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Stephen Pickering

Author: Stephen Pickering

  • Arkansas Alabama: Selfish Quarterback and Horrible Defensive Game Plan

    It’s like a guy trying to make the highlight films at the expense of his team.

    Update 10/27/27 – I will take one thing back. I watched the replay. On that last interception DJ was open. Mallet simply lofted way over his head. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that it got away from him and floated. Today on “Shawn and Wally” Wally also said it was 3rd and 11 instead of 2nd and 1, which also would make a big difference.
    So, if that’s the case, I’ll take it back on that one that he was going for “heroics” against the odds. Because DJ was clearly open.  Still, I stand by my criticism of the first two. The second was especially the killer. Deep in our own territory with the lead, throwing into double coverage to a guy who wasn’t even looking for the ball. That gave them the lead. Also, I still stand by my defense criticism, unless I feel like watching the whole game over and see something that convinces me otherwise.

    Yeah, the Mallet interceptions were bad, especially that last one on a 2nd and 1 with plenty of time left. I mean c’mon! Run it or fall on it if no one’s open, don’t loft it up in desperation like its 4 and forever with :03 left. And there’s also the sense of Mallet’s unfocused nature to finish. I’m thinking of that drive in the first half where we’re in the red zone and he forces it to a guy not open covered soundly by two Bama defenders. It’s like a guy trying to make the highlight reels at the expense of his team. The other interception in the 2nd half was the same way: guy’s not open over the middle, well covered by two defenders and he tries to thread the needle to be heroic, and it pretty much costs us the game. I mean we were leading at that point for heaven’s sake! The point is to win the game, not try to gamble on some outrageous throw to make yourself look good. That really felt selfish.

    But to me the biggest mistake was really our defensive game plan. Almost the whole game we were lined up in a three man front against 7 hulks. It was like we were defending for a passing offense. Mclroy could have read a book back there with all the time we gave him. The one time I saw us blitz we actually stopped a crucial third down when Bama was deep in our territory that forced a field goal. Instead for most of the game he gashed us to death, which in turn only opened up everything for already the best running game in college football. Looked like we were in a “prevent” defense for most of the game. Instead we should have been pressuring, playing for the ball like some fighting Razorbacks. If we had played defense like that, I think we could have made a lot more stops and possibly won going away.

    Tiger Woods’ always said the key to his success, what his father always instilled in him was that “You gotta finish.” Booming drives and heroic, highlight film quality iron shots aside, he knew the key was “bringing it to the house.”

    Highlight films mean very little when the other team finishes the game with more points than you do.

    I can take losing this game, what I can’t take, what’s keeping me up in the middle of the night, is how we played it.

  • Quantum Leaping Through Time & Space

    I haven’t written about this subject in a long time. I just picked up a Science book for the first time in a long time and I was re-fascinated by the “reality” of what is really going on inside and outside us. I’ve read these books so many times and realized it before, but it’s amazing how easily and quickly we can forget, and start seeing the World, what we call “reality” as mundane and predictable, while the exciting stuff happens “only in the movies.” But the gist of ‘actual’ reality (how else do you say it?) is this:

    1. Quantum reality is the reality of everything in the Universe, from your toe-nail to the furthest Galaxy.
    2. Quantum reality is this: Anything can, will, and does happen for any reason, spontaneously, with no energy or time expended.

    Everything in the Universe is made of one thing, “Quarks” (This our current understanding. It could be that something even smaller, called “Strings” make up the Quarks, but for our discussion here let’s keep it at Quarks for simplicity’s sake. We’re trying to imagine the smallest indivisible particle that makes up everything.)

    Quarks make up everything, you me, your dog, the trees, the air, Stars, and planets.

    Quarks are subject to the ultimate Law of the Universe which is no law: Quantum Flux. Everything can and does happen, not every second, but since we are dealing with Quantum reality in Zero time. Like light, quarks are truly eternal. They do not experience time. Actually Quarks and Light create time, but I’ll explain that later.

    So here’s what’s happening right here, right now at this moment: The hundred trillion trillion trillion quarks that make up my typing hands, every single one of them is leaping in and out of existence, perhaps to the other side of the Universe, perhaps to another Universe.

    Look outside at a tree. Every particle of that tree is quantumly leaping all over the Universe and all throughout time. So why do you see a solid tree not moving? Because for every particle that disappears, another Quark, maybe from Abraham Lincoln’s leg, maybe from the Galaxy Andromeda is taking its place. So the whole looks relatively stable. Same for every “large” object, a rock, a blade of grass, a drop of water.

    So why don’t large bodies quantumly leap? Actually they could. If you stood in times square for a trillion years you would see someone magically vanish at some point during that time and end up somewhere else. It’s sort of like the proverbial monkeys at a typewriter. Given enough time, they will eventually write a Shakespeare play.

    The reason large bodies don’t quantumly leap (very often!) is because large bodies are actually hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of trillions of Quarks. The chances that they would all synchronize and quantumly leap at the same moment to the same place are that once every trillion year thing.

    Still, it brings up an interesting point. Even though the odds unimaginably, astronomically against it, it is possible that you could fall asleep in your bed tonight and wake up tomorrow in Africa or Mars, the other side of the Universe, or 1928. It is non-zero. So if you magically quantumly lept from your bed to say Africa tomorrow, not at the speed of light, but in Zero time and taking Zero energy, the interesting Question becomes what is the Mechanism for making this happen?

    Here’s the interesting answer: That’s the way it is.

    The Ground State of the Universe or the Multiverse, of Everything that is or could possibly be is that Everything can and will happen, does happen, and does not need a reason.

    The so called “Physical” laws of the “Macro” world we are used to, are simply the result of the symmetry breaking caused by the quantum “jitters” of the ground state being spontaneous.

    This is also why we age, and why time moves forward. When one of your Quarks leaves you, for another planet, or another century, the Quantum “Vacuum” replaces him with another visitor. And the Quantum Vacuum is remarkably accurate: maybe to 1 part in 100,000,000. That one mistake in a hundred million is caused by the “uncertainty” principle itself which states that nothing can be 100% certain. That one mistake, over time, causes everything, our bodies included to slowly deteriorate or as we call it “age.” This is the cause of all entropy, the 3rd Law of Thermodynamics, which states that everything moves from a state of Order to Disorder.

    That last bit depressed me. At first when I read again about Quantum reality, it excited me: I thought, “What if there was some way to bring ‘coherence’ to a larger body?” “Then wouldn’t it Quantumly leap?” Even though its probably impossible, and even if it were, I can’t imagine how it could be achieved, or even controlled, it still was exciting to imagine.

    But then I realized that this same mechanism that perhaps could make “magic” a reality also is relentlessly in charge of aging and decay.

    Let’s play a “thought” experiment. Imagine you could somehow achieve coherence and assuming you somehow also manage to control the spontaneity of it, you decided to travel to someplace back (or for that matter, forward) in time.

    In other words the Universe truly became your oyster. The only thing is, because of the Uncertainty Principle, you still would age and die. I can’t see any way around that, because the Uncertainty principle is the ground state of existence, and assuming that you or someone in the future could somehow do these “magical” things, it would be the Uncertainty Principle that itself enabled the Quantum Leaps.

    I don’t see any way around that bit at the moment. Now maybe, somehow, someway, there is a way to slow aging, for instance if somehow, coherence slowed the number of mistakes uncertainty produced over time. That would be an interesting topic to consider on its own.

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  • New Rough Song Demo: “It’s Over Now”

    So, for the first time in a while a tune struck me out of the blue. I’ve been in straight poetry writing mode the last month or so, so I decided to apply the lyrics from one of those recent poems to this tune. I was surprised that it worked out so well. I think its because in the past I’ve been applying tunes (or trying) to five foot iambic lines which just doesn’t work. And this poem was based on two foot lines. I think the basic measure of songs is four feet, which makes sense. Everything in Western Music is based usually on 4s, 4/4 time is probably 99% of all Western songs. So the two feet lines of this poem probably just joined together to make a four foot rhythm that worked with the 4/4 time.

    This is from the poem “I Know the Lake” I wrote last week. I just kind of hurried that title. I’ve changed the song title to “It’s Over Now.” Chorus lyrics seem to work better as titles. I think I’ll change that first line from “I know the lake” to “I know it’s late.”

    “I Know the Lake”
    I know the lake.
    There’s nothing more.
    What is at stake
    Is behind the door.
    Up in the sky
    Your hair flew wild.
    Your sunglassed eyes
    They hid the child.
    I thought you said
    To meet down there.
    We’d find the bed
    Without a care.
    It’s over now.
    It died somehow.

    ©2010 Stephen Pickering

    For the song I need to write another verse extra from the poem which is written in 14 line sonnet form. But I notice the song structure needs to change. The chorus needs to come in sooner anyway, so writing another stanza will make a nice two verse two chorus structure without having to repeat the first verse all over again. These lines just popped out of my head:

    Remember when
    The water fell
    We jumped right in
    And didn’t tell.

  • The Best Way to Use Twitter

    Update 9/27/11

    Here it is in a nutshell. You don’t need to read the rest of this post: Don’t worry about getting followers. Just fill your inbound (who you follow) with cool people your interested in who, and this is key, whose information will somehow make your life better. Help you learn cool new stuff.  That’s how you get value. And the same would go for Google+.

    date 6/23/11 –

    Just saw this tweet from @steverubel (Good guy to follow) “How To Answer The Question “How Often Should I Tweet?”http://j.mp/kyTYGR ” – Thought it’d be a good and perhaps valuable read for this subject.

    Update 2/06/11

    If you’re a member of Twitter, then I’m sure you got this email recently from the Twitter team on how to get the best experience from Twitter. I’ve copied and pasted it hear and put my comments in parenthesis:

    Happy New Year,

    Our resolution is to help you get the most of out of Twitter this year. To start, we thought we’d send this note with four simple suggestions. Come on by our web site to try these out anytime! http://twitter.com

    1) Follow your interests. We’ve found that the people who enjoy Twitter most tend to follow a variety of accounts: friends, family, people in their profession, local shops and events, and most importantly, people who share their passions.
    (This hasn’t been easy in the past. For the first few years twitter was all “techies”, but now that it is becoming more mainstream, it’s becoming more possible.)

    2) Get specific. Like sports? Follow your favorite leagues, teams, players, coaches, commentators, writers and fellow fans. Love food? Follow chefs, restaurants, critics, bloggers, specialty shops and respected foodies.
    (Obviously, no-brainer. 🙂

    3) Don’t panic. People turn to Twitter during emergencies. Snowstorms, power outages and fires are just a few emergencies where Twitter may be helpful. Search for #hashtags and follow local civic accounts to stay informed.

    (This may be one of Twitter’s most understated assets. Search in general on Twitter is not that good. But when you are searching for something that is happening right now, it’s fantastic. For instance, my team was playing the other night. Their schedule said it was broadcast on “CSS” which is Comcast something. I don’t have Comcast. I have Dish, but I thought maybe somebody was “Ustreaming” or something. So I did a real time Twitter search (Search is the box at the very top center of the page). Couldn’t find anyone Ustreaming it, but what I did find was even better. Someone tweeted loud and clear, “Arkansas vs Georgia on @ESPN3 tonight” ESPN 3 is the online streaming arm of ESPN. )

    4) Return to Twitter. There are about 200 million accounts on Twitter now – that means new interests, new voices, and new ideas every day. We offer services in seven languages, apps for most devices, and SMS worldwide.
    (Wow, 200 million is a serious number. But I believe it. Every where I go, everything I hear, Twitter and Facebook are mentioned in the same breath, same tandem. So it makes sense that Twitter would start to be getting “Facebook Numbers” so to speak)

    Thanks for being part of Twitter,

    @Biz, @Ev, & @Jack
    Co-founders, Twitter

    Part I: What’s in it for You?

    Firstly, I wish the follower counts weren’t listed on Twitter. It becomes an obsession, and it works against the first tenant of how Twitter is best used for the “average” user.

    If you are an average human being, who isn’t interested in being “recognized” or being a digital “star” the best way to look at Twitter is simply what value you can attain from it. You shouldn’t care a hoot who or how many people follow you. You should only be concerned about following people who interest you, who can give you value for your life, entertain you, whatever turns you on. You’re first objective is that Twitter should be a pleasure, not a strain. You should look at it as a media source, the same way you look at which book or magazine to buy that will give you those same things.

    • So, firstly, you should find 150 or so great people to follow or whatever your “Dunbar” number is, and leave it at that. Don’t follow people just so they will follow you back or just because they are following you.
    • You would rather follow 1,000 of the most awesome people in the world and have 0 followers, than have 10,000 followers and be following 5,000 people who tweet things that aren’t adding value to your life.

    That really could be the end of it for most of us. Think of Twitter like a book. If you’re reading an awesome book that enriches your life, do you care if that book “Like you back” so to speak, or “follows you back.” Heck no. Even if you were Ashton Kutchner or John Mayer, you would be better off with ZERO followers but following only people who were enriching your life. This really is the top priority of Twitter. What can I get out it that adds to my life. Not, oh, if I can only get Roger Ebert’s or Steve Martin’s attention!

    Part II: Your Still Not Satisfied

    OK, so you still want to be a “Digital Star” part of the “digerati.” If you do want to attract honest to goodness followers, and by that I mean folks who aren’t following you just so that you follow them back you need to

    • Create original content in a subject that you are passionate about, preferably in video format.

    It’s easy to tweet interesting content that someone else created, say the New York Times, the Tech Blogs, etc. But everyone is doing that. It’s ok at times, and especially if its something you find truly interesting and that you have actually read yourself and thought about, but people are more interested in the source. They may follow you, but they are listening to and influenced by the source. Because the source is the guy who is passionate about his subject, he’s going to deliver the most interesting, not only content about it, but perspective and opinions about it.

    So find your passion, no matter what it is, and create original content around it. It may not be tech or some of the other popular Twitter topics, but even if no one else on Earth was interested in what you were covering (and that’s highly unlikely) at least you’ll be living on the edge of excitement all the time.

    And one of the points of Twitter is that you would rather have 1,000 followers who are truly interested in your tweets than 10,000 who are only following you so that you follow them back. That is akin to having a conversation with someone who is only there so that you’ll listen to them.

    What are your thoughts about the best way to use Twitter? Love to hear your insights.

  • 4 New Iambic Poems

    Iambic Dimeter:

    “I Know the Lake”

    I know the lake.
    There’s nothing more.
    What is at stake
    Is behind the door.

    Up in the sky
    Your hair flew wild.
    Your sunglassed eyes
    They hid the child.

    I thought you said
    To meet down there.
    We’d find the bed
    Without a care.

    It’s over now.
    It died somehow.

    ©2010 Stephen Pickering
    _________________________

    Iambic Trimeter:

    “The Girls of Boston’s Bay”

    The girls of Boston’s Bay
    With circled stars for crowns,
    They have some tea to save
    Before a nation drowns.

    They chew on Franklin’s ear:
    French whores, they’ll have to cease.
    Theses secrets Paul must steer
    With snakes’ coiled fangs to sea.

    The peoples’ fists clenched
    Poetic visions choke.
    Only shelters smell the stench
    As purple mountains’ glow.

    They pull the dream to shore
    Jerusalem had bore.

    ©2010 Stephen Pickering
    _____________________________

    Iambic Tetrameter:

    “Comets”

    It’s interesting to say the least
    To sit here now among the stars
    Above the desert’s slouching beast
    Watching warriors collide on Mars.

    It be temper and it be stew
    The magic bogeymen were brought.
    They drank from stones the witches brew
    And guarded temples where Zen was taught.

    The egg that cracked the Russian woods
    Blasted our chimps through Sputnicks cage.
    Forever laying where they stood
    Each past dropped in a falling stage.

    If we sit back enough and stare,
    Our dogs we launched be finally there.

    ©2010 Stephen Pickering
    ______________________________

    Iambic Pentameter:

    Sonnet #6

    I smell the burnt red color of the fall.
    Back from the hunt curled up in evening sleep.
    The girls have climbed the mountain spirit’s wall.
    The fireplace burns a pathway to our dreams.

    A Norwegian pine absorbs the grieving day.
    The children leave their Latin books alone
    With the decisions Caesar has to make,
    And cherubim who speak in tongues through stone.

    Through Italy the German troops will drive.
    We pass the ball hoping for winning years.
    They pass the scotch just hoping to survive.
    If either drops, the Tiber drowns in tears.

    The ‘Mercan girl was born in a French Bar.
    But leaves this world through a bent steel guitar.

    ©2010 Stephen Pickering

     

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  • More Examples of the Social Media “Shadow”

    Camera+ Shot I Got, and While I Love the Effect, I'd Like to Have the Original Too.

    I think every time I see a Tweet or other notification from out in the World of Social Media that is an example of Social Media’s “Shadow” Side, I’ll put in a post. We’ll call it the on going “Shadow Side of Social Media” series, although in some sense, I hate to harp on the negative. Maybe harping on the negative notes, brings more negative notes. Of course to balance it out, I’ll remind myself that Social Media has many positives. If it weren’t for Twitter, for instance, I wouldn’t see Jason Falls‘ experiences, both the negative and the positive, nor his knowledge, which mixed with a network of knowledge is greater than the sum of its parts. So social media is, overall, a Positive force in the Communications Revolution. I stress that to balance things out. But I’ll bring up the negatives sometimes too, if only so that maybe some momentum can be built to correct them.

    Hey @posterous Why would the text in my emails not post? All I’ve got is pictures all day. Each one of them had copy with it?! – @JasonFalls

    Comment: This reminds me of the time I first tested Evernote. I decided to take a photo inside their application. Bad mistake. When you do something like that you can never recover the JPEG for yourself. Oh, it just so happened to be one of the best, cutest photos of my dog, ever. Now it stuck inside of Evernotes “Notes” folder, server, or whatever they call it. FOREVER. I can’t get it out.

    Same thing happens in these iPhone Photo apps like Camera+ and Best Camera. I took this great action shot within Camera + and then played with the effects. Found one that was really cool, hit SAVE. Rut-Roh. After you hit save in those apps, again you’ve lost the original, which I would like to have in this case more than the one that I played with and found an effect for.

    At least Jason Falls problem with Posterous, which I think is a great service by the way, nor my problems with Evernote or the photography apps are “intentional” in the sense of being evil, trying to lock you in. But they are lazy. And the shadow demonstrated here is a lack of attention to detail to some of the problems that may occur, and again the over riding theme I see again and again, in the so called Web 2.0 world, lack of appreciation or stewardship to the customer’s data.

    Lesson for SmartPhone Users:

    • ALWAYS TAKE PHOTOS IN THE PHONES NATIVE PHOTO APP FIRST, THEN OPEN THAT PHOTO IN YOUR FAVORITE APP FOR FURTHER USE. That way you’ll always have the original.
    Aspen, stuck inside an Evenote "Note" :***

    Lesson for Posterous Users:

    Actually I really don’t know. I have a posterous. Its cool and everything, but still, the whole idea of your data going out there on someone else’s servers, I just don’t get sometimes. Why not send it straight to your blog instead? I mean I understand the value of Posterous and Tumblr is that it makes blogs more Social. I get that, and I like it, and I want to try to be more involved in those services going forward, but sometimes it makes me scratch my head why I am sending traffic to those services based on my own data and content. But at least with Jason’s problem above he hasn’t lost any data. Presumably its still on his phone and in his outbox of sent messages on his email server. In his case, its just frustrating to have to do things over again, edit posts that didn’t display correctly, and otherwise not get information out to an audience, in the way that you meant, at the time that you meant.

    What are your ideas on Posterous and Tumblr and how one should use them within the context of having your own blog on a server where you control the data?

    UPDATE:

    Hey, I think I just learned something. In an effort to find that Evernote photograph, I opened my Evernote account for the first time in a year. Well I found the photography of my dog Aspen that I was talking about. It was tied into what they called a ‘note’ Couldn’t find a way to share it or get it out of their system. But I did notice that when I right clicked the photo, it did give me the option to ‘save image as’ or ‘open image in a new tab’ which did allow me to pull the JPG out. Still, the photo, taken on the iPhone 3GS is much grainier than it would have been, if it was simply shot on the iPhone’s camera app. So, a little better, at least than I originally thought.