Retrospecticus: 2008

Entry 3:

The Year I Started Blogging

I started blogging because I finally had time to do it, really. I had been out of school for a little while, and felt like I needed an outlet for my creativity, and that I needed to start spending my time on the computer more effectively. Not to say precisely that blogging makes me a more efficient user, rather a more precise one.

Here's what I mean: blogging not only makes me occasionally focus my generation-Y hyperactivity and ADD into something concise and coherent. I feel that its making me a better writer most of all.

I'm currently in the process of abandoning this blog and switching to a more versatile WordPress powered blog format. Through all of this, I've re-learned my passion for web design that was pushed to the backburner when I started to get serious about film school. I feel like I've been able to transfer my sense of visual composition into an asset that will help me in career path.

In the past 80 or so posts I've become pretty happy with what I've managed to create, and am looking forward to the new year and new things to blog about. Trying to find what space I fit into is something that I'm learning more about everyday, and its been really enlightening to really start to get my feet wet with blogging.

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Retrospecticus: 2008

Entry 2:

The Year I Started Working

On the personal front, 2008 marks for me the year that I started to get my first professional jobs in the film industry. After leaving school, I initially found it difficult to market myself in the field that I had chosen, and a bad combination of location and scarcity of work led to ennui and a day job. I still have the day job, btw.

In January of this year I started getting work as a production assistant on commercials that were being shot in the Denver area. These were fulfilling, exciting gigs that really helped to re-vitalize me out of my early-20s boredom. I started hunting out work, and specifically people to work with, and have managed to make, in my opinion, some pretty tactful career moves.

The downside to all of this though is the failed / failing economy. I don't have any intention of leaving the Denver area for a few more years, and because of that I'm prevented from really making a push to work full time in the film industry. While there are a good deal of things shot in the state every year, the uncertainty factor really kills it. Therefore, I've chosen to stick with my guns and non-career day job.

I've recently begun to get jobs as a freelance editor, which I intend to explore more in the upcoming year. I'm a bit apprehensive about 2009 because I know that investors are scared, for good reason, and aren't going to be pumping money into the small scale operations that I relied on in 2008.

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To Trash Or Not To Trash: What to do with 5 years of Music

or, 1200 words about hard drives, videos and way too much music

So I've reached a bit of a crossroads: my storage demands are being stretched to their limits, and every one of my HDs is beginning to fill up. I'm a bit strapped for cash at the moment, so simply upgrading to a bigger and badder HD isn't an option thats really on the table, and the temptation to just delete all that music that I don't listen to anymore is becoming more and more of a palatable option. And anyway, its not like any of this stuff is *that* important. I mean its just media, right?

In a time when we are becoming increasingly defined by our tastes and consumption of mass media (just look at anyone's facebook or myspace profiles--most offer a laundry list of music and movies that are they're favorites), what does it mean if you simply don't care enough to keep all of those old files anymore? Maybe its just because I'm behind the times in terms of drive storage: 120gb internal on both my laptop and desktop, then 200gb and 80gb externals, it seems like a little over 500 gb is paltry compared to the multi-terabyte rigs that are en vouge. I'm no stranger to multi-gigabyte project workflows (I work with digital video) and the necessity for massive amounts of storage, but it just seems like 500gb is still a lot of data for me as a personal user.

So here's how my data usage breaks down: about 30 gb on each computer is music, some of which overlaps between the two systems; OS and software take up about 40-50gb on my laptop and about 20-30 on my desktop; most of the rest of the space is taken up by video, mostly mp4 or avi, leaving about 15gb free on my laptop (this changes alot though because I use it for work and need at least that much free space) and less than 10gb on my desktop. The externals hold video and music exclusively, and are as full as the internal drives on both of my computers.

Essentially, I would only have to pay about $100 for a decent 500gb hard drive, but I just have this nagging feeling that I'm wasting money to do that primarily because I really don't listen to all of my music anymore, nor by any means do I watch all of my videos.

It turns out that most of my videos on my HD are now streaming on my Netflix Player, too. I think the real reason for not deleting my movies is because they are all high quality dvd rips that I made myself, over years of buying and borrowing. I have a dvd player and hundreds of dvds, but I prefer to upscale them through my computer via the ripped files. Still, I don't think that I could ever have enough space to do what I wanted to properly without running into a database problem and crashing the drive.

So ultimately, the movies stay with a few exceptions here and there for things I know I just don't need to have lying around.

Now my music is another beast entirely. I was 13 years old when Napster came out and it was one of the single defining moments in my growth as a music listener. Suddenly, every song, album, and band were at my disposal to download at about 5kbps, at least until my family got cable internet. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had discovered newsgroups as well, and now my music collection was in two main parts: the single song folder of MP3s culled from Napster, Bearshare, iMesh, Gnutella, Limewire, Kazza and every other fad piece of software (most of which came packed with spyware & malware) that defined the early years of P2P filesharing; and a meticulously well kept folder heiarchy of bands and albums made by hand before iTunes made it easy for you. That was when things were easy, when I only had one computer and one ipod (which I still have, btw), and generally listened to music in 2 main locations: my car and my computer. It also must be noted that I had lots and lots of CDs, mostly burned, which have since been abandoned at my parents house, where they will probably stay forever.

Then I moved away to college and my music collection started the chrysalis its still currently in. I was forced to pick and choose from about 80gb of music because that's exactly how big the HD on my first powerbook was. I ended up with only the newest and most beloved of my music collection, leaving behind the archives of my music that so defined me as a teen.

As I went through college, my music tasted changed more rapidly then they ever had before, and I eventually made the switch and started to collect vinyl--both new any used. Now my vinyl collection is well into the hundreds and its the primary way that I listen to music besides my ipod. Ipods are another part of the story, too: all in all, I think I've had about 5 different iPods over the past decade, most of which either crashed or were stolen. But averaging about 20gb, they were perpetually full and used constantly. I also DJ'ed parties using my computer for about a year, so having everything that I wanted to play stored on my computer was essential.

The problem was that eventually I ran out of space. I started deleting frantically so my computer to slink along on a day to day basis until I justified needing an external drive for editing at school. I went big, and thats the 200gb HD I use at the heart of my media center. But what happened was that I couldn't save anything and it eventually led to the fragmenting of my music over multiple computers and hard drives. I eventually went back to my parents house and collected the internal HD with all the music on it, so some of that was thrown into the mix too.

So as it stands, I feel like I have multiple copies of my music in a couple different places but I don't have the time or energy to sort through it all and try and compile it into a single location. At some point in the near future, I'm doomed to add a 500gb (or larger) HD to my collection of storage devices, thus confusing things even more. On the bright side, the some file system improvements in linux now allow me to merge folders, copying only new files and not asking me the dreaded question, "keep or replace," for entire directories.

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I'm still alive, but my google reader wouldn't know

So I've been working like an animal at a job I don't like, and I've been letting it get the best of me. I've had to put my other projects on hold, including my blog. It was hard enough to hash out the two posts I made yesterday, which feel a bit strained. I was just at a loss to talk about anything but receiving dozens of boxes of American Apparel clothing or interviewing way too many job applicants in a downturned economy. The latter of which really sucks, by the way.

I've retreated back into things that I know make me comfortable: There's a pawed, dog-eared copy of The Long Goodbye sitting on the nightstand and The Empire Strikes back was in the background of my linux hobby-ing last night. But for today I'm trying to branch out a bit by watching some cable tv, something which I haven't made any effort to do in a long time.

So, I watched Countdown with Keith Olbermann while I was cooking dinner (wow, never thought I'd write the second half of that sentence), and now I'm really enjoying The Rachel Maddow Show. I've caught it once or twice before, and her style of punditry is refreshing. Also, the New York Times wrote this piece about her the other day, hence my going out of the way to view this tonight.

For now I'm looking forward to the weekend and somewhere lurking in the future is the return of normalcy in my work life. The colors have been changing, and I'd like to get out and I shoot some more pictures this weekend.

Oh, and Amy and I have been together for two years today. I love you monkey :)

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Another Frightening Week with the Economy

So the Economy is failing. Really failing, actually. It's impossible to ignore, even for someone that lives on cash, like me. The numbers may seem unreal, and the entire structure of the global credit market can be at times surreal with all those trailing zeros.

Personally, its been a tremendous learning experience for me because I was never interested in economics in school, and barely remember passing high school econ. But I'm a shrewd and curious person, so when I started hearing about the subprime mortgage crisis earlier this year, I began to look into it.

That was about the time that I started listening to This American Life religiously. And of all the unlikely news sources, I've learned the most about the global credit crisis from this oft-kilter left of center Saturday afternoon radio show.

TAL has a great way of breaking down the relationships and steps that have led to 3 weeks of roller coastering stock averages and a freeze up of the credit markets that are threatening to plunge America, and the world for that matter into depression.

Admittedly, I was upset about the bailout when it was first propsed. Partly, this is because the politicians in this counrty aren't capable of properly explaining such a complex problem. Although the roots of this are spurious and deplorable, its imperative to stop the freezing up of credit markets and attempt to bring stability to the stock markets.

And most important of this whole thing is to learn to regulate again and vote for responsible leadership. I don't necessarily think Barack Obama has all the answers, but I think of either of the candidates he is more to listen to intellective advice instead of an anti-intellectual base.

Here are some useful links:

Planet Money - An extension of This American Life's financial coverage.

This American Life streams all of their episodes. Listen to Giant Pool of Money and
Another Frightening Show About the Economy.

The New York Times talks about how TAL has done such a good job of explaining this by asking the "dumb" questions.

Also at The New York Times, a great interactive graphic about the severity of the current crisis.

How Credit Default Swaps are spreading the effects of the Sub Prime Mortgage Crisis.

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New Writing

Here's a single session piece I wrote before bed the other night:

What a vague, terrible time we live in.

I ride my bike to work and picture a future where there are no new cars, just rusted out hulking suvs that burn expensive fuel and pollute the already polluted streets. It feels like this is the beginning of something real actually happening. You can feel it. People are nervous. Even the weather is erratic. The delicate balance as they say has been knocked off kilter, and is slowly spiraling downward towards chaos.

At least it feels that way.

There's nothing more pathetic than an empire in decline, and thats how I feel the first of October two-thousand and eight. Even when I drop all the politics I still have an ugly, vapid culture staring me back in the face. There's no surprise that real greed is even more painful and damaging then what's in the movies. Real greed pushes this entire country off the edge of a cliff with nothing to do about it but sit back and occasionally blog. My generation is too busy updating its damn facebook to look around and realize that the america that they grew up in is changing and falling behind the rest of the world.

A few months ago I read the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. There's great emphasis in the later books about the empire's decline, about its shabby fall into physical and intellectual decay. It's weird that I can see little examples of that here and there, little cracks in the facade of the richest nation on earth.

Even the homeless population in Boulder seems to have grown a bit, favoring the young and desperate. Why get a job that takes money out of your meager paycheck when you can panhandle and keep one hundred percent of your profits? Some of the street performers make hundreds of dollars a day, and even the least pathetic looking vagrant is bound to get a least a few bucks every couple hours. And they just get to sit around getting high and talking shit with their other street kid friends. We call them mall kids, and avoid eye contact at all costs, except for the occasional sneer. But how are they any less american than I am? They're living on terms that they alone brokered, like cowboys in the old west. Except their horse is a pipe and the mall is their sunset. But anyway, this population has always been here, regardless of whats happening with the economy.

I guess that I should be glad I have a job, even though I hate it, and I should be glad that I at least make the same amount of money that I did a year ago. But I need more. I need to relegate this unpleasantness to my early twenties and be done with it. I need to be paid for doing what I'm good at, and I'm starting to figure out what that is.

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777 Means Nothing to Me

If only if the dow had dropped 666 points yesterday, I could be blogging about this being yet another harbinger of the apocalypse. But alas, there was a last minute speech from House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and over 100 Republicans helped to put an end to bailout package 1.0. So in turn, the fiduciary gods decided to punish the markets for congress' unwillingness to prop up the now failed money markets.

Personally, and this is really only from the standpoint of greed, I have absolutely no interest in this bailout coming to fruition. Now, thats not to say that I don't understand why it may be necessary, but the realities of my personal financial situation make this impossible to agree to. Isn't personal fiscal freedom the most important aspect of a free market economy?

The markets are volatile, yes. Perhaps this is a sign that we may need to rethink some of our most basic tenets of modern banking. Maybe all of this fictional borrowing and trading has finally gotten the better of itself. But on the same note, the last major (by that I mean on the scale of only this and the great depression) government interference with banking institutions came with the New Deal, which helped to lay the foundation of sixty years of almost uninterrupted American prosperity and wealth.

I think that the urgency that all this has been carried out with is tantamount to its failure. Our lame duck president has only brokered another deal to bail out those to whom he has already helped so much through his blindfolded economics policy. I think that this can wait until a more nuanced, rational president is in office.

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