Life and living

I just returned from a couple of weeks in Greece: Crete and Athens.

The trip was great and I’ll post some photos soon but I wanted to briefly mention what went well (and what didn’t) with the electronics on the trip.

The Good?

I left my laptop behind.  How awesome not to carry that weight.  A smartphone works totally fine for keeping in touch. The only need I’d have for a laptop is backing up and processing photos.  Backing up I can do with a dedicated backup unit (that’s the size of a small portable hard drive). Processing photos can wait until I get home. For this trip, Meghan brought her laptop so I backed my photos up to that.  I think in the future she won’t be bringing along the laptop either.

Another good?  USB charging.  It’s so nice being able to use USB cables to charge.  It’s nice to be able to carry around a couple of small USB cables and charge so many things.  What’s not good?  Having dedicated chargers for the different camera batteries, headphones, iPhone, etc.,

Another?  Public Wifi.  Not only the usual cafes, etc., but Athens provides a few locations throughout town with publicly provided Wifi.  Nice!

The Bad?

My iPhone is unlocked so I brought that along and purchased a Vodafone SIM card.  While I was able to make a call or two, I couldn’t for the life of me get anything else to work.  The Greek text messages that Vodafone sent didn’t help!  On previous trips I either purchased a SIM card in a language I could understand or I had an international AT&T plan. Purchasing a local SIM is the way to go, but dealing with the language barrier will be tough.  In retrospect, I could have looked into buying a SIM on the layover in Germany – at least I could have better understood the language..

Another bad, my iPhone is painfully slow.  I have the 3G (not the 3Gs) and with the latest OS installed it’s just awful to use.  Especially compared to my newer phone.

One more bad?  Many of the places we stayed didn’t have WiFi (or only had it in the lobby area).  This was a minor nuisance. We could plug the laptop into the ethernet connection but my smartphone was out of luck.  I was surprised by the lack of embrace for Wifi.

The Ugly?

I decided to download a free app on the iPhone (while in a public square, connected to free public wifi).  What an awful experience.  For a free app (in a controlled app store) I had to enter my password only to learn that my credit card info needed to be up-to-date (I didn’t have a salutation and my expiration date was old).  Despite the fact that I have credit available in my iTunes account and DESPITE the fact that I was trying to access a FREE app I had to update my credit card information before I could proceed.

Fail.

People can complain about the Android app store all they want but I find the experience to be SO MUCH BETTER than the iPhone app store.

I came across this during my regular blog cruising:

KEY TO CREATIVITY IS ERROR RECOVERY, NOT FAILURE AVOIDANCE

It’s a blog from Chase Jarvis, a pro photographer who is pretty keyed in to using new media to promote his business.

But what struck me was not how this applied to creativity but how I would apply it to jobs I’ve had and companies I’ve worked for.  Time and again, the more successful companies I’ve worked with, and the jobs I’ve enjoyed exponentially more have embraced this concept.

It’s when a company gets bogged down in failure avoidance that, what was probably an already sinking ship, upends itself and shoots straight for the bottom.

I’m glad to have been able to move away from these companies and continue to look forward to working in environments that aren’t afraid to make mistakes while making forward progress.  It sure beats a stagnant environment that fears failure.

It’s been a little while since I posted anything here.  At first, it was because my attention was focused elsewhere.  Then, I started to appreciate the break.

Back in May, armed with a relatively new 50mm lens, I brought my camera with me every day of the month, making a point of taking photos around town during my daily walks to and from work or while taking the dog out for a hike.  This exercise culminated with a rather warm Sunday Carnaval celebration, just around the corner from my house.

Alongside all of this, I had a new project at work that required a lot of my attention.  It was in the early phases of a new initiative that required a lot of creative thinking and I found that I didn’t have a lot of that energy left walking out of work.

So it was in June when I decided to do nothing with those images, and not post to this site.  I focused all of my creative energy on work.

Sometime last month, I wrapped my head around the items at work and started putting some energy towards processing the images from May.  Towards the end of the July I took the camera out for the first time to take some photos of the now shuttered Transbay Terminal here in San Francisco.

And today I’m back writing here.

I’ll get around to uploading photos from May sometime, but I’m currently spending time going through some of the photos from Africa and South America, looking to make some black & white images.

The next few months promise to be pretty busy, in a good way.  I should have a few things to post.

But I did appreciate the break, and the perspective it provided.

I recently finished reading and really enjoyed A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks

As a rule, I’m really interested in the creative process.  This is true in many of the photography podcasts that I listen to and the photo blogs that I read.  I’ve written before about the 33 1/3 series of books (which analyze classic albums from throughout the years) and in addition to these I’ve also enjoyed documentaries about the making of albums like The Dark Side of the Moon or Nirvana’s Nevermind.  In each of these, as in A Simple Twist of Fate, the author (or filmmaker) examines aspects of the creative process as the artist(s) struggled to put together their work.

One thing that I find is that by really analyzing the work one gains a much greater appreciation for the components that make up the whole.  These are all albums that I’ve liked over the years but my appreciation grows

when I really take the time to understand more about the work.  Looking at each of the minute decisions that were made (

and the reasons behind them – sometimes very consciously and sometimes not) you apprecia

te how each of these small decisions add up to create a greater whole.

In this case, the reader also gains an understanding of Dylan as an artist – and all of his idiosyncrasies that come into play.  In this case there’s definitely a visionary and a vision that are filled out by some very talented musicians and producers.  For any Dylan fans, I highly recommend this book.

If Dylan’s not your thing, I still recommend the 33 1/3 series .

I’ve been seeing a lot of ads for Prop. 16 lately and it reminds me just how screwed up California can be.

I used to be a big fan of California’s propositions.  I thought that it was a way to get the people more directly involved in government and elections.

I was young and innocent.

Image via Wikipedia

The propositions have long been a way for interest groups to circumvent the legislature and use the uneducated masses to vote on items that they don’t understand.  And they’re just getting worse.

I’m not trying to be harsh on the masses.  When I say uneducated, I’m referring to their awareness of the propositions and their content.  Most people just don’t spend any time to understand what it is they’re voting for (or against).

Prop 16 is a great example of this.  The “Taxpayers’ Right To Vote” proposition.  Who doesn’t like the right to vote?  Why, on the face of it, of course taxpayers should have the right to vote.  But that of course is the problem.  Most people won’t look past the simple description of the ballot measure.

What this proposition is really about is whether California governments should get into ‘public power.’ (I don’t want to trouble with debating the merits or detriments of public power – that’s a separate topic.)  Because what this proposition says, if it passes, is that, should the government be truly interested in getting into public power, they’ll first need a 2/3 majority vote by the public to approve such a move.  And think about that – 2/3 majority is just about impossible.  Just ask someone trying to pass national healthcare or a California budget.  And these were passed by legislatives.  It’s hard to imagine the general public voting 2/3 for anything.

So basically, all one needs to do to change the law is to get a proposition passed (with a simple majority, by the way) that calls for future votes to require a 2/3 majority vote.  In doing so, you lock in your own view and make it near impossible for any future changes.  And how does one do that?  Just throw a bunch of money behind it.  PG&E has already supported this measure with over $30 million (while opponents have raised about $50,000).

More and more I’ve become a fan of a constitutional congress for the state.  Of course that process has the potential to be filled with missteps and problems but we’re getting to the point where almost anything would be better than what we have today.

Now this is cool: The population of the united states, if it had the same population density of Brooklyn, New York, would need only the landmass of New Hampshire.

Thanks StangeMaps