in here, as well as the great presentation delivery which is a characteristic of TED. This type of forward thinking is unfortunately missing from the national efforts on “reform”.
Apr
15
2013
Just keeping track of this. I had a minor role in data collection.
Mid-South Imaging and Therapeutics, Memphis, Tennessee 38120, USA. rduszak@duszak.com
Apr
4
2013
I’m taking a songwriting class. More about that later, but it is a great experience for a number of reasons and the professor’s material is really brilliant. As we’re discussing melody and song choices he snuck in this link:
It is a somewhat timeless piece of American television, when regular programming was intellectually interesting. I don’t know all of Mr. Simon’s work, but some of it I like a ton and this particular song was influential when I was younger for a number of reasons, including a performance on Saturday Night Live while wearing a turkey costume. Anyway, I really enjoyed seeing this in the context of a work not yet completed, talking about note choice, and like great foreshadowing in a movie we know that he will end up putting in a great bridge,a great sax solo, and the song eventually becomes AABA and one of his greatest works.
Enjoy, including the awkward jump to commercial break. The final product.
Apr
2
2013
The oldest April Fool joke in the world has been the fake news story. The problem is that on the Internet more than half the material is fake, so its not funny, it’s just annoying. Just give it a rest and do something more important, like rigging a bucket full of confetti on top of a doorway.
Mar
18
2013
I’m taking a class right now (more on that later), and in the assignments for the week was buried:
“So many. I had not thought songs had undone so many.”
(Extra credit for recognizing the quote I just mangled.)
When I was in school, answering this question would have required being fairly well read in things I normally don’t read. Of course, in this current, very modern time of 2013 when we’re all walking around with a network terminal in our pocket its a simple matter of plugging in the quote above into your browser. In seconds, Google returns what many college poetry majors spend years learning.
Naturally, this kills the value of recognizing the quote (but perhaps the credit is a tiny fraction of a point, reflecting the effort of recognizing). The more important thought is how Google impacts mental processing the way the electronic calculator has impacted doing math in your head. Just like no one spends time working arithmetic, perhaps soon no one spends time remembering facts.
Feb
25
2013
http://gizmodo.com/5986253/david-bowie-young-americans
Feeling both very old and very young at the same time.
Jan
14
2013
“Scotch Tape” artist. Very funny.
Jan
13
2013
Doing a little house cleaning here; the comment spam filter filled up to more than 700 entries (not sure the last time I checked). I usually just roll through and delete them all, but then I saw one real comment and realized I should step through them. Akismet does an awesome job catching junk, but they collect until you permanently delete them. It would be nice to have an option or another plug-in that would delete out comments in foreign languages or non-American character sets. I can’t read them, and they are a large percentage of the junk that gets submitted.
Jan
12
2013
iWoz, by Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith, 2006, published by W. W. Norton, 288 pages. ISBN: 0-393-06143-4 (find book)
I was given this book with a note inside telling me I would probably like it, “but what an ego this guy has”. I thought that was funny; if someone decides to write an autobiography, of course they have a big ego. And, started reading. And, very quickly understood what the note was referring to.
The style of the book (and the two person authorship) shows the book was mechanically built from conversations by Steve about his life. And, as it rolls through his early life it is a lot of references to the accomplishments of a boy and filled with “greatest ever” and “no one else” comments. This gets old very fast, and a lot of people would be left with the impression of his ego. If you plow through the book you will get to a different place, especially if you understand the knowledge it takes to design electronic circuits of the complexity to make a computer.
Steve is really a unique person, and also was lucky to grow up in a unique time. The pace of product development today and the complexity of devices make it very unlikely that a single individual could sit at a workbench and put together something that has the impact of a personal computer did around 1977. While the personal computer would eventually be built by someone, he did it first with no or almost no assistance. The design and concept of the product is still relatively unchanged 35 years later, and is as common to life as a telephone and completely altered the dynamics of information access, technology investing, and patent law. I think Steve can be forgiven a little ego.
So, whether you like the style or not, there’s lots of great first hand explanation of the history of the personal computer, founding of Apple the company, and the lifestyle of an entrepreneur. Along the way you’ll get an understanding of the history of a central person in all this and how he was positioned to take advantage of the opportunity. Steve also comes across as a person who actively promotes passion for your work and to not follow conventional thinking. I enjoyed the book a lot and its a pretty fast read.
What was missing was Steve’s thoughts on the iPhone revolution. The book was published in 2006, so the iPod had not yet shown its impact on the music business and the iPhone was still sitting on the drawing board. I would have enjoyed an updated version to get Steve’s thoughts on these events (you can find them in more recent articles) as well as what drove him to enter Dancing with the Stars.
Dec
20
2012
Call Me Sometime – Cheezburger.
Another winner from I Can Has Cheezburger.
A cute picture that is almost hiding the fact that someone out there took their dogs on a “Dolphin Experience” tour. How great is it that we live on a planet where we can rent a boat to take dogs out to meet dolphins? And where are the floatation devices?
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