Joe Mills

The Internet of Things

From the last issue of Wired, I was really intrigued by this small aside in an article about Google Maps. Not all technology is worth getting excited about, but I think this is worth  it:

What if you could walk down an unfamiliar street, use your camera phone to take a picture of a building, and instantly know everything about it, from the architect to the list of tenants. The technology to make common objects clickable, like hyperlinked words on a Web site, is available today in the form of 2-D barcodes. These digital tags look like empty crossword puzzles. Users create them online, print them out, and paste them around the city. Then anyone with a phonecam can “click” on them. A program on the phone decodes the pattern and redirects the curious pedestrian to a Web page. One project, called Smartpox, is using these barcodes to build online communities that center around, for example, scavenger hunts and restaurant reviews. Members slap a barcode on a given establisgment, and in-the-know passerby can get the dirt on its creme anglaise. At Semapedia.com, you can drop in any Wikipedia URL to instantly generate a 2-D barcode pointing to the corresponding entry.

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Family Guy

Over the years, I have had many favorite TV shows. In no particular order, they have been The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Night Court, Cheers, Golden Girls, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Entourage, Will & Grace, and Everybody Loves Raymond. I could do an individual post on each one of them, but I’m going to stick to my favorite for the past 8 years, Family Guy. I think part of my attraction to Family Guy is that I was there from the beginning. I thought it was great when it came out in 1999. I was angry when it was canceled. I purchased the DVDs, and now, I have been overly elated that it has been back on Fox for the past couple years. The comedy is fast-paced, smart, and is one of the few shows that has me laughing out loud every single week. No, the jokes don’t work all of the time, but that is part of the charm for me. They are willing to take risks with story lines and see what happens. Sometimes, that makes for the best comedy. As you can tell from the above clip, they turn a chicken fight into an extended joke that most shows wouldn’t even touch. And more than that, they have used the chicken fight in a couple episodes. And yes, Family Guy can be crude at times, but as I stated above, they always keep it smart.

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Kirby and Rickey

With this post, I’m adding two more categories: Nostalgia and Favorites. The more I work on this blog, the more I find myself wanting to have a place where I’m not just talking about the things that inspire me now, but talking about the things that used to have a large place in my life when I was younger. It is easier to talk about the things that you like now because they are immediate, but I also want to remember where I came from. I still consider them my “favorites” but because they are more memories than anything now, they are also very nostalgic to me. So, while something can certainly be my favorite, it might not always be nostalgic. Get it?

Let’s begin with baseball. At one point, it was my life. I played baseball. I collected baseball cards. I lived and breathed it. Now, I play one of my current favorites, fantasy baseball, and watch some games, but I don’t think I’ll ever get to the point I was from 1986 to 1992. Let’s start with my absolute hero, Kirby Puckett.

Above is one of the moments I will remember him by, a walk-off home run during Game 6 of the 1991 World Series. It was a a World Series I watched from beginning to end. He was my favorite. A friend of mine makes fun of me because I probably started liking him because of his first name, but I grew to love the way he played the game and his personality. Plus, he played my position, center field. I collected everything with his face on it. I went to baseball games in other cities just to see him play. One of my most treasured possessions is a personalized autograph from him on a poster that I keep saying I want to be buried with. And, when he got inducted in to the Hall of Fame, I went to Cooperstown. It is hard to imagine that he has already passed away, but he always hold be one of my heroes.

My other favorite was Rickey Henderson. He was very different from Kirby Puckett. Plus, I think I’ve grown to appreciate his career more as I have gotten older. He is kind of a jerk and full of himself, but there is no question about how he played the game. He has passion for baseball. While other players were content to retire and fade away, Rickey kept on getting on to Major League rosters into his 40’s. He even played minor league just to have a chance to get back in the majors. He hasn’t even officially retired. He is a true physical specimen and a motivated and talented athlete. He has broken many records and, in my opinion, should be respected more as one of the greatest. And, he also makes for great story telling. I want to see him inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009 because he will be there.

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Ghetto Nation

Image courtesy of Cora Daniels

I actually read this book a couple months ago, but I am only posting about it now. I was a little anxious about buying this book because there are so many new books nowadays that are just pure junk. They put a catchy title on the cover with a great image, but the content never matches your initial thought. This book is not one of those books. I’ll let Ms. Daniels web site do the talking about what the book is about:

How often have you used, heard, thought, snickered, whispered (under your breath), shouted (at the radio): “That’s so ghetto”? We live in a society where shows like Pimp My Ride top cable ratings, babymama has become a family term, pimp and ho Halloween costumes are sold in toddler sizes on the internet, and even Martha Stewart proudly boasts to television viewers that she “can get ghetto when she needs to.”

These days, ghetto no longer refers to where you live, but to how you live. It is a mindset. And a mindset is not limited to a class or a race.

Ghetto is found in the heart of the nation’s inner cities as well as the heart of the nation’s most cherished suburbs; among those too young to understand (we hope) and those old enough to know better; in little white houses, and all the way to the White House; in corporate corridors, Ivy League havens, and, of course, Hollywood. More devastating, ghetto is also packaged in the form of music, TV, books, and movies, and then sold around the world. Bottom line: ghetto is contagious, and no one is immune, no matter how much we like to shake our heads at what we think is only happening someplace else more . . .

The book was short but well thought out. And for a topic that seemed almost impossible to research, I liked that Daniels actually did some pretty decent research. The issues she discusses really apply to anyone. Not just people who live in cities or urban areas. It is a quick read, and I hope that this topic finds it way into more books and articles.

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200 Bad Comics

Image courtesy of Nedroid

This artist was issued a challenge to draw 200 bad comics. As he states on his site:

As a gentleman and a scholar, I had no choice but to oblige.

They are worth checking out…they are so bad, they are good.

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The Wisdom of Crowds

I’m in the middle of The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, and I’m very intrigued by the point he makes about how decision-making groups in this country are so focused on a consensus instead of making the right decisions. From his book:

You do not need a consensus in order, for instance, to tap into the wisdom of a crowd, and the search for consensus encourages tepid, lowest-common denominator solutions which offend no one rather than exciting everyone. Instead of fostering the free exchange of conflicting views, consensus-driven groups – especially when the members are familiar with each other – tend to trade in the familiar and squelch provocative debate.

I can think of instances in my own life where this is true, so I can only imagine how many big decisions in government and corporate America have been made in this very same way. Everyone is afraid to speak up or go against the grain because they do not want any responsibility or they do not want to sound stupid, so the “easy” solution is chosen instead of trying to figure out the best solution. Something to keep in mind the next time you are in a meeting that seems to be going nowhere.

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Car Batteries

Considering I’m selling my car to my brother next month for a number of reasons (he needs it, I can get around on public transportation, having a car is SUPER expensive), maybe this article from Wired about the next-gen car batteries shouldn’t be of that much interest to me. With the dependence our country has on oil, I wish this was a bigger deal in our country, but sadly, it is not. Oil brings in a lot of money for a lot of people, so you know why people are resistant. And with the introduction of the Tesla this year, we know it is possible to build a high performance electric-powered car. So, when are car corporations going to suck it up and think more pro actively about building only electric cars?

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Tom & Jerry Blueprints

I’ve always been inspired by nonsensical contraptions. Rube Goldberg is probably considered the pioneer of these contraptions. And, I used to love the blueprints that Tom used to create in Tom & Jerry to try and catch Jerry. The absurdity of those mechanisms were so entertaining! I even wrote another blog post about a commercial that used these elements. The above photo is from the episode Designs on Jerry from 1955. I know more episodes exist, but this seems to be the most famous one sense it was available on DVD. I wish I could link to the actual video of the contraption in action, but no one has it on YouTube. I suppose I could put it there…

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Cartoons in the Real World

Even though it is not a new idea, I’ve always liked the way cartoons look in real life situations. The above picture is from an issue of Wired from a few years back which illustrates my point. Maybe it has something to do with my love of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? when I was kid, but I think this style just looks “right” when done well. I’ve done a couple of pieces with this theme recently, and I know I might revisit it in the future…if it looks “right”…

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Tell Me a Story

I recently finished a book called Tell Me a Story by Roger Schank. The main focus of the book is that telling stories is tied to intelligence. In a nutshell, it states that the ability to take an event, synthesize it, and retell it to a listener so he understands it and can relate to it, is the mark of intelligence.

While I think this is a very important point, I wanted to select a portion of the book that deals with a different issue that I have always felt to be extremely important in the world of intelligence and learning. First, the passage:

Learning to explain phenomena such that one continues to be fascinated by the failure of one’s explanations creates a continuing cycle of thinking that is the crux of intelligence. It isn’t that one person knows more than another, then. In a sense, it is important to know less than the next person, or at least to be certain less, thus enabling more curiosity and less explaining away because one has again encountered a well-known phenomenon. The less you know the more you can find out about, and finding out for oneself is what intelligence is all about.

The reason I feel that this is important is that it is completely opposite of how most people think. I would bet that the most people think that the more you know, the smarter you are. It seems rationale. I have always felt, though, that not knowing everything is a great feeling. Being curious and wanting to find more about a subject is how you learn as a child, but as most people get older, they feel confident in what they know and don’t feel the need to be curious. Not a good idea. Becoming a curious human being is a hard thing to learn because we are nation so caught up in being correct 100% of the time that curiosity is seen as a novelty. It’s really too bad…

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