mechanical happenings beauty while listening to moosefrog

22 07 2009

“the little light on the dash keeps coming on” he says

“and what does that mean?” she asks

“well, the computer goes all whack, and the engine kicks into this ’safe’ mode” he explains

“’safe’ mode?” she asks

“yeah, ’safe’ mode; all the gears go screwy and it just drives using 3 gears” he adds

“and since last week each time i drive the car, as soon as i hit 3rd gear, the light comes on. Always!” he sighs

“just do that trick you do to get rid of it” she says as a matter of fact

“i do, but it doesn’t work anymore. No matter what i do it just keeps coming on” he says…

…and pauses

“i think it’s finally had it” he says breaking the silence

“hey check that out over there!” she says pointing to somewhere in the distance

“wow! nice one!” he says and shrugs off the fact the green machine is lifting its weight on limp legs, buckling under the pressure of almost mechanical failure.

“nice music!” she says

“moosefrog” he says





And So I Thought

16 05 2009

Just a smile and I get on by
A joking vibe and on I slide
A mask that’s been painted
With my own hand
And all along I had no idea

But it’s my thing my special gift
It ain’t my doing I’ve been given it
A natural thing that’s born within
Or so I thought, oh man
How wrong could I have been

She told me how it really was
Said have you noticed that always
When times are tough you run and hide
And others think you’re getting by
Stronger than before

And with her voice inside my mind
I started to peel and tear aside
The years of smoke and layered lies
And find myself in a naked sky
Filled with clouds and waterless rain





tweet tweet – explaining twitter in the workforce!

25 02 2009

There’s no doubting the fact that the web has come leaps and bounds over the last decade in particular the last few years.

Social media (socmed) sites abound and the take up of each has been astonishing.

At least every second person you know will have an account on facebook, gmail (in conjunction with google apps), plurk, a personal blog, and the list goes on.

A more recent socmed application twitter has burst into the mainstream scene. Twitter has been receiving a fair bit of media attention as more people begin to find out about it and talk about it. The list of “famous” and “infamous” ppl using it is very long; check out this forbes list printed recently.

But taking away the stars and the glitz of it what is twitter? Why is it so popular? I’ll try and break these questions down as I understand it and my experience of twitter.

Personally I’ve been tweeting for almost a year now. Twitter is an extremely useful tool for many reasons which I’ll try to explain.

What is twitter? In short twitter is what’s known as a micro blogging site. Users sign up to the service and post short messages (much like sms msg) up to 140 characters.

You can choose to follow people and people choose to follow you; you can see the public stream (which lists all tweets in chronological order) or you see the tweets as they occur for the people you’re following; ditto for the people that follow you.

Coupled with this you have the ability to reply to a person someone you follow or not, or you can send a direct message (dm) to someone you do follow. A dm is not on the public timeline and will only be seen by the person you dm. A reply is on the public timeline so the person you reply to is notified they have been sent a message as well as the tweet appearing on the public timeline.

It all seems pretty simple, right? But what’s the point.

Well it’s all to do with who you choose to follow and who chooses to follow you. There’s a usual trend that people you follow tend to follow u back.

Since tweeting, I’ve found that I have distinct groups of people I follow. These groups offer different “flavours” or “streams” of information that I’m interested in. I follow sharepoint people, SOA people, K2 people, socmed people, web/e 2.0 people, and just plain “fun” people, from all around the world.

When you increase your following (both who you follow and who follows you) patterns of information streams start emerging through the apparent chaotic clutter of twitter; and THAT’S where the real value starts coming out.

I’ve found many answers to some tech qns I’ve had, as well as good advice. The key point here is that the twitter community is fairly socialistic by nature so sourcing info is equally regarded as giving info. Help me / help you type of attitude.

Tagging – tweet trends.

Tweets can be “tagged” with a # symbol. This allows for topical information to be “grouped” and “searched”. This is a very powerful tool. As an example if I want to tweet something about my iphone I might say:

“Just upgraded my #iPhone software; not as stable as last upgrade”

This has the effect of tagging my tweet with “iPhone” so all searches on iPhone will pick this tweet up; also all iPhone trending topics will also pick this tweet up.

As I mentioned, tweets can be tagged and as such trends of conversations start emerging and searchability becomes a reality. Recent examples of popular trends have been:

  • #inaug09 - barak obama’s inaugaration.
  • #bushfires - tragic black saturday bushfires of victoria.
  • #connex - trend topic coveric connex train service in melbourne (this should be a biz school case stategy in brand Mangament – amazing!)

During the fires in Victoria a couple of Saturdays ago, the first tweets with #bushfires started emerging early Sat morning. By mid afternoon, #bushfires was the number one trending topic on twitter. Worldwide!

Radio station 774 Melbourne, the CFA, and a few other news agancies all started streaming live updates of what was happening with respect to the bushfires and the tragedy was continuously unfolding like a live tv drama on twitter. It was amazing to watch. It was the most up to date, real time info you could get. Online News papers were lagging behind. It got to the point where TV networks were using twitter streams to get their updates, and then would use as updates themselves (Most, if not all, commercial free to air TV stations credited twitter as their source).

Now it doesn’t need to be coverage of disastrous events. The Barak Obama inauguration captured a massive audience online, and the tweets were flowing by the thousands from people who were actually at Lincoln Square. Again it featured as the number 1 trending topic.

I have many anecdotal stories that testify to the marketing strengths of twitter as a social media tool. There’s the case of a fellow twitterer tweeting the poor service he was getting from an ISP in the USA. After hours of getting nowhere on the phone he tweeted the situation, and within minutes the ISP company responded, on twitter, and the guy had his service restored within the hour.

Companies know that brand management is key to sales and twitter is the type of network where brands can be strengthened or worse, damaged. And if you think what I’m saying is simply text book rhetoric, jump on twitter and search for #connex. There’s no doubting the connex brand is severely damaged and it’s evident on tweets regarding their service.

Will twitter be a key component of companies’ brand management and marketing strategies? I think at minimum it needs to be considered. You have a grass roots view of the world, directly connected to your consumer market, all segments, and an opportunity to hear it from the horse’s mouth so to speak, not just sample focus groups representing your potential segments.

A close friend of mine described it as “a river of information continuously flowing”, an apt description.

Remember there will always be those narrow minded cynics, which will scoff at the idea of twitter; I just ignore these people. It’s more than likely they are the same strain people that said “what use is the internet?” 15 years ago.

To me one of the untapped and potential opportunities with twitter is to completely redefine the search landscape. Currently google searched static content, tagged and indexed based on algorithms, very static. Twitter offers search responses by people. Coupled with mashups (a completely separate post is required for this) that pulls topical information from a variety of sources, you really start getting peer-to-peer searching/answering. The possibilities are mind blowing (and Yes! I can hear the cynics in the bg).

My question is what do you see as the possibilities of services like twitter providing to you as an individual, and to you as a representative at Tatts Group? Now think of the question not in regards to twitter specifically, but services of this nature, behind the firewall!





open the door

23 12 2008

He spends his day walking through doors

expecting to find the unknown;

that which is waiting, patiently,

for him to arrive.

A hope triggered hand reaching out,

cutting the fear of doubt

and uncertainty,

slowly turning a handle of hope.

“Does this mean it will end?”

It’s only the beginning.





a town like alice

19 10 2008
tali by salt pan

tali by salt pan

i should say, one of the things i really luv is australian aboriginal art. Not all styles grab my perceptive stimulants so to speak, but some are just visually delicious. 

The style i luv is the one which combines abstract methods with traditional aboriginal ones.

 

And there’s no one that does it better than Alice Nampitjinpa; chk out her bio

 

here are some of her awesome and inspiring works.

tali-in-the-rainy-season

tali tali

tali tali 2

rockholes near talaalpi swamp

rockholes near talaalpi swamp

sandhill country - My Favourite!!!

sandhill country - My Favourite!!!

tali

tali





i wish i knew

18 10 2008

I wish I knew
What to do
How to see
And push on through

To take a chance
To risk it all
And find myself
Wanting more

To just let go
And jump right in
Change my mind
And change my skin

To be bold
And not afraid
This I wish
I wish I knew





Life is Beautiful

17 10 2008

i heard someone say today
life is beautiful
if you overcome
the very thing which binds you

but the beauty hidden deep
within this life of mine
can only be reached
with an overcoming mind

the hand that shaped and moulded me
full of fear and wonder
with gentle love it guides me
so i overcome

life is only beautiful 
when in you myself i find

life is only beautiful 
when in you myself i find





spiritual journey

17 08 2008

don’t know if it’s just the winter time blues or not, but i’ve just been in a bit of a rut lately. There’s no particular reason why, just have been that’s all.

Anyhow, that lead to some conversational exchanging between moi and the wonderful webby chick i know. And the suggestion was made by the wonderful webby chick to “…go on a trip and find out what u should be doing…” to which i replied “…what? like a…spiritual journey?”, and was met with a yes prefixed with 3 seconds delay and a gaze that was staring slightly to the left of me and just above my head height.

Well, that immediately reminded my of the 1988 U2 movie Rattle and Hum. Specifically the scene where Larry Mullen Jr responds to an interviewers question asking him what the flick is about, in his thick Irish accent, “it’s a musical journey!”.

So, a spiritual journey hey?

And that got me thinking. does one need to travel out to somewhere, ANYWHERE, go on a quest to find TEH something? go on a trip with the sole purpose of EXPECTING an answer to the very thing that they don’t even know what it is they’re questioning?

And, let’s just assume for hypothetical’s sake (top bloke he is) I do go on this “spiritual journey” (please use irish accent when saying that, it feels better). There’s a few things that need to be asked just there.
1. Where do I go?
2. What do I DO there once i get to ANSWER 1?
3. So I start doing ANSWER 2 and then how will I know the answer when I come across it?
4. And assuming i come across ANSWER 3, what then?

Its a “spiritual journey”!

Ok. I need to understand what frame of mind I would need to be in? Do I need to be expectant of an answer? Do i need to start out seeking (for something I don’t really know) and expect that I will find it? Seek and ye shall find! (Irish accent optional).

What would you do? allow urself to be immersed in experience? spirituality? both? circumstance? is it ok to go to the chosen place with no clue of where to go, who to seek, nor what to do?

I know these words may come across as nonsensical scattered thoughts and in some ways showcase my current state.

It’s a musical journey says Larry, only now i need to find out what instrument to play, and the scariest part, is finding out if I can play?

And me thinks the latter question might be the root of the problem.





saggy dna

9 08 2008

So i jumped on PersonalDNA and took the 12 page test; too much time on my hands i hear no-one say. well, no; just wanted to play with yet another program using (claiming is more accurate) AI to assess my responses to a bunch of questions, which, behind the scenes, deep down where the rats and guinea pigs are doing loops and all, each response denotes a particular characteristic or behaviour. Each different type of trait and/or behaviour is tallied up at the end, and the ones that rank highest map to a prefab profile. Mine being teh benevolent leader,

with pretty colour maps; buggered if im going to work it out

Key findings:

1. I’m 90% masculine, 10% femine (tg for the confirmation)

2. I put a high trust in others

3. I am overtly extroverted

4. I’m empathetic, but only slighlty – :-(

and there u go.





I know what they’re doing is wrong…but…look at their faces!

4 11 2007

I’m stepping away from IT for a sec, and commenting on a news paper article I read recently.

The article appeared in The Age newspaper on Oct 31, titled:

“China puts clamp on shady goods manufacturers”


In brief the article talks about Chinese officials clamping down on “shady” goods and food manufacturing operators, due to health and safety issues.

I agreed with the article, as our H&S is very important, and with global markets in full swing, a lot of our consumables come from China.

But then I looked carefully at the photo that accompanied the article.



“A Chinese man and his wife plead with a Government inspector not to confiscate their equipment used to make soy products in Wuhan, central China.”
Photo: AFP quoted from The Age article

I know what they’re doing is wrong…but…look at their faces!

My heart broke…