Festive dot net » Thoughts About Life

John McCormick - You out there?

Thoughts About Life, Uncategorized — ivanovick @ 16:18

I now live in New York City and I know a long-lost friend of mine is living in Queens. The trouble is that I don’t know how to get a hold of him. So if you’re in Queens and know a John McCormick who’s obsessed with the New York Rangers, Slayer and April Wine, please let me know.

Comments Off

sitcoms & mental health

Thoughts About Life — ivanovick @ 22:33

Don’t you wish you had more time to just sit back and watch some good ol’ TV? Oh wait, you’ve got your TIVO to help make sure you don’t miss a minute of your favorite shows. But is it helping or hurting? Here’s a fascinating excerpt from Martin Seligman’s Authentic Happiness

In the nightly choice between reading a good book and watching a sitcom on television, we often choose the latter — although surveys show again and again that the average mood while watching sitcoms on television is mild depression. Habitually choosing the easy pleasures over the gratifications may have untoward consequences. — Authentic Happiness, p. 117

It’s a wonderful, thought-provoking book. Highly recommended.

Technorati Tags: My Name is Earl, Scrubs, According to Jim, The Office, positive psychology

Comments (0)

music on this monday

Thoughts About Life — ivanovick @ 22:22

I’m new to San Fran so I’m taking every opportunity I can to get out and meet people. In that spirit I attended Blogger Night at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on Saturday night. It was a night filled with contemporary classical music as part of their Blue Print Season.

Those who know me know that I’m all about new music. (Aside: who cares about the new Radiohead when this is about to drop.) So I was excited to hear the sounds of composers Tan Dun, Kaija Saariaho, Jay Lyon and Benjamin Britton.

The first piece by Tan Dun was a challenging listen. I couldn’t quite figure out what the heck the composer was going for here. To be fair, I find it difficult to appreciate dissonant music in a live setting. There’s too much visual distraction. A good stereo and some solitude got me into Sun Pandamonium — perhaps that’s what this Dun stuff needs too.

The second piece “Sept Papillons” by Saariaho was very effective and interesting. Jean-Michel Fonteneau managed to bring forth the sounds of butterflies from his cello. It was technically impressive and somehow pleasantly jarring.

As for the rest of the program, I honestly just didn’t get it. That’s it. I wish I had more of an explanation. It just left me cold. That said, it was a really enjoyable evening. The building is beautiful and the people were wicked cool. I love being challenged by music. I’ll be sure to make my way back.

Thanks to Cariwyl and the staff and the Conservatory for organizing the whole thing.

Technorati Tags: Hecker, Burial, San Francisco Conservatory, Radiohead

Comments (0)

lesson 6: get the data

Thoughts About Life — ivanovick @ 21:48

One of my favorites movies of all time is Errol Morris’s Oscar Winning The Fog of War. It’s a collection of life lessons from former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. McNamara is an incredibly accomplished man having served as President of the Ford Company, Secretary of Defense (under Kennedy and Johnson) and as President of the World Bank. His lessons are unforgettable but what is most interesting is how war, morality and duty are uncomfortably woven together. I’m still totally unsure how I feel about the man. (Although I love his sixth lesson — Get the data — which could serve as a slogan for data-driven decision makers everywhere.)

What’s great is that you don’t have to take my word for it — the whole doc is on Google Video. You can watch it by clicking below. Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: fog of war, data, war, Errol Morris, decision making, life lessons

Comments (0)

how do you feel about howard?

Thoughts About Life — ivanovick @ 21:52

Do your feelings about Howard Moskowitz change as you watch these two talks?

First up is Malcolm Gladwell:

Next up is Barry Schwartz:

So what do you think about Howard?

Technorati Tags: howard moskowitz, malcolm gladwell, barry schwartz

Comments (1)

Personality profile of your host

Thoughts About Life — ivanovick @ 22:24

I did a little self-assessment using some form of the Myers-Briggs personality test. I can’t believe how they’ve pinpointed so many of my traits. For those of you out there keeping score, I’m an INTP: Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking and Perceiving. If you can find one of those free tests out there, you’ll be surprised how much you can learn about yourself. It’s useful in figuring out what you’re likely to be good and not so good at. That way you can concentrate on your strengths and stop beating yourself up over your shortcomings.

Here’s a little self-serving quote about my mind (ha) from some web page (which may or may not be of dubious quality):

The mind of an INTP is both a finely-honed analytical tool and a playground of ideas. Its strongest function is introverted Thinking, which is supported by extroverted iNtuition. In other words, INTPs interact with the outer world intuitively, observing the big picture and its implications. They use their introverted T to process this information logically and abstractly, analyzing new ideas until they understand every aspect.

I don’t know if you find that interesting at all. If it was your brain — perhaps you would.

Also — I’m back on the blog after a prolonged absence. So tune in for ramblings about entrepreneurship, technology and music. I was suffering from blog fatigue. But I am no longer.

P.S. Listening to Skream - skreamizm volume one — some of the best dubstep I’ve heard thus far — but I’m admittedly new to the genre

Technorati Tags: personality, Myers-Briggs, INTP, Skream

Comments (2)

democamp 7 - download

Entrepreneurship, Internet, Technology, Thoughts About Life — ivanovick @ 23:06

Good evening.

Tonight was another excellent edition of the phenomenon known as democamp. For those of you too lazy to click the link, democamp is basically a bunch of software (and occasionally hardware) geeks gathering in a room. Five people volunteer to demo their latest creations. Each volunteer gets about 15 minutes and, at the end, everyone has drinks and mingles.

domainer.com

First up was domainer.com which is a custom web server and content management app designed specifically for managing a whole lotta domains. To paraphrase the presenter, domainer treats domain names as the atomic units of web development. It’s pretty basic right now but has a solid user interface. One interesting feature is how it deals with themes. The programmers have chosen to decouple structure from look and feel which is tough to explain in words so I won’t even try. In sum, it’s a solid app that will become more intriguing as more functional components are added.

feelingbullish.com

Feelingbullish.com is a site for investors seeking honest user-generated financial information. The Internet is littered with messageboards and forums containing low-quality information from unknown sources. Feelingbullish attempts to solve this problem by providing a community where all users become stock analysts. Users then develop a reputation based on the votes of other users and an analysis of their success. I think it’s a great idea — and one that I wish I had thought of.

paruba.com

Paruba.com is pretty much the exact site that my business partner Reg talked about building last year. (Check it out Reg.) It’s a place where you can create lists of products that you like from around the Internet. (Think del.icio.us and flickr for e-commerce.) The theory is that these products say something about you. You can browse other lists or grab items off any site on the Internet. The UI is slick and the whole thing looks really easy to use.

Two interesting insights from the presenter about taking on a project that is outside of your core business: (1) if you try to do things in your spare time — things don’t happen — you have to invest in a project to make it go and (2) you won’t get things done until you feel the pain — turning down paying contracts will motivate you to complete your pet project.

the glove

An excellent presentation injecting a little hardware into the ol’ democamp. Cameron Browning demostrated a 3-D visualization tool for file structures. It was entertaining — check out the link for more details.

Damian Conway and Perl 6

The final presenter was Damian Conway. For those of you who don’t know Mr. Conway check this from his bio:

Currently he runs an international IT training company – Thoughtstream – which provides programmer training from beginner to masterclass level throughout Europe, North America, and Australasia.

Most of his time is currently spent working with Larry Wall on the design of the new Perl 6 programming language and producing explanatory documents exploring Larry’s design decisions.

Damian was great. First of all, he got around the whole no PPT rule by tweaking VIM to act as his presentation software. Very clever indeed. Next he lead us through a brief tour of Perl 6. I understood about 32% of what he was talking about at the time, but failed to write any of it down. Just put “Perl 6″ into your Google alerts or something.

For those in Toronto, I encourage you to go check out Damian tomorrow July 5th. He’s speaking at 6:30 pm at 40 St. George and the topic will be “Fun with dead languages”. Should be a hoot.

This post is long enough. But lastly I just wanted to say again that meeting people is the best part of democamp. For some reason the vibe is so relaxed that it just makes for good conversation. Thanks to the organizers.

Technorati Tags: democamp, torcamp

Comments (3)

Go get it, no holding back

Thoughts About Life — ivanovick @ 09:09

From the bizarrely inspirational department comes Zach Slow who used his website to win a date with UK emcee Lady Sovereign (Cha Ching):

This has reminded me that you absolutely, no matter what anyone else says, have to take risks to get exactly what you want out of life….I really believe that and this simple project has reaffirmed that for me. Stepping up, asking for what you want in life, and then working to get exactly that is probably the most fulfilling single thing you can do in your life. If you’re holding back, I suggest you think to yourself, “If Zach Slow can make a crazy website to go out with his favorite emcee, then I can surely do whatever the hell I want! After all, it would be impossible to look crazier than him!”

From: http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/33271399

Technorati Tags: ladysovereign, inspirational

Comments (0)

Thoughts about execution

Strategy, Thoughts About Life — ivanovick @ 15:42

Here are some random thoughts about execution from the past week of the life of your host, Brian Ivanovick:

You or your company will make mistakes — and that is okay — don’t let the fear of mistakes get in your way. (Source: Coach Kara)
You will hear “no” or just screw up sometimes — and that too is okay — everyone who does something fails some of the time. (Source: Coach Kara)
Successful people try things more often than unsuccessful people do. If you want to succeed, you have to fail more. (Source: Business partner Reg found somewhere on the Internet)
Try new things just to try them. You don’t have to try to become the best at everything you do. Sometimes being just okay (or even bad) is perfectly acceptable. (Source: Prof. David M. Lank)
You’re allowed to be a beginner. (Source: Emmet Conor O’Reilly)
Seeking perfection can get in the way of moving forward. Seek out what is good enough. You always have time to fix it later. (Source: Paul Carr and The Paradox of Choice by Schwartz)

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Technorati Tags: perfection, fail, execution, mistakes

Comments (0)

Eternal health

Thoughts About Life — ivanovick @ 08:19

A few months ago I read Fantastic Voyage by Kurzweil and Grossman. If you’ve been feeling a little sluggish or just plain unhealthy and want to change your ways, I really recommend this book. Some parts are a little out there (their goal, after all, is to actually live forever) but I think the fundamental message is true. It’s the straight goods on human dietary needs mixed with a dicussion of future technologies that will help us stay alive until the planet will no longer support us.

Kurzweil’s one of the most exciting thinkers on the planet, the inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and, I’m told (source: Hans at Wiki Tuesday) that he’s the only person to start two, count ‘em two, billion dollar companies.

Technorati Tags: diet, health, productivity

Comments (0)

domainer.com

feelingbullish.com

paruba.com

the glove

Damian Conway and Perl 6

Blogroll