Just a little something for those of us that enjoy the music of Dave Matthews Band - A live feed of their concert.
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Playing For Change | Song Around The World “Stand By Me” from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.
http://playingforchange.com - From the award-winning documentary, “Playing For Change: Peace Through Music”, comes the first of many “songs around the world” being released independently. Featured is a cover of the Ben E. King classic by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it traveled the globe.
Play For Change - What a wonderful concept. This video and the campaign that goes along with is has been absolutely inspiring. Think about it… not just the technical merits but the message of it. Music is a universal language that we can all speak, that we can all connect to. Our world doesn’t need more war, we need more things in common, more hands to hold, more ways to get to know one another. Play For Change is the beginning of that mission.
Technically, I enjoyed the video too. It’s really cool that the single song can be brought together all over the world and then put together and work beautifully. It’s like the music group, The Postal Service - each musician recorded their track on a tape and then mailed it to the next to record theirs. So too did each of these musicians play their part and then got sliced and diced together.
Visit their website at Play For Change to learn more about their project. You can get involved by connecting on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, or buy their newest album just released (buy through their site so they get all the $$ instead of iTunes).
Please enjoy these other videos from Play For Change:
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It’s 2am and I’m still up. Tomorrow is the last day of classes for me as an undergraduate. I want to be in bed but I have procrastinated away my semester and am now paying for it. That said, there are 18 days 11 hours and 4 minutes until graduation according to my widget… that’s foreboding.
What am I procrastinating on right this moment? Well… it’s an assignment that was originally due two weeks ago for IS. I just finished an assignment that was due four weeks ago. I still have to prep on the concepts of pipes and design a pipe for class tomorrow. On the up side, I have nothing left except the final exam for finance, and I’ve completed all requirements for my networking and telecom class except for the take home final.
The way I’m looking at it now is this: I’ve spent 4 years doing the same gag, I’ve caught onto the game and now, with the end quite literally in sight, I am sort of hard pressed to stay concentrated. Truth be told, it’s hard to keep attention on any one thing right now. My head and attention is all over the place. Oh well. I’m getting it out of my system so that I can bang out work starting in July but that’s for another post.
Now back to my object oriented model building - wOOt.
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- Image via CrunchBase
That’s right, the little tweeting bird is all over the place on campus. Every department, administrative office, and student now has an @ handle. I walk down Commonwealth Avenue and hear college kids debating whether the posting to twitter is “tweeting” or “twitting” (I’m in the tweeting camp…). It’s just so strange to think that Twitter has become a main-stream(ish) service that the masses, at least at the college age/level, have seemed to adopt and run with.
Last week, my friends @DeanElmore, @JohnBattaglino and Tom O’Keefe (@bostontweet) led the first Boston University “tweet crawl.” Here’s a concept for you. Combine Twitter/social media, with the age-old tradition of imbibing intoxicating beverages and you’ve got yourself a dangerous combination. It seems that the crew didn’t have a schedule or even a route prepared but they tweeted their next stop and a crowd formed to follow through the standard BU haunts - the BU Pub, Cornwall’s, the Dugout.
It’s funny to think that I joined Twitter 643 days ago, according to www.whendidyoujointwitter.com - it was a time when twitter was still VERY new and definitely didn’t have the sort of following it does now. Really, it was just the insiders, the ones that knew about it because they were truly geeky. To say that you tweet, was an automatic admission of your geekiness and further, proof that you probably were of a technically inclined nature.
Twitter activities here at Boston University and in Boston as a whole have increased significantly of late. There was even a discussion of which campus in the Boston area was most with it when it came to twitter… I think BU won: Boston tweet debate. The real question here is whether or not you “get it” and use the service or just use it because everyone else is.
One can see this clearly by the high number of people with protected tweets. Very few hardcore twitter users will protect their tweets but so many students are worried about what employers can and will see, that they are cutting out the greater twitterverse in lieu of keeping their messages for their close friends.
I guess that means that the real question is why do you use twitter? I know why I do (a topic for another night), but why do YOU use twitter? P.S. you can follow me on twitter at @jamesconnors.
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- Image by wanderinghome via Flickr
At the core of most belief systems are a main set of rituals or acts that the group performs either together or on their own as part of their celebration of faith. Though not a religious act, I have a few rituals that I enjoy and that sometimes stand in the way of moving forward or being productive.
Cleaning My Room
Most mothers would love to hear this… unfortunately my mother knows the real source of this one. I can’t work in my room if it is dirty. Not even dirty in the sense of dust or dirt, but rather the clutter and chaos of being a college male.
I don’t pretend to understand it really. Perhaps it’s something about the energy in the room but I find myself constantly cleaning up the room - putting things away, doing laundry, vacuuming, making the bed, etc. whenever I need to work here - generally on the weekends.
So the next time you need to buckle down and do some work… especially if you need to procrastinate a little longer… consider cleaning your room and doing your laundry! It’s good for at least a couple hours of time killing and the OCD voices in your head will be satisfied.
Ironing
Shocking, I know! This might be a hold-over from the military academy thing (as most of these are…) but it’s a really productive thing… right? In all seriousness, there is something about making my dress clothes look THAT much better than they were when I took them out of the drier. Sure, they’re all wrinkle resistant dress shirts these days but that’s nothing a little light starch and a good hot iron can’t make look 100x better.
One late night of doing laundry sophomore or junior year in South Campus, a girl came up to me and complimented me on my folding skills as I was putting creases into my t-shirts as I folded them on the tables while they were still warm. She worked at Banana Republic and was trying to get me to come work for them to fold stuff… I thought not. BUT! It did remind me that I take great pride in stuff like that. At USAFA I had a near perfect record for my military inspections - one of the highest in my flight.
These days, though I do iron more dress clothes than I ever did before, the most relaxing moments are when I go through and heavy starch my CAP uniforms. There are days when the BDU’s (The camo uniforms) can stand up on their own when I’m done. Razor sharp arm creases, stiff front and back panels - so good.
Polishing Shoes and Boots
How ironic is it that this is THE most zen ritual that I have? It all started in high school when Civil Air Patrol met every Thursday night and sometimes on the weekends. In the beginning, I would spend hours trying to get any sort of shine out of my boots but over the years I picked up tricks that got my shoes looking like glass. Heading to USAFA, I was able to share this with my fellow classmates.
We would bond over late night polish parties. These polish parties were some of the few times the upperclassmen would leave us alone - maybe that’s where the big tie comes from. These days, I don’t have anyone else to shine shoes and boots with so it is a solitary thing that I do to refocus and clear my mind. It’s amazing how making tiny little circles with handkerchiefs and Kiwi polish can flush everything bad out of your head.
These are the rituals that bring me back to center, that relax me, that make me concentrate when I can’t normally focus. What sorts of things do you do to bring you back to center when everything else seems to be going crazy?
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It is officially the last week of my undergraduate education. Shit.
The last time I was in a similar situation, e.g. the last week of high school, I was looking out to this huge adventure that was laying before me. No, that adventure wasn’t the standard orientation, matriculation, and endless hours of waiting for elevators to move into your freshman dorm. No, I was waiting to hop on a plane with nothing more than the clothes on my back, the strung around my neck, and the knowledge that I was about to enter the military as part of the United States Air Force Academy class of 2009.
Though, slightly less forboding than going out in to the “real world” as I will be in a few short weeks, given the time in my life of each, I think the feelings are incredibly similar. It’s time like these that I start to reflect… and procrastinate. This week is even similar to the last week in Dublin, Ireland this time last year. We start counting off our activities as our “Last xyz” where the xyz is something that you would only do there: the last pub crawl, the last business class, the last frat party etc etc.
I am terrified that my list of lasts will miss so many things that I “should” have done while in college. I didn’t have the standard freshman experience, the military had a very different path there. I didn’t live on campus that first year at Boston University. I didn’t have to deal with gang showers (in Boston at least) and I never really frequented the fraternities on Trashford et all.
Following that same thought process but bringing it outside of the social education one gets at college, I’m afraid that I didn’t make the most out of the absolute gift of education that my parents have helped make possible for me. It is not the thought that I didn’t do my best or that I took the wrong classes but the worry is more along the lines of whether I took the “right” classes or not. Did I miss an elective that would have been amazing? Was there a different professor that would have been better? Should I have stayed in Engineering and not go to business?
Thinking like this isn’t productive.
I have decided that I am happy with where I am right now. I feel confident in my ability to go out into the workforce and do a great job. I know that I will succeed. That said, I cannot stop running the what if’s in my head. What if I didn’t go the Air Force Academy? What if Notre Dame had taken me off their waiting list? What if I had stayed in Engineering? What if?
Instead of spending hours working through the what if’s of life, I have found that it is best to deal with your actual reality. What did you actually do? Why did you do it? Ok, so you’ve got you past, your present… where are going now that you know these other two parts? How are you going to change the world? With that, I’ll leave you with one last piece of pondering:
As we are moving away from wherever has been our homes for the last 3-5+ years at school, we need to define where our home is. Home is where you go to re-energize, where you go to get in touch with yourself, where you feel at ease. For me, home is where ever I am. That is home for me because I need me to recharge, and I don’t need sentimental ties to arbitrary locations.
How do YOU know that you’re in the right place and that you’ve made the right decisions? Is it only with 20/20 hindsight that you know it?
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- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
A blogger I always admired once told me to never apologize for not updating your blog and he was doing very well for himself. So too, I will not apologize but I will go so far as to say that I have rejuggled my obligations in the internets and this is my sole priority.
It’s a wonderful spring here in Boston, MA at Boston University. Classes are almost out, jobs are being landed, professors are loosening up, and graduation looms on tomorrow’s horizon. Well, not really. We have 25 days left… that’s close enough. I can almost taste the amazingness of freedom.
Everyone is priming themselves for their next few weeks as we finish school, stumble through senior week, and finally walk across a stage to receive a small piece of paper that validates all of the effort I have exerted for the last four years. In these few short days, we must finish all of our illustrious classes with famous professors, grit our teeth through the pomp and circumstance that is graduation and finally, move on to bigger and “better” things.
I am one of the lucky ones. I have a job. For the last 6 months, I’ve known that I had a job upon graduation and finally found some information regarding when that new game would begin. I will be starting with Accenture on the 6th of July, the Monday following the 4th. I see this becoming an epic weekend. Along these lines, I am moving out of the coop from the get go. Some friends and I have an apartment on Beacon St. in Brookline, MA. I cannot wait to move in with these friends and to begin my life as a professional, a productive member of society.
Funnily enough, I am so excited with bringing my new experiences to the website. I want to share the new activities and observations to you… if you’re still listening out there. We are all on the brink of something amazing and the die is cast. Our course is set. We’ve been directing our boats for the last four years (or more) and now our course is set. Basically, that means it’s time for autopilot. It’s time to enjoy the moments we get to share with those we love and surround ourselves with. It is time for celebration.
Please look for jamesconnors.com to bring more and more content directly to you through RSS and the mighty interwebs. I hope that you enjoy where we go with this and stick around for the ride. Warm wishes and good health. Congratulations to all of my classmates in the class of 2009 and thank you to all of the parents that have made this a reality.
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To all that may have had an issue getting to the website, I’m very sorry. We have moved… well, I have moved. For a number of reasons, the hosting company that I was using, Bluehost.com, was not meeting my requirements:
- Their support personnel, though intelligent, have often been rude when responding to issues. They have straight up refused to help with an issue that was clearly on their end.
- Admin work they were performing in an unannounced maintenance window actually deleted my website.
- The shared hosting service that I was on was routinely overloaded and nothing was ever done to the load even after I had brought it up a number of times. There were times when my mostly text site would take nearly 40 seconds to load… in internet time, that was an age.
So what have I done? Well, I’ve taken action and seen an opportunity here. Not only will I NEVER DO BUSINESS WITH THEM AGAIN, I will be taking all of my properties over to Godaddy.com. I’ve had good experiences with Godaddy thus far and have even recommended them to clients and friends alike. Goodbye Bluehost. Take your slow service and unresponsive techs and keep them to yourself.
The new project is ambitious. I have left the traditional ’shared hosting’ behind for the next step up in the evolution of my digital life. For the time being, all of the North West Wind Productions properties - jamesconnors.com, collegetechcentral.com, bualumni.org, and buakpsi.com - will be hosted on a virtual dedicated server. This move has started this past week and will continue through the next month. Each property will move on its own schedule depending on the critical nature of the content.
I’m proud to say that the old website, Jamesmconnors.com, is now relaunched as jamesconnors.com - hopefully this will be easier for people to find and get involved with. So far, so good. I’ve been able to make some good changes thus far and the site has never been faster. At the same time, I’m getting some amazing experience configuring in a linux environment and it’s really nice to have the added horsepower of a virtual dedicated server.
Hopefully you’re seeing improvements to the site as we’re moving forward too. But, I’m curious. Where do you host your website/blog? Do you use a hosted service like wordpress.com or blogger? Do you opt for shared hosting? Virtual dedicated or fully hosted?
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Today is a historic day. We are about to swear in our first black president. Not too far back in our history, our beloved country subjected anyone of a different race to slavery and worse but now Barack Obama will lead our country into a new chapter in our history.
So, around this country, men and women will pause for a few moments of their day and tune into the inauguration on TV, streamed online, or listen in on the radio. Thousands more have swarmed to the nation’s capital, Washington D.C., to honor our new president and celebrate the closing of our last.
I am sitting here in my apartment, relaxing with a cup of tea, watching the events unfold on NBC. It’s an odd feeling that I have right now. Am I fond of President Bush? No, not really. However, I do have to respect that he has kept our country safe following the tragedy of September 11, 2001. The circumstances that surrounded his presidency have been the most extreme that I’ve seen in my lifetime. BUT
It’s time for Change.
I am excited for Barack Obama to take office today. I am excited to see what he says. I am excited for our country to get back to the business of being a nation leading the rest of the world. Let’s make the change by being the Change YOU Want to See.
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It’s been a while since I posted last and I’ve been looking for a reason, an impetus to start blogging again. Well, my friend Jenn over at www.youllgrowtoloveme.com tagged me in an interview meme. Of course I wanted to take part, but then I saw the questions. Oh well - here are the answers to her juiciest questions:
1. How many times have you been naked in public? Elaborate.
I guess the first question is what is public? I can’t really remember any time that I’ve been out streaking or naked in public on purpose. The only time that I remember was a hot summer day at Aquabhagan - a water park in Maine. I was on the racing slide that goes incredibly fast and you race your friend in the lane next to you. When I hit the bottom pool, my bottoms decided that they had had enough and slipped right off. My times naked in public = 1.
2. Now that you’ve been knighted, what else is there to look forward to in life?
As amazing as being knighted has been, there is plenty more to look forward to. I’m still waiting for “the one” - the woman that I spend the rest of my life with. I’m still looking forward to my first job and even my last job. I’m looking forward to having children, a dog, a family. I can’t wait to go skydiving, continue to blog and write. I look forward to meeting all the rest of the people that will be part of the story known as my life.
3. What is your favorite sound in the world? Why?
I think my favorite sound is the complete lack of sound when I am out in the woods alone except for nature all around. Living in the city, there aren’t many times of quiet… I mean COMPLETE silence. When my mother’s side of the family went whitewater rafting down the Grand Canyon, I experienced a complete silence that was indeed “deafening.” Yes, the river burbled at the shore and the wind blew through the grass but the air was completely devoid of human sounds. I found the quiet comforting, rejuvenating, and personal.
4. What is the best thing about women?
I think the best thing about women is that they make men want to be better men - at least when things are going well. Have you ever noticed that a coed apartment is generally cleaner than the frat house you used to party at? Have you ever seen the way that men dress when they’re trying to impress women? What about the man that learns about something from a woman and because they said something, they stick to the change. Recently, my friend Rachel made a cup of tea for me while I was sick. I’ve had tea before but her lack of coffee drinking and this amazing cup of tea seemed to spark something within me. Since that day, I’ve forgone coffee and slashed my caffeinated beverage intake to nearly none. Women are great - and they’re pretty too.
5. How would you propose to me?
Jenn, the one who tagged me on this, loves to travel. She went abroad while in college and was in a different city each weekend for a time. At the same time, I have always wanted to travel with someone I love because I think there is nothing better for two people than to experience something together and make some amazing memories. This particular trip would be throughout Europe, backpacking style. In Paris, my favorite city in Europe, we would spend the day seeing museums, the Tower, and lounging by the river eating a baguette. As night falls we would walk towards the Tower once more and the timing would be perfect where it flashes just as I get on my knee and ask her to marry me.
Okay so here’s the deal. It’s now YOUR turn to be interviewed! Here’s how:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me!”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. Update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you get to ask them five questions.
Even if you’ve already been interviewed by somebody, you can still play. I’ll be sure to e-mail you new and exciting questions
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