Last Friday we went and saw Toy Story 3 in a theater. We caught the last showing before 5, which in the old days meant we caught the last Matinee, but not now, because a Matinee showing is anything before 3. We avoided the 3D and saw the old-fashioned 2D version and yet our tickets were still $21.00 – $10.50 apiece. For a Pixar film I would probably pay more (and multiple times – I hope to see Toy Story 3 again before it leaves theaters) but $21 is a lot for an hour and a half of entertainment. It’s high enough that when I pay that much I am not willing to risk an crappy film.

Ever since I got married, well, probably even before then but more so since, I have tried to be very intentional about how I spend my money and on what. This applies to everything from food to entertainment to furniture. And in attempting to wrangle in my foolish spending habits developed through years of being a mindless consumer, I’ve realized that a lot of what I spend my money on does not give me benefits that justify the cost.

There is a hidden dilemma for the modern consumer that corporations work hard to hide; the dilemma of what standard of living your income allows you to have. What I mean is that Chinese factories and low cost big box retailers have made easily available to us a great deal of luxuries that until about 50 years ago weren’t within reach for the middle class. But the tradeoff is that most of these consumer goods are really shoddy – they don’t cost much but they don’t last long either.

Freya and I have a lot of books so this year we went looking for a new bookshelf. The first thing we found was that no one sells bookshelves much any more, apparently they aren’t in demand. But the second thing that we found was that we had two choices – very affordable bookshelves that were primarily made of particle board or rather expensive bookshelves that were made from solid wood or metal. This choice is one that is presented to us regularly but we just don’t realize it. We can save money and buy something cheap that will have to be replaced once it inevitably breaks, or we can pay lots of money for something that won’t need to be replaced for a long, long time.

The choice comes in the form of food – of cheap fast food that kills us more quickly and tastes the same no matter what part of the country you are in versus healthier food that tastes better and is good for our health. The choice comes in the form of clothes – of having lots of cheap clothes that you change out because of new trends or of spending a bit more money on clothes that fit well and last a long time and aren’t subject to trends. The choice comes in many forms.

Upon recognizing that viewing my purchases from a long-term perspective changes everything, I soon realized that it applies very much to entertainment, and ever since I’ve had a much harder time justifying most entertainment purchases. There are a lot of people out there looking to make a quick buck off of me (or a quick 21 bucks) by making me think that the entertainment I receive will be worth it.

The truth is, most entertainment is shit. Not because it contains offensive content, but because it is created and marketed merely to con me out of my money. And I’ve realized that for years I bought into this, I told myself the lie that it is occasionally nice to just “zone out” and be entertained. I would pay good money to go watch a bad movie because I just wanted to be entertained.

But as soon as I realized I was being taken for a sucker, I wasn’t entertained any more. Hollywood has realized that if they make a crappy movie and take all the funny parts and put them in a trailer and feature a famous person or 3, they can make millions. And we don’t even notice! We have decided that it’s more worth it to watch a dumb movie now than to hold out for something worth our money.

And so I’m fed up. Hollywood is worthless. They are selling us the same lie that nearly every large corporation in America sells us every day – that short term instant gratification is just as good as intentionally seeking out that which is good, even if it requires a sacrifice or extra expense. This is a lie, and once you recognize it, it is rather infuriating how stupid these corporations think you are. They are very confident they can sell us anything. I for one, have decided not to buy.

The best part about this though, is that the local indie theater in Nashville – The Belcourt – is incredibly antithetical to the Hollywood machine. They play first-run independent films from all around the world that are hand chosen, along with regular retrospectives of great filmmakers, classic films, and more. Rather than constantly trying to feed me the crap that Hollywood is selling, they attempt to provide good films to the Nashville community. And they do it at a phenomenal price – $8.50 if you aren’t a member but $5.75 all the time for members. Now that I’m a member, I can see a movie anytime I want that is almost guaranteed to be good (which doesn’t mean I’ll like it, but it means I can respect it) for under $6.

When I have that choice – under $6 for a good film versus more than $10 for any generic, formula-based Hollywood film, well why would I ever consider them? They just can’t compete. Unless they are Pixar, in which case, well, Pixar isn’t trying to sell me anything except the best film they can possibly make. And they happen to be really good filmmakers.

They give this example that I’ve used in a few conversations recently – and unfortunately I don’t remember where the article is online or I would give a link – an example of how people do something they think will make them happier but over the long run they are actually unhappy because of it. When looking for houses, one of the trends you notice is that a house in the suburbs is much cheaper than a house close to the city – such that you can get a lot more house for the same amount of money a small house is in urban areas. And when people judge houses, they think a nicer house makes one happy.

The catch is that living in the suburbs means your commute can grow quite a bit longer – the average commute in America today is between 45 minutes and an hour I believe. And being stuck in traffic on a daily basis means you are unhappy. Plus, being stuck in traffic means you have less time to spend at your nice house – meaning you don’t feel as fulfilled.

There is another trade-off as well – if you live in the suburbs then it is likely you don’t have a strong community that is close by because all your friends probably live in different suburbs or closer to the city. Distance between friends means it is less likely you’ll see them as much, and your happiness reflects this.

But we misjudge what will bring us happiness in life a lot. Sometimes it is with food – we eat too much food or we eat an extra dessert and feel bloated, sick, and a little guilty about it. Sometimes it is in relationships – we think doing something at the sacrifice of a friend or significant other will make us happier but if the relationship suffers, it probably doesn’t win on the net happiness scale(think: choosing to go do one activity in regard to spending time with that person, or not doing a chore for your spouse because you want to watch a ballgame).

In America of course, we are free to make these mistakes because we have a constitutional right to pursue happiness but no right to actually achieve it. But when I read that article about happiness it made me start thinking about the things in my life that actually bring me happiness. The results were interesting.

One of the things we seemed to be hardwired to think as humans is that we will be happier if we are selfish. We equate pursuit of happiness as the ability to seek out what is primarily best for me. If this were a conscious thought it might be laughable, but like I said, it seems to be the hardwired thought process in our heads. A brief examination of this thinking made me realize that my hardwired thinking is ridiculously wrong most of the time.

This morning I woke up early and went out to weed our garden. As it is almost summer here in Nashville, it was already warm by 8:30 and it was hot by 9:30 but I stuck with it and finished the weeding. I can without a doubt say that sitting out there in the dirt and hot sun weeding was a little bit miserable, but the happiness I have now from being able to look at a weed-free garden is extremely fulfilling. The selfish, me-first part of my brain was totally justified in saying there is no reason to actually do this, it’s not necessary right now, it’s too hot, etc. etc. But that part of my brain wasn’t trying to make me happy.

The same happened this past week, when I rode my bike to work and then the next day rode it home. The bike rides can be a little painful. I’m out of shape, just enough that my body really hates me for making it do the 5 mile bike ride. But the happiness and fulfillment I have upon arrival at work is honestly unattainable any other way because I’m happy with myself for succeeding. This is not to mention the sheer joy of riding my bike when I’m not going up a hill – the world takes on a new and beautiful look from two wheels that I am powering.

It seems like the happiness that a freshly weeded garden provides would be obvious, but it takes fighting a lot of laziness and selfishness to get to that point. Same with the bike ride, same with the decision to buy a smaller house closer to the city than to get a larger one in the ‘burbs.

I guess what I’m writing about here is how it’s nice that if I take the time to weed out the stupidity in my head, and I make a few sacrifices (hills on my bike, gardening in the sun, etc. etc.), in the end I’m a way happier person. I hope this awareness continues to grow.

Upfront: I enjoyed watching the finale. It was emotionally fulfilling to see all the characters back together. But once Jack’s eye closed, well, how could I not be let down?

I understand that the show has always been character driven. I have always appreciated the top-notch writing, the consistency of the characters, the way that I actually cared what happened to them. But what caused them to be compelling was the way that they responded to the circumstances around them – the Island and the mysteries and the constant struggles about What It All Means.

Last night the writers told us it didn’t mean anything.

So rather than the characters rising up to challenges for some Bigger Picture, instead a bigger picture was created so we could spend time with the characters. The writers have spent six years carefully fact-checking everything they did; creating symbols, teasing out themes, meticulously crafting a world that was fascinating in and of itself. Then they gave us some wonderfully broken characters all looking for redemption, all searching for something more than what they had, stuck on an island that constantly gave them hope that there was something to find.

Last night the writers said that the world didn’t matter and there wasn’t any need to worry about all the themes.

Think about it. For six years we’ve been wondering is it Reason or is it Faith, is there a meaning to all this or isn’t there, and for six years the writers have led us on by taking the world seriously, by making the mysteries very mysterious but also by making them consistent. They dropped clues and hinted at conspiracies, they gave us hints of history and larger mythologies. By the very fact that they took the Island and all its various mysteries and coincidences seriously, they invited us to do so.

But last night, we got nothing.

All the great fantasy and sci-fi worlds of the past (most notably – Star Wars and Lord of the Rings) gave us enough information that we knew the authors had a grasp of what was going on. There was some sense of history, some sense of future, and a very strong sense of purpose defined by a knowledge of who was good and who was bad and usually, we even knew WHY they were good or bad.

Lost never gave us this. We got a history, but no proof that there is an idea of any history beyond that which we were given, which did not explain anything. There is no sense of a future aside from the fact that Ben and Hugo stayed on the Island until they died. But most of all, was the failure of the writers to ever establish why one side was bad and the other was good, nor was their a sense that they even had a clue.

Ultimately, Lost was a big charade. If there is no good and evil, if there is no bigger picture, then it doesn’t matter how mysterious the world is, nor does it matter what we believe about the world, because in the end the point is that we should all be happy.

Lost decided that all its characters should be happy last night, but it left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. If I ever decide to watch the show again, it won’t be near as interesting. None of the mysteries of the show matter, none of the questions they ask matter, because in the end, none of them are slightly answered. And that makes me unhappy with the show overall, because the characters were only compelling due to the circumstances they found themselves in, and if there is no larger picture to their circumstances then there is no reason why the characters are particularly interesting.

Nashville has been under water for a few days now. This past weekend we received about 15″ of rain in 36 hours or so, and it turns out the Cumberland has trouble holding that much water. Flood stage on the cumberland is 40 feet and the river finally crested Monday at just under 52 feet. Houses that were never imaged to be in flood plains are flooded.

On the news they showed some video of high waters and reported that the Grand Ole Opry house is under water and we were having to conserve water based on the mayor’s orders, which is true, both things are definitely true. But that is the only hook of the story that makes us interesting to the rest of the world, except maybe for the few news channels who reported on how we were being forgotten because of “other stories.” Thanks, media, for reporting on how you have decided we were less important. I guess we should take that as an apology.

Monday I took off and helped a couple friends whose basements had flooded, and it seemed pretty bad. Monday night we went (with about 150 other volunteers) to a section of town and sandbagged a levee that engineers were afraid might break. That was tough work but the camaraderie with our neighbors made it much easier.

But then yesterday is when it all sank in. We got word of a church going to help out in a neighborhood at 4 so three of us decided to go. But right before we left we got word of a lady whose house had been flooded, but because she was new to town she didn’t know anyone and had been trying to clean up by herself.

To get to her house we had to drive through a neighborhood that was really badly hit. There weren’t front yards anymore, there were lots and lots of piles of furniture and drywall and carpet and on and on. It looked like someone picked up these houses and shook out everything inside. These neighborhoods weren’t even the worst hit as the water was only about 3 or 4 feet high, and some neighborhoods it was as bad as 10 feet or more of water.

The lady we helped, and ended up hosting for the night so she could take a warm shower and sleep in air conditioning, just moved to Nashville a couple months ago. Her son was killed a few years ago by a drunk driver and the move to here was an attempt to start over. She didn’t lose everything but she lost a whole lot. She said she had no warning of the flood, someone was banging on her door at 6am and the water was to her front step at that point. She grabbed all her photo albums and took them upstairs then left her house.

We did what we could to help clear out all the drywall, and we’re going back today to help again. I don’t know what we can offer but we’ll do what we can.

In Nashville nearly everyone’s feelings are hurt that we aren’t in the national news. It would seem such a petty thing except that we rely on the media to get the word out and help raise money and support as people rebuild their lives.

The flip side of that coin is that in the absence of national attention, the community here is banding together with a overwhelming sense of selflessness, generosity, and kindness. Yesterday while cleaning out drywall I asked the homeowner if she’d eaten and she said no, not today, and so I rushed out to find her some food. Down the road not even a mile Logan’s Roadhouse had their big roadside grilling trailer set out with a big buffet of free food for victims and volunteers so I was able to make a big plate for her and get it back to her quickly. I know this is the story all over the city and area.

Meanwhile the work that has been done in cleaning out damage and cleaning up could not have happened without people taking off working and helping out; I’m sure there are people just taking it for granted that they escaped damage and going about their lives as normal, but there are thousands of people in Nashville who are stepping up and lending a hand because their neighbor needs it.

I’m headed back out now, but if you happen to see this and want to help, the biggest need going forward is monetary. A lot of people whose houses were flooded had no flood insurance because it wasn’t available to them. CFMT is a great organization that will pour all donations straight into Middle Tennessee to help families recover. Please consider donating.

So, deep down, I’m probably a conservative. But my political thoughts and beliefs are so nuanced that to all sane and rational people they appear hypocritical and/or irrational. I’m ok with this for now, because my positions are very much “under construction.” That’s why I’m not really going to write much on this issue, I promise.

But this thought has been boiling in my head lately and I just have to put it out there.

All conservatives who despise the healthcare bill as the worst thing since Hitler need to think about one thing:

No Republican President would have ever touched healthcare reform. It wouldn’t have happened, and it may never happen, for the simple fact that the guiding principles of conservatism (smaller government, fewer entitlements, market-based systems) require such radical reform of the healthcare system as is that healthcare reform is political suicide.

The system that existed before 1:22pm yesterday was not much more conservative than the system that exists now on the balance. Because our health care system was and still is pretty damn messed up.

But to reform the healthcare system to be in line with conservative principles would require removal of entitlements, increasing competition in health care (by increasing transparency? letting insurance companies get bigger?), and giving up short-term political thinking for the long-term good of the country. Bush didn’t do that on the healthcare issue (he increased Medicare, right?) and I would be willing to bet no Republican president would be likely to do that any time soon. It is political suicide for the party, not just for the president.

That said, the healthcare bill passed yesterday was a mixed bag. There was good in it and bad in it and depending on which voters you are pandering to, you are only able to see one part of it. That, sadly, is how politics works today.

But the good that came was needed. Like the ending of rescission, the increased abilities for people with “pre-existing issues” to be covered, and many of the pilot programs that will be started to find ways to reduce Medical costs. And as an American, and as a slightly politically aware realist, I’m really glad for some of those reforms because they help more people get the healthcare coverage they need. It was a start, but there is still so much more reform needed.

Honestly, the realist in me would rather take the bad mixed in with the good from a Democrat president (who, come on, please, didn’t bring us one step closer to socialism. Don’t be an idiot.) because we needed the good reforms that much. The seats that Democrats are now expected to lose this fall in the midterm elections because of this bill are the political backlash that will forever keep the Republican party from attempting reforms like that. This is a political reality.

Obama, whether you hate him or not, seems to be a President who is attempting use the principles he believes in to help guide him in leading long-term reforms rather than ones that are politically expedient in the short term. Most of the health care reforms he passed yesterday do not kick in until after he leaves office assuming he is not re-elected. I only wish that Republicans, rather than acting like the Black Knight from Monty Python, foolishly yelling “NONE SHALL PASS” as their limbs are chopped off, would recognize that there is now an opportunity to set their sights on some long-term goals and work to achieve them.

Until then, I remain a conservative in principle who is willing to look optimistically at the reality of politics, even if that means being happy that liberals are in charge.

My father laughs every time I mention the record player; first when I said I wanted one, then I told him it was Freya’s present to me, and then just this past week when I told him it had arrived. Why, he wonders, would his perfectly rational son go out and pay money for a technology that has seen its time and, in his mind, thankfully been replaced? But I’m not the only one; there are no less than 4 record stores here in Nashville that have a great deal of records and do what I suppose is a thriving business buying and selling them. Vinyl – the long dead format, is not dead at all.

There are similar type resurrections all over the place if you peer past the wares at your local big box retailer. Despite advancements in digital printing technologies, many “ancient” printing techniques are still used. And even though our food supply is now mostly hidden from our eyes and able to deliver any food – natural or synthetic or something in between – at any time of the year to anywhere in the civilized world, lately there is a movement to plant gardens and raise chickens in our own backyards. From the ongoing popularity of thrift stores to the success that etsy.com has had in bringing craftspeople’s handmade goods to a worldwide audience, it doesn’t take much work to see that in our age of unprecedented technological advancement, the “old ways” of doing things aren’t completely dead.

“Technology has not resulted in convergence” Jesse Schell, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University said in his recent presentation about the future of gaming. Rather, he observed it results in divergence. It creates complications for us. The technological landscape is filled with dozens of revolutionary devices that don’t interact well if at all, for every “life simplifying” device there are multiple hacks available that actually utilizes the technology in some form that simplifies our life. And we accept this way of technology because we trust the long arm of progress; we believe that each New Thing really is better than the previous thing, and thus necessary for us to own.

Convergence. Technology that works together and in doing so, makes life simpler. I think we assume this is coming. Technology just keeps improving, and this is just how progress works. I’m afraid if we keep thinking that way we will waste a great deal of time waiting. There is no incentive for technology designers to create convergence and simplification – proprietary systems are what make money. They lock you in and force you to buy from one corporation or technology creator. Progress, as it stands now, is at the mercy of a capitalistic market prone to the incentives and desires of corporations. This does not make it evil, but it does make me question our inherent trust in the system.

The problem with the system, to me, is that it keeps producing really cool gadgets. I’m a geek, I understand the common feeling of geek gadget lust. All geeks seem to function on the same wavelength. We seek to find the perfect device, but we don’t know what that device is. We keep waiting, and if a device isn’t quite there, then we hack it and modify it. Geeks accept divergence as a way of life. Sure, it’s frustrating occasionally, but usually it is just an obstacle to overcome on the path to, well, who knows what. Progress? We like the challenge and we accept the frustrations. We take the time to learn what needs to happen to change the technology we are given into something that’s closer to perfection.

Maybe this comes because we implicitly trust in the idea of progress. We are moving forward in time, so naturally we must be progressing. Necessity is the mother of invention the proverb tells us, and the inventions come at a staggering pace these days, which must mean that we have a lot of unrecognized necessity in our life. That is what happens when an exciting new technology is announced; we immediately recognize the previously hidden necessity in our life, a need that we just didn’t know we had until now.

The iPod did that for me, nearly a decade ago now. It was announced in early 2001, but I didn’t obtain one until 2004. I had always enjoyed listening to music but I didn’t realize that I needed to listen to it everywhere. Once the ability existed, well, portable music (in mass quantities) instantly seemed to be a necessity.

But last year, after having an iPod for about 5 years, I realized that I don’t listen to music the way I used to. There was a time when the acquisition of new music was exciting; when I would open the CD and take it out and play it and listen through while reading the lyrics, admiring the album art, appreciate the album as the art it was (admittedly, a very low and pop art considering my tastes at the time). Lately though, I rarely stop listening to music, which means obtaining new music is simple an event which allows me to set aside the last album I wore out and listen to this one until I find yet another album to wear out in an endless cycle.

The music just passes by, and I know the melodies of the songs really well and I might even subconsciously know the choruses, but I hardly ever take stock of the album as a whole. I hardly ever focus in on the music. Actually, truth be told, I have trouble doing it because music has become merely a soundtrack – something that plays while I live life. It is the background, and I just like the background to change occasionally. Last year I realized this about myself, and I decided I didn’t like it.

Have you ever objectively examined a technological device in your life? Marshall McCluhan made famous the maxim “the medium is the message,” but do we ever try to examine the mediums in our lives and what that makes the messages in our lives? Is it possible that the message of cell phones is that people are convenient, portable, and subject to our schedules? Could it be that the message of iPods is that all music is cheap, portable, and demands nothing of us as listeners? Is it true what Neil Postman says, that books relate a worldview that is rational and linear, and moving images destroy this worldview, disconnecting us from the world?

Recently I saw six arguments against ebook readers meant to establish the thesis that ebooks and the devices that display them are actually regressive technologies when compared to books. The arguments focused on technological aspects – books can be skimmed, ebooks can’t, books can be searched non-linearly, ebooks can’t, etc. Another argument put forth against ebooks, at least as sold by the major distributors, is that they are proprietary and locked in. Imagine if the book you bought at your local bookstore was physically incapable of being loaned to another person. You can’t imagine it because it doesn’t make sense. But that is the nature of technology. It diverges. If you stumble across a good ebook, you either loan your ebook reader to your friend or you recommend they buy it, neither option being as convenient as loaning them a physical book. Why do we put up with these problems of technology?

Ostensibly, we put up with hindrances like this for the sake of “convenience.” An ebook reader doesn’t let us lend books to friends indefinitely, but it does let us carry our books anywhere we want go to – a whole library with us all of the time! If, granted, we have bought an entire library to carry with us, at prices similar to those of physical copies. Maybe this is convenient for things like textbooks, but most of the bestselling books on ebook seller’s lists are the types that actually are just as convenient to carry around. And they don’t ever run out of battery life.

“Convenience,” at least sometimes, is a lie we tell ourselves to convince our minds that we are living in the future, that this is progress. It’s not that all technology is inconvenient, but maybe more of it is than we’d like to admit. This is what I mean by objectively examining the technology in your life. Do we ever stop to ask ourselves if this technology is making our life more convenient? Is it easier than the way things were before? Do we even know how things were before this technology exists, what sacrifices or simplifications were made in accepting it?

I often think “I can’t even remember what life was like before X existed.” Maybe it was cellphones. I know for a fact I can’t remember what life was like before computers – there has been one in my house for as long as I can remember. But even newer technology like iPods, HD video, laptop computers, these are the things that radically change the way we live, and yet we don’t step back and question them. Our answers aren’t at all guaranteed to be negative, but they should always be revealing.

I realized that music played all the time in my life and yet I hardly ever listened closely to it. And, as mentioned, I didn’t like that. And I further realized that it was due to the technology in my life. I could play my iPod anytime I felt like it, any song, on demand. And if I didn’t like a song, or it was catchy, or I wasn’t in the mood for it, I just hit skip and was on to the next song. Meanwhile, I claimed to appreciate artists and art. I wanted to understand art more, and I was very aware that you understood art only through intentionality, through focusing on the art and asking questions and attempting to understand it. And I claimed to consider music an art.

Cognitive dissonance. I guess I had a shortage of it. I finally received a dose and I realized that in order to combat this constant flow of music, I needed to make music listening an intentional action. There needed to be some sense of purpose to it, at the very least to regain my respect for the artist and their art.

So I decided to buy a record player. This wasn’t, perhaps, the inevitable result of wanting to pay more attention to music, but it’s what I chose to do. There was a bit of nostalgia – of harkening back to the days when you couldn’t just call up any song you wanted at any time, but you had to go pull out that specific album and carefully seek to the track you wanted, or, more often, just play the record all the way through as the artist intended.

Does a record player create convergence, does it simplify my life? Not at all. It’s just as disconnected a device as any. Vinyl is a specific format unplayable by a cassette player, a CD player or a computer. To listen to music on vinyl I have to buy it all over again, even if it’s an album I have in some other form. But I had a desire to put an obstacle between me and my music, a barrier, as slight as it may be, for me to overcome. This means that hopefully I don’t just casually throw on a record, but instead I find a fitting album for the setting and mood, and put it on, and respect the creation of the artist.

In the end, it’s not that divergence is a bad thing, more that it is an inevitable thing. Technology will continue to diverge, and we’ll keep hoping it simplifies our lives. Sometimes it will, but many times it won’t. The question is, are we willing to admit that?

So yesterday I tested my self control by waiting to find out about the Apple iPad. I did this by closing down Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader until Apple released the Keynote video online. It worked, except for in a moment of weakness I signed onto Facebook and saw that it was named the iPad.

That is the worst name ever.

But I remember a few years ago when Apple released the iPhone and everyone laughed at how dumb the name was. Fast forward to now, when millions of people have used the word iPhone multiple times a day, and we all think it’s the most obvious name because the Apple Reality Distortion Field has settled in. I imagine in a year or two this will be the case with the iPad – we’ll move away from feminine hygiene jokes and everyone will just want the device.

So I watched the SteveNote last night and took in all the demos of the software and then read a few blog posts, some positive, some negative. And I think most people writing about it are missing it. This is partially because, as with all new Apple products, the Tablet had been rumored to save mankind from itself and what Jobs announced yesterday unfortunately is simply Apple’s version of the next generation of computing. And there were a lot of rumors that were, as always, false which was disappointing to many people.

Here, for my future self and anyone else who may be interested, are my thoughts on some of the main features of the iPad.

Why Does this Exist? Apple has always been brave enough to tell people what they want, rather than responding to the masses’ requests and delivering some futile attempt to give everyone what they want. With the iPhone, Apple blew everyone out of the water because it wasn’t much like anything we expected. The iPhone, simply, was revolutionary. But the iPad is, on a hardware level, just a large iPod Touch. Not very revolutionary. The iPad exists therefore, to allow users to gain the potential that touch computing offers without the size limitations of an iPhone or iPod Touch. It won’t fit in your pocket, but it’s a lot easier to use while on the go than an iPhone is.

Software & OS I think a lot of people are let down by the software, whereas it is the thing that most excites me. When Apple released the iPhone no third-party software was allowed on it, and furthermore there was no “roadmap” of when it would be available. The iPad on the other hand, comes with 140,000-ish non-optimized apps and a roadmap for the development of iPad optimized apps. With the immediately available SDK and the iTunes store (whether you love it or hate it), the iPad on a software level is nothing but Potential. The demo of iWork didn’t seem that interesting yesterday because who thinks making documents is interesting; but I think the iPad will give us a sense of tactile creation again. By dragging and drawing and resizing with our fingers, designers can work in a more innate method. Hopefully Adobe (or some more nimble competitor) will come out with an Illustrator and Photoshop for the iPad that will remind us how poor mouse-based designing actually is.

In fact, the options seem incredible when you consider the size of the device. An iPhone is limited by its extremely small screen, but the nearly 10″ tablet gives you some good working room. Imagine Architects being able to sketch plans or modify blueprints on the fly; contractors being able to pull up blueprints and double check everything on site. Imagine hospitals finally being able to access centralized medical records. Imagine using the iPad as a control device for the programs you use on your computer, or as a better remote for your home theater or Apple TV. Imagine a cable that plugs it into your DSLR letting you measure levels and exposure on a touchscreen, or previewing video that you are shooting. Imagine all the different uses that a large touch screen offers, and eventually they will probably be created for the iPad.

MultiTasking. This seems to be the most shocking of all revelations about the iPad – it doesn’t multi-task! But let us remember, it does multi-task, it just doesn’t let you run everything. When you are using an iPhone, and based on what I’m reading from people who played with it, the iPad works the same, there are multiple tasks happening in the background. Mail is running, Safari is always in the state you last used it (all browser windows remain open and in the order you opened them), and the iPod is ready to play music. So the iPad and iPhone DO multi-task, but only with the tasks that Apple thinks should always be running. This can be frustrating, but consider the alternative.

Since the release of the Nexus One, the Google designed Android phone, one of the comments many people have made is that multi-tasking is great, but you never know what programs are running. There is an app-switcher, but it only shows six recently used apps. For many users, even advanced, geeky users, the only way to quit out of all programs is to restart the phone. That’s a horrible user experience, because most people won’t correlate a slow phone with too many apps being open because there is nothing in the OS that lets them know too many apps are open. So a slow phone will be a fault with Android, and Google will take the fall. Apple does not want this to happen, so they are taking the totalitarian approach of only Apple approved tasks are able to run always.

The iPhone has Push notifications from a web server that are able to keep you up to date on the phone even if an app is closed, but it remains to be seen how an iPad will solve this issue. Personally in my use of an iPhone, the lack of multi-tasking has never been much of an issue, except in a few specific cases. Apps launch so quickly most of the time that it does not matter whether it had been opened or closed before I wanted to switch to it. But the one exception is music – it is annoying if I am playing music in an App that isn’t the iPod, and need to do something else on the phone. Say I’m listening to Pandora while on the road. If I need to check Google Maps I have to close Pandora and stop the music to do so. This doesn’t kill the usefulness of the device, but it does make me use Pandora less because it just isn’t as convenient.

The lack of multi-tasking does make sense right now for the iPad since it seems to be working on a slightly modified version of the iPhone OS. I have no clue how fundamental the lack of multi-tasking is to the OS, and I have no clue if Apple plans to modify the devices abilities. What I would love to see is a simple system of multi-tasking. Allow me to select the apps I want to be able to remain open in the Background. An easy way that I see to do this is if the “dock” on the iPad had permission to keep apps open. In other words, the four apps that are at the bottom of the dock are the ones that can remain open. I’ll always know which apps are running, and at any time I can rearrange to end the tasks and shift my preferences.

Lack of a Camera This surprised me. I can only hope it’s coming in future versions of the iPad. One on the front would be cool, but one on the back would be just as cool, if apps could be written that allowed for me to draw over live images or manipulate pictures taken on the device (as already exist for the iPhone). I’m sure Apple has a reason to not include a camera on the device – possibly for the same reasons they didn’t add a camera to the iPod touch? But hopefully future generations of the device will add one. If one is added, we won’t find out until they announce it.

The iPad is a really cool device. It looks closer to the “future” than anything else since the iPhone. The best part about it is that it exists – it’s not a prototype, it’s not a beta, it is a real, working, touchscreen computer with thousands of apps and the potential for thousands more. I don’t think I’ll buy one until the next generation at the least, but the $499 price point makes it tempting to buy now. The iPad, despite it’s crappy name, is to me, a device with a ton of potential.

Fourteen months ago and some change I made a covenant with the most amazing woman that has ever existed to love and cherish her, and to stay by her side until she dies. Those fourteenth months have been the best months ever in my life, and whether or not the trend continues, I’m her adoring lover and eternal best friend until my soul departs this gigantic world. Daily I will ask the questions that fill my head constantly: “how can I make her happier?” “What does she need that I can give her?” “What does she want that I can give her?” and quite often, “What am I doing wrong right now?” But my overarching, all-encompassing question is always “How can I best show her love at this moment?” I look forward to a year of understanding how to better answer that question each day.

Fourteen months from now the two of us hope to embark on a wild and crazy adventure – an 8 month road trip covering a great deal of the outer edges of the US. From Nashville to San Diego to Alaska to Maine to the Florida Keys and home to Nashville (with a great deal of stops in between). There is no overarching “why,” rather it is a natural way for us to achieve a great deal of our desires and fuel our passions in one big crazy act. Here’s a couple of our reasons:

Obviously, an eight month road trip covering 15-16,000 miles means that the people undertaking it enjoy traveling, and that is our most shallow reason for the trip. We want to travel, and see the US, and meet wonderful people, and understand a little more about life than we might learn by just staying in Nashville. But most jobs today grant us 2-3 weeks of vacation a year, and you always want to conserve that and use it sparingly; one big vacation and then a few days here and there for other traveling. Traveling within these confines inevitably forces you into tourist mode – see and do everything in a compact time so that you’ve “seen” wherever you may have traveled to. We don’t like that.

Travel for us, is to take our time and to soak in the culture of wherever the road has taken us. Time moves differently in each city, people have different habits and norms. Oh sure, you can travel to a hundred cities in the US, staying at the same hotel, eating at the restaurants, shopping at the same stores, and always feeling “at home.” That is exactly what we hate about travel – the chain-ification of America. But to scratch beyond that surface requires curiosity, patience, and a healthy does of adventurousness. So we’ll spend anywhere from a week to a month in cities that we want to visit, camping out somewhere close to the city or crashing at friends’ houses for a few nights, and then taking the time to wander streets, explore the unknown, talk to locals and get recommendations. In this way, hopefully, we will experience the real culture of the cities we visit, rather than just experience the amalgamation of Chain America.

To take this road trip will not only require giving up our jobs, but also our home. We’ll pack up important stuff into a storage unit and give away the rest. What little we decide is worth taking, we’ll pack into a camper that we are planning on buying this year. One of those small 13-foot models that tows behind small SUVs. Just some sort of permanent structure to sleep in if its raining and to do a little cooking in. Otherwise, we’ll sleep in a tent and enjoy the freedoms of being rent-free. But this forsaking of our home is fitting too because a purpose for Freya in this trip is to explore how cities around the US deal with the issue of homelessness. Her dream is to help those who do not have a home, specifically families and kids (this is a larger problem than you imagine, it is just typically much more invisible), but in what form and how she doesn’t know yet. So this trip will give us a chance to volunteer and serve at shelters and ministries around the country to understand what works, what doesn’t, and who has some really good ideas.

My passion has always been film though, and this trip is an exciting chance for me to develop more of my understanding regarding the medium. I hope to buy a Canon 7D in the coming months and start the process of familiarizing myself with the gear, so that while on the road I can document. Home movie style documentation will no doubt occur on our trip, but I also want to make short documentaries that are film festival quality. So it is my goal to seek out people carrying on antique craft-making skills, or unique museums, or anything of interest really, and to make short 10 minute-ish documentaries about these people or things. First of all, to actually document and remember, but second to refine my skills at editing and creating and mostly just because I love to make films and I don’t get a chance to do what I want most of the time these days.

One of the things I do get to do a great deal these days, and Freya too, is to learn. We may have both dropped out of college, but there’s not a week gone by that we don’t learn something new. I’ve been on a history kick lately and Freya has been reading about Art History and also Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Syndrome), meanwhile we both love to read fiction and poetry. But book learning can only get you so far. So while we’re traveling we’ll be stopping in whatever museums catch our fancy; wandering through, reading all the signs (because both of us are Those People) and soaking it all in.

Those are four of many reasons, but they are why we are resolved to take this trip, and this year we are resolved to save every dollar we can towards this trip. Of course, when we take it we will take many pictures and make many funny videos and video blogs to keep everyone up to date on the things we do, posting the documentaries, and overall trying to remind everyone that yes, we are crazy, but we’re the type of crazy that you’re envious of.

There are many other things I have been and continue to be resolved to do; building better friendships, learning new skills, reading all of Dostoevsky’s major works, and writing a screenplay. These things will happen in due time. As it stands now, I have ginormous goals to carry me through the next two years (well, marriage carries me through forever), and I find it much better to stand resolved to do bigger things than it is to stand resolved to go to the YMCA regularly. Which is, now that I think of it, something I very much need to do.

In the idyllic days of yore, when science was a black art and the world worked by magic, there was power and fear and wonder in the things we didn’t understand. From our modern standpoint, we can see how priests and witches controlled people because they seemed to have the keys to the world – they controlled the magic forces and thus they controlled people

Now magic is the fodder of kids books and illusionists, and the world is safely in the hand of the laws of physics, of forces like gravity and genetics and molecular biology. And the world can be a pretty damn boring place to live, if we just delude ourselves into thinking we’ve got it figured out – or at least more figured out than those foolish people in the dark ages who believed in magic.

But, even if we do have it figured out, that doesn’t necessitate a lack of wonder and marvelling at the forces that guide the world. We do understand gravity, but that means that stuff that is up, falls down! That’s kind of cool!

Even more cool, more magical if you will, is that the act of procreation and the system of DNA and genetics means that I am very literally made up of the stuff that makes up my mother and father – in visible and definable ways. I find it even more fascinating that genes allow information to be carried but hidden for generations – a scientific but seemingly wondrous way in which we are linked to our forefathers.

If you don’t marvel at this stuff, you obviously don’t like mystery.

With every subsequent viewing though, I’m able to soak in more. The first time it is of course only the emotion, the story, the narrative that sweeps me up. The strength of the scene is how that will never fade away. But the other viewings allow me to peer further into the scene, into the details. The joy of a Pixar film is that all the layers are there, so carefully crafted.

Pete Docter was on NPR’s Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me a few weeks ago, and he spoke of how they had meetings to design all the badges on Russell’s uniform – every badge has a reason and a specific design (don’t believe it – check out the designs here). The host asked if anyone ever stops those meetings and says – “Hold up, THIS DOESN”T MATTER, no one is ever going to notice!” and Docter replied, that no, they never worry about that, because they make the movies for themselves, and they do care.

Watching this scene again, this becomes so clear. As Carl flips through Ellie’s adventure book, he sees pictures that she’s added. The scene is monumental first [SPOILER] because he always thought he failed her, that she had wanted a life filled with adventure but had never had any. But the pictures reveal that she was happy – that their time together was an adventure.

But the power of the scene is enhanced by the photos that he looks at. I fear to think how this scene would have looked from any other animation studio – pictures from “decades” ago would be the same colors and vibrancy of the world that the character currently inhabits. Pixar doesn’t do this. Each image looks like it was taken with a camera from the time period it is supposed to represent. The grain on the photos, the coloration, everything is carefully designed so that the album feels real, almost as if we are turning physical pages in our hands. Just look:

I imagine if you know anything about film cameras  you can just about identify what camera they were modeling in each image. I don’t know much, but I can see the difference.

What struck me though, and this is the real point of this long post, is how these small details make such a big difference in helping the scene rise above sentimentality. Pixar movies are often praised for their ability to deal with big emotions without delving into sentimentalism – the cheesiness we associate with Hollywood (think “Romantic Comedies”).

The root of Pixar’s ability to stay away from sentimentalism is it’s concern for Story as first, second, and third priorities when crafting a film. But I think a great deal of it is their desire to focus on the details and worry about the little things. Sentimentalism is the cheapening of emotion – love as a mushy feeling rather than love as something that is wonderful but hard, epiphanies as easy to gain insights that feel important rather than hard earned wisdom.

Sentimentalism is widespread in our culture because it is easy. Rising above sentimentalism, conversely, is hard, because it requires wisdom, hard work, avoiding easy the definitions of emotions, and most of all, taking emotions seriously.

Check out the last two pictures above. Notice the way the light plays on the characters. In the picture of Carl and Ellie on the hill, their heads glow from the sun and the balloons are barely visible in front of the bright sky. In the second photo, the edges of the windows curl in softly because of the bright sunlight, and Ellie’s shoes are slightly lit from the light. In the curtains we see the texture of the photograph, as if it were a physical object on the page.

These details aren’t obvious. If you notice them the first time you watch the film, you’re a very strange person (or perhaps you do computer Animation, in which case, ok). But the details are there, adding a sense of reality and history to this scene that draws us in with real emotion. Because Pixar takes seriously the pictures in Ellie’s adventure book, we are able to take the emotions Carl is “feeling” seriously.

I imagine every scene of every Pixar film has layers like this that we could point to as reasons they are masters at what they do. But this is an encouragement to me to pay attention, to care about what I do. Specifically as I keep working towards making films and crafting narratives, it’s a reminder to pay attention to the little things. No one may ever notice them, but the more fully I pay attention to these details, the more full my worlds will be.