Posts filed under 'Personal'
A new global warming report coming out of the UK called the Stern Report got the attention of Tony Blair:
Mr Blair says the study is “the final piece of the jigsaw to convince every single political leader, including those in America, China and India, that global warming must be at the top of their agenda”.
He says the report must be acted on urgently.
“We can’t wait the five years it took to negotiate Kyoto,” he said.
These types of warnings make me continually wonder what I can do beyond making personal changes in the way I consume and live.
October 30th, 2006
Because being open and transparent is all the rage, we just moved our Oregon office at Right Media into a new office space that is both open, and in fact very transparent.
Our previous space had closed offices and lots of walls, and now we’re basically all in a big L-shaped space that has floor to ceiling windows overlooking a nice park with trees and a fountain. It’s also home to the famous Eugene Saturday Market, the USA’s oldest weekly open air crafts festival. I prefer it for the food.
Unfortunatley, our RMX Direct development manager Joe Garstka scored the corner space, and you can tell he’s smug about it.
Overall it’s a nice change of scenery, and everyone seems to be very productive so far in the new environment.
October 30th, 2006
I don’t think I’ve talked about my passion for Oregon Duck football on this blog ever, but
this post from the
OregonLive.com Ducks Blog summarizes the top 15 things about a gameday at Autzen Stadium, the Ducks home field.
My favorites are #1, #6, #13, and #15. Good stuff. Although this weekend’s game isn’t that exciting against Portland State, just goint to Autzen Stadium will be a thrill.
October 26th, 2006
I recently acquired my vanity domain name of patrickmccarthy.com. Why? Well, I’m kind of an internet nerd that way, although I’m not really sure what to do with it. I’m currently thinking about the following options:
Redirect it to this blog.
A very easy solution, and it’s probably the closest thing on the web to being about me.
Change this blog to be at that URL
The pros here are that it brands my name more, makes the blog topics more flexible, and may be easier for some to remember. The downside is I’d lose the branding, search engine trust, and other benefits associated with ConversionRater.com name built up over the last year.
Post information about me or my resume
This seems somewhat vain and I’m not looking for jobs, so it seems like a bad option.
Make it a family site/more personal blog
This is a decent option to communicate more with distant family members and friends about the more personal aspects of me and my family’s life. However, I’m not sure I’d really post on it much.
Make it a personal “feed mashup”
Take the RSS feed of this blog, my Flickr photo feed, Last.fm feed, and feeds from any other social sites I participate in and aggregate it one place. While this would be cool, it’d probably really only be that interesting to me. An audience of one isn’t really all that cool.
Do nothing with it
Since this is the easiest option, it’s probably the one that will win out.
Any other suggestions?
October 25th, 2006
I had a good time earlier tonight catching the mustachioed Donavon Frankenreiter with T-Money and Cam.ilicio.us at the charming local venue the WOW Hall. T-Money also wrote up a little review.
It wasn’t very crowded, but was a nice intimate experience with Frankenreiter’s smooth voice and varying styles from acoustic to funk to rock. Opening act The White Buffalo was also amusing for many reasons, and he was talented to boot.
Even though it wasn’t too crowded, there was still a fair share of fans using their phones to record pictures and videos of Frankenreiter in action, which reminded me of Fred Wilson’s recent post about Hyper Recording. Fred’s post complains that the super high quality video being shot probably wouldn’t be seen or shared like it should be, while we’re moving to a society that will be recording ever more stuff as phones and cameras continue to improve in quality and size.
Like Fred, I agree this is a good thing, but really it led me to wonder why I haven’t seen or heard of any bands taking advantage of the new video phenomenon by actual releasing live shows or portions of live shows the night or day after the show occurred?
I’ve been to many live shows that I’ve wished to watch again or see parts of again. And there are bands that I enjoy so much that I’d love to view shows or parts of shows I wasn’t even at just to see what went down. It’s even a service I’d pay for with certain artists.
What’s the down side? Less people going to shows? I doubt it, you can’t replicate watching a live concert over a computer, so it would probably only increase the amount of people who come to see the shows. Sure, it takes some work to record a show, get it on a computer, and upload it. But we’re getting to the point where that’s getting more and more feasible. I’ve seen 25 minute concert clips on YouTube of decent quality, so why couldn’t a band start putting up 45 minutes from each night’s show? And soon why not 90 minutes or 120 minutes?
Maybe Fred’s right that artists are perfectionists and wouldn’t want their imperfect work out there. I tend to think there’d be some artists willing to take this “risk”, it seems like a no-brainer to me. I’d love to watch the Frankenreiter highlights again tomorrow and possibly share with some others who missed out on their cover of The Band’s The Weight featuring the White Buffalo. In fact, I’m laughing now as I typed that….ah, the memories, too bad they’re only in my head. At least I can watch some older short clips on YouTube.
October 24th, 2006
I’ve been wanting to write this post for a long time, but Matt at Signal vs. Noise beat me to it. It’s always nice when someone does the work for you.
Netflix is one of the few web sites that’s a pure joy to use for me. It’s one of the few Web 2.0 type of sites that my mom and other non-geek consumers can figure out. It just begs for me to use it. The emails, the buttons, the ratings, I just get urges to add movies to my queue, rate movies, see what my friends are watching and have rated, see what the critics say, etc. I wish the Netflix team were behind more sites to put it simply.
To sum it up, I’ll point out that I probably don’t even watch enough movies on Netflix to make it worth paying the subscription fee, but I like using the site so much I’m willing to pay it. Now that’s a good web application.
October 10th, 2006
I don’t really blog about anything personal here, I guess I’ve assumed nobody really cares (I’m probably right). However, two things have led me to make a non-web/business post:
1. I’ve noticed that the authors of my favorite blogs tend to mix in off-topic personal posts that give me more of a connection with them, helps make them seem real, and provides something memorable. I do notice though that too much off-topic action usually leads to me unsubscribing from their RSS feed though, so I think it’s a fine line. Based on this, I figured I could throw in the occasional post that is off topic but hopefully interesting to people in one way or the other. If you find it a total waste of time, let me know.
2. It was one of the most gorgeous days at the Oregon Coast I’ve ever seen, and I’ve lived near the Oregon Coast for a long time. I took some pictures, and thought people who haven’t been here might appreciate a quick look.
I’ve been to the Oregon Coast many times over my 29 years of living in Oregon, but usually my visits seem to coincide with rain, clouds, wind, and other unmentionable weather conditions, even in the middle of the summer. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely sunny days their, I just think I’ve always tended to miss them. At least days that were sunny and warm. Today was a thing of beauty though, as it was 85 degrees, a warm breeze, and my kids just had a blast playing in the sand and water for a good couple of hours. Just a day where you’re glad to be alive and experiencing the outdoors, instead of staring at a computer trying to figure out the latest happenings of the web world.
September 24th, 2006
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