I was down there working on my chemistry homework, all of which is due on May 3rd. So far I have completed 5 of the 10 assigments, and I hope to complete an additional 1 or 2 tomorrow. I am not enjoying this homework in the least. Its not very representative of the material covered in class, lab, or the tests.. so I’m not 100% sure why they are assigning it. I think it may have something to do with the fact that the tests and classes are run by one professor, the labs by another, and the homework by a third. They are not doing so hot on the coordination this semester. I think the lab we just did last week covers material we’re schedule to learn this upcoming week in class.. and who knows what the homework will be about. I have started to dislike doing chemistry homework online. I could deal with physics, but the chemistry is just dumb. If I was doing it out on paper I could get it done much faster, with fewer mistakes because I’m more likely to notice things like units and such.. online they are just numbers.

Blah de blah I was working on that comfortable, and everyone shows up to re-arrange the office. Now I know this had been coming, because they tried to re-arrange it once.. but I undid it the next morning after my chemistry test because it was junk and I was completely out of the loop on it. I’m more likely to be ok with things if I’m in the loop about them, surprises are not for me. But yea, the rest of the next 4 or so hours were spent moving furniture. Of course I didn’t feel there was even a need to move the furniture, but what do I know. After everything was re-arranged at least twice the furniture got settled and everyone went out shopping. Realizing I had gotten a very small portion of the chemistry I set out to do today done, I retreated back to my dorm to start the work again. I find chemistry and furniture tends to go hand in hand for some reason, the past 2 times re-arranging the room was brought up/done were the day of a chemistry test, and today was chemistry homework day. I look forward to finishing this class and rearranging furniture soon.

The internet was working again (whew) so I was able to login and start work again. During the process I received the replies to my email about weighting, which was pretty much what I was expected. Past assumptions have been re-affirmed. It seems the best way to get people to go along with my ideas, is well… I’m not going to share the secret with you. I think that might ruin it. Essentially I find myself in a constant balance, where I weight the least. It doesn’t help that I lack the verbal communication skills to present things outside of cyberspace.

Actually I take that back, I lack the confidence to do so because I know very clearly what will happen and it probably won’t boost my confidence. In comparison to South Hadley, where what I said was evaluated and sometimes agreed upon as correct or the route to take, I find what I say here tends to be the opposite of what people do (or want to do) and everyone is very capable of telling me otherwise. I lack the ability to argue or effectively debate my point because people insist on using these college-level works that just have a lot of letters and are not so dense. I guess I have to keep trying and hope someday my ideas may be correct. I should also consider myself fortune in this respect. I think my life lies in equilibrium, so all these poorly received ideas are going to lead to better received ideas in the future.. unless I’ve already had those ideas.. in which case idk what is going to happen.

To talk about a different subject, I think my Google Summer of Code projects have pretty much been a waste this year. No one responded to my request for a mentor. Thanks everyone… and my other submissions haven’t had any comments placed on them. In general (and in past years), advisers will read them over and give you a sentence or two where to improve or at least acknowledge its been read. Nope, not mine. Nothing… Maybe I will be lucky and its just so good that they don’t have anything to say to it. Yea right.

Katie interviewed for her first real job yesterday, I failed to provide any good tips because I’m not familiar with non-technical interviews. Like when I have gone on interviews its always very oriented at my skillset and implementation knowledge, and less on my people and service skills. I think thats probably been to my benefit.

Twitter is working again, I’ll consider adding a widget here at some point. There was this 2 day period where all my requests to update my status were going nowhere.. I think I was “bored in physics” for like 48 some odd hours. Thats a pretty crazy amount of hours to be bored, nevermind in physics! I ate McDonalds for lunch, which was a decent change of pace from the regular RPI Commons food. I haven’t made up my mind if I want to get I Love NY pizza tomorrow for lunch or not. Its what I typically eat for lunch up here on Sunday, but its also typically a Katie food, though I did go alone once while the bowling championships were on.

I’m kinda debating how I can increase my leadership skills without decreasing my effeciency. Its tricky, I spend a lot of my time writing code for things, and less time leading them. I’m very comfortable with the code writing portion, and I will never cut down on that (it goes against my belief that leaders need to do as well as lead) but its certainly tricky. Actually I don’t think I’m thinking about this at all actually. That sentence or two was all I had to say. What I do think about is the line “we’re starting to get recognition” and I wonder what exactly is getting recognition. I know concerto is getting recognized on campus, but I frequently wonder who people see as the people behind the system. I wouldn’t say this is just a concerto thing, or just an RPI thing, I’ve found a lot of things I’ve been involved in tend to have a very clear distinction between the people who are viewed as behind the system, and who actually is. A great example would be a television production, say a Tiger Times Special Edition… everyone is like ooo Matt Caron you did an awsome job with that or I really enjoyed the show (Matt is the anchor FYI) but very few people would credit the editor who spent a lot of time working on it behind the scenes. No, it wasn’t his/her face being broadcast on all the TV’s.. but it is their work. Thats why I frequently will put just about everyone else in the credits before the anchors (ok so the special edition is a bad example because of the limit crew).. but I feel its the least I can do to show appreciation to the production assistants, camera operaters, etc who made the production possible, but aren’t the starring roles.

I am tired and am going to bed now.

The day after I came home, Saturday, Katie and I went down to New York City.. our second trip of this nature. Overall this trip went better, I like to think I was much better at navigating us from A to B than the previous trip, and overall I was much more stable. While I do not know what the future holds for me, I would not be opposed to living in a very populated city environment. Walking is something I enjoy, and a city facilitates lots of that.

I spent the majority of Sunday and Monday installing OS X 10.5 here, its pretty neat. I’m not a big mac fan, mainly because I enjoy the flexibility Windows offers, but there are some things a Mac is better at than a Windows box, so I’m using it for that. Right now I’m actually blogging from Mac, I’ve yet to unpack my windows desktop [primarily due to lack of desk space or KVM availability]. My mouse is broken, so clicking doesn’t work.. I like to blame it on the Mac for being stupid about mice.. buts thats probably not very fair.

Things are certainly busy around here over break. Between Digital Signage at RPI, cleaning up this Widget I’ve been working on [Dashcode is a great mac program btw], and today I just got called in on another project to work on a mockup/demo in ASP.net. I don’t know much ASP or .NET stuff, but tomorrow morning I’ll quickly figure out how do-able the project is and see where I go. I hate saying no to opportunities, especially moderately cool ones, but I am positive my mental health sometimes suffers.

Christmas is around the corner and I failed to make a list for my parents to shop for me, they have forewarned me failure is likely. I have a few ideas floating around out there, but I doubt they will find them in stores. I wish I was better at thinking up what I want. For example tonight I realized I need a Multimeter. I was fixing this TA3F [Mini XLR] to XLR cable that someone broke, and to verify/test the pinouts I was using a battery tester, some wires, and paper to hold the connection open. I’ve been doing this for several years now so I’m pretty good at it… but stupid Shure people.. you should not make the Red cable Negative, that is very counterintuitive to me… Black should be Negative, Red Positive, and the other one Ground. Please fix this in all of your cables. It only took me the better part of 2 hours to repair it, I can only hope it works in the morning for them.

I should be going to bed, I was hoping to konk off at 11:00 and wake up at 7:00, but I guess I’ll have to live with 6.2 hours of sleep for tomorrow.

Goodnight Moon

For RPI TV to do news there would need to be 2 major changes. First, production facilities. RPI TV would need a more-permanent home, or something that slightly resembled it. Two closets in the basement of Sharp Hall can not hold a full news crew and the campus’s (one?) green screen room (I didn’t say studio) is shared between several groups, making a permanent setup impossible. The work related to breaking down and doing a full setup every week (dare I say day) takes too much time off the news end of things and puts it all on the setup and testing of equipment.

What we need? Honestly we need a full studio, with close to permanent cameras, video switcher, audio mixer, the works. So that a news crew, or crew of any show really, can move a few cameras, turn everything on and be ready to film in under 15mins. Not the 1-2 hours it takes to setup for a multi-camera shoot.

Secondly, we’d need a must faster way to get on TV. Non of this 3day nonsense, maybe thats a digital video server, maybe its a “live” feed that we control to MMS, maybe its a head end. But something must be done.

My parents are paying approximately a lot of money to send me to RPI, and also paying under $2 each money on the cable bill for a PEG fee. That fee goes towards a local PEG station, which in South Hadley is housed in the high school. I lived in that place for 4 years, and its a whole lot better than most things I’ve found at RPI. No, they don’t have an XL-2, but they have 3JVC DV-550′s and a permanent studio setup. You can’t say its financially not possible, and if you argue it is raise a fee by $1 (tuition or housing)

I was surprised to arrive at RPI to find a lack of television facilities, as if computers were the only thing people cared about. So far I’ve yet to find any “studio” at RPI that looks like and works like a TV studio, and I can’t seem to explain why such a place doesn’t exist. Television and broadcast media isn’t going away, the technology is changing, integrating heavily with theinternet and IPTV yet nothing exists at RPI to allow a group of students to come in, film a linear production, and be gone in under the hour.

Maybe the campus doesn’t like to be on the cutting edge, if so someone should tell admissions, cause I can guarantee they are selling that idea to prospective students.

I’m open for some discussion or thoughts. Please submit some. If you’re interested in reading more, this is an expert from “what I type about RPI TV when I’m bored, frustrated, and wanting to change the world”. I can send you a link to the google doc.

P.S. I’m sorry if anyone strongly disagrees and thinks that I’m a freshmen/sophomore that doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I think I have a little idea, but you can always enlighten me.

As many of you know, I am very attached to the Tiger Times and SHHS. For me, I spent the first three years in high school without many close friends, many had been seperated from my by the music program. I didn’t hangout with people on weekend, I starred out the window at the white limo leaving my neighbors driveway 4-5 times as cotillions/prom came an went. Of course I wasn’t there, who would go alone… not just like stag with a group of others, but I meant alone alone. I never went to any parties or was involved or assocaited with any “questionable” acts that people constantly look back on as memories of good times.

For me everything has been about pretending. I’ve pretended to not care that I did chores as weekend instead of call a friend. I pretended that I actually knew the 200 buddies on my list and that I had actually chatted with them at one point or another. (Of course this wasn’t true, I wrote a script to harvest buddy lists from AIM) I pretended that I could save the world, and that the code or server or whatever I was working on was actually important. I spent my time imagining what it would be like to attend cotillion, go to a real party, or hangout with friends… I call these “simulations”. I would run a type of thought experiment to see what happens, and try to learn from it. I gave myself an overall mission for High School, always pretending of course, and convinced myself that not being socially involved was a component of this mission. (No, I won’t reveal the mission)
It wasn’t until senior year when I met this girl that some of the pretending started to change. I didn’t have to pretend to have friends anymore, I actually had a girlfriend. Eventually I started hanging out with her and trying to find things to do. Luckily for me she was very patient as I had missed out on just about everything people did that was cool in HS or Middle School. Somehow, using her superheroess like powers she got me to lighten up and be more human and less scarry.

Somewhere in there I was told to quit all that and go to college, no.. not quit Katie my girlfriend.. but quit everything I learned in high school, the Tiger Times, scouts, etc. I pretended it would be easy, just like going to a freakisly extended summer camp. Of course I should have known that I can’t pretend the rest of my life is just a freakishly long summer camp. There’s no coming home after it, your dead!

I’ve suffered from withdrawl from the world for the past few months. I dislike not being exposed to world news with my parents watching World News Tonight after dinner. I dislike not being involved like high school. I dislike the fact that there is one person that relies on me, yes.. that person happens to be the biggest person in my life (not physically), but I’ve screwed up so much that I can’t be relied on for half of things. I liked to think that I can or have changed the world. I believe in the butterfly effect to some degree, but what I struggle to see is where am I.

I spend the past semester hiding this with work, I used the guise of a full inbox to keep me constantly busy, the same technique I employed for 4 years of highschool. Yesteday my inbox emptied, it wasn’t just a day thing.. I could see it coming. I builtup a todo list, and it stopped building. I got everything done and uh oh. Blank screen.

I made the mistake of trying to give myself work, something to do, something to focus my efforts on, the problem was I picked the completely wrong topic. Deep down you may think I actually wanted it… but deeper than that I know I couldn’t do it. I already went out without a bang (thanks guys), and I don’t think I’ll be ready to make another formal attempt anytime soon. Maybe its because I never got a simple thank you from the people I effected the most. That is if I actually effected anyone. Not once in my HS career, or life to date, has a student of SHHS come up to me and say thanks for doing the announcements, faculty have said nice job, but never thanks. The Principal gave me an award for fixing computers, not doing the TT. I’m not asking for a huge ta-da trophy or formal recognition… it just would have been a nice ending to shake someone’s hand when they said thanks a lot, well done.

Being in charge, that was my job.. I was suppose to thank those who worked for me and pass the torch off, I’m not sure.. but somewhere in there I caught myself on fire.

I realized this a little while ago and tried to fix things, cancel my plans, but I just can’t figure it out.

I think I need to get a new mission for college, pretend or not.. its something that can keep me going… well its something that I can use to keep myself going..

I think?

I arrived in South Hadley today because, unknown to me, my dad was in Stockbridge at a Strategic Planning Meeting for his company and came out to get me after the meeting was done.

Well, I planned on going into the studio/SHHS tomorrow to do some work and say hi to a few teachers. In typical mom tradition, she told me that I can not go to school tomorrow. Its a normal day of school and I shouldn’t distract the students. Wednesday it might be ok though.

That goes the plan. I can’t just go to school tomorrow because she won’t leave for work until 7:20. Unfortunately if I leave at 7:20 I won’t get to school in time to walk in like a regular student and go right to the studio without having to hassle the office. Well, I figured there was a chance I could make it into the school and sign into the office, I’m friends with Ms. Z so I thought I had a chance.

After talking with Katie tonight I no longer feel motivated or excited to come into school. Apparently I will have to jump through loops, be restricted to a certain area, that is IF someone will let me into the studio in the first place. And I guess there are only a few “authorized” persons to do so? I don’t know anything.

So what will I do? Who knows.

Personally I think I have a valid reason to be there. I was hired over the summer for a year long position, so technically I’m still an employee of the school district so I could be there unpaid, volunteering. I mean I still have a key and everything, so I don’t think I’m an intruder like everyone else.

Maybe everyone has forgotten how much time I’ve put into that place, not just that place but the district since 6th grade at the Middle School. I’ve fixed hundreds of computers, most of which unpaid. I know that if a teacher stops me tomorrow (if I go) I could say “do you remember that time I came to help you install ________” but of course I would never say that to someone, I’d rather take the humble lonely approach and sit here all day watching the laundry.

Of course I can’t stay all day because I have laundry and things to do. If I don’t do them tomorrow I’ll have to do them Wednesday and that will ruin that day. I’m not as lucky as some people who come home from college and get their laundry done for them. All I get is to save $1.25 a load.

Time to go to bed. If I can sleep. And think of a plan…

Good night moon.

At first I was clueless about the group, I really didn’t know how they operated or anything like that so I decided to take the mellow/shy approach. Attempting to show off or anything like that is stupid if you ask me, people can determine for themselves what skill or lack there of I have.

The group is working to get a news show broadcasting, and with my experience I joined the teams “mailing list”, whatever involvement that brings. I guess my main thinking point on the subject is how would I do it differently. I can say I’ve started a news group before… Tiger Times… but the college version cannot be the exact same.

The main sticking point for me is sources. In HS we were given news, in college we’re given nothing. Working with “TV” people for a little while, I’ve learned the tech-savy people tend to be not so great at finding news. Hence the need for journalists. At RPI, all the journalists are a member of The Polytechnic.. a newspaper. So how do we get news? Whatever is found needs to meet a few criteria.. it needs to have reliable timing, the accuracy of the content isn’t as important as the regularness of it. News also needs to have some substance to it, a college news program needs to run for at least 15 minutes for it to be effectively watched.

Unlike high school, the stories don’t need to have any specific relavancy to anything.. thats a bonus feature if something exists.. but there needs to be stories.

Production time is another critical component. News gets stale overnight, unless you’re breaking a story or taking the documentary approach, news gets old fast.. and by fast I mean by the time you have time to air it, its alreadu outdated.

Few thoughts…. I get these annoying bullitens in my email weekly with 3-4 stories, theres some content. Could any kind of partnership with the Poly be setup to allow for a more visual presentation of their stories? I know most newspaper people hate tv… Ok, I’m alreay out of ideas.

Now for the structure of such a group, I dunno but access to a studio is critical, especially if a “breaking-news” approach exists. Based on my experience, having people work on stories seperatly is very difficult. I pulled off a total of 2 half-hour shows like this and it took about 4 months to do so.. why? Everyone has different deadlines. You end up waiting on stories or footage forever, constantly re-adjusting deadlines and frustrating everyone in the process.

An interesting idea would be a joint-editing facility.. somewhere that everyone could edit together.. better allowing the communication between editors and stories to make things flow.

How would I do it again? Depends..

Daily news has to be linear. Thats rule number 1
Weekly news can be edited, but keeping it linear will save time and ease deadlines

Bi-Weekly can be fully edited and spiffed up.

One problem I see is talent. In most cases, finding a tech crew isn’t nearly as hard as a reliable anchor. Since RPI is mostly an engineering/science school, I doubt finding a passionate journalist will be easy.

Well, I don’t know why I wrote this.. it will be interesting to see how things go. Being the freshmen I know changing the world is not something in my scope….

Time to attack php.. I’m beating phpBB and Gallery2 to use the same login for the Tiger Times portal. I compare it to… using a fork to drink milk

Well this weekend I did some research, learning more details about the specific message board problems.

The manager has attempted to abandon the old system and use a PowerPoint. Let us start with some technical details. The message board is installed on a Windows 2000 machine connected to the school’s domain. It accesses a shared network drive on one of the school’s servers to store the messages and announcements. The Display reads from the files at a certain interval and updates the screen. The secretaries share a program that can modify the text files. Why does it work? The chance of the secretaries clicking update at the precise moment the Display is trying to read the file is low to none. To further prevent this, the display will not read the file if it has an error, skipping to try again.

A PowerPoint shared on a network drive is not capable of doing this. Why doesn’t it work? Microsoft Office puts a lock on a file that is being accessed by a computer to prevent someone else from modifying it. The though is in a business, two individuals cannot change the same file, overwriting each other’s changes. In this case, it prevents everyone from changing the screen. Another problem is how PowerPoint presents, when in “view” or “full screen show” mode, PowerPoint takes steps to prevent the lose of the presentation by loading it into memory or a temporary file. Not only are you locked out with the read/write issues, but also a design limitation in PowerPoint.

I am also disturbed by the theory behind this logic. The manager is a Mac user. People use Macs to be different or achieve a functionality of their liking. In my eyes, the message board program is the equivalent of a Mac. Both are proprietary, only working with certain compatibility… the message board was only tested on one machine. When a Mac breaks you call the Apple people, when the Message Board breaks, you should call the Message Board people. The message board “thinks differently.” Its third-grade logic design overcomes the obstacles of a network. Both rarely crash (only when the network share server dies), and when they crash… they crash hard. Both systems are understood by few, but the few who know them can work them great.

See, the manager only knows Mac. The school is a windows place and the message board is a windows application. He forces students to learn how to edit video on a Mac, the only platforms he will buy. He refuses to learn how to work the message board, quite an incongruous situation if you ask me. He as no logic or technically understanding of PowerPoint to determine is as the better system.

What should I do?

{{This is where you start thinking of comments}}

Moving on is not an option. Everyone tells me that but I do not want to. I have no need to loose involvement in an organization. I did that with scouts and I regret it weekly. Too many of my peers and “adults” have said, “forget about it, let go, move on” Why though? Because that is what they did in college? Well maybe I want to do college differently. Maybe I do not need to cut old ties to better myself. I think the best thing I can do for myself is continue to accumulate, I have no mistakes that are life changing I pretend never happened. High School was not a bad experience for me; honestly, I would like to be there right now. See my posts about the educational system for more information, and if you cannot find those let me know and I will write them.

My arms continue to shave and I am not eating well as I did about two weeks ago.

Then I hear kids are getting in trouble for fixing things! What gives? When I went to high school, you were thanked for fixing something. I though learning was a priority, not an offense,

Now I have no clue where to go with two projects. I have been developing a new message board to work with the next generation of networking and windows (IPv6 / Vista) that will knock your socks off… but is it even worth it anymore?

Who knows about project two…. Not me

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(Daniel Quinn, Ishmael pg 6)

I just threw a book and turned on a tap light. I feel rather accomplished in a who really cares kind of sense.

That can apply to so much right now. I feel lost. Thats probably the best way to describe it. So many things I wanted to do I’m not. So many places I wanted to see I didn’t. I’m in a new enviroment experiencing no closure on the old one. I wasn’t ready to be here, and I don’t know if time can change that.

Today I ran into a sophmore here who went to SHHS, Andrea Dalton, she asked if I liked it here, I said “Sure, I guess”. “I guess? You’ll like it.. just give it time.” She replied. That made me think about stuffs. How do we change over time? Over time we forget, we change, we mold, we think. What stays the same. I can think of very few things on a consious level that are the same for me from when I was in Kindergarden, or possible even last year at this time. I don’t think change is what really effects us, its the time that change takes place over that does. Lets look at in like calculus. Its not the function that matters, its the intergal of that function that does. Change that occurs swiftly is more likely to be dramatic and the logical link would be that said change would cause more emotional issues. I debate that topic, all change causes the same issues. Change over time, gives you more time to disregard and forget those issue. Personally, I have the problem of forgetting the wrong things. I forget how things were, how they felt, how me was. I don’t forget my thought process, I don’t forget the heartbeat that keeps me going, I don’t forget my mind. I lookback and say congrats sir. (Yes, I call myself sir) You’ve managed to mess everything up. You are nowhere you wanted to see yourself. I left more loose ends than a rug with tassely things. Looking back, I go “what are you doing there idiot?”

Before going to college I thought to myself how interesting it would be to be able to look forward into my college life and see how things were, so I could see what I should change. Well, I’m trying to do that and I want to slap myself. Not for the past week, not for the past month, but for the past decade of doing things differently then I want.

I’m great at planning, I can think up a solution to just about any situation (still working on a tough one) but its the impletation where I fail. I don’t know how to make it work, or how to go about doing it. If you can think you’re useless. If you can do your useless. Until you master both do you actually get somewhere.

I need to recognize where I started going the wrong way, where did I shut up, when did I start listening to people, when did I stop writing freakishly long blog comments? When did I stop commenting obsessively? Was that just a fad? No, I don’t think so. I need to find the motivation, and its hard when one can’t do anything right. I can’t “get rolling” because I’ve come to a complete roll, maybe backwards… not only do I have to find the forward switch, I need to hope it works….

Completely Lost…

SAVE ME

And now I feel awful, when people are waiting on me and I’m not able to do things for one reason or another. I know one reason is fear of continued failure, or the lack of coming up with things to do. I know the other is out of my control (aka parental units). I know some are in my control, like what I plan to do and such.

I know one thing that has kept me busy. I’ve been working on a project for a little while (a few months) now and its definately the largest project I’ve undertaken to date. It’s due Friday, and it will be a miracle how I get it done. I have about 3 hours of raw footage that need to be cut into good footage that needs to be put together. So far I’m leaning towards one hour, currently I have around 12 mins of high quality completed video. Why the last minuteness?

a) I lost the master tape that had the final “glue” of the video (aka narration)

b) My usual editing times were not available because I was hanging out with people

c) I cannot Instant Message/Myspace and edit at the same time. The editing software crashes and melts.

d) I cannot stand the repeated use of w.e. to express frustration. To me it shows an unwillingness to try. Sorry, completely off topic but it popped into my mind.

e) I spent too much trime thinking and not enough time doing

f) Darn, I just forgot f.. trust me, it exists… think think think… I had to change plans at least 5 times because of LACK OF COOPERATION

g) That wasn’t the f I was thinking of…well.. who cares… no one!

In other news… I’m hoping on a plane to SC on Sunday morning, at a very early hour of the morning.. I’m excited. I like airplanes, I dislike mom trying to help me pack, I like waves, I dislike salt water.

There is other news, I don’t feel like shareing tho… just know its my fault, like always.. and listen to the Over My Head song.. the part about waiting on a cue…