Stephen's Untold Stories

I have decided to stop posting to this blog. I no longer have the motivation to continue, and I’m spending more time these days using other tools like Twitter and Facebook.

It’s been a lot of fun, but 4 1/2 years is enough.

Good night, and good luck!

How are you celebrating?

NPD is celebrated in schools and businesses throughout the world with activities, games, programs, and contests. It has inspired people to pay attention not only to their p’s and q’s, but also their commas, semicolons, and ellipses. NPD reminds us of the importance of proper punctuation for communicating clearly at home, school, or at work.

NPD has received worldwide media attention since former newspaperman Jeff Rubin founded the holiday in 2004, with newspaper coverage from Manila to London and from Seoul to Seattle, in addition to broad radio and TV coverage in the United States—including a short segment on Regis and Kelly in 2008.

Read more here.

I’ve been trying to do this for a while. Sometimes I get the impression that the audience really wants us the use bullet-points. Looks like I was right.

People are reluctant to change their slide style for a range of reasons. Different people will have different sticking points. To change their minds you need to engage directly with their sticking point. Find out what it is by asking them what they like about bullet-point slides.  Then you’ll be able to offer just the right counter-argument, encouragement or advice which may entice them to make a change.

Here are the common reasons why people are reluctant to ditch bullet-point slides and how you can address them:

1. People are emotionally attached to their bullet-point slides.
2. Some people genuinely like bullet-point slides when they’re in the audience.
3. Some people don’t want to stand out.
4. They are easy to prepare.
5. Bullet-point slides allow other people to deliver the presentation
6. “Visual” people like bullets

Link to article

Generation X for me.

Generation X – Born: 1965-1980

Life-Shaping Events

• Stagflation
• Gulf War
• High divorce rates
• Women working
• MTV

Traits

• Pragmatic
• Self-sufficient
• Skeptical
• Flexible
• Individualistic
• “Me” Generation
• Distrust authority

Read the rest here.

Almost 4 million views as of this writing.

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say “no” to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs.

Read more here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Beautiful video!

Kuroshio Sea – 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world (Please don’t go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

Simply amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BQBE4jkHsg

Some very interesting images.

Information graphics (or infographics) are graphical depictions of data and information. By presenting information in a compact and creative approach, infographics are able to quickly convey knowledge and engage its viewers.

In this collection, you’ll find forty beautiful and educational infographics, displaying the uncommon spectacle of “art meets science”.

Link to site.

Nice graphic here. Click it to see a larger version.

I like just about anything that the Commoncraft Show puts together.

Shocking news to many, but not to some of us.

The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all.

A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem.

The findings ran counter to popular perceptions of online dangers as reinforced by depictions in the news media like NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” series. One attorney general was quick to criticize the group’s report.

The panel, the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, was charged with examining the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that adults were using these popular Web sites to deceive and prey on children.

But the report concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

“This shows that social networks are not these horribly bad neighborhoods on the Internet,” said John Cardillo, chief executive of Sentinel Tech Holding, which maintains a sex offender database and was part of the task force. “Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons.”

The 278-page report, released Tuesday, was the result of a year of meetings between dozens of academics, experts in childhood safety and executives of 30 companies, including Yahoo, AOL, MySpace and Facebook.

Read the rest here.

More info and larger version here.

Can you guess which is which?

Check it out here!

Looks like he’s flying over the Pyramids as of the time of this post.

Track him for yourself here!

I remember watching Monday Night Football when Howard Cosell broke the news.

Yoko Ono has kindly emailed Boing Boing this beautiful photograph of her husband, former Beatle John Lennon, who was murdered on this day in 1980. Photographer Allan Tannenbaum took the image on November 26, 1980, just a couple of weeks before Lennon passed away.

Pearl Harbor Memorial

A fun post for a Friday.

Someone made a great list of 101 Movie Lines that every movie junkie should know. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Casablanca , (1942), “Here’s looking at you, kid”, Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart)
• Psycho , (1960), “We all go a little mad sometimes”, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins)
• Cool Hand Luke , (1967), “What we have here is a failure to communicate”, Captain (Strother Martin)
• Apocalypse Now, (1979), “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like victory”, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall)
• Sudden Impact , (1983), “Go ahead. Make my day”, Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood)

Here is the complete list.

Some really good ones here.

And here is the one I chose:

Get yours here!