I got a late birthday present for Thanksgiving, a new pair of Converse All-Stars. Classic black with inner green/grey. If my memory serves me right, this will be my ninth pair of Converse shoes since sixth grade. I guess I would have to say the Converse is my “signature piece” of fashion – if it qualifies as fashion – but I honestly believe I wear them because they look normal and they’re comfortable.

The first pair I had in sixth grade were all black – rubber included – and that’s exactly why I wanted them…they were all black. They were actually a size too small, so they didn’t last very long. Not until eighth grade did I get my first “regular wear” pair of Chucks – they were green hi-tops and cost $15.00.

After that I think it was some black hi’s, then I diverged for a pair of black One-stars, which are by far the best Converse shoe ever made. They lived a long, hard two years and I have yet to find another pair. After that, I think was a pair of blue hi-tops and then a trip to Chicago yield a black leather pair of lows. They were truly unique and also lived a long hard life. After that, another pair of blacks, then a pair of whites – which brings us to the new pair.  However, I did buy a red pair but don’t really wear them out in public…and for good reason.

With the newest pair of shoes that are regularly called “clown shoes” it really hit me how much wear-and-tear All-stars need before they actually look good. They aren’t bad off-the-shelf, but they are stark. Of course, any “real” sneaker these days has windows in the heel, springs, air pumps, no laces, and sockets for your iPod. Not my idea of a good-looking shoe. It is hard to find a normal-looking sneaker these days and All-stars are the best option – even if their price has gone up ($40!!).

All-stars the closest thing you get to bare feet and still qualify as a shoe. And they don’t make your feet sweat thanks to the patented sweat holes. The only down side is they are really not a year-round shoe. Winter and rainy seasons make wearing Chucks almost a fine art. One good puddle or snow drift and you’re done for. But at least you can throw them in the dryer and the color doesn’t come off on your socks.

Despite the All-stars’ current retro popularity, I believe they will eventually fall back into the “unhip” realm and prices will drop. However, despite their retro-ness, they certainly are hard enough to find and I still don’t see many people wearing them.
Here’s to the Chuck Taylor All-stars.

During some “down time” I was flipping through Revolution in the Valley looking at pictures and reading some select passages. The book discusses the history of Apple computer and looks at various aspects throughout the 1980s. Cited in the book are magazines from the era that declare the age of the computer and so on and so on… This is just over 20 years ago.

We all have computers, or at least use computers on what is probably a daily basis. No one can argue the impact of the personal computer on the world and society at large, but a trip to Urgent Care had me kind of baffled.

There were three nurses on-duty in the front office. When I arrived they were all chatting about Christmas gifts and sharing which web sites have the best coupons. They were all talking about which video game system they were going to try and get their hands on for their kids. I was listening in to their conversation while I was waiting and boy did they have problems:

“Why isn’t this printing?”

“What’s a PDF?”

“Why is this 37 pages?”

“What is a ‘dot net’”

“Why is this going so slow?!”

Now these ladies were not old nurses. I’d guess they were maybe 30 years old or so. I obviously don’t know their work schedules, but logic would suggest they probably work the same shift everyday. So here are three women that use computers all day long – for important things like finding sale ads – and they are still befuddled by common computer puzzles.

These women probably grew up with computers much like I did. Now I know not everyone is a nerd such as I or my regular readers, but you can’t avoid using a computer in any work environment, it is a requirement. With such experience necessary, why are questions such as theirs still popping up?

That might sound stupid, as I have to deal with non-tech savvy people everyday, but most of the people I have to support are “above” the tech-born generation – so I cut them some slack.

Is technology still that scary and intimidating?

And if so, I wonder what it takes to build trust. I believe firmly that a top quality user experience (read user-friendliness) leads to trust and confidence when using technology. But even that (apparently) only goes so far. It amazes me how people seem to lose the ability to learn from frequent experiences when faced with technology. Surely the nurses at UC have experienced their slow printer before…and a PDF…I wouldn’t believe them if they told me otherwise. So if you experience a slow printer once before, then why wouldn’t you expect it the next time? …and the next time… I make some assumptions with this case, but I think they are safe ones.

Now that I have witnessed this in a place other than my home and my work, I am wondering what technology still scares people? Which ones do not? …and why?

Your thoughts…?

Why am I more impressed with the CGI in Jurassic Park which is a 13 year old film than anything with CGI today? Because, Jurassic Park was afraid to use CGI. It was a new technology and they didn’t know how it was going to look. So they used it on far away shots and fast action shots. But anything up-close was still an animatronics model. CGI today is used front and center and movie watchers are expected to just gloss over the fact.

Case in point, Yoda is by far better as a muppet. The movements
of the puppet and the spoken lines mesh. You believe that he’s a cranky old hermit when he’s hitting R2-D2 with his cane and the infliction of the actors’ voice matches the actions. While CGI yoda can fly around and battle anything there is no connection to the character because there is nothing tangible. One of the reasons
CGI today is used improperly is the advent of entirely CGI
characters and environments. The reason this hinders most
movies is because your flesh and blood actors have nothing
to interact with. If you have seen any movie with a CGI character
inevitably you see the real actor focusing on the wrong part of the
CGI character.

Now the case can be made that CGI characters can be done well. Gollum in LOTR is a prime example. Except that was a real person overlaid with a CGI “skin”. There was someone there for the other actors to interact with. Someone who was also the voice and could match the movements with the lines. The entirely CGI set is another case of lack of interaction. The real actors look out of place because there is nothing there for them to react to. You have to have some element of tangibility.

My second issue with today’s CGI use is it all looks exactly the same. CGI dragons look the same, CGI people look uniformly horrible, CGI battles look to planned out and rigid, and CGI backgrounds always look shiny and flat.

CGI is perfect and thats the problem. Real people and places are never perfect. CGI should be reserved for adding little things and for far away shots and should always be mixed with something that’s actually there. The only time CGI should be heavily used is when the entire film is CGI. CGI is a tool for tweaking a movie not building one around your actors. Unfortunately, CGI will come into heavier and heavier use. As movies make less and less at the box office (we could site the fact that Hollywood is unoriginal and expects us to swallow the same movie over and over) CGI use will grow. CGI is cheaper. Basic economics dictates if your profits are declining you reduce costs or you up your price. Hollywood is doing both yet has forgotten one key point. If your product is of low quality it doesn’t matter how much you lower your costs or raise your prices you still won’t sell your product. So pop me some popcorn and put in Jurassic Park.

-Lorkin-

I’ve written before about how the Lord of Rings trilogy will be the set of movies that every other movie gets compared to for the next decade. It’s true. Lord of the Rings was just that good – great story, great characters, great acting, and great visuals. The downside to such a good film is that is pretty much ruined any future fantasy films.

Case in point is the new film Eragon, a fantasy film that involves all the same ideas as every other fantasy story, Lord of the Rings included. I watched the trailer today out of pure curiosity and noticed two very distinct things about it.

One, it doesn’t explain any plot or characters. You see some dragons, some knights, some sort of wizard and a witch. Without an explanation of of the story, the film appears to be really nothing more than a Rings rip-off. Some of the shots in the trailer are almost verbatim “borrowed” from Rings and anyone who has seen the Rings films will make the connection immediately.

Obviously we don’t know if Eragon will be a good or bad movie – as it’s not out yet – but after just watching the trailer I say to myself, “I’ve already seen this movie…three times even.” And that’s unfortunate.

Rings was so instrumental in the fantasy genre of film that I fear all fantasy films will crumble in its shadow. There were no flaws in Rings so there’s really no reason to see another fantasy film. What’s left to cover in the genre?

We are all pretty familiar with being “in the zone” – that point in time when you get completely lost in whatever you are doing because you are totally involved in making it happen. It could be homework, office work, or mowing your lawn. Little did I know there was a more scientific name for this state of mind – Flow.

One guy, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, has actually based his essential existence around The Flow. Of course, he’s European and probably extremely smart — or that crazy-genius smart. He considers being in the zone an almost euphoric state of mind, a Zen-like process. He boils it down to several key points that describe what being in the zone is (from Wikipedia):

1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernable).
2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time – one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.

I never really thought about what it is to be really tuned in to what your doing, although it happens all the time. Looking over the eight points of Flow, I really understand how I consistently get to the zone – and it relates to stress levels.

I like to study and write about organizing and thinking to give yourself free time and thus live a little more stress-free. As readers now know, I apparently have way too much free time. But I reach this (apparent) obscene level of free time by organizing and balancing everything I do – at work, at home, and everywhere else.

Failing to reach the points of Flow leads to stress. But the parts that make up Flow tell you what you need to do to be stress-free. Seeing Flow in graph form may also help understand what you know versus what you don’t know (or what you think you know). Although this chart is new to me, we all have one in our head and are constantly plotting what we do on it – or at least we should.

We all have a degree of control over what we do. Of course that degree can vary significantly depending on the circumstances, but it is still there. However, I think a lot of people give up on this idea due to the lack of #5 and #8.

Getting feedback can be hard. In many cases you expect feedback automatically, but that rarely happens – so sometimes you have to ask. You have a right to know if what you are doing is good, bad, kinda good, kinda bad, or just out right stupid. If you’re not told, you need to ask. Question people and you’ll find out what you want to know.

Self-reward is certainly the curse of the Flow. Some might ask, why do something if you don’t get anything in return? But these people don’t consider their stress topics in that formula. Some take the “heck with it” approach and just do the task without much consideration of reward. But what reward is better than not having to stress out about things? If you’re working late, skipping vacations, working weekends, or anything else of that nature, then you are stressing over something…(or it could be just poor planning and balance on your part)

How to live life as a work of art, rather than as a chaotic response to external events…

When you need to get into the zone with something that you really think is stupid or a waste, you just need to Stop, Organize, then Execute. You’ll find yourself in the zone quickly and you’ll find the end result ends up better that you expected. Slowing down a process to get it more correct will lead to getting better results faster over time – this gets you to Flow – good skills and good challenge. If you find yourself at the top-left or low-right side of the chart above, then the solution may be rethinking the problem and possibly changing the problem.

Trying to get yourself in the zone for most problems you come across will lead to less stress and more free time for things you really want to do. This then turns problems into challenges you actually look forward to figuring out.

I’ve been keeping tabs on the Nintendo Wii news over the past few weeks since it comes out very soon. Surprisingly enough, there’s not much interesting news. Most are reporting on the game box art and other stuff that really doesn’t make much difference. On the flip side, I read people are already waiting in line for the Playstation 3 which comes out next week. Fools!

But while roaming the game news I came across Guitar Hero 2 for the (now classic) Playstation 2. I heard about Guitar Hero 1 but didn’t give it much thought. But now that I’ve been hit with the Wii bug and it’s interactive-ness, I’m looking back at my PS2 to see what is available. We have the dancing, so why not have some rocking to go along with it?

Guitar Hero 2 doesn’t use your traditional controller – it uses a guitar. Yes, a wee guitar controller that has colored buttons on the neck and a little “strum spot” for your thumb. This is a game that will truly involve your dexterity. God bless my E.T.-length fingers…

The motivation behind Guitar Hero is not unlike that of DDR when dancing. As the music plays you have to hit the right combination at the right time. In the dance world this tends to be on the beat. In the guitar world you’re actually playing the lead guitar part. And with songs from the likes of Guns N Roses, Kansas, Motley Crue, and even Danzig…you know you’ll be rocking out hard.

This game might find it’s way home on Christmas this year rather than a Wii. For one, I’m not sure if I would be able to get my hands on a Wii before Christmas, as the rest of the world will be looking for it too. Also, sometimes it’s not the best move to get a new console right away. Although Nintendo is not known for first model issues, it could happen. And also $80 is easier to spend than $300.

Now…what would be really cool is if they provided you with a database of games that you could pay for and download for the game. Do an iTunes and charge a $1.00 per song and download each from the Sony Mothership directly to your console. People would eat it up…or at least I would if they picked the right artists.
Rock and roll forever!

After bitching about Mattel’s Hot Wheels web site, I decided that I could probably build a better one. So I did. It’s not a collector’s web site with a database or checklist or anything, it’s just a showcase I can use to show off and share my Hot Wheels collection.

Frankly, I think it’s pretty neat. Plus, it kept me busy during my birthday vacation. So please stop by and check it out. There’s not much to it, so don’t be surprised by the simplicity. But, that’s what is nice about – simple.

The Morning Toast Hot Wheels Showcase