Author: Daniel

Daniel https://turnings.phrasewise.com/ In the 4th grade Daniel was asked to step in into the hall because he was coaching fellow students on a similarity assignment he provided the class. Since then, Daniel’s passion for helping people has propelled him to be a creative developer of software and systems, and a team coach who excels at successfully delivering business value. Daniel founded QuietlyHelping in 2009 in order to have a direct hand in helping families with the struggles of debilitating disease. QuietlyHelping is an organization of compassion and empathy that brings ease, comfort, smiles, laughter, healing, and love to people battling cancer and other diseases. Spare time activities include cycling, occasional work as a musician, woodworking, photography, and reading books he never got around to in school. Unsurprisingly, Daniel is able to cook minute rice in just under thirty seconds.
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Some Thoughts On The Louis CK “Experiment”

Some Thoughts On The Louis CK “Experiment”:

But this can also work for emerging artists. They won’t make as much money as Louis CK, but they also don’t need to make as large of an investment either. And over time, if their work is good, their audience will grow and the investments they can make and the profits they can make will increase.

[This piece was going OK until he got to the paragraph above. I know he said “emerging” artist, which implies some following already in place. But the truth is that kick starting something like this is really, really, low odds. Like Lotto low. And I’m not saying that everyone has to do a six camera shoot of their gigs. I bet you could get a great shoot done with six IPhones for goodness sake. But that’s not my point. There is definite chicken and egg problem here, where not enough people know who you are and what you are doing to make virtually any production pay for itself, let alone make you money (never mind “real” money). The lesson I’d take away from what he did was how much of the work he did himself. Something that the super powerful computers sitting on many of our desks make possible. Look at what people are accomplishing by mastering their craft, and then how relatively little technology it takes to get an amazing recording on the ‘Nets for all to enjoy. And think about it. He could have walked away with nothing (or less than nothing) for his efforts too.]
Source: A VC

Fight SOPA.

If you hate Big Government, fight SOPA.:

Nobody who opposes Big Government and favors degregulation should favor the Stop Online Piracy Act, better known as SOPA, or H.R. 3261. It’s a big new can of worms that will cripple use of the Net, slow innovation on it, clog the courts with lawsuits, employ litigators in perpetuity and deliver copyright maximalists in the “content” business a hollow victory for the ages.

A few years back, a former government official confidentially issued a warning to a small group I was part of, which favored some kind of lawmaking around technology. While this isn’t a verbatim quote, it’s pretty close, because it has been burned in my mind ever since: “In the course of my work I have met with nearly every member of Congress. And I can tell you that, with only a handful of exceptions, there are two things none of them understand. One is economics and the other is technology. Now proceed.”

Know-nothing lawmakers are doing exactly that with SOPA. As Joshua Kopstein says, Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works.

SOPA is a test for principle for members of Congress. If you wish to save the Internet, vote against it. If you wish to fight Big Government, vote against it. If you wish to protect friends in the “content” production and distribution business at extreme cost to every other business in the world, vote for it. If you care more about a few businesses you can name and nothing about all the rest of them — which will be whiplashed by the unintended consequences of a bill that limits what can be done on the Internet while not comprehending the Internet at all, vote for it.

[Go read the rest of Doc’s piece. And then get off your hands and get in touch with your congress people.]
Source: Doc Searls Weblog

How I’d Build an Apple Television Set

Super thin tv sample

kickingbear» How I’d Build an Apple Television Set:

I’ve done a lot of thinking about the Apple TV. For some reason it fascinates me. It’s entirely different from the other applications of software. First, it’s a shared experience rather than a direct experience like a Mac or an iOS device. Second, this shared experience means there’s necessarily an indirection of input — if a screen is big enough to be seen by everyone in the room you’re not going to be close enough to it to mess with it directly. So when the rumours went around of an iOS based Apple TV coming I became intrigued and tossed some ideas back and forth with a friend. Mostly the discussion came down to input methods — what could they do and what’d that mean for the interface? Around that same time Bluetooth 4.0 was ratified and the specification includes a low power mode. I guessed that if the Apple TV had a Bluetooth 4.0 chip then we’d see a new remote, if not we’d likely just stick with what we had.

[Interesting thoughts. Still not convinced Apple will do something, but I have no doubt they could if it made business sense.]
Source: inessential.com

Teens triple data usage

Teens triple data usage:

Nielsen:

Teens have officially joined the mobile Data Tsunami, more than tripling mobile data consumption in the past year while maintaining their stronghold as the leading message senders. Using recent data from monthly cell phone bills of 65,000+ mobile subscribers who volunteered to participate in the research, Nielsen analyzed mobile usage trends among teens in the United States. In the third quarter of 2011, teens age 13-17 used an average of 320 MB of data per month on their phones, increasing 256 percent over last year and growing at a rate faster than any other age group. Much of this activity is driven by teen males, who took in 382 MB per month while females used 266 MB.

∞ Permalink

[Unsurprising and amazing at the same time.]
Source: The Loop

Iraq war

Iraq war:

It’s over today. Today will never be a holiday. There will be no V-I day. There will be no pictures of revelers in Times Square.

[Marking the occasion. That is all. Thanks to everyone who served, and welcome home to all those finally returning.]
Source: inessential.com

iPhone apps to tune your instrument

One of my teachers used to say (minus a lot of removed swear words) If it ain’t in tune, it ain’t nothin’. With that in mind, two favorite tuners for the iPhone:

iStrobosoft by Peterson recreates their great tuner which used a strobe light and a spinning wheel to create a great harmonically rich visual display. This iPhone app is an awesome recreation and works superbly, giving you both fine and gross indicators as well as that awesome harmonic stack. You can calibrate it for accuracy, it supports capos and dropped tunings and other reference pitches, has a noise filter, an input boost, and some display settings.

The other is the polytune from tc electronic. Aimed at guitar players, it allows you to tune all six strings at once, a quick strum is all you need. Start fine tuning one string and the display switches to a finer display along with the pitch. It allows for drop tunings, a range of reference pitch (lots of folks don’t use 440 as the reference) and has a setting for bass players as well. there’s a couple of display settings for good measure.

Both of these guys support the mic on a phone so tuning an acoustic guitar only requires a somewhat quiet room.

Both are recommended and work really well. It’s great to have a such great tuners with me all the time.

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