As you might know, I was let go from my last job because of the company’s low performance in general. In total, 15 people were let go, mostly new employees like myself. I took a few days to recharge and look for other job offers. Took some time to work on some personal projects, catch up with friends and relatives… but never really not doing anything.

It’s a thing I have… I need to be doing something. I can’t just not be working. That’s one of the reasons I loved being freelance; you’re your own boss and give yourself work to do. There is no busywork to keep you entertained, you do what you need to do because its your lively-hood. You work to pay the bills and eat. It’s a great motivational effect. In turn, this past month I have been working on redesigns to this current blog but decided to use it for the revival of my side project 20Somethings. While I did state that the project has been a bit of a failure, I have had a hard time shutting it down. I believe that it’s a great place for people in their 20s to read about real people with the same type of problems and situations. But more on that later.

I started the redesign on top of the framework using a GPL license and using a custom font that will work on most modern browsers and all iOS platforms. I really couldn’t have been able to do most of this if it weren’t for all the “free time” I’ve had in the last few weeks. The learning curve is high and there is a lot of work of “trial and error” and then back to debugging. I am not a web developer… I barely know some HTML and PHP but it’s just something I enjoy to dabble in.

I have also been up and up on my Objective-C learning. Sadly this is something that needs to be constantly practiced. You can only get better at it by practicing, which I am currently doing but not to satisfactory of actually releasing something to the public. In conjunction to learning Objective-C (C and C++) I started to learn Python. Another programming language. But a modern one and completely different. I really don’t know why I’m doing it, but it wouldn’t hurt to add another skill. I think it was suggested by one of the people I follow that has ties to Warner Music Group and their tech division, either way its something I am going to follow through on.

The last and probably what I’m most exited for is that a friend of mine has asked me to become his manager. It’s been a few weeks but changes are already apparent and I have tons of things to do. It is great when you work with someone that both trusts you as a friend and as a professional. This brings me back to my roots and it will be fun and challenging all at the same time, so very worthy.

As I stated before, me losing my old job was probably for the best… Things are taking shape and I will have more time to manage and consult with my friend about his career.

I am definitely looking forward for what is to come and all the learning opportunities this will lead to, as a manager, as an audio engineer, as a friend, and as a person.

Then there are others that are reflecting on the past year. This past year I had my biggest break. It was a great job and I did it very well. It was also the year I have struggled to find work and manage my personal life. It had many up and downs. I’ve started new venture, lost contact with a few people, gained new friends, and strengthen those relationships around me.

This new year I have very little resolutions. I rarely do them… last year was about being a better person which I think and hope that it happened. This year will be continuation of that but I’ll be adding a bit to it. I want to take formal Photoshop class and learn Object-C, Cocoa, Cocoa Touch and create an iPhone/iPod tTouch application, probably release it.

I will also try to become more active in writing about my interest, web, apple, music, and blogging. Not only here my but at my newest venture and where I am a contributor with several other people, 20Somethings.

Getting a bartenders license, both skydive and bun-jee jumping are also on the list but just penciled in.

While I don’t plan that 2010 will be a difficult year, it will be a year that will mold what is to come in the next few years. This year I will have decide if to go back to school and finish my BA in Commercial Music, I will have to decide if I would like to stay in Los Angeles. Which at the time being are the two largest decision I will have to make in the first half of the year. While I can dwell on them now and have a vague idea of what might happen I will not be able to make a definite decision until later in the year. As you can see I have some idea of what might happen but do not want to show an inkling just yet as I have learned that plans usually unravel fairly quickly and sometime not to our liking.

To help solve that problem I decided that there should be another site base around community, people that know each other and others not so much. To this end I tapped on the shoulders of a few friends. They agreed that it would be a great idea, not only would we be writing in the same place but would make us closer as friends by sharing what going on in our lives. Most of us are in our 20′s but have different upbringings, some of us are in different parts of the country/world. I hope that this will be not just about us writing about our lives but open discussion for people in our age group.

This may have started as a way to make money but became something completely different. I am happy how this has turned out. I really am excited that this will be more focus on sharing and community that anything else.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
-Leonardo DaVinci

The past few days I have spent some time trying to see what changes I will be making to the site. Decided that before I did anything I should read up a bit on HTML (A code which websites are built upon of, including CSS, PHP and JavaScript). It was a bit difficult seeing that the last time I had read about HTML was in an HTML class in high school. At the time people were still using HTML 3.1 and CSS 1. A lot has changed since then. Most of it good. The next gen, HTML 5, brings a lot of great changes, mainly in the area of multimedia. HTML 5 is still in the draft stage but that hasn’t stop people and developers from using it.

HTML 5 has this great < video > and < audio > tags that can imbed video and audio, respectably, fairly easily without the use of a flash player or extra codecs for your browser. The bad thing is that only three browsers currently support HTML 5 extensions. Safari 4 was the first, with Opera 10 beta following and most recently Firefox 3.5. At this point, Microsoft has kept quiet if Internet Explorer 8 will support HTML 5 or CSS3. I advice you to move to Firefox, Safari 4 or even Opera, instead.

But there is a problem with the < video > tag. Apple and Google are pushing for the H.264 codec while Mozilla (maker of Firefox) and Opera want Ogg Theora to be the standard.

Apple is highly invested in H.264 since Quicktime 6 which was released in mid 2005 and since then has become a major investor in the format. Google is highly invested as all of youtube has a subset in H.264 for Apple’s iPhone and it’s own Android platform. Apple and Google hope that by using by using H.264 iPhones and Andriod phones will also be able to see video on mobile web fairly simple because of the h.264 decoder chip already in those phones. Google even has a proof a of concept of Youtube running HTML 5 instead of flash

With that out of the way. I brought that up because I want to start implementing some of the HTML 5 tags and CSS 2.1/CSS 3. I will also use the @font-face tag to give my blog a bit more of a personal flair and not use “web friendly” fonts. I have also revamped the mobile version, so it can accommodate other mobile platforms such as the Palm Pre, any device running Android and S60 but have yet to be able resize photos on the fly. I’ve also added the option of login-in to comment via Facebook connect, OpenID and even twitter. Not only have I done a complete redesign I have also done a lot of back-end, changes the new site should load faster even if it is more media centric. I moved most of my online services of the site to Google Apps and going to be using the server to convert h.264 video to Ogg Theora, if you are using Firefox 3.5 or Opera, on the fly.

I want to start sharing side music projects, rough mixes, even behind the scenes of the recording/mixing process which is not always mixing but planning and discussing. These new technologies will help me do it more efficiently and streamlined.

I will not be releasing it at this time due to a bug in Facebook Connect that drives up the latency in a script that is use to create the thumbnail on the fly in Safari. Until I am able to find a fix to a point where I am satisfied, it will stay in development/sandbox. But I doubt it will more than a few days, two weeks at most. I am not the author or anyway developed the theme. That credit goes to Derek Punsalan. I don’t know that much PHP or HTML. I’m just using it with different plugins and scripts.

You can see and use a working preview here Remember it’s still not completely functional.

I was reminded of one my first posts when the blog became self-hosted, “Five Reasons I Blog”

4. I like writing. I don’t know when this happened but I like writing my thoughts down. It seems to be my form of therapy. And I really enjoy sharing my life with people that will take an interest.

My thoughts have been warped mostly because I thought there had to be some kind of recognition, when in reality it should be for personal enjoyment. I’m seeing that I’ve lost a lot of what this blog was really about. Sharing my thoughts, my pictures, my music, my travels. With all of this I was able to go back and reflect; there is no need to decide on a new path, just go back and do what I enjoy. It doesn’t matter if I have an audience of 5 or 5 million.

In the coming days/weeks I will try to go back and just write things down without trying to be more than I am.

Second was not. It was specifically posted on Facebook, limited to those in a certain network. This post was more obscured, but in less than two hours people where already going at it.

“…the fact that something is on the internet does not mean that it is in the public domain.”

wrote Faith Hefty¹

The post was from Aubrey Sabala, of digg fame (Some-what of social media celebrity and overall awesome person) personal blog. Specifically, “Don’t Ask, Just Tell“.

I’ve been blogging for awhile now. I think I know what blogging etiquette is. Example are as follows; here, here, and most recently here. As you can see, I gave credit where credit is due. In the 4 years of blogging there are only three post that need to be cited. Mainly because I try to convey my own thoughts unto my posts, even though my writing isn’t that great. There’s also the possibility of being caught, if one where to plagiarize. You can discredit someone or help protect your blog content by following these steps found here.

Why post someone else’s work, if I know this?

Curiosity and boredom. There really isn’t another reason why I did it.
The first post brought up people accusation of stealing copyrighted material. I, in a civil manner, admitted that I had borrowed from Gizmodo. Then was accused of plagiarism. Ultimately I had to go to the Creative Commons to prove what I had done was fair use, per their copyright license.

But something very curious arose from this. For one, it seems like even though you don’t tag people on your notes they still read them, even those you haven’t talked to in years (or ever). Second, are you really as busy as you say?

Most people that commented claim to busy with homework and practicing (as most of them are music majors). It seems like people are just not that good at managing their time. Could these individuals be online wasting time and then talk about how busy they really are? Don’t get me wrong… these are one of the brightest and most talented musicians at the school. Or maybe they are good at managing their time and are able to have civil discussion about someone they know is using someone elses work.

I’m not attacking anyone as I am/was the same. When I was in school, I spent hours ignoring papers, going out instead of practicing. Pull an all nighter because during the day I was hung out with people.

The blog I “riped-off” had very serious points, about technology, about dating, about our identity online, and even the use of copyrighted material on the internet was brought up because of it. It brought up good points. I would like to write about them but there are better suited people to write about the effect of technology on ones life. Things that people posting online should talk about more freely and openly. I could go on how social networks might be seen as a waste of time, but I don’t think I am adequently informed(or good enough writer and bias) to make a stance. Also, there’s already better suited and worded publications out there that would do the same.

One comment really caught my eye… it was from Mas,

“…the end of nostalgia.”²

Personally never thought about that way and it’s a great observation. Even though he did not cite his source.

If you visit my personal blog, you see that there is no Creative Commons. Gave credit to the creator to the theme I’m using (lower right corner). I moded it to my liking but other than that there’s nothing. I believe that if you post things online it becomes public domain. Even though by law it is copyrighted once its written. Anyone in the world can see. I do respect copyright, as you’ve seen.

Footnotes:
1. “Don’t Ask, Just Tell.” Facebook . Comment #4. 23 Apr. 2009 http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/note.php?note_id=74948513739&comments.

2. “Don’t Ask, Just Tell.” Facebook . Comment #7. 23 Apr. 2009 http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/note.php?note_id=74948513739&comments

“Where do you see yourself in ten years?”

In the past week I’ve been asked this question several times. I dislike it… As an ex-planner I thought I knew where I wanted to go. But things changes and in turn your plans change. Therefore you can’t plan where you want to be.

I stopped planning… I know I have a job until August but after that I have no clue. I enjoy it. It gives me freedom to grow as a person and not be confined to this little definition I have set for myself. Truth be told, if had stayed with my original 2 1/2 year plan, I wouldn’t had gotten the opportunity at working where I am currently employed.

I understand that replying to the question with, “I really haven’t given it much thought” or “Where ever the wind takes me” doesn’t give adult much confident in you as a person. A lot of people have taken aback from those responses, some think I’m crazy, some think I’m bold, other question if I fully understand my actions.

With these answers I open the lines of dialogue and show my view. When I was planner I was alway looking toward the future and was excited of what was to come. Not so much about the present. I was anxious to get on with my life that I rarely lived in the present. My views have changed a lot. Tomorrow is not guaranteed, make most of today. I am not saying that one should be irresponsible. I am still work towards something. I just haven’t put much emphasis as other have.

I’ve had this blog since September of ’05 when I started it on Blogger, then grew up to WordPress.com and ultimately to a self-hosted blog on Media temple using WordPress.

Even though I’ve had this blog for that long I still don’t have a clear direction of what I want or should write about. When I was in school I was able to discuss those things but now I find it difficult to talk about work without either sounding pretentious or extremely vague. There are a few factors why that is, mainly because I work under contract with a NDA (Non-Disclose Agreement), basically a gag-order. I’m fairly young and work in an area where I shouldn’t know this much about the industry yet because of the way my mentor taught me, I am able to understand the complexities of what my work entails. I’m fairly good at it, even though it has completely nothing to do with what I went to school for. Yes, it’s music related but barely, if that. It’s not my passion, but it pays the bills, anyone that lives in LA knows that that really isn’t an easy feat.

Why bring this up?

Talking to friends and when introducing myself to new people, I’m finding it hard how to describe my occupation without being a tool or being exceptionally vague.

Then, there are other things on my mind, such as the need to sensor myself. There has been a lot of talk about the demise of personal information on the internet. I frankly believe that once something is posted online it becomes public domain. Sure, there can be watermarks and what have you, but as soon as you post something online post it’s there for the whole world to see, be it on facebook, twitter, a personal blog. Employers are understanding the importance of such social media and have made great strides in doing background checks on their employees, now that even covers what you do online and what you say about your work on blogs and forums.

A lot of people hark that it’s invasion of privacy, which is debatable. I personally think that if it really that personal you shouldn’t post it online. Simple and efficient.

I can’t discuss what I do, some of my friends have expressed concern because there was a few weeks when it seemed that I had dropped of the face of the earth. Others have question the various trips I have been since my return to work in February. While being a somewhat of a private person I am finding it hard to be less than forth coming with details on work with close friends; people that I consider almost family.

A concern that was brought to my attention is that when I am in any project/work I dive 100% in. That becomes my life. I become invested, heart, mind and soul. It’s the only way I know to achieve the level of my satisfaction.

February was just brutal for me… sometimes leaving the office at 10-11 pm only to be back at 7 am to continue my work. During that time I rarely had time to write, for personal use. I usually write a lot more that what I post. I usually just shelve a lot mainly because I don’t think that I am the most eloquent writer, and if your going to read something I would prefer it to be something of substance, thought provoking, an experience to share, or a life lesson to pass along. Of course, I am guilty or using this as a medium to rant and a bit of bragging… and trust me I am trying to find the tone of what this blog should be.

I’m not sure if this type of writers block has anything to do that I’ve been using on twitter more frequently, if it’s just writers block, or maybe a way to stop and think of the direction of where I should go with this blog, and the possibility of just closing the blog.

When I started it, it was ‘Random Thoughts’…. but of what, I have steered clear of political stance, I have one post on the financial sector, and if you read thought you rarely see when I am in a relationship or not.

It’s not a journal just to have… I want to convey something…. sadly it seems that this job has been something a burden that is keeping me from expressing myself to my full potential. Sadly, the job is here to stay, until August at least.

In the next few days I am going to take some time and read a few of peoples blogs and hopefully I can get an idea of where I want to go with my writing. If not, I will start taking actions to end the site; for those that have read this for sometime I rather have an end that just let it die.

Ideas would be much appreciated. Thank you for your time.

After a few bumpy glitches I got WordPress running smoothly.

I really like the new dashboard – I’m just saying.

It’s a mod of mod by Derek Punsalan. I’ve also added OpenID. If you have a WordPress, AOL, Livejournal, Vox or Yahoo account, you probably already have one . I will be adding a few more things in the coming days, like tags and an Archives page. They are just a bit unstable at this time.

Hope you like the redesign.