Out Of The Box

Tilt-Shift / Timelapse Artistry

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ March 3, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment

Another great example of tilt-shift / time-lapse film making – thanks to Photojojo and It’s Nice That … I like the helicopter rescue at about 1:20, a mini-flashback to a previous video from this guy … … which was featured on the Guggenheim site (what a great site to wander through for inspiration!) Take a [...]

I Hate the Business

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 19, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment

Hmm, not quite … how about I Hate “the Business” More specifically – I really am getting uncomfortable with the whole “IT and the Business” meme: … demonstrating IT alignment with the business … IT’s relationship with the business … IT and the business need to work together / build partnerships … the Project is [...]

Change and the Crop Duster

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ September 24, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

Drive south through the state of Indiana on I-65, and before you hit Indianapolis you will come across an impressively large array of wind turbines, the new vertical symbols of energy self-reliance and innovation. I remember not so long ago, when this section of the road was just miles of cornfields, as far as the [...]

Twitter and the First Amendment

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 21, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

Apparently, 2011 is the year when Twitter, Facebook, and smartphone videos are graduating from Social Networking toys to evolutionary, revolutionary Sociology tools. Can they be controlled by governments or big business? It’s been argued that any such controls might run afoul of Amendment No. 1 from our Bill of Rights … how amazing for a [...]

Market Driven Data Quality (Data Darwinism)

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 19, 2011 ⋅ One comment

Just trying a little contrarian thought this week … Have you ever noticed how much time and energy goes in to data validation? I think it stems from visual forms development and the wide variety of clever data entry controls that are available – everyone wants to write an app that gets the oooo, cool! [...]

Vintage Technology

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 9, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

Here’s one of those videos making the rounds via eMail. I found this in my inbox at work, from an observant friend who apparently likes the same web sites I do (although I had originally this as a great example of minimalist site design). It’s interesting to note how the magical becomes the mundane. I [...]

Fun with Ngrams – Art, Science, Programming

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ December 19, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

A recent gift from Google Labs – the NGram viewer, a fascinating tool that searches the Google Books database for words and phrases, and charts their relative frequency. For example – let’s take some of the themes of this blog … Apparently, Art and Science have grown closer, and enjoy a somewhat parallel existence together. [...]

External Radiance Projection 2010: A Christmas / Upgrade Story

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ November 10, 2010 ⋅ One comment

No, I’m not a Christmas fanatic – but when you live in Chicago, you learn to look for nice weather in the weeks approaching Thanksgiving, to put up the lights before the wind and cold conspire to make it a painful experience. Basically, I gotta burn a vacation day – but why not? It’s an [...]

A Company is like a Sphere

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ September 15, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Where do these great analogy ideas come from? Full credit – I got this one from a speaker at the SAP Research Center in Palo Alto, last spring. A company is like a sphere. As it grows, volume increases much faster than surface area, and the larger a company gets, more people get embedded and [...]

Perfect IT

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ August 4, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

I once met with a rather thoughtful Project Manager to catch up on things. An interesting person to talk to – it’s the cadence and style of his chat, he’s a fairly laid-back guy. I asked where his Stress comes from – he shows no visible signs of any, and it made me Ponder. We [...]

Out of the Box