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Stephen Pickering

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  • It’s National Poetry Month – So I Should Write Some Poems

    I was just glancing at Youtube, and it said that it was national poetry month. Man they have a day and a month for everything, don’t they? Hehehehehe. Well, since I’m a poet, I thought I should write some poems, especially this month! Just wrote this sonnet a few minutes ago. Hopefully I can do one each morning for the remainder of the month, in honor of the month. I’ll just keep posting them here so I don’t have to have a new post for each and every poem. Maybe I’ll do a Youtube video at the end of the Month in honor of “Spoken Word Poetry.”

     

    Sonnet – April 11th, 2011

    It’s middle April and the rains have come
    The silent morning rings to life and sings.
    Each note a whisper of our long lost love
    that glides on creeks and swims through springs. 

    The turtles’ silence guards the lake all night.
    The frogs swim through the moistness of our song.
    When morning curtains nudge, they plop from sight,
    Soul searching for our long lost golden ball.

    The crickets provide the strings, the ducks the horns;
    An evening symphony that gives us bliss;
    To help in healing what the dragons tore,
    And bring us comfort for those that we miss.

    The flowers bloom, and trees sway in the wind.
    They dance lost songs to visit us again.

    ___________

    Sonnet – April 12th, 2011

    At dawn we lost the whisper of our song.
    Dreams carried us to worlds we’d rather stay.
    The mind builds places our souls don’t belong.
    And so the heart remains asleep all day. 

    Who’s driven long and who has driven far
    To face the mountain hiding secret love?
    Inside a bower lit with dreams by stars
    They’re parted by the birthing rays above.

    Below her bathing pool is where they hid:
    Two gems of corn who’d seek the northern light.
    She knew their power even just as kids
    To overcome the monsters which they’d fight.

    The road to follow is a mag’cal one
    To marry dreams with the light of the Sun.

    ______________________

    Sonnet – April 13th, 2011

    I’d like to hold your essence cool and free.
    Your hair is waving spirits to rise up.
    Your parents are the mountains and the sea.
    You dance with legs of deer and arms of dove. 

    Your eyes are saying dive and swim this stream.
    They speak a language without having sound.
    Tonight I dance with you like in a dream.
    I can’t describe but know this thing I’ve found.

    There are no tensions in this purest form,
    Here even where Yeats said the ladder starts.
    You are the place where happiness is born,
    and fill with light the center of our hearts.

    You are the warmth of Sun that’s brought by Spring
    We glide on light by saying not a thing.

    ____________________________________

    Sonnet – April 14th

    I’ve noticed that the people seem to glide
    And sing down by the river through the trees
    They seem to have the glow that’s born inside;
    Exuberance from not caring what life means. 

    A shadow carries water to their Spring.
    They’ve always known that someone lived in there.
    Was it a spirit or a human being?
    They say it breathes the water, drinks the air.

    The children leave their houses for the Sun.
    They swim like fish this river made of snow.
    It feels though time had just begun
    The garden nature made so long ago.

    And in the forest still the spirit rests.
    Upon stars made from Mother Nature’s breasts.

    ____________________________

    Sonnet – April 15th, 2011

    We’re meant to glide upon a beam of light
    But here in one wave where life splits in two,
    Collapsed a notion of what’s wrong and right.
    And now there’s nothing but toil and work to do. 

    Sometimes I think therefore I’m not so free.
    The stagnant water forms where walls are built.
    Drowning spirit born effortlessly.
    Like burning rays so hot the flowers wilt.

    It feels like its only those fleeting times
    A moment when the mind naturally rests
    A spirit born inside the heart’s red wine
    Appears in actual joy and manifests.

    A bliss that doesn’t seem the need to show
    With pride how far it’s infinite knowledge goes.

    _________________________

    Sonnet – April 16th

    There was a darkness that surrounded her
    What do I do I thought as things grew dim.
    A feeling of emotions’ vision blur
    When she brought night and cold from where she’d been.

    What was this night so sad shown through her eyes?
    It was an empty stare she laid down cold.
    How can you judge a thing through all the lies
    And describe a feeling that has not been told?

    A path through strife we see a shining truth
    Come here again so I can touch the face.
    A land of plenty rises from the root
    A mouth says things we feel but cannot trace.

    Few days of riding through the emotional highs
    It disappears up through the nighttime skies.

     

  • The Reason for the Internet Connectivity Problem

    We all should be riding on waves of light, but false monopolies propped up by Government regulation of communications has stifled innovation and business plans alike.

    I was just listening to TWiT and they were having this discussion about the internet connectivity problem, the fact that we have a duopoly of telco and cable controlling it and now threatening bandwidth caps that could effect the coming consumption of video streaming that is coming online with Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and the advent of live streaming from Ustream, Justin.tv, et. al. This is in fact the new paradigm, “Real-Time” as its known in the industry, and the falsely earned duopoly is threatening to turn off the spicket as it were just as video, a major leap forward for the net, wants to take center stage.

    Leo Laporte suggested why doesn’t the government just force the cable companies to sell their access to other companies, just like they do with telco, in order to solve the problem.

    Sounds reasonable, right?

    No, no, no! A thousand times no! This is the very action embodied in the Telco Act of 1996 that caused the problem in the first place. It was the false propping up of competition that killed real competition.

    Remember all those small telco companies that cropped up out of nowhere in the 90’s who promised you the moon and then quickly went broke?

    Their entire business plan was not competitive, not investing their own capital, but merely using government regulation that allowed them to piggy back on existing infrastructure with no capital invested.

    Then the whole thing came crashing down. It sucked the life out of broadband, and since all of the business plans of Web 1.0 were based on ubiquitous broadband, we had the great internet crash of 2000.

    Think about it. If you had the billions of dollars it would take to make a go of it in the connectivity market, would you invest in laying fiber to people’s homes, when the government can come in at any time and force you to resell that access at no profit to an upstart “connectivity” company, a phantom company? NO. And that, my friends, lays the problem.

    We all should have a fiber connection to our home for a reasonable price. The technology is there, the market is there, but the only thing that is standing in the way is Government regulation in the first place.

    People like Leo still believe that the government is on the people’s side in this issue. But it isn’t. The government is on the Oligarch’s side. It’s like the old bit of “Good cop, bad cop.” The government in the major industries plays “Good Cop,” but behind the scenes it is the industry leaders who are writing the very legislation that the Government blesses, and thus stops investment in productivity, and ends up lowering the standard of living for all.

    The only solution is for the government to get out of the way. On the one hand you have to let the Telcos and the Cables do what they want and have their data caps if they want. On the other hand they have to make it very clear that they won’t interfere with any real capital that is anxious to enter the market, making it clear that they can fairly compete.

  • Mylikes Update: A Retweet is All It Takes

    The Mylikes_Retweet account on Twitter. Makes publishing an ad almost effortless, and totally fun!

    Remember when I wrote about Mylikes, the social media ad platform, that allowed you to leverage your Social Media efforts? Well, I still love it, for all the reasons I mentioned in the post, but I noticed lately I haven’t been as active on it. There are more than a few reasons for this, but one of the biggest was LAZINESS. For one thing I got a new Mac, I didn’t remember my password, and I’d have to walk ALL THE WAY to the next room to log on. Just think of that: I’d rather walk to another room, boot up another computer, than simply reset my password! I just found out last night that I can log in to Mylikes through Twitter (or Facebook for that matter) but I was alway hesitant to do that because when I used that strategy with CinchCast, Cinchcast simply opened up another account for me, instead of linking me to my existing account. Not Mylikes. Simply logon through Twitter or Facebook and it links you to your existing account. Nice.

    But it gets even better, and easier.

    A Retweet is All it Takes

    I noticed the other day that they have set up a special account called @Mylikes_retweet that tweets ads, and all you have to do is simply retweet (use the twitter retweet button) and of course not only is that ad published to all of your followers, any time that it is clicked you earn money! Talk about removing any friction! Not only do you not have to go to Mylikes and pick an ad, the copy is already written for you. And it’s great, eye catching, fun copy that is more conducive to “clicking” (translate, good for publishers!) As a matter of fact when I do it, I almost have to keep myself from clicking the retweet in my own stream (which would be against the rules.)

    I love this feature because of its ease, but not only that, it interests me because it shows the innovative nature of the company. I mentioned in my earlier post that the founders, Bindu Reddy and her husband were ex-Googlers and that that fun, innovative approach was in their DNA, just like it is at Google.

    Fun is something that is way underestimated, especially in Western Culture. We tend to divide “fun” away from our business life. Almost a firewall between fun, life, and business. But I just finished reading Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose,and the secret to Zappos’ culture is just the opposite: Fun, social, caring are intrisic to Zappos’ DNA. In fact it is their business model.

    This theme struck a bell inside me earlier this week. I was chatting with a web developer friend. I mentioned that I was looking for a photo editing, creative application that wasn’t so intimidating (and expensive) as Photoshop. He mentioned Pixelmator and after telling me all the nice features about it, at the end in an unconscious exhuberence spouted, “And it’s fun!”

    Well, for all the philosophical debate we have over advertising and it’s place, especially in Social Media, what about the philosophy of Fun?

    If you are already a member of Mylikes, simply go to @Mylikes_retweet and pick an ad from their tweet stream. Simply retweet it, and see if you don’t have some fun as well as potentially earn some money.

    And if you are not a member go sign up here: Mylikes.com (It’s free, and if you sign up with that link, I have a chance to win an iPad2, which you can too once you are a member.)

  • 220lbs- 10lbs Lost in Under Three Weeks

    An important milestone to record. 10lbs lost. 220lbs. (From 230)

    Yeah! Well, I didn’t want to really blog every pound or did I? Maybe if I had something so say at every pound, but I thought 10lbs and 220lbs was an important milestone.

    Not really. Just eat less calories than you burn. Which is easy but tricky. The iPhone app helps a lot. Writing it down. Keeping track, but you still have to know how many calories are in a meal.

    I’ll probably have to move into the Livestrong app as I start eating at restaurants and such. At least to identify how many calories are in certain meals.

    I’ll let you know how that goes. For now I’m still using the Lose It! app, which I feel a certain loyalty to. It got me here!

  • 222lbs- 8lbs Lost in 2 Weeks.

    Finally I made some progress to 222lbs. Felt like I was stuck on 224 forever.

    Well this is cool. Seemed like I got to 224 really fast and then couldn’t budge from there for a while. Kind of frustrated me for a few days. I was counting calories diligently and always under for the day, but I still felt bloated and the scales didn’t budge. Finally yesterday and today they did. That was rewarding. I started taking 30 minute walks with my dogs every day since Spring has sprung. That feels good to get some exercise. I want to gradually increase it until I’m doing full workouts at the gym. I want those coveted “ironing board” or “six-pack” abs. I just want to know what that feels like. So obviously losing weight is not the most important thing. It’s losing fat. Plus, I learned that the more muscle you build the faster your metabolism burns. It has to burn faster just to keep up with the overall increase in muscle, keeping that muscle built. But I think losing those first few pounds to get some momentum going is important for morale. Getting some feedback on the scales.

    I think I went at it too hard in the beginning, hungry for results. I was only having about 1100 calories a day. Now I’m having more like 1500-1800.

    Interesting thing about this app: When I first programmed my numbers it gave me a calorie “budget” of just over 1800 calories. Then as I’ve lost a few pounds my new “budget” has decreased to 1799. That’s cool if it adjusts automatically like that.

    My diet has been pretty much the same. 3 boiled eggs and toast (whole wheat) at breakfast, half sandwich (freshly made at the Kroger deli and packaged) & apple for lunch, then one of those Stouffer frozen dinners at dinner. Those are usually around 400-450 calories. I’ll drink water, fat free milk or a Sugar free Verve with those meals. Then later at night I might have a Chocolate Myo-Plex shake with fat free milk and a banana.

    Looks like I started this on March 10th. So I’m right at the 2 week mark and 8lbs lost.

     

  • What to do when your iPad’s Home Button Stops Working

    A few days ago my iPad’s home button stopped working. Seems like it happened right after I upgraded to iOs 4.3. The only thing I could do to use it was turn it off and back on. Mine’s a first generation that I got at Best Buy the first day it came out on April 3rd, 2010. I searched the web. There was a blog post where a lot of people who were having the same problem talked about solutions and whether it was hardware or software caused. Some found answers. Most didn’t and ended up taking it back and getting it replaced. Since mine is almost a year old and I didn’t buy any of the warranty from Best Buy or Apple, I figured I would have to take it back, they may send it off and that it would cost me something.

    Anyway on this blog post I know one guy mentioned that his would work in Portrait mode. I tried portrait mode, still nothing. So I let the thing sit for a day. I’d thought about a hard reset, but how are you going to do a hard reset if the home button doesn’t work?

    Anyway, yesterday, even though it was still not working, I found something funny: I noticed that when I held it in landscape mode, pushed the button, held it, then rotated it to portrait mode, then released, it started working, maybe half the time. I thought, “OK, I can live with this for a few days until I take it up there.”

    Then later on, I had the iPad sitting flat on my wooden desk next to my desktop. I pushed the button. It worked every time. I thought, “Hey this is cool. OK.” I thought maybe it had something to do with the hard surface. Now my iPad is not in a case, so I don’t know if that may make a difference.

    Now, a day after that, it seems to be totally working again like normal.

    This could be totally anecdotal and have nothing to do with my exercises. Maybe it was just a glitch in the software that some how “healed” itself. But its worth a try if you find yourself in this same situation.

    So try this:

    • Hold the iPad in front of you in landscape mode
    • Push the button and keep it held while you gently rotate it to Portrait mode, then release.
    • See if you get any response: 1 out of 2 times, 1 out of 3, etc.
    • If that works, or even if it doesn’t, lay the iPad gently on a hard, smooth surface, so there is even resistance. (If its in a case, I’d recommend taking it out) Push the button, hold it in a second longer than normal, then gently release.
    • This may be totally anecdotal but it “feels” like it started responding when, after I pushed, I kept it pushed for a second, and then gently released.

    Well maybe this is totally luck and yours still won’t work or maybe there’s something to it, and either the maneuver or the slight resistance somehow put it it back in place (assuming it is hardware related) or somehow fixed the “glitch” if it is software.

    Either way, what I’m describing above is in no way harming the iPad. I wasn’t pushing any harder than normal or trying to shake it or anything like that. No need to push harder. Although it did seem, at first, that when I would hold it pushed in for just a second longer than normal and then gently released, it started to respond.

    Don’t do anything that could damage your iPad, but try the above and see if it works for you. Give it a day or two. Maybe you’ll have the same “luck” that I did, and it’ll start working again.

    If not of course take it back to the Apple Store. But either way, if you are one of the unfortunate ones like me that this happened to let me know how it works out. I’d love to hear your experiences. And learn.