Changing the Odds

Ariel wants to be where the people are!   © 1989 Walt Disney Studios

Many people believe that success is just a matter of luck. Some people just happen to be in the right place at the right time.

I believe there is validity in this point of view. It is good to be lucky. However, in a highly mobile society with compulsory education and an unlimited flow of information at our fingertips, all of us have tremendous opportunities to improve our probability of being in the right place at the right time and recognizing opportunity when it appears.

Knowledge and preparation are the first step in enhancing serendipity. It is important to spend time everyday learning and some of that time should focus on the following questions:

• What industries and companies are going to be growing in the future? 
• What skills are required to lead in one of those growing industry?  
• What is your plan for acquiring those skills?

Ariel in Disney's Little Mermaid expressed the next step in these lyrics:

I wanna be where the people are
I wanna see, wanna see them dancin'!

I'm ready to know what the people know
Ask 'em my questions and get some answers

If you want to increase your chances for success, get out!  Get out of your office! Get out of your immediate circle of friends! Get out of your comfort zone!

Go find and meet the people who are creating the future.  Spend more time with customers, more time at trade shows, more time interacting with the thought leaders in your field.

What have you done lately to improve your odds of success?

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Closer to the Heart

Heart shaped stone at the Bay of Stoer ©Ulrich Hartmann CCL

I have been listening to some classic Rush recordings recently and have found myself troubled by the opening line of the song Closer to the Heart. Overall, I like the sentiment expressed by the song and agree that each of us play a role in making the world a better place.


The phrase that bothers me is "And the men who hold high places, must be the ones who start." My concern is that the belief is naive and actually discourages action by ordinary people.

To me, "the men who hold high places" implies leadership in government. In a democratic society, those who get elected are those that embrace the beliefs of the majority of the population and offend the fewest members. This process makes it highly unlikely that any new initiative will begin at the top. Political leaders follow public opinion, they do not lead it.

Change begins at the bottom, usually with those neglected and reviled by the majority. Through hard work and time, justice is accepted by more and more people.  Eventually, support for change crosses a tipping point where those in governmental leadership positions are willing to risk lending their support.

If we wait for change to begin with government, we will never mold a new reality.  Change must begin with churches, businesses, non governmental agencies and individuals.

Change must begin with you and me!

I am not able to change the historic lyrics to classic rock songs, but if I could, I would rewrite the opening line of Closer to the Heart to:

And the ones who care most deeply
Must be the ones who start!

To mold a new reality
Closer to the heart
Closer to the heart

The blacksmith and the artist
Reflect it in their art
They forge their creativity
Closer to the heart
Closer to the heart

Philosophers and ploughmen
Each must know his part
To sow a new mentality
Closer to the heart
Closer to the heart

You can be the captain
I will draw the chart
Sailing into destiny
Closer to the heart

   Rush

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Looking Forward

The Impossible Movie

© 2011 - Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

Life of Pi, Ang Lee's magical movie about a boy and a tiger trapped in a lifeboat together, surprised the pundits by topping $22 million in its first week. The movie features the most beautiful 3D cinematography that I have ever seen and a storyline that is as unusual as it is heart warming.

When director Ang Lee first read Yann Martell's novel ten years ago, he felt that making it into a movie would be "technically almost impossible" with the tools available at the time. However, he also "suspected that a new film language might open up the chances with this particular project."

3D Camera System from the Cameron | Pace Group

The Fusion 3D camera and workflow developed by James Cameron, Vince Pace and the Cameron | Pace Group along with advances in computer generated imagery made the impossible possible. "The 3D is an integrated part of the art form and I feel like the technology that we created has contributed to a masterpiece," Cameron explains.

The 3D imagery in Life of Pi rivals, perhaps exceeds, the beauty of Cameron's Avatar. Don't miss it!

What is your favorite 3D movie?

James Cameron and Vince Pace on Life of Pi

Life of Pi Official Trailer

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Quotations sourced from:
http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_22005587/life-pis-ang-lee-talks-3d-casting-and
http://www.iamrogue.com/news/movie-news/item/7706-life-of-pi-featurettes.html

"suspected that a new film language might open up the chances with this particular project."

Read more: "Life of Pi's" Ang Lee talks 3D, casting, and adapting the impossible - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_22005587/life-pis-ang-lee-talks-3d-casting-and#ixzz2DGl40EmK
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

Read more: "Life of Pi's" Ang Lee talks 3D, casting, and adapting the impossible - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_22005587/life-pis-ang-lee-talks-3d-casting-and#ixzz2DGkummkP
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

"suspected that a new film language might open up the chances with this particular project."

Read more: "Life of Pi's" Ang Lee talks 3D, casting, and adapting the impossible - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_22005587/life-pis-ang-lee-talks-3d-casting-and#ixzz2DGkummkP
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

"suspected that a new film language might open up the chances with this particular project."

Read more: "Life of Pi's" Ang Lee talks 3D, casting, and adapting the impossible - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_22005587/life-pis-ang-lee-talks-3d-casting-and#ixzz2DGkummkP
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

November in Columbia

Jesse Hall in the Fall

November 10th was a beautiful day in Columbia so I grabbed a camera and went for a walk around the MU campus and downtown.  Here are some images I captured.

Memorial Union Surrounded by Color

Yellow Leaves and Red Bricks at MU's Lowry Hall

Looking Up!

Red and Green

Jesse Through the Columns

Enter and Learn

The Quadrangle and Columns at MU from Jesse Hall

Framed by Pines

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3D Printing Crosses an Inflection Point

A few days ago, a major inflection point occurred in the history of manufacturing and the progress of 3D printing. For the first time, a consumer company has started offering replacement parts for its products as 3D CAD drawings that can be printed on demand at a 3D service bureau or on a 3D printer at home.

Teenage Engineering, a Swedish company that produces electronic music synthesizers, has posted the models on Shapeways. Any customer can download the model for free or order the part to be manufactured on-demand by Shapeways.

The production of replacement parts on-demand with a 3D printer has been predicted by manufacturing experts for years including Scott Crumb, the CEO of Stratasys, one of the primary companies building 3D printing equipment. Now that it is beginning to happen, I expect the trend will accelerate and transform the way companies produce and stock parts.

3D printing creates parts by building them layer by layer based upon a 3D computer model. Each layer is added to the layer below until the part is completed. This additive process is completely different from the way most items are manufactured.  Traditional machining processes start with a block of material and remove material until the part desired is completed. The additive process can be much faster and easier for creating prototypes and small production runs.

The term 3D printing is seldom used by its practitioners.  The process was originally called "stereolithography" which is the name of the first method used to manufacture additively. As other types of technology were introduced, the term "rapid prototyping" became popular because that was the most common use for the machines. Currently, the preferred term is "additive manufacturing" because the method is used increasing for short run manufacturing and producing highly specialized products.

Whatever you choose to call it, the speed and costs of the additive process are continually improving and the technology will be highly disruptive to traditional manufacturing.  Teenage Engineering's new approach to parts support is one of many inflection points we will cross over the next decade.



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Recreating Classic Black and White

Early Eastman Kodak Camera

It has been 120 years since the Eastman Kodak Company introduced the first consumer cameras and film. For the first half of that period, most consumer photography was limited to black and white. Classic black and white prints have a crisp, clear quality that is seldom matched by contemporary printing methods.

A classic black and white photographic print is produced by exposing an image on a sheet of paper coated with a light-sensitive silver halide emulsion. Where light reaches the silver halide crystals, they are converted to metallic silver. Chemical processing then develops the metallic silver into the dark areas of the print and washes the unconverted silver halide away.  The silver that remains in the image generates the crisp image that we expect in classic black and white prints.

In the 1960s, consumers began capturing images on color film and receiving color prints from their labs. While the color photographic process is also based upon exposure of silver halide into metallic silver, the final result is different. Color print processing activates color dyes that are coupled with the silver. Once the dyes are activated, the silver is washed completely out of the color print. Initially, the dyes in color prints were not very stable which is why color prints from the 1960s and 70s are often faded and off-color.

In the early years of color photography, consumer labs offered both color and black and white processing. During the 1990s however, black and white had become such a niche product that many consumer labs began printing black and white images using color materials. Now, instead of one layer of crisp metallic silver, the black and white image was reproduced using cyan, magenta and yellow dye. The black areas were seldom black.

I am excited about a new method for printing wall decor that recreates the crisp clear quality of a classic black and white print. The metal prints offered by Black River Imaging and other professional labs are made with black ink and the metallic background brings out the timeless character of black and white photography.

Black and White Metal Print from Black River Imaging

Would some of your images be more interesting in black and white?  Have you tried having them printed on metal?


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What's Your Pinball

If I told what it takes
to reach the highest high,
You'd laugh and say "nothings that simple."

 Pete Townsend

In 1969, more than a decade before Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's experiments on Flow, Pete Townsend and the Who explained the phenomena quite accurate in their rock opera Tommy. Frightened and abused into a catatonic state, the apparently "deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball." The enlightened state induced by the game sets Tommy free.

He stands like a statue,
Becomes part of the machine.
Feeling all the bumpers
Always playing clean.
He plays by intuition,
The digit counters fall.
That deaf dumb and blind kid,
Sure plays a mean pinball!

He ain't got no distractions
Can't hear those buzzers and bells.
Don't see no lights a flashing,
Plays by sense of smell.
Always gets a replay,
Never tilts at all.
That deaf dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball!

Whether you call it "flow", "in the zone", or "in the groove", all of us have been so absorbed with an activity that nothing else seems to matter. This feeling of total involvement, when ego falls away and time flies, brings a sense of elation unlike any other.

For Tommy, that sense of elation came from playing pinball. For others it might be playing golf, skiing, building a website, writing a blog post, quilting, playing the guitar or questing in Worlds of Warcraft.

To reach the flow state, there must be a balance between the challenge of the task and the skill of the individual. The skill level and challenge level must be matched and high.

When do you feel the joy of total concentration?  What's your Pinball?


I'm free
I'm free
And freedom tastes of reality
I'm free
I'm free
And I'm waiting for you to follow me


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