This past week, I had the opportunity to go down and spend some time in Las Vegas during CES 2012, attending conferences, scanning the showroom floors, and meeting with various clients. I wanted to write a few observations about the travel side of that trip. Continue reading
Hai Tech Eric
eclectic musings
UPDATED: Review of WWW Series by Robert J. Sawyer
My most recent diversion while commuting into work has been listening to audiobooks. I just finished WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer last night. It’s the first episode in an obvious trilogy of W-titled books. The premise revolves around Caitlin Decter, a young blind girl with a rare genetic disorder that distorts the signals entering her brain from her retina. Her blindness allowed her brain to adapt to the environment in which she spent the majority of her time: the Web. When she receives an experimental implant from a Japanese scientist to restore her sight, she discovers her visual cortex is initially only capable of processing website infrastructure and the connections between them. That unique gift helps her discover new and wondrous secrets about our world.
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Readers/News Aggregators for Android
In lieu of lengthy Android App of the Week posts, I decided to devote my time to creating quick and hopefully helpful compilations of curated apps for specific genres. There are many ways to keep up to date on your blogs, news, and other online publications. I will take a quick look at Currents, Google Reader, Pulse, and BeyondPod. I’ll also make a shout out to the “reddit is fun” app.
On Metrics and Goal-setting
Setting targets and goals for achievement in work and personal life is all well and good. They are, in fact, a useful method to quantify in some degree your effectiveness. However, there is a slippery slope of using metrics as a crutch. In my limited experience in the workforce, I have personally seen the power of metrics completely dictate the actions of employees. This works in conjunction with the desire to follow the path of least resistance (in an effort remain effective, of course?) to sometimes create unusual or undesired dynamics. Continue reading
The Versatile Violin
In light of my last post, it saddens me to think how little the art world considers of gaming. While I freely admit a large portion of gaming is sensationalized, I also believe the art community overly generalizes the medium and fails to recognize incredible work in gaming. Much can be said about science fiction and fantasy genres in the literary world. Authors like J.R.R. Tolkien and Orson Scott Card took advantage of these genres to create profound literary works, much like gaming does today.
Not Art?
Art?