Geek Books by erinzam

In keeping with my notebook / sketchbook fanaticism, I recommend these handmade notebooks made from old computer paper.

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Free 5:00 counter

In the spirit of giving away media for One Prayer, please enjoy this free 5:00 countdown timer. You’ll have to log in with a Vimeo account to grab it.

iPhone track

I created this track in a hour or so experimenting with one constraint: all sounds had to be generated from the iPhone. I played each sample out and captured it in Garageband, then arranged the pieces. I didn’t specify that the result had to be interesting, but I’m reasonably pleased with my 1 hour effort and solely cell phone generated content.

In case you’re curious about my app selection, the kick was generated by Randgrid, the bass and other synth parts generated in megaSynth, the plinky sound comes from Melodica (app store link) / (youtube demo), and the solo type elements was Bebot (app store link) / (youtube demo).

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

mp3 download link

Review: “Instant Turnaround!” by Harry Paul and Ross Reck, PH.D.

Recently I’ve decided to read more. I love reading, but don’t often take enough time to do it. Meg picked up a few books for me on business, leadership, managing, and things of that nature. And that brings me to this book, Instant Turnaround!, Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard.

What manager wouldn’t want his team to enjoy their days at work? I suppose some wouldn’t really care about how his employee feels, and that’s really the point of Instant Turnaround. The way a person feels about their job directly relates to their performance. Multiplied on the scale of an entire department and it begins to shape the performance of an entire department and an entire company.

This is an interesting and refreshingly brief read about the fact that success is hinged on an employee’s discretionary effort. There is a baseline amount of effort that each employee gives to their job to stay employed. This is effectively C-average work. For a companies to thrive, its employees must operate at A-level.

The difference, according to Instant Turnaround, is that these employees give all of their extra effort to their work. They can withhold and partially do the job. But if they give it all the results are demonstrated in the companies’ bottom line and in the perception that the workplace is somewhere you want to be, not just somewhere you have to be.

And as I’ve heard before, “it rises and falls on leadership.” The book explains that the leadership above the employee sets the tone and creates the environment whereby employees feel they want to give their discretionary time to the company. How? You’ll need to read the book for a full, detailed play by play of the author’s four distinct steps.

If a manager focuses his or her efforts on the employee, on engaging them as a person, that person will feel valued and cared for. Instead of hiding away in your office tirelessly pouring over the stats and numbers Instant Turnaround recommends a manager put himself on the production floor, in the mail room, or with his people. Talk to your people, be nice to them, truly seek to learn about their jobs and what frustrates them. When an employee feels like their manager is their fan rather than their foe, they will be more willing to give their discretionary effort to the cause.

The book even advocates an manager join his employees in the trenches from time to time. Get your hands dirty, especially on the toughest of days, and model how you want your team to act.

I had a few points of contention with some of the book’s assumptions. What do you do with an employee who is lazy or has a poor attitude? The book briefly addresses removing negative personnel. The lion’s share of the story focuses on the more typical case, that the manager sets the tone and people want to want to be there.

Why is the turnaround instant? You’ll have to read and find out. Typically the results are seen in days rather than weeks or years.

It is a short read with a focused theme. This is not the kind of book that spouts endless theories and principles. Instant Turnaround remains on target throughout, and by the end, you know what Harry Paul and Ross Reck want to communicate. For that, I recommend reading it. You may not 100% agree with their advice, but it is a good, useful lesson for any manager striving to realize success.

MTV Unplugged

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before now but I spent the other evening browsing YouTube for old clips from my favorite program in high school, MTV’s Unplugged. As a wielder of a Guild D24 acoustic I used to dream of being in my own five man acoustical jam, and frequently was.

By watching that show it turns out you can do just about anything acoustic. Some of my favorites (can you name them):

Percussa Audiocubes

Before you start up, I’ve already told myself “no.” But aren’t these great? Music cubes, capable of controlling a variety of MIDI or sound parameters. They interact with you or each other. Here is a Youtube video showing the technical side of how they work. And this video demonstrates them in action.

I am really fascinated about this trend of controlling / creating music with unique interfaces. It’s really a dream come true for someone with my background, and engineer who also used to play guitar but now loves electronic music.

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Now What behind the scenes

We armed Michael and Amanda with a Flip Mino to catch some behind the scenes clips of the making of our current series opener. Personally, I love the part halfway through the video when the driving shots start up. In case you missed the resulting pieces, you can watch the counter and opener.

Now What – “The making of…” from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

Type I’m in love with

Here are some type links I came across that I currently adore.

One, Two, Three, Four.

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Now What counter

Enjoy this sampling of the Now What counter. Personally, I like it even better than the opener. In case you were wondering, the type is a black video / white type projected directly on the road. The image you see is a direct recording from the camera with some color grading. The comping was done in camera, and it was shot in a 5:00.00 continuous run. No cameramen fell out of the truck while shooting.

Now What counter from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

And as promised, here are a few behind the scenes shots of our high end mobile rig.

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Birdhouse App

A few weeks back I decided to drop a whole $3.99 on Birdhouse, an iPhone app that serves a somewhat of a notepad / queuing area for Twitter. It works alongside your favorite twitter application (Tweetie, for me) as a place to jot down your thoughts for future twitter updates. Their marketing write up says that if you are a person who likes to marinate over what to say as opposed to just putting it out there, this is the app for you. As I’m rounding 4,400+ twitter updates (the lions share generating from my iPhone as opposed to a desktop computer) I decided this app may be for me.

It’s difficult to judge the effectiveness of such an application with an unbiased assessment, but I will say I really like it. They suggest if you drop a twitter update at the right now (ie., not 2:00am Wednesday, but rather 9:45am Monday) and take the time to properly tweak and compose it, it may be of more value. I tested that theory on a recent tweet. I wrote (and tweaked over the course of a few weeks) this:
If my mac could do no wrong it would be infatuation. Because I see an occasional flaw I know it’s love.

Within the next hour or so I found that tweet replicated (ie., retweeted) several times.
Here, Here, Here, Here
Here, Here, Here (technically, this is a response… but it still counts).

I surmise that tweet got a reaction, whether by its timing, its composition, or the fact that it was marinated for a week or so before released to the public. Regardless, if you frequently release thoughts at the wrong time (or… feel you need to delay a potentially harsh reaction) I would recommend trying out Birdhouse.

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9 years

Today, my beautiful Meg and I celebrate 9 years of marriage. You can read her thoughts here. They say when time flies you’re having fun; that could not be truer. It literally seems like yesterday that I was waking up for the last time at my parent’s house, going to workout with my bro (yes, I lifted the morning of my wedding. Some people play golf, some hit the iron), cruising by the reception hall with Dad to check on things, hanging out with the groom’s men, verifying the wouldn’t embarrasses me (unless you call handing me condoms as they walked down the aisle… in front of my grandparents embarrassing), and eventually watching the most beautiful sight ever to grace my field of vision join me down the aisle. That day my life changed forever for the better.

Meg, you are the one God chose for me, and for that I am eternally grateful.

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How to Stop Dealing With Someone Else’s Lateness

I came across this article today on Lifehacker concerning lateness and how to deal with others who are perpetually late. I believe the first step (below), says it all. Well written. And what a personal challenge to myself as well to play out Philippians 2:3 as a real life example.

Step 1

Call it what it is – a respect issue. When it comes right down to it, that’s what it’s all about. Why is your time any less valuable than your friend’s? Why should you put up with a lack of respect for your valuable time? The answer is, you should not. Your friend saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so busy, I had to etc.,” should not fool you. What your friend is really saying is, “What I was doing was more important to me than the fact that I knew you were waiting for me.” That’s disrespectful, rude, and wrong. There are no excuses to justify this kind of behaviour, and you need to make your friend clear on that.

*** UPDATE – this post is ultimately ironic as I was late for a meeting today. But I did call and apologize and will make it up. So there. ***

Now What? series open

Now What series open from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

For this piece our goal was to communicate the idea that we as a church have been on a journey over the past several months. Through the past four series Perry (and others) have been teaching through the Sermon on the Mount. As this teaching arc ends, this next series asks the question “Now What?”

Where do we go from here? We’re still on the journey, but we’re stalled.

We wanted to convey the journey, and represent that the journey has been through our previous teaching series.

Technical notes:
To achieve the desires effect of speed, travel, and images projected on the road we first looked at motion tracking and After Effects. It took about 2 minutes to realize that our time would be better served strapping a 5,000 lumen projector to the back of Dad’s truck with a gas powered generator, wait for dark, and have some fun driving around.

I’ll have some pictures up later this week so you can see just how insane my team really is.

Automator Actions – Sync Folders

How do you preserve your digital data? Are you prepared to lose a hard drive and everything on it.

At the Wilson house data integrity is a high priority. All of our family photos are digital, our music is digital, our videos (thanks to the Flip Mino) is digital. To lose a simple hard drive would be catastrophic with regards to our media.

The easiest was to protect your assets is redundancy. At our house, I have a Buffalo NAS* on my network and all crucial files are directed there via a plethora of means (manually, or automatically via Windows backup utilities). Since moving to the Mac, I’ve been seeking a way to automate the task of replicating this drive onto another external hard drive.

With this automator action I use the Mac Mini desktop to grab all of the crucial NAS files and move them to another external hard drive. It keeps the two drives in sync, creating a perfect backup. Two is better than one.

If your content is all digital (and I would guess most of you operate that way), the question is not “if it will crash,” but rather “when it will crash.” You really should consider a system for preserving your precious data. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but a little organization and preparation goes a long way toward insuring you won’t lose your data.

Download Sync Folders Action.

* Network Attached Storage

TiltShift Generator

I came across the TiltShift Generator the other day and though it appropriate to pass along to you. It’s an Adobe AIR application and can either be used directly from the site or downloaded as a standalone app running from your local machine (for when you want to TiltShift-simulate-and-go). The results vary, but here’s a little demo from my Twitpic backlog.

Before.
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After.
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Now isn’t that fun?

sean tubridy

I’m in love with the Polaroid photos of Sean Tubridy, so much so I’m seriously considering his book. Simply intriguing.

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Field Notes

I put it out there on Twitter yesterday and have decided on my new replacement notebook now that my beloved Rhodia spiral bound is coming to an end. This time I’m opting for something smaller and simpler, a 3-pack of Field Notes notebooks. I’m going to try the plain paper version this time, and with their small stature I’m thinking of making at least two coexisting volumes, “Business,” and “Pleasure.” This way I can collect my sketches into one volume unencumbered by daily notes and captures. The second volume can be a catch-all for anything by sketchy that can’t be easily nabbed by Evernote.

Moving to a new journal / notebook can be scary. You never know about the paper quality, if it folds down correctly, if it will be too bulky or too flimsy. But on the flip side I’m often inspired by a new burst of creativity and ideas with a new notebook, and that’s usually worth it. So we’ll see. I’ll let you know how these turn out.

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That hurts

This. This right here is the source of Sunday night’s brain freeze. But it was so, so worth it.

Crystal Method’s fourth album

I haven’t listened to it yet, but at $2.99 on Amazon I just picked up the whole thing. Rather than wait around, review it, and then recommend (and thus let the price increase) I decided to tell you about it now. Fans of electronica, big beat, gritty (ie., not “trance”) would probably dig this.

Crystal Method – Divided by Night

*** UPDATE – After listening through about half of the album at the gym yesterday I’m going to seriously suggest you skip track 6 (due to distasteful, and really just stupid, lyrical content). On the other hand, Track 7, Double Down Under… just WOW. It’s amazing. The synth nearly peels back the paint off the wall. ***

Yes and no

It’s been a while.
Yes and no.