Puerto Vallarta Post Card

I was in Puerto Vallarta last week and what better place to test my Canon G11 camera along with the new intervalometer. This is my first attempt at time lapse and although rather crude I thought it was an interesting and fun result. The sunsets over the Pacific are very beautiful and this captures a little of the essence of that experience. This was taken from my fifth floor room at the Fiesta Americana in PV. The music is a little dramatic but just deal with it since I don't want to re-edit the video and it was an initial grab from a free music website.

(Editors note: For playback I would recommend setting the quality to 720p, there is a drop down menu on the bottom right side of the menu that let's you detemine this number and I suggest you set it to that for best play back; or simple go to my YouTube channel and watch it there.)

No editors in the digital age

I've had this screen capture on my desktop for a while now and I meant to post it - there are no editors in the digital era. That is very clear from the Twitter post to the right and by reading this blog for a few minutes.

How to design your life

I started to read this article in Wired magazine recently as a straight forward effort to learn a bit about the history and practice of design. The article profiles Fred Brooks who was a software engineer with IBM.  Mr. Brooks went on to write a book that highlighted the diminishing return of adding programmers to an overdue software project. He has recently authored another book which is a collection of essays about design.

Two quotes struck me in the interview. The first is what he says about the process of design:

The critical thing about the design process is to identify your scarcest resource. Despite what you may think, that very often is not money. For example, in a NASA moon shot, money is abundant but lightness is scarce; every ounce of weight requires tons of material below.

It is an interesting way to approach general problems in one’s life. Not to always go to the most obvious answer of limited time and money but to identify the other scarce resources, that could be maximized to present solutions.

The second quote involved a question about what he had learned from the design of Apple’s products:

Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera, once said that his method of design was to start with a vision of what you want and then one by one, remove the technical obstacles until you have it. I think that’s what Steve Jobs does. he starts with a vision rather than a list of features.

It struck me that this quote could apply to life at a much more personal level. A person should start with the vision of who they want to be and then work on the technical and other obstacles until you have what you want.

By the way, the picture at the top really has nothing to do with the post, I just wanted some color and it looked kind of "designy".The shot is from the Japanese Friendship Garden near my house in Phoenix.

I'm Really Trying to be Back

Ok, so perhaps the last post was a little optimistic on my part. The first part of the year has blown by, I had a few distractions, some planned some not, but for now I’m working to keep the blog updated again. What got me motivated was this post from a blogger I follow in Mexico. I think she has a good point about blogging and social media in general. It takes a lot of work and after an initial timeframe the excitement of it wears off and one must decide to be dedicated to it or let it go. I think for most that will be to let it go, make an occasional mention on Facebook and be done with it. For me, a blog still makes some sense. Let’s see if I can keep it up this time.