Sport
/ miami-hurricanes, orange-bowl
28 August
2008
Tonight marks the first time in more than 50+ years that the University of Miami football team will open their home season somewhere other than the illustrious and famed Orange Bowl. I had the opportunity to fly down and attend their last game in the OB w/ my dad. The ‘canes were blown out by the University of Virginia Cavaliers. I had a last OB dog – a last walk up and down the beer soaked walkways – a last buildup to the famous entrance through a tunnel of smoke as the team took the field. Dolphin stadium is antiseptic. The OB had flavor and grit and it literally shook and rattled when the crowd got amped.
|
Add your comment |
|
Editorial
/ politics
24 August
2008
I have hope about my country’s future today. I do not know if Obama will be able to create a new form of political machinery that can actually address the problems we face today. I do not know if Obama and Biden can once again place our relatively young country into an elevated stance of respected global hegemony. I do not know if anything will change.
I have hope however that change will happen and it will happen for the better of my fellow citizens and others around the world.
|
Add your comment |
|
Arts, Editorial
/ movies, reviews
24 August
2008
I’d heard of this film. I read about Errol Morris as an accomplished documentarian for a few years now. Under the windy rain of what was once tropical storm Fay, I made some pasta and sat down for an immerssive lesson on history, politics, war, and about a man who for better or worse helped steer the U.S.A. through some of the most harrowing times of our young country’s existence.
I particularly enjoyed the editing and film stylizations – the quick cuts over myriad statistical documents replete with facts, figures, charts, graphs – statistical enumeration of humanity through war, commerce, and once again war. Brilliant film.
|
Add your comment |
|
Arts, Editorial
/ movies, reviews
24 August
2008
Two words: See it.
Robert Downey Jr. is so good in this role, i forget he’s an aussie playing an over-dramatic african american. Comedic brilliance all around.
|
Add your comment |
|
The Internets
/ IA, world-wide-web
15 August
2008
I am an Information Architect. IA was my first interactive job way back at Quaxar.com, then a joint-venture partner with Agency.com – a global interactive consultancy.
Now, I dig IA. I like being an IA – I enjoy being at the nexus of design and tech – sort of the cornerstone of the project if I may say so myself. I happen to be at this very moment the ONLY IA IN MISSISSIPPI – that is according to the Institute of Information Architecture (IAI). So obviously I have some interested in having a good name for the field and my profession.
That being said – the field is becomming so full of ultra-high-level jargon and self-importance that reading through my IAI-Members mail list recently has become painful. In particular, a recent post on a marketing centric blog relegated IA to library classification which illicited a first snarky and then outright venemous series of attacks from an uber-geeky community of computer content classifiers and library science types.
I was tempted to post in the comments section of the site, but felt it best to practice restraint of tongue and pen (and keyboard) and post my thoughts to my own little space here.
IA, like other disciplines of thought and practice, has found it necessary to defend its own turf in the intellectual ether. My first run-in with this came while an undergraduate studying Anthropology. There was this Anthro – Sociology low-grade fight going on. Further on in my life, I witnessed a similar tiff between International Relations and Political Science. I mean – Come On!
Now with the IA Praetorians!
I guess these sorts of skirmishes between disciplines and the overt attempts to protect intellectual turf seems to reek to me at least as self-importance.
Again, I’m an IA. I dig the practice. I happen to think we’re the most important part of web development. I have a vested interest in having the practice understood and valued; however, at no time would I feel the need to degrade another opinion, or another person, however parochial or uniformed they may be.
Mis dos centados.
|
Add your comment |
|
Sport, The Internets
/ olympics, world-wide-web
9 August
2008
I awoke this morning for a call of nature – not uncommon these days. As I stumbled to the baño I remembered that much of the live competition to this year’s olympics occurs at night. This thought coupled with my knowledge that its Saturday and I have no pressing responsibilities urged me to fix a glass of OJ and sit down at my desk. Not one to miss a sports viewing opportunity – and an olympic one at that – I booted up and ventured over to http://nbcolympics.com.
Olympic Junkie Bliss ensued. Using the ‘control room’ interface, I was able to select from dozens of live, recorded, and edited competitions. Always one to follow the lesser known sports, I filled up my player w/ women’s sailing (usa in 2nd during this writing), women’s rowing, men’s judo, and capped it off with some women’s badmitton.
It is 3:05am local time. I have got my olympics fix for now. Off to bed for a few before the TV blitz starts later this morning.
|
Add your comment |
|
Culture
/ corinth, mississippi, slug-burger
7 August
2008
Slugs on a bun. Nothing better than a slug burger on a hot July day – at least that’s what Corinth, MS believes in putting on their annual Slug Burger Festival. I first learned of the festival via my local NPR station. Once a week they feature a Mississippi town promoting the concept of a stacation – when one keeps things local rather than travelling afar.
As you may very well imagine – hearing a delightfully sweet woman speak about all the fun they’re going to have up in Corinth at this year’s Slug Burger Festival had me mumbling an internal wtf or two. Turns out the Slug Burger however isn’t as frieghtening as it may seem.
A Slug Burger in the end is just a regular old hamburger – ground beef, some breadcrumbs, a little egg to bind it together – the ‘Slug’ concept enters the picture in how when they originally were sold they cost only a nickel. The U.S. nickel was then commonly referred to as a slug.
Zack Steer has some nice photos on his Nikon MyPictureTown website.
|
Add your comment |
|
Me
/ recovery, work
6 August
2008
I’ve come a long way thanks to some basic principles I’ve learned to incorporate into my daily life including perseverence, dedication, integrity, and honesty among others. I was involved in probably the biggest presentation of my life yesterday – myself and a select team from the advertising agency I work for pitched a major insurance company for their business yesterday. My contribution consisted of creating an easy to digest segment on the relatively tough subject of internet lead generation and search engine marketing (SEM).
I did very well. The metaphor I came up with of a Highway and Exits and Off-Ramps and Off-Ramp signage/real estate worked very well. One of my bosses hugged me twice yesterday and praised me. The other broke into a full fledged Hank Aaron swing to designate I had hit a home run. I felt as though I stumbled over a couple sections but by and large executed well. I also know I put forth 100% effort which I’ve learned is a much better indicator for me personally than whatever results may come to pass.
Three short years ago, I was unemployable. I was sick. I was pitifully and incomprehensibly demoralized. After hitting bottom, and a lot of hard work over virtually every facet of my life, I have as some with the same disease I have say – I have recovered. That is not to say I am cured – just that for today at least should I choose to do some simple things I will be able to lay my head down at the end of the day having remained sober.
For many years, having seen the advertising world in movies and TV, I yearned to be part of a creative team delivering amazing work. Low and behold I find myself in Jackson, MS. doing just that. I just had some sort of incling inside that I would be good at that. Yesterday I saw the idea I formulated for this large insurance company come to fruition through a large series of print, outdoor, tv, radio and internet concepts. The little idea that started in my head during a personal brainstorm was selected as the tack the firm I work for would use as its main creative direction for the campaign. That feels really good and new for me.
|
Add your comment |
|
Rob lives and works in the town of Jackson, MS where he leads the interactive department at an awesome advertising and branding agency. Life is slower than most places in Mississippi, and Rob tends to like it that way. Some of his favorite life experiences include sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in a 44ft sloop, learning to speak Swahili while living along the lower slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and zipping along the curviest of Mississippi country roads in his VW Rabbit.