Unfolding Life

I apologize for my long absence – travel, wedding, etc. So…A couple of weeks ago I was at yoga and before the class got started, my instructor read a passage she found on her mentors site. I found it to be very “eye opening” and it got me thinking about how we as humans perceive time and the world around us. A portion of the reading is provided below. Let me know what you think.

“Life is a dream whether we are awake or asleep. What makes it a dream is that the images are manufactured in the processing plant of our own mind. What ever we have experienced we store in our own being. It doesn’t matter much to the mind if the experience is “actual” or virtual. To our mind; and ultimately to us, it is real. Life is real. According to our English dictionary “real” means something actual, of this earth. This definition is opposite to the Vedantic idea of that which is real. Anything which can be perceived in earthly terms of time and measured in space is anything but real. Real, according to Vedanta is that which is eternal, limitless, and changeless and cannot be bound by time or space. Oneness is the only true reality.“

We see the everlastingness in everything that’s passing. We become that everlastingness through everything that’s passing. Life is continuously un-folding, never arriving for longer than a moment. The moment now has emerged from the moment before it. The next moment can only come from the one preceding it. Life is process. We are life, as we live.”

Sharon Gannon, April 2006
http://www.jivamuktiyoga.com/fms/inspr_fm.html

Six Foot Office

click on image

For those of you that didn't realize that i actually HAVE AN OFFICE, i have put together a quick slide show.

Now...in your defense, i rarely ever to to it because it's in Houston, but...I have an office none-the-less! Hopefully 2006 will bear an office here in LA.

The photos where taken last Christmas and for some reason come up on the slide show backwards so - if possible, start from the end. =)

More Work

A good friend of mine mentioned to me last night that he enjoyed the work I posted last month. Coming from him, I took that as a huge compliment since he is such an amazing, well respected artist. So... in that spirt, I thought i would post a couple more for all to see.
Click to view

Zomba Film Animated Mark	Lord of the Rings Digital Trading Card
Tristan and Isolde Web Reach Material	Halliburton Product Mktg Animation

Intelligence

I apologize; I’ve been away for a week so this article was slow to come.

Last week at the gym, a group of us were talking about intelligence and aptitude tests. The conversation got me thinking about how people perceive intelligence. It seems to me that generally society recognizes intelligence by how well people recall information (as opposed to their cognitive abilities - reason, intuition, perception- or capacity for rational thought).

Given that Intelligence Quotient Test scores measure just a limited range of intelligence it begs the question - how relevant is a typical intelligence test?

With that thought, I have listed some memory tricks and tools that we can utilize to in an effort to help those interested become “smarter”.

1. ACRONYMS. You form acronyms by using each first letter from a group of words to form a new word. This is particularly useful when remembering words in a specified order. Acronyms are very common in ordinary language and in many fields. Some examples of common acronyms include NBA (National Basketball Associations), SCUBA (Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus), BTUs (British Thermal Units), and LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation).
   

2. SENTENCES/ACROSTICS. Like acronyms, you use the first letter of each word you are trying to remember. Instead of making a new word, though, you use the letters to make a sentence. Here are some examples:
   

• My Dear Aunt Sally (mathematical order of operations: Multiply and Divide before you Add and Subtract)
• Kings Phil Came Over for the Genes Special (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Genus, Species)
  

3. RHYMES & SONGS. Rhythm, repetition, melody, and rhyme can all aid memory. Are you familiar with Homer's Odyssey? If you are familiar with the book, then you know that it is quite long. That is why it is so remarkable to realize that this, along with many ancient Greek stories, was told by storytellers who would rely solely on their memories. The use of rhyme, rhythm, and repetition helped the storytellers remember them.
   

4. METHOD OF LOCI. This technique was used by ancient orators to remember speeches, and it combines the use of organization, visual memory, and association. Before using the technique, you must identify a common path that you walk. This can be the walk from your dorm to class, a walk around your house, whatever is familiar. What is essential is that you have a vivid visual memory of the path and objects along it. Once you have determined your path, imagine yourself walking along it, and identify specific landmarks that you will pass. Once you have determined your path and visualized the landmarks, you are ready to use the path to remember your material. This is done by mentally associating each piece of information that you need to remember with one of these landmarks. For example, if you are trying to remember a list of mnemonics, you might remember the first--acronyms--by picturing SCUBA gear in your dorm room (SCUBA is an acronym).
   

5. CHUNKING. This is a technique generally used when remembering numbers, although the idea can be used for remembering other things as well. It is based on the idea that short-term memory is limited in the number of things that can be contained. A common rule is that a person can remember 7 (plus or minus 2) "items" in short-term memory. In other words, people can remember between 5 and 9 things at one time. You may notice that local telephone numbers have 7 digits. This is convenient because it is the average amount of numbers that a person can keep in his or her mind at one time.
   

6. PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT (or closer to it anyway): Okay, it may not be a mnemonic, but repeating is still a great memory aid. Remember the children's game "I'm going on a picnic and I'm bringing...." As each new object is added, the old objects are repeated. People can often remember a large number of objects this way. When remembering a list of things, you might try a similar concept. Once you are able to remember 5 items on your list without looking, add a 6th, repeat the whole list from the start, add a 7th, and so on. It can be quite intimidating to see long lists, passages, or equations that you are expected to commit to memory. Break up the information into small bits that you can learn, one step at a time, and you may be surprised at how easy it can be. You might even utilize grouping techniques, like those discussed earlier, to form meaningful groups that you can learn one at a time.

Memory tricks found at http://www.web-us.com/memory/mnemonic_techniques.htm

Thermal Conversion

I was on my way back from New York a couple of weeks ago and I kept glancing over to see what the guy next to me was reading because he kept making sound of “epiphany”. Something was definitely resonating with him and it drew my curiosity. As it turns out, he was reading an article in DISCOVER magazine about Thermal Conversion (the process of using high-temperature systems for converting low-value hydrocarbons and wastes into valuable chemical feedstocks – like oil).

The man was kind enough to offer me the magazine when he was finished and this is what I found:

Basically, truck loads of waste (slaughterhouse waste, municipal sewage, old tires, mixed plastics, virtually all the wretched detritus of modern life) move into a factory at one end and clean high-quality burning oil comes out of the other. It sounds like a futuristic fantasy, but believe it or not, it’s a reality of today. There has been a functioning plant that has been refining this process here in the US for the past couple of years through a company by the name of Changing World Technologies - http://www.changingworldtech.com/.

The process involves pushes raw materials from receiving hopper into a brawny grinder that chews them up into pea-sized bits. Dry feedstocks like tires and plastics need additional water at this stage, but offal matter like slaughterhouse waste is wet enough. A first-stage reactor breaks down the stuff with heat and pressure, after which the pressure rapidly drops, flashing off excess water and minerals. In turnkeys, the minerals come mostly from bones; these are shunted to a storage bin to be sold later as a high-calcium powdered fertilizer. The remaining concentrated organic soup then pours into a second reaction tank where it is heated to 500 degrees Fahrenheit and pressurized to a 600 pound per square inch. In 20 minutes, the process replicates what the deep earth does to dead plants and animals over centuries, chopping molecular chains of hydrogen and carbon into short-chain molecules. Next, the pressure and temperature drop, and the soup swirls through a centrifuge that separates any remaining water from the oil. Water that is laden with nitrogen and amino acids (from slaughterhouse waste) is then stored and sold as potent liquid fertilizer. The oil then goes into storage tanks and awaits a truck.

NICE!

15% of what is produced is recycled back to running the plant and the remaining 85% is embodied in the output of oil and other products.

It seems that CWT is having a difficult time here in the US making this work from an economical point of view because of the lack of subsidies for alternative fuels from the US government. So, it looks like Europe will be the recipient of the amazing technology. The functioning plant currently working in Carthage, Missouri.

DISCOVER
Science, Technology, and The Future
http://www.discover.com/issues/jul-04/features/anything-into-oil/

Recent Entertainment Work

I thought i would post several of our more recent projects - Check'm out!
Click to view

Freedomland Theatrical Website	Laurel and Hardy DVD Mini-site
Tristan and Isolde Web Reach Material	Fever Pitch DVD Mini-site

Getting With The Program

I’ve been overcome by peer pressure and have come to realize that to be cool in this age of information technology that I have to have a blog. It's not enough for me to own a piece of an interactive marketing, design and technology agency. I have to spend another couple of hours each week on my laptop transforming poetic nonsense into digital nihility.

Seriously, my hope is that this blog serves as a place for friends and family to see and hear about some of the cooler stuff I get the privilege to work on and for those people that I don’t get to see often, catch an inside look at my incredibly talented group of friends.