Long Time

Although I am making this post from school, the router issue has been fixed. I've just been a bit busy, and I had gotten out of the habit of posting (if I could ever have been said to be IN that habit).

I started a new job the first week of November, doing support for people using a complicated website-based contract management and quoting tool. I was pulled immediately after the classroom training to go to a more specialized team on the same project, so it's been a lot of learning.

Last quarter I had:
Audio Visual Techniques (A)
Instructional Design (A)
Written Analysis (C)

AV Tech took a big chunk of time, but... I made a movie. I have not uploaded it to youtube yet, but I will do so sooner or later (probably on Christmas break).

This quarter I have:
Managing Game Development (which is more or less Flash 101)
Web Scripting and Authoring I (html, css and dreamweaver)
Ethics

I have also come back to FFXI as I am doing better monetarily to where I can pay some money for something even if there will be times I won't have time to play at all. I've still got the DarkAssassins pearl and Riykere is still on a lot. Shinjo joined the Army apparently.

I am still living in WI, where I have lived all of my life. We've been getting hit with Blizzaga IIIs pretty consistently already this year.

Besides that I am working on making a game with a team of fellow students/friends. When I can share more about that, I will.

The Brewers made the playoffs this year, if I didn't mention that before.

Another Short Video and Picture(s)

Finally got my fighter model complete. Just have to skin the darn thing now... I better go find a couple photoshop for dummies books I guess! Pictures follow:

Link

Link to a thread that I have more screenies on. (Didn't feel like uploading the 5 pics a second time)

Really Short Videos From Modeling Class

3D Modeling Class

3D modeling is a very in depth subject. We're using 3DS Max, which is made by Autodesk, and you can do incredible things with it. It seems like it's all going over my head, but I'm plugging away, and I've done a couple of cool things so far. Here's one:

Dys Functions!

You may or may not find this insightful.

Removing the ‘Dys’ From Function

By Philip Morey

The key to overcoming the Five Dysfunctions, whether in an online or a traditional business setting, is having the right people, especially the leadership. Here are some strategies that will help a leader succeed.

Absence of Trust is the biggest issue facing a team. If the team members don’t trust each other, it leads to a Lack of Communication, which then turns into the remaining three dysfunctions. The key to having trust between team members is to… have trustworthy, responsible team members in the first place. If you’re team is full of slothful liars, all the teambuilding exercises in the world will do nothing for you.

If you do have good team members, Lack of Communication may come down to technological difficulties in an online setting. However, with a good IT department, that should be of little concerned and it remains on the leader’s shoulders to foster good communication throughout the team. The leader does this by setting an example of open, honest communication to all the members. There should also be plenty of opportunities made for communication to take place, yet not call an over abundance of meetings or flooding the correspondence channels with ‘babble’, which impedes the progress of the actual work.

A good team leader heads off Fear of Conflict with good communication and impartial judgment of the results. The leader needs to be the front runner in paying attention to the status of the project. If the leader is paying attention to the results, the good communication ensures that the rest of the team can’t fall prey to Inattention to Results.

Following the above principles, the leader will be aware of any problems in the project and have the ability to follow through with the necessary means to keep on track. Firm, consistent follow through, as well as the leader showing personal accountability to the rest of the team, will keep the rest of the team from Avoidance of Accountability.

The thing to note through all of this, is that having the right people is really the most important factor. A good leader with bad, or just the wrong, people will be no better off than a good team with poor leadership. Sadly, most failed groups actually have bad leadership AND members. In that case you can pretty much throw all these ideas out the window and have a corporate merger.

God Save the Trees

The trees of the world are thankful for the online revolution. Sure, from 1995-2000, Canada doubled it’s paper production, and paper usage has been estimated to have increased by 40% since the popularization of e-mail[1], but just think of the amount of knowledge out there on the World Wide Web; tree-friendly information. A major advantage of online communication is the availability of knowledge without sacrificing our environment.



It’s impossible to say exactly how many web sites there are on the World Wide Web, due to it’s dynamic nature, but, according to Thomas Boutell’s calculations based on there being over 108 million individual websites counted by the Netcraft Web Server Survey in February, there are at least 19.2 billion individual web pages[2]. A ream of paper weighs about 6 lbs, so 19.2 billion pages is the equivalent of 115,200 tons of paper just to print off every site once. That’s a lot of information available without harming a single being of deciduous or coniferous ancestry.



Granted, the accuracy of a lot of the information on the web is suspect, but, having such a huge amount of information at my fingertips, with out defoliating our world is a strong advantage of online communication. Now we just have to get people to stop printing off all of their e-mails.



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[1] The ePaper Revolution; Geographical; Aug2005, Vol. 77 Issue 8, p36-37, 2p, 1c Ebsco Host, Acedemic Search Elite, kwd: paper usage

[2] WWW FAQs: How Many Websites Are There?. Boutell.com, 2-15-2007 Thomas Boutell. http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/sizeofweb.html