Life and Code » Life

Why I Don’t Believe in New Years Resolutions

karl.lockhart — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 17:16:40 +0000

I am always asked what my resolutions for the new year are, people are sometimes taken aback that I don’t make resolutions when the calendar year rolls over, y++. That said, here is the short version of my feelings on the subject. New Year resolutions imply static goals to me – don’t get me wrong I think the new year is a great time to examine the progress on goals and make new goals. I do feel that once a year to make broad sweeping resolutions is too long an interval to make any kind of measured progress on a resolution. I much prefer a dynamic approach to goal setting as smaller goals tend to be easier to measure and accomplish. Broad sweeping resolutions hardly ever are meaningful – Stretch goals are awesome, making small measurable changes often work better than nebulous ideas like, I am going to lose weight this year or to the extreme, I am going to work on world peace this year. I will agree these are both good goals, but without a specific plan both are pretty meaningless and it is almost certain that neither will happen. So I guess, really, what I am saying is that deciding on December 31 that you will change major things without a specific plan is equal to running at full speed into the darkness with no idea of why or where you are going. I am a big believer in goal setting, but in general the only thing broad goals are useful for is general direction/policy. So to save yourself the FAIL that most experience a year after they decide to do whatever thing they planned to the year before my suggestion is simple.

Make simple goals that you can actually accomplish in the time period. The goals should be specific and quantifiable and the review period should be way less than a year.

I Miss Unlimited Data

karl.lockhart — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:44:54 +0000

Today, I am mourning my unlimited data plan. I got my first limit warning email from AT&T, a courteous but bubble bursting email/text message. It just reminds me that I miss my unlimited data. In reality, I didn’t think that I was that big of a data user. Music is a big part of my life though, and I am usually streaming Last.fm (iamzerokos — my username) in the car and at work most days. I just miss the sky being the limit, don’t like living under this AT&T imposed glass ceiling.

One day, one photo

karl.lockhart — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:54:15 +0000

So one of my friends posted an article about a guy who took one Polaroid a day for 18 years. It occurs to me that this is an awesome way to document your life.

Being a tech guy, I have the resources to make this hap.pen and have decided to follow in this photographer/film maker’s footsteps. So, here we go. I will rely on my blog here at http://www.karlockhart.com along with my photo album at http://foto.karlockhart.com. the underlying technologies being WordPress and Gallery 2. I saw the need to have a camera I can take with me, something more portable than my D60, and as a result I have decided on the Olympus X-560WP. This camera is described, by Olympus, as waterproof and sporty going on to describe it as being able to ‘survive whatever you can dish out.’ On paper it is the perfect camera for the job, and $70 bucks off retail via http://www.dealnews.com doesn’t hurt either.

I see this experimental homage as a great way to document life and as a great way to practice my photography. My intention is to snap compelling shots that represent the highlight of my day, or something I just really want to share. I have decided there will be no captions and no descriptive photo names, so that I do not color the interpretation of the pictures. I plan to start this project today, so photo quality will vary as cameras change.

Links related to this post:

http://bit.ly/caXOwk - the article that inspired me

Olympus X-560WP – Digital camera – compact – 10.0 Mpix – optical zoom: 3 x – supported memory: xD, microSD – green

UPDATE

Sept 1, 2010 - http://daily.karlockhart.com

Life and Code 2 – SEO suicide

karl.lockhart — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:24:41 +0000

The new ‘Life and Code’ launched yesterday with not much fanfare. I had been talking for while about a refresh and really the time is right for a new site.

There really wasn’t too much wrong with the old site, but I felt a re-launch was not the worst move I could make. As life changes, we too must adapt and I have decided to adapt in the focus and execution of my personal blog. The old blog will move to my development machine, probably.

Looking forward to a more focussed blog.