SailorJ.com

Author: sailorj

  • Remind your friends, “Know Your Audience”

    Hello 2019! Time to have a serious conversation to my politically minded friends. I am glad you are thinking about the country and politics. But I would caution you about where and how you post your thoughts on the subject these days, but particularly on Facebook. If you are unaware, you may be exposing your material to a public audience for some of your private thoughts that you may only want to share with just your friends or even just closest of friends.

    You might say, well, who cares? This is who I am and it doesn’t matter. This is true, until you realize that you have an employer, or organization that you represent that may be feeling some guilt by association.

    I know we all think we are on the right side of history with our political views. But the truth is that no one is going to change your mind, and you are not going to change anyone else’s mind either.

    If you feel your are going to explode if you don’t post your political views, try an anonymous twitter handle, join a private facebook group, or limit the audience for your facebook posts.

    Bottom line is, be smart. Don’t spread hate, and fear and lies. Your reputation is on the line, as well as your friendships. Think about it.

  • Change is the only thing that is constant.

    I am pretty sure that Calvin and Hobbes has nailed it with this one. No one really likes change. Change is super hard. I have always heard, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. But you know, things don’t get better if we aren’t striving to make them better.

    One of the most difficult things about change is leaving our comfort zone. Maybe it is changing your relationship status or getting a new job or even changing your routine.

    But change is the constant in this world. Look at yourself today and then look back a year, or 5 years, and see how far you’ve come.

    Then there is good ol’ January 1st and the New Year’s resolution. We resolve to change. We consciously make an effort to do the one thing we resist. Usually it is a resolution to lose weight, or something to be a better person.

    The hardest thing is is letting go to something you are used to. Maybe it’s your favorite restaurant or toxic situations, or the safety of income, because the risk for an opportunity seems too great.

    But in the end whether we consciously make a decision to change or have it thrust upon us, change is the one thing that’s guaranteed. Our biggest hurdle is how we choose to deal with it.

  • 30 Day Song Challenge

    So there was a photo posted in my twitter stream and I thought it was a great challenge. I like the post a day challenges, because they are engaging and fun.

    Here is the text of it, but I’ll also post the image file that I saw so you can repost either if you like or even this post. I would recommend letting people know to hashtag it with #30SongsD1 or whatever, then we can find songs that are being posted for whatever day you are doing. You can start the challenge anytime, you don’t have to wait for the 1st day of a month. Have fun.

    Day 1: A song you like with a color in the title.

    Day 2: A song you like with a number isn’t he title.

    Day 3. A song that reminds you of summertime.

    Day 4: A song that reminds you of someone you would rather forget about.

    Day 5: A song that needs to be played LOUD.

    Day 6: A song that makes you want to dance.

    Day 7: A song to drive to.

    Day 8: A song about drugs or alcohol.

    Day 9: A song that makes you happy.

    Day 10: A song that makes you sad.

    Day 11: A song that you never get tired of.

    Day 12: A song from your preteen years.

    Day 13: One of your favorite 70’s Songs.

    Day 14: A song that you loved played at your wedding.

    Day 15: A song that is covered by another artist.

    Day 16: One of your favorite classical songs.

    Day 17: A song that would sing a duet with on karaoke.

    Day 18: A song from the year that you were born.

    Day 19: A song that makes you think about life.

    Day 20: A song that has many meanings to you.

    Day 21: A favorite song with a person’s name in the title.

    Day 22: A song that moves you forward.

    Day 23: A song that you think everybody should listen to.

    Day 24: A song by a band you wish were still together.

    Day 25: A song by an artist no longer living.

    Day 26: A song that makes you want to fall in love.

    Day 27: A song that breaks your heart.

    Day 28: A song by an artist with a voice that you love.

    Day 29: A song that you remember from your childhood.

    Day 30: A song that reminds you of yourself.

  • Nike, the NFL and defending your right…

    Many people learned over the weekend that Colin Kaepernick would be the face of a Nike campaign. Much to the outrage of the far right conservatives who believe that the flag is being disrespected, Nike took a stand to not be on the sidelines.

    We used to have a saying here in America:

    I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it.

    The discourse on speech that people don’t agree with has become more than toxic. Even my fellow veterans, many are blinded by their reverence to the flag that stops them from seeing the real problems in the world.

    They and many others seethe with anger when others do not conform to the way that they pay tribute to the flag. They forget that the flag represents all Americans regardless of their reverence to the sacred cloth of red white and blue.

    They forget that they pledge allegiance not only to the flag, but to the Republic… with liberty and justice for all.

    And so Kaepernick kneels, as he would at a grave to honor a fallen soldier. He doesn’t burn it, wipe his ass with it, drag it on the ground, but rather mourns for her, and looks at the angry people around who’s pledge are just empty words and false promises.

    He tries to remind people that there are many in the US that do not get justice, and are in fact denied it regularly. That is what this is all about. Maybe we need a moment of silence to remember those who have fallen because their were denied justice.

    Without ranting about flags and meanings, let’s just get back to agreeing to allow people the honor of speaking, and supporting their right to speak without having to agree with it.

    The angry people who will burn their Nike shoes are on the wrong side of history. I don’t have an answer when things will change, but they can’t while Americans are in denial and are too concerned with whether you stand or kneel than if children are dying in the streets.

  • How to fix @MoviePass

    If you are a movie person, maybe you finally broke down and said, I’ll try out this Movie Pass thing. I was skeptical at first, but I bought in and registered, and they certainly began delivering what they promised. I got to watch lots of great movies for $9.99 a month, unlimited. Then all of a sudden, it was as if the system moved upside-down and we began to see a sea of changes and even cases of not being able to see a movie using the pass.

    As a consumer, I want to consume this product, but we are all sitting here wondering, why were they able to do this? What was this business model? I still have yet to figure out how they are trying to make this work and what they are doing behind the scenes. But because I personally would like to see them succeed, I have some ideas that may make the difference that can return the service to solvency.

    • Collect non-private data from us. Your user base can help you develop a lot of information that is sellable that we will voluntarily provide. Imagine getting public opinion data that would be separated from being personally identifiable?
    • Market to us! Why aren’t you trying to get us to watch a particular movie each week. Imagine getting movie studios helping you to promote their movies?
    • What about coupons to get us to buy things to help promote a product through the app?
    • How about working through theater chains to enhance their loyalty programs? Do you have data on how many people buy concessions that use the movie pass? This would be helpful for marketing purposes. If people provide the data, maybe you could get theaters to help give you a discount on the cost of a Moviepass ticket.
  • These are just a few ideas. So please fix the service so we can enjoy it for years to come.

  • The blog… the long form tweet…

    Maybe part of society’s problem is that we suffer from TL;dr. Otherwise known as too long, didn’t read. Twitter has gone from microblogging, so now having double the characters available.

    Blogs, real blogs like this one are so important, but how do we bring them back from the edge of obscurity? How do we get people to read? How do we get blogging to be relevant once again?

    Something to ponder.

  • Apple destroys the Social Web for the good of us all.

    By SailorJ

    If you haven’t noticed, Apple released information about their new operating systems, iOS, MacOS, TVOS, and Apple WatchOS. One of the features that seems to be telling, is how they are going to increase your privacy and help you ween yourself away from spending too much time on your device. Some people think this is just a gimmicky thing, but in fact it is not gimmicky at all. If I was Facebook or Twitter, I would be carefully watching my stock price, as Apple users begin to limit their time using these services, and for great reasons, to re-engage with life. What is Apple’s end game anyways, since the addictive nature of the device is what helps to sell it to the masses? Why lead the next change in culture? There is a lot to be said for people to use their device as a tool for good, and Apple may think that people can discover more exciting things to do than Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Apple is right, as people do have a lot more apps and things that can be done on their Apple iDevices. Maybe you write that novel, edit that video, take amazing photos and edit them, there certainly are a lot of things that you can do. I’m just scratching the surface. Yes it is an amazing productivity tool, but it’s a time waster as well. That’s great when wasting time is what you want or need to do, but even more is our Pavlovian response to everything, every notification, and how quickly we feel we have to respond. We will learn to breathe again and reduce our stress in the long run. We won’t worry about what people are posting or saying or doing, because we will be living in the moments of our lives, instead of just watching the moments of others, like some reality TV show.

    There is nothing wrong with posting to Social Media and doing everything that we do now, as long as we find a level of moderation and do live in the world of Fear of Missing Out.

    I’ll admit it, i’m an addict to my iDevices, and I’m looking forward to weening myself away from the time killing and refocus on the things that will make me re-engaged back into the best of life.

  • Who lives with a broken heart?

    There is love and there is unrequited love and there is Romeo and Juliet type love. I wouldn’t call it forbidden, just bad timing.

    The hardest thing about love isn’t finding the right person, it’s finding the right person at the right time.

    We all grow and change and

  • What do we need “Social Media” for?

    You might ask, why do I need Facebook or Twitter or whatever? And you would be correct to think that you probably don’t if you do not care about reaching out and engaging an audience. More importantly an audience that wants to read your information because they subscribed to have it show up in their feed, just like you may be reading this article.

    Back quite a while ago, the promise of feed syndication was something complicated that probably scared a lot of people. But it is the modern solution to decentralize ourselves from the group think that we have been exposed to by the likes of the social media giants. Start your own blog, host it yourself, it’s cheap enough to do. The problem comes with engagement. What platform does the metadata of likes, views, and comments get used? How many logins do you need to deal with news and blogs and friends postings. Twitter was called a microblogging service at one time. Now it’s just free form open texting at best.

    We like our walled gardens. But all walled gardens eventually give way to the next big thing. If you’ve been around long enough, you watched them all fall, from Fidonet, AOL, eWorld, IRC, MySpace, and so on… the only constant is change.

    Apple has a chance to create a metadata “safe space” because of the user base it has, and it’s direct os for mobile and long term use of RSS. How serious are they about security these days? But they could decentralize the Social Network space. Google tried many times and have not been very successful in their Social Offerings.

    I worry about the Narrowing of voices. People being banned on different networks, government regulations restricting free speech, and the obscuring of facts by people unaware how they are being marketed to.

    Do not take your privacy and freedom for granted. The chance to get it back once the cat is out of the bag is not very good. Most people are out of some bag, but who knows how far it will go, or what it could mean? Such as insurance, jobs, etc… who knows, or worse yet, wholesale monitoring of people bypassing our 4th Amendment rights.

    We do need Social Media to stay in touch with our network of friends and colleagues. What we don’t need is companies exposing our person data for financial gain.

  • DNA Tests…

    I recently had DNA testing done and I used to separate DNA testing companies. So basically I found out that I am of one lineage only 99.7% in fact. But what I realized is that I believe we all hope to find out some thing magical in our DNA testing. It’s as if we want to know that we are part something else. We want to find out that we are a mix of many different cultures and many different things that eventually make up the person we are today. So I guess in someways I was a bit disappointed because I was hoping to have this special connection to something else and in fact I didn’t. But then you wonder how positive it could be that your DNA line comes basically from the single stock of a tree. Usually something like this would have a lot of DNA issues where people have birth defects and things like that but in my case according to the markers for genetic illnesses I had no signs of any issues whatsoever.

    It’s pretty easy to go and have your DNA tested these days and the prices pretty reasonable but I think that the majority of people will not find themselves to be extremely surprised and at this point with the limited numbers of people who have the testing done you probably will not find many close relatives if any at all through DNA testing. Secretly I was hoping to find out that I had a stepbrother or stepsister but that didn’t happen either. So maybe in time more people get tested and I’ll find out more to the mystery of who I am even though I can pretty much tell that there isn’t a mystery to it at all.