Staying on the up and up

The majority of the men in my family play golf and or baseball, I hate baseball but I’ll save that for another blog. Outside of our Y chromosomes, golf is the common denominator in my family. We all learned to play from our fathers except me because I dont have one,  so I didn’t start to play until I joined the golf team in high school and once I did that my I had help from all the men in my family to learn the game. I struggled at first but soon took to like a real Beltran Man as if the gifts of my grandfather had been passed down through his genes.

The point that I might trying to get at is, while I was learning to play my family alway had these little pieces of advice that I found related to more than just golf. One in particular was about confidence and how easy it is to lose your confidence after a bad round of golf, that the real challenge was being able to stay confident. They told me that they had no doubt that I would be able to learn how to play because that was the easy part, the hard part they said would be maintaining a level of confidence that would allow me to have a good round of golf one after another.

The way I applied that to the rest of my life and designing in particular was learning how to would be the easy part of being a designer, but maintaining a level of confidence and inspiration would be the hard part. And in recent months that has proved to be the case I have the techniques and the know how locked inside me, but maintaining the inspiration and the confidence to get it out has proved to be the hardest thing I’ve had to to this quarter thus far.

Know Thy Self

Since I didn’t post last week I’m doing another post to make up for it, a continuation from the last one.  I went to class Tuesday morning expecting the same boring lecture along with slides or video that we always get on Tuesday mornings. Little did I know what was about to come a knock me for a loop, was the best lecture that I had heard in a long time.

Everything spoke to me as if Mrs. Bryant felt my body cry for inspiration, she unloaded not the greatest speech in the world but the right amount of inspiration accompanied with some fire to be lit under my ass. “Know thy self” she said as if she was directly talking to me leaning back in my chair at the end of the class room to make me sit up at attention. She told us about her past, her experiences and it wasn’t in the same way a teacher usually tries to tell you how it is. It was different she spoke to us like she was one of us.

She told us about her fears, and how we all share a certain kind of genius thats separate from the academic genius. That the type of genius we had was the special something inside us that we had to share with the world. Then she started asking us questions like who are we? and why do we want to do what we want to do? She listed things on the board that everyone needs to do.

1. Show up everyday
2. Show up no matter what
3. Stay on the Job
4. Here to work for the long haul
5. Master your technique
6. Ask for help
7. Have a sense of humor

All things that I used to do just out of habit of being a fighter, not a traditional fighter, but someone that fought through the struggles of life. She talked to us about Resistance, she said something like if creation was God then destruction was the devil, but that wasn’t the important part that caught my attention it was when she corrected herself. Destruction is still apart of the cycle but resistance that nothingness was the devil.

I went home that day in a different mood, and a new view on the way my everyday life was going to be. One thing I had as a kid was the never say die attitude, never give up in the face of fear event though I didn’t have much experience. Now that I’m older and have more knowledge and more experience I just need that killer instinct that I had when I was younger.

Getting Down

Its hard not to get frustrated with myself, that how I’ve always been, I start off motivated like no one else and a few weeks into it I start to think twice about my goal and if i can even accomplish it or not. I should have planned it out better than I did I don’t know what I was thinking when i just bought the calender and the cd that came with it.

And yes I have the Rosetta Stone software but when did I think I was going to use it, in between classes, or before I go to school, or maybe when I’m supposed to be doing my homework. I hardly do my homework as it is if i were to try to do both it really wouldn’t get done. I’ve had a cloud hanging over me this quarter, this funk I cant get off of me it might be this depressing weather, but I’ve never blamed anything on the weather before.

I’ve never been one to blame my problems on something else before, perhaps I’m changing, but if that the case I’m not changing into anything I thought would. I’ve worked hard for everything I’ve ever had, never scared of putting in work even as a skinny short chicano kid with long hair. I learned very early in life that the world wasn’t going to take it easy on you just because you were under sized or unprepared.

Actually talking about it right now is reminding just how much I have changed, and in such a short time to. I mentioned before that I alway start to doubt myself, that true, but I still finish everything I start so there has to be a part of me that willing to fight against that resistance. That what I need to find again that fight, the fire that burned inside of me that helped me stand up in the face of failure and stare it down.

First Steps

So I’ve begun my journey to be able to speak spanish an achievement I’ve yet to conquer, I’m always hesitant to call spanish my native language only because I was born an American and english should be considered my native language. But nonetheless, I was brought up to be a proud Chicano and to value my culture as a Mexican-American so conquering the language is one of my goals in life. I’ve been around the language all my life so I’m hoping now that I’m finally putting a focus in learning, it wont be as difficult on me as it would be for someone that has never been around the language at all.

I recently bought I spanish one a day calender that has a different spanish phrase for each day of the week, even though they might seem random, they do still help. My plan just to reiterate is to completely immerse myself in the language by using it, and listening to it as much as possible. I tuned my radio to 107.5 in hopes that once I start to get more familiar with the words that everything will start to make sense to me. I’m not enrolling in any spanish classes as I am already enrolled at the art institute part time and can’t afford to have any distractions from that. Not having any formal instruction or education is going to be diffcult but I’m almost confident that this is something that I can do.

If I were to describe what its like for me personally, I would have to say that its like recongnizing a person that you pass on the street but not being able to remember who they are until its too late and they’ve already passed you by. I hear words that are familiar to me in sentences, but by the time I know what the word or words are I can’t remember the order they were in or the conversation has moved beyond that. Its frustrating at times, because I start to think why didn’t i just make the effort when I was a kid to learn it and I cant think of a good enough reason.

When I was a kid no one really pushed me but myself and the only things I was interested in was, watching tv, getting away with being bad, and girls I wasn’t interested in communication I didn’t realize what my potential could be if i had just learned it. The majority of my aunts and uncles speak spanish including my mom, so its a mystery why she didn’t teach me. I started to notice that a lot of my friends that didn’t speak spanish had parents that were young during the civil rights movement most of whom were second generation Americans. So I talked to my mother about it and she says that it was us trying to speak out and say even though our culture comes from Mexico we are American, so she tried to teach me to speak and act as an American or Chicano and not just a mexican.

Another new direction

This week wasn’t the week to get started, on my last project I think it more about me not wanting to let go of a project that is already dead. Soon after my last post I came down with a cold that struck me down rather hard. The entire weekend I was in bed drinking liquids and resting. I was never really good at being sick, never finishing my medication or going to the doctor at all, I probably get it from the way i was raised we had to be damn near dead to go see the doctor.

This is where i get back to what my blog is going to be about I’m going to use it as a journal a weekly journal that I will write in and recap everything that has happened that week. This week I saw “The book of Eli” which was really good I wasn’t expecting much only because I’m not a huge Denzel Washington fan, but I was very impressed not just with the acting but the plot and the action and the characters. Before the movie I had sometime to visit a book store which i had been planning to do since new years day, my resolution was to be able to speak spanish by the end of the summer. So my idea was to dive head first into the language and get a spainsh to english dictionary listen to spanish music and watch spanish tv.

So far I’ve bought the Rosetta Stone for learning Spanish, and a spainish one a day calender I’ve also switched my radio station to 107.5 which is a spanish station. I just thought it was about time for me to speak my native language I have uncles and aunts on my father’s side that tell me when I was younger spanish was my first language but of course I dont remember.

I just want to be able to be one of those true chicanos that can live in both worlds, like my grandfather is a perfect example graduated from high school at 16 salutatorian and started his own business and  did well only because he was able to communicated to both spanish and english speaking customers. It was because of him that I had to take Advanced Placement courses in the subject, but I didn’t give much effort and did poorly as my way of rebelling and saying i’d rather play basketball and golf than study english.

Web standards

Articles Used

• What are Web Standards: A comprehensive explanation of what is comprised in the term
• Developing With Web Standards – Recommendations and best practices
• Jeffrey Zeldman: King of Web Standards

Web standards took me a while to grasp the understanding partly why my post cam so late, but to my understanding web standards are a way to have full compatibility of your web site in any browser regardless of the version. This is achieved through markup languages such as cascading style sheets (CSS) and others.

With that being said I would say that web standards are vital almost above all other pieces of the site except for a design and idea. I cant tell you how many time that I’ve opened my own projects and tested it in one browser only to find out that in another the spacing is all off and the video doesn’t load correctly. Not to mention viewing other sites in a browser you like and their drop down menu works but isn’t in the right place and dissapears when you try to roll your mouse over it. I’ve been a visual person my whole life if I liked the way it looked I considered it to be good, I’ve even been known to rent movies based on the covers, and what happens is designers will make this really cool looking site that is a pain to try to navigate. Now, before I try to make a pleasing site to look at through web standards I want to be just a pleasing if not more to use and navigate.

Cloud Computing

Articles Used

• Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing
• The Cloud’s Best Kept Secret
• Ellison Shoots Hole in Cloud

In a way cloud computing could be described as using a computer through the Internet, now while that might be over simplifying it, its not that far off. Essentially  you would be using your computer as a portal to a service that’s online and you basically have all your data on “The Cloud” and all the applications that would normally be stored locally on your computer would be run over the Internet.

Now right off the bat I thought that this would be the wave of the future, since all gadgets and lap tops are getting smaller and mobile it would make sense that they would eventually be able to run applications and such remotely through the internet. I’m still not totally sure how fast the service could be running over the internet, especially for someone like me that edits video and motion graphics I would need a fast connection and lots of ram to run the application and have play back in real time, assuming that there is a service that allows me to be edit video and motion graphics. Even though cloud computing makes sense, I’m still attached in a matter of speaking to my local hardrive and having the security of knowing where my data is at all time we’re in the age of identity theft and having all my information on the internet doesn’t seem like the safest way to store my data, even though it’s probably the most accesible way,I would still be afraid of having my information out there.

Tweet Tweet

Articles Used:

• Twitter Support
• How Twitter can help at work
• Twitter: Why It’s So Great And How To Effectively Use It

So the video should give you some idea as to what twitter is and what is does, at least the short and sweet version. I myself found it to be very helpful when I first visited the site a few months back to try and figure out what the big idea was. So to sum up what twitter is again, twitter is a form of micro blogging the allows the user to either update his or her status or receive updates on the people he or she is following. Similar to the way one would change their status message on Facebook or myspace, only this allows people to subscribe to your tweet via mobile device, rss, or another third party application.

That is basically what twitter is in a nutshell, now what twitter is capable of doing is a horse of a different color. Some users will use twitter to self promote their work by updating what they’re currently working on, or share ideas with their peers about a certain topic and create a small community of practice, and since twitter is so immediate probably one of the most common uses is to get instant updates in the news or celebrity gossip.

I haven’t quite made up my mind about twitter simply because I haven’t tried to use it to its potential, but what I can do is lay out my plan to put it to work. My plan is to use twitter as a self promotional/networking  tool. The blog that I’m going to start for my final project,  something I hope to be an ongoing thing, is going to be used to promote my work as a short film maker, designer, and later a web developer. I am going to commit myself to using twitter to promote my blog and myself for the remaining 4 weeks I am in this class with the option to continue at the end.

www.twitter.com/view_finders

Communities of Practice

Articles Used

• Communities of practice a brief introduction
• Communities of practice
• Communities of Practice:The social dimension to the virtual world?

Now maybe since I was brought up in a digital age, as most people my generation and younger were, I often find that I’ve participated in most of these social learning practices in some form or another with out even realizing it at first. Communities of Practice is no exception, from what I understand a CoP is a group of individuals communing together on a shared subject in order to learn more from each other on a regular basis. Now with that being said not everyone that shares common interest is a community of practice it takes a commitment, as it does with members that belong to the same industry that encounter the same problems for example.

As I said earlier I’ve particapated in a community of practice for a number of years, most notably in my college years, without even knowing it which is probably due to my involvement in digital technologies. I’ve accumelated a nice amount of knowlege about digital imaging, and compositing, and manipulation just to name a few where as my team members have their expertise in something else but all of us share a common passion for film making. When we meet we either go over past problems we’ve encountered that we now have a solution for, problems we have now and look for a solution together, or ideas that we have and try to avoid or plan for problem that we might encounter during our next project. The topics change the solutions are almost never the same, but we remain focused on what our goal is and the reason why we gather together and that is to learn and teach each other to become better at what we do.

A successful blogging practice

Articles used

• 10 Principles of Successful Business Blogging
• How To Become A Professional Blogger
• Being a Professional Blogger

I’ve always been a supporter of people being able to express themselves through whatever medium they choose and the same goes for blogging, if  a person chooses to share his/her thoughts, ideas, and opinions with whom ever wants to read then by all mean I think they should. Being a professional blogger means that people weather they be  a business, corporation, or a group of people is willing to pay you for your opinions, thoughts, ideas or to blog about certain topics and issues because of your comprehensive writing style.

I greatly appreciate the blogging community without the group of professionals that I frequently read my evolution as an artist would have taken twice as long as it has if not longer. Even though I think my career as a professional blogger is as likely as me becoming a Olympic gymnast there’s nothing wrong with seeing what it would take to become a full time blogger. In most of the articles I read they all say that you should find something that you are passionate about, a topic that gives you a lot to speak about, and preferably something you know a lot about. They also say that you should make blogging a daily habit after a while when you’ve been in the subject for a while that the words will come and if they flow then you’ve found the thing you like to speak about. Probably the most important part about being a professional blogger is generating traffic, create links to your blog, ping other bloggers in hope that they ping you back, brand your look.

As I mentioned earlier how much I appreciate the blogging community the chances of me picking it up full time are very slim. I’m writing this blog as and exercise to further my understanding of how the community works and what can be accomplished using these tools.