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Sunday, April 7, 2013
New Moms Check In With Their Newborns On iPads To Start Surveillance Young
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Cloud Connect Is Too Polite, And That's The Problem With Vendor Conferences
I sat through the Cloud Connect keynotes this morning but left early out of frustration. The morning started with a discussion?I was really looking forward to: Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners was moderating a panel with vendors from Citrix, Red Hat and CloudOps. But it had one big issue: It was too polite. That’s the problem with these vendor-oriented conferences. They suck the passion out of what is a super-fascinating space. Here we are at a time when there is more disruption in the enterprise than in the past 20 years. But today, I saw the coolest group of executives talking in hushed tones….on message. And the Winblad panel was just the start. During keynote after keynote all morning — there were five — the pitches didn’t stop. I left at the start of the fourth keynote when the Rackspace executive started with some FUD for the IT crowd in the house. During the second keynote, the chief scientist from SoftLayer presented a case study. There was no question-and-answer session — this was a vendor pitch. An HP executive came onstage and told everyone to stand and yell the name of the latest release of the OpenStack operating system. Awful. The HP keynote was better than the others in that the speaker advocated for IT to shut people down if they are using apps/services that do not have the IT seal of approval. HP is one of the biggest IT vendors in the world. But still, she at least stirred the pot a bit. And in the fourth, the Rackspace executive told the crowd that the company’s budget was going elsewhere and shadow IT is a reality. Then she talked about Rackspace. Here’s what one attendee tweeted: The only way that talk would have ended better was if Rackers walked through the aisles signing people up for RackSpace Cloud #ccevent ? Michael Ducy (@mfdii) April 4, 2013 Now, following the keynotes, lunch was served in the back of the exhibit hall. To get there, the attendees had to weave through the vendor displays for a cold, box lunch. Nice touch to a morning filled with marketing talks. It wasn’t all bad. Apparently the fifth keynote by Joe Weinman, senior vice president of cloud services and strategy at Telx saved the morning to some extent. #ccevent glad we have @joeweinman?to add some interesting keynote content ? adrian cockcroft (@adrianco)Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/fdFxjys7LdU/
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SPEAKER PREVIEW: Building a sustainable business from ...
Wednesday, April 03, 2013
Lee Valley Regional Park Authority has inherited three of the London 2012 Olympic venues: Lee Valley White Water Centre, Lee Valley VeloPark (the iconic velodrome) and Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre.
But, what is the future for these venues now that ?the circus has left town??
Shaun Dawson, Chief Executive of Lee Valley Regional Park Authority will share the legacy vision and business plan for these post-Olympic legacy venues ? and reflect on the decision processes taken during their development ? at TheStadiumBusiness Summit 2013.
?Our work on delivering a legacy from London 2012 is already underway,? says Dawson. ?We are determined to ensure that that the whole of the nation and all abilities benefit from what was a global sports extravaganza. I look forward to sharing our plans with the global sports industry in June.?
Join us ? and more than 500 stadium owners, operators and developers from around the world ? at the world?s largest dedicated meeting for the stadium, arena and major sports venue business: TheStadiumBusiness Summit 2013 in Manchester, 5-7 June.
>>REGISTER NOW<<
THE LEGACY VENUES
Lee Valley Regional Park is playing a leading role in delivering a lasting and enduring legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The authority owns and runs three London 2012 venues ? Lee Valley White Water Centre, Lee Valley VeloPark and Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre. It also own a third of the parklands on Olympic Park and is working closely with the London Legacy Development Corporation to create a park that is vibrant, popular and sustainable while making the best use of public resources.
The vision is that the 2012 venues will join the sports venues it already runs to create a chain of sporting excellence along the 26 mile long, 10,000 acre Lee Valley Regional Park. Find out more about the venues and the legacy work here.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Shaun joined the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority as Chief Executive in 1997. During this time he has created a dynamic and award winning organisation that both delivers its core remit and also works with partners to ensure that the 10,000 acre Regional Park adds value to the bigger social and economic agenda in the Lee Valley. Shaun was a key player during the bid process for the 2012 Olympics and he is now leading the Authority?s remit as a central legacy owner/operator organisation for a number of Olympic venues and parkland.
Shaun has spent his career in the leisure industry both in the public and private sector. Before moving to the Authority he was Assistant Director of Education and Leisure at the London Borough of Hackney. Shaun?s particular areas of experience cover, sports venues design, facilities management and parks management/activation.
Shaun graduated from the University of East Anglia with a BSc in Ecology and went on to Loughborough University where he gained an MSc in Recreation Management.
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Obama: Gun control a tougher slog than immigration
ATHERTON, Calif. (AP) ? Conceding the fraught politics of guns, President Barack Obama said Thursday that passing legislation curbing access to firearms would be a tougher slog than an immigration overhaul.
Obama told an intimate group of high-dollar donors Thursday he is optimistic immigration legislation can succeed within the next few months, because the impact of the November election is breaking through partisan gridlock.
"People spoke out through the ballot box," he said. "It's going to be tougher to get the kind of gun legislation to reduce gun violence through the Senate and the House that so many of us, I think, want to see, particularly after the tragedy of Newtown. And I still think it can get done if people are activated and involved."
It was Obama's most candid assessment yet on the prospects of gun legislation in Congress, an issue he has been pushing since a gunman shot and killed 20 children and six educators in a Newtown, Conn., elementary school in December.
Obama has been pushing Congress to act on both the gun and immigration issues. Senators are preparing a bipartisan immigration bill that's expected to be released as early as next week. But in the face of stiff opposition from the National Rifle Association, efforts in Congress to curb gun violence are in danger of losing steam.
Obama has called for expanding background checks for gun buyers and has supported bans on certain assault weapons and limits on the capacity of ammunition magazines. But lately, he has been emphasizing the background checks over the other measures, insisting simply that lawmakers get a chance to vote on the assault weapons ban and the magazine limits.
Obama spoke at a campaign event in California for the Democratic National Committee. It was one of four fundraisers he's doing for Democrats this week.
Obama made his remarks on the same day Connecticut's governor, Dannel P. Malloy, signed into law new restrictions on weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines similar to the ones used by the shooter in the Newtown mass murder.
Obama is going to Hartford, Conn., on Monday to continue his push for federal gun legislation.
___
Follow Jim Kuhnhenn on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jkuhnhenn
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-gun-control-tougher-slog-immigration-182627327.html
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Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Which Form of Writer's Block Do You Have?
This is a guest post written by Deborah Gallardo and it is a tie-in to the discussion on Writers? Block. I am pleased to welcome Deb to the Fiction Blueprints blog. I love her writing style and I got so much from this post. Please do comment at the end so Deb can know how much you enjoyed the post. ~ Sharon
One thing guaranteed to get my dander up is to hear some writer, claiming to be an authority, assert that writer?s block does not exist. I find such blanket statements insensitive at the very least and downright arrogant at worst.
Most times those who make this assertion are ?working writers,? folks who sit down every single day, facing deadlines for producing copy, without the luxury of being able to say to their editor, ?Sorry. I?m blocked. I can?t turn in a column today.?
And it?s true. Working writers as a group are the least likely candidates to encounter writer?s block.
Three Things Working Writers Have in Common.
- Firstly, they have developed a discipline that other writers may lack.
- Secondly, they have developed a habit of writing every day, generally about the same time of day.?
- Thirdly, they have developed techniques or rituals that get them started writing, that prime the pump, so to speak, although in today?s world, not many people encounter pumps that need priming.
Your Brain as a Water Pump
When you think about it, getting water to flow against gravity isn?t such an easy thing to do, unless you have a way to effect a change in pressure inside water pipes. A quick start is to pour a cup of water down into the pipe. This process is known as ?priming the pump.?
Just as old-fashioned water pumps need priming, so do our writers? minds. If we can learn techniques that jumpstart our brains, we make our job a lot easier because the ideas will start to flow. And if we haven?t already done so, we need to learn what working writers know and do.
1. Develop our own brand of self-discipline.
2. Cultivate the habit of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair (as Hemingway put it) every day without fail, even if only for 10 minutes.
3. Come up with personalized techniques to carry us over the tough spots when our creative well seems to have run dry. These can be free-writing, writing prompts or something along the lines of picking three random words and using each one in a paragraph or short story.
When You?re Running on Empty
The truth is, there is nothing quite as scary to a writer as having nothing to say. In my experience, this is related to self-doubt. ?What if I can?t think of anything to write? What if I?m really not good enough??
Likewise, there is nothing that makes a writer feel more vulnerable than coming face to face with the specter of failure. Here?s the thing, and it?s going to be hard to hear. If we?re not failing, we?re not reaching high enough. We?re playing it safe. This is why, when it comes to writer?s block, self-confidence is often to blame.
My New Hero, Dr. Bren? Brown
And here?s another important fact. It comes from my go-to authority in the psychology of creativity (my term, not hers), Dr. Bren? Brown, who became an overnight YouTube sensation when she gave a TEDx talk on her groundbreaking research. I recommend you look her up. It will change your life.
[Editor's Note: The YouTube Video of the TEDx talk is at the end of this post.]
Okay, here?s that fact: ?Vulnerability is the birthplace of creativity, innovation, and change. It?s also the birthplace of joy, faith and connection. To create is to make something that has never existed before. There?s nothing more vulnerable than that.?
Exposed!
The multi-award-winning author of ?Jacob Have I Loved,? and ?Bridge to Terebithia,? Katherine Paterson, confessed to me once that creating her stories was like walking naked into a room full of people
The image is an apt one, because writing exposes the deepest parts of our being. Even if we don?t write our life story and turn it into fiction, from everything we are, from our deepest thoughts and fears and joys, to the people we love, hate or are fascinated by, bits and pieces of those all find their way into our storytelling.
So when we struggle coming up with things to write about, it?s not that we don?t have ideas. It?s that some ideas make us feel more vulnerable than others. We feel exposed, and fear of rejection is primal. It touches us at the very core of our being.
Not Good Enough. Not Perfect Enough.
There?s another side to our worry over what other people will think. It?s fear that even we won?t like what we write. So now, let?s talk about what happens if you?re actually writing and you find yourself hating your words.
1. You?re too close to your work. Set it aside for at least a day. Longer if possible. And the more pages we?re talking about, the longer you should let it grow ?cold? so that when you read it next, it will be with fresh eyes.
2. Don?t confuse striving for excellence with perfectionism. The former is healthy. The latter is not, mostly because perfect does not exist, and striving for the unattainable is a good way to end up needing a therapist.
3. When you?ve put your work away and revisit it, you will find things you like and things you loathe. STOP. Do not even backspace to make corrections until you have saved that file under another name. I?ve started appending a date to my file names. You will thank me when you?ve done some drastic editing, but want to include a section you got rid of. Do not begin editing until you have created and saved a NEW version of ANY document.
4. Consider saving to a special folder in DropBox or EverNote. These cloud-based programs provide a central storage area accessible from any of your web-enabled devices. Plus they provide a backup location. I recently lost access to 25 years of writing archives because of an external hard drive failure. When your backup fails, what then?
Are You Making This Mistake?
You?re working away on your first draft and then you get up for something to drink. When you come back, what?s the first thing you do? If you?re like most people, you start reading from the beginning. HUGE MISTAKE. Here?s why.
Writing is a right-brain (creative/intuitive) function. Editing and rewriting are left-brain (analytical/logical) functions. The two don?t play well together because they have conflicting goals.
Our subconscious mind is our muse, and s/he must be cajoled out of hiding and begged to provide us with useful creative genius. When she?s on a roll, you don?t want to do anything except to take down every word she gives you. Don?t interrupt the flow.
Bear in mind that you are creating a rough draft, the same way an artist creates a quick rough sketch. Don?t concern yourself with formatting, typos, misspellings, etc. And when you know there?s a better word but it won?t come to you, don?t open up the thesaurus. Just type a series of underscores and in parentheses include the word that?s not quite right, then continue letting the words flow. It?s the best gift you can possibly give yourself and your writing.
The ?P? Word.
If you?re a free spirit like I am, you probably hate to plan. But I?ve learned the hard way that I must do at least minimal preparation or my writing lacks cohesion. The method you use to plan should be according to your personal style or personality.
The subconscious thinks in images, not words. This is why a mind map is useful for recalcitrant muses. Mind maps are just visual enough to fool our muse into thinking it?s an image.. And it?s the interesting connections that make our writing appealing and saleable.
The ?O? Word.
Outlines are useful to our left brain, which needs something concrete, like a timeline, to provide structure. Here?s the thing about outlines. There are two primary views on their effectiveness.
For authors who must plan each scene in excruciating detail before they ever start getting their story down on paper or their computer?s screen, an outline is a foregone conclusion. And you will find that they are convinced every single writer must outline first.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are writers who will absolutely shut down when faced with creating an outline. By the time they complete it, they feel like they?ve already told the story and there?s no point in developing it now. For these writers, an outline is a straight jacket. They prefer to grab a starting point, an ending point, some back story, some characters, a scenario and then they set off on a journey of discovery. To them it?s much like archaeologists uncovering antiquities. They carefully brush off the dirt and sand from ancient artifacts they?ve discovered, exposing untold treasures.
The differences boil down to style and personality. There is no single right way to create a story.
However?
You sensed that was coming, right? A little bit of structure is necessary and a little holistic thinking is, too.
I?m of the loosey-goosey variety, in case you didn?t figure that out. But if I don?t have guideposts, I waste a lot of time going down rabbit holes. About 20 years ago I wrote a 100,000-word romantic suspense novel. Had I outlined it, the book would have been published by now, I have no doubt, because I would have detected the plot flaw that has kept it archived on my hard drive all these years.
I did, however, create two documents while I was writing it. I did this for my own sanity and it helped tremendously with workflow. One was a timeline that traced the characters? lineage all the way back to Colonial days: when they were born, married, gave birth to or sired a child, divorced and died. I also included other important document. In this simple document, I ?discovered? plot points I wouldn?t have thought of otherwise. The other document I created was a simple listing of events or scenes that other situations depended on. It wasn?t in any particular order, but rather as I thought of them. I added to the list constantly. Both were instrumental in getting it written.
A Side Note.
Now that I?m writing again, I?ve revisited this novel and I?m adapting it for the digital marketplace. People, in my opinion, are not looking for long novels anymore, at least not for the most part. I?m in the process, therefore, of breaking the story up into three sections to be published separately. And I may be changing the genre to erotica. We?ll see.
Your Muse.
For a middle grade children?s book I?ve been dabbling with for years, I went online and found photos of castle-like mansions. I recommend home building plan sites, because ultimately you?ll want to know the layout of any houses you might need. I also wanted some d?cor, and fortunately I found photos of actual homes based on those plans. I mixed and matched until I came up with what I wanted, then drew a complete floor plan, including closets, pantries and bathrooms.
Why? Because as I said before, my muse is visual, and she needs these details. As I was drawing my mansion floor plan, she found a way to make a series of secret passages. (Admit it. You?re fascinated by the idea of secret passages, too.) And when I drew the carriage house, she insisted secret passages be included there, as well. Not only that, she connected the passages from both buildings to a tunnel, which will make for some interesting and possibly scary situations.
Don?t be put off about my speaking of my muse as though she?s real. How could she not be? She is me in my unselfconscious state, my true subconscious who remembers everything I?ve ever felt, said, done, read, even dreamed. Our subconscious is smarter than our conscious mind.
So treat your muse with care or she may go into hiding until you cajole her out. Mine is partial to chocolate chip cookies. Whatever works.
One final thought.
It?s altogether possible that what we call writer?s block is Muse Block. Be sure to feed your muse lots of visuals as you brainstorm plot ideas and search for photos of people who represent your characters. And don?t forget the chocolate chip cookies.
~
Dr. Bren? Brown on Vulnerability
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To learn more about what I have to say about writer?s block, I invite you to visit The Story Ideas Virtuoso where you can download with my compliments ?Writer?s Block?Facing Down the Dreaded Blank Page? in the sidebar.
Deb has been blogging about writer?s block, creative writing, the psychology of writing, as well as tips and tricks for discovering the story ideas that are hiding in plain sight, and more since 2007. At the end of 2012, she retired from working for other people and moved across the country to southeastern Arizona, where she is writing full-time and learning to cope with an alien climate.
The latest writing accomplishment of which she is ecstatically proud is an Amazon review which she penned for the new film ?A Perfect Ending,? starring BarbaraNiven, John Heard and Morgan Fairchild. Deb?s review caught the attention of not only Niven and the film?s producer Marina Rice Bader, but also writer/director Nicole Conn. Conn?s comment at the end of the review is the kind of feedback every writer dreams of hearing.
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Source: http://www.fictionblueprints.com/which-form-of-writers-block-do-you-have/
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TrustMovies: A sad, shocking education: Maria Iliou's SMYRNA: A ...
The power of a good documentary to inform, educate, entertain, shock and encourage further thinking and discussion is brought to fine fruition in the film, SMYRNA: THE DESTRUCTION OF A COSMOPO-LITAN CITY, 1900-1922. Even, I suspect, old fogies like TrustMovies, may have some trouble coming up with the time and place that this fabled city existed (and we don't mean Smyrna, Georgia), so long has it been since many of us have heard the name or, for that matter, the larger location in which this city rested: Asia Minor. (It has literally been decades, I think, since I've heard spoken or seen those two words in print.) Now, thanks to writer/director?Maria Iliou?(shown at left) and the several experts whom she and her crew have rounded up, this truly cosmopolitan city comes to life -- and death -- in a documentary that should take its place as a prime work of necessary historical excavation. We often hear the world "cosmopolitan" bandied about, in reference to American cities such as New York and San Francisco, but to hear our narrators speak about Smyrna -- the sounds of its multi-cultural music, its languages spoken, fashions worn and food eaten -- is to define that word anew, and definitively. Filled with wonderfully rich, archival footage, we see a city made up of Muslims, Greeks, Armenians, Jews and Levantines?(TM had to look up that word, so he figures you might need the definition, too), each group in its own district?and?all managing to get along within the borders of the city -- thanks in good part to the kind of "mayor" who made certain that every group was included in the "spoils," so to speak. The film give us a tale of nationalism vs. cosmopolitanism, and for those of us who've lived awhile, it will not be difficult to imagine which group prevails. Though located in the area of the Ottoman Empire known as Asia Minor, Smyrna was always pulled most strongly between two cultures, religions and countries -- Greece and Turkey, Christianity and the Muslim world. The city became such a popular place that it was, in a sense, "protected" by the Great Powers, at least so long as it served the interests of those powers. After World War I, the favor of the Great Powers moved from Greece to Turkey, for reasons of trade, among other things. The historians/narrators gives some very good history here, with cogent explanations of what was happening and why. One big question that hangs over the film is why did not the residents of Smyrna realize the horror that was on the horizon, which ought to have been clearer to see. Yet life in the city was so secluded from what was happening elsewhere -- in other cities, in the nearby countryside -- that, like Germany and much of Europe pre-World War II, the populace did not want to believe what they most needed to at that time. The experts here include Alexander Kitroeff, Giles Milton, Victoria Solomonidis, Eleni Bastea and Leyla Neyzi, and they are all worth seeing and hearing. When it comes time to tell us what happened to Smyrna, the speakers do not stint, and it is among the most horrible tales of destruction and genocide that I can recall -- made worse by the fact that warships of the Great Powers were sitting in the Smyrna harbor all the while and for too long a time did absolutely nothing to help the populace. The story has its few heroes, as well as its many villains (foremost among these the actions of the Greek military as they withdrew, and then much more so the Turks). After the Armenian genocide, Turkey now has another permanent blot on its honor with the Smyrna story. And of course, that country refuses to own up to anything. Little wonder it is still not a full-fledged member of the European Union. Though, if and when it is finally accepted, this will have more to do with the Higher Powers getting what they want and less about anything so trivial as a judgement on the country's past actions and its refusal to take responsibility for them. This Smyrna documentary begins its two-week theatrical run on Friday, April 5, in New York City at the Quad Cinema, where director Maria Iliou (shown above) and Historical Consultant Alexander Kitroeff will be present for a Q&A after the 7:00 show on Friday, April 5th. There will be another Q&A with Director Maria Iliou and the film's director of photography, Allen Moore, on Friday April 12th at the 7:00pm show. You can learn of other screenings internationally by first clicking here, and then clicking on SCREENINGS AND NEWS at the bottom of the frame.
Source: http://trustmovies.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-sad-shocking-education-maria-ilious.html
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Chris Brown Tries To Keep His 'Sanity' On Social Networks
'Everything I say is looked at under a microscope, so I gotta kinda pull back sometimes,' Breezy tells MTV News.
By Rob Markman
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1704794/chris-brown-twitter-sanity.jhtml
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