Lessons Learned
As a parent I’ve had many situations where I’ve learned/taught lessons from/to my kids. Here are a few that I’ve found to be very valuable.
- All you can do is the best you can do.
Different people have different skill levels at different skills as well as different levels of knowledge in different areas. That’s a whole lot of different. We need to adjust our expectations of ourselves according to our own skill and knowledge levels but not so much that it inhibits our ability to continue improving ourselves in all areas. My daughter is probably tired of me saying this to her: “All you can do is the best you can do.” - Always try to do your best. The second part of accepting that all you can do is the best you can do is always trying your best. Don’t settle for anything less than your best.
- Always aim to do a little bit better than the last time. Any time we do something is a learning experience. Whether it is something we do every day like brushing our teeth or something we do rarely like changing the oil on a snow blower we are always figuring out ways to do things better for ourselves.
In the conversations I’ve had with my kids this lesson has been mostly applied to school work. Every time you get an assignment in a particular subject aim to get a slightly higher grade than the last assignment in that subject. Got an 85 on your last history test? Use that as a goal for the next history test and try to beat it!
- You may not get it right the first time. There is nothing embarrassing about not knowing something when you’re trying to learn. However, not knowing something you should already know may be embarrasing. Knowledge may not stick the first time you learn something so ask the right questions and try to get it right the next time.
This doesn’t just apply to school work. It could apply to just about anything. Learning to ride a bike. Putting together a piece of furniture. Programming an app.
- If you tell me a bad truth I may be upset with you but not as upset as when you tell me a good lie. As we all know by watching politicians when you lie about something you have a better chance at making it worse than if you come clean in the first place. When you do something that is ‘wrong’ (a very vague term) I’ll be upset. But when I catch you lying to me about it I’ll be even more upset because that shows me that you don’t trust me. Be honest from the outset and it will not only show me that you trust me but that I can trust you too.
- Download and setup FFmpeg. The instructions are pretty simple and there are versions for all the usual operating systems.
- After your installation is complete run the following from the command line:
ffmpeg -i input_video.mp4 -metadata:s:v rotate="0" -vf "transpose=1" -acodec copy output_video.mp4where input_video.mp4 is the video you want to correct and output_video.mp4 will be your corrected video. - Quoting song lyrics. This has been done since Facebook began. I understand it as a way to express ones self and how one may feel at the time they write it. But doing it every day (sometimes multiple times a day) is just plain annoying.
- Continuous posts stating how proud one is of their children for some accomplishment or other. I know this is part of Facebook too but for some people this is all they do and they do it incessantly. Again, I understand the occasional or even regular post about your kids. But there’s a limit.
- Over sharing personal information. I don’t need to hear details of the best date you ever went on, constant daily reminders of upcoming (and previous) milestones in your life or an endless stream of links to articles you find interesting with little or no context as to why you are posting them.
- Play by play of sporting events. This is perhaps my biggest pet peeve. When I looks through my feed I see many statuses that are out of context and don’t mean anything to anyone not watching the same event. This is something better suited for twitter or blogs with live blogging functionality.
- Endless news reporting. I appreciate your take on both main stream and offbeat news stories. There are times I actually look forward to it. But 10-15 times a day has me asking “does this person have a life?”.
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NBA Standings Plugin For WordPress
A couple of years ago I released a plugin to show the standings of a Major League Baseball (MLB) division on one of my other blogs. In the time since then I’ve done a few one off versions of that plugin to help people use it in specific ways.
Recently I was asked if I could do a version of the plugin to display National Basketball Association (NBA) standings. Since I get my data from the XMLSTATS API, which also provides NBA data, I was more than happy to oblige. The result is the NBA Standings plugin.
NBA Standings functions the same as it’s MLB counterpart but since the data format is slightly different it took me a little time to work out how to properly parse the feed. Either way it’s here and it works. Enjoy.
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Fix Smartphone Video Orientation
The other day I was trying to post some video I took on my iPhone to a WordPress blog. But when I previewed the post the video orientation was sideways. This is not just because I had the phone oriented vertically (which would give you a portrait oriented video as opposed to the usually desired landscape). It’s because most smartphones code their videos in such a way that they play sideways in many media players. Shooting video with the phone’s speaker to your right will usually prevent this from happening but there are exceptions to this rule.
I did a little research and found a way to fix the orientation on afflicted videos so it would appear properly on all media players. The fix is actually quite simple but it involves a command line so those who are faint of heart (when it comes to tech and computing) are warned.
That’s it! Just two steps (or only one if you already have FFmpeg set up on your computer.
After running the above command line on my video it posted to the WordPress blog perfectly. Now the only thing to remember is to hold the phone right when taking video.
Bonus tip: Need to convert videos (or other files) to other formats? Zamzar, a free online file converter, is an excellent choice. Select the file to convert, the format to convert it to and your email address and they’ll email you a link when the file is done converting. Worried about privacy? The converted file is only kept for 24 hours. I’ve used this service many times to convert .mov files to .mp4. Works every time.
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Recent Facebook Pet Peeves
Facebook has gotten totally out of hand for me lately. Though there is no right or wrong way for an individual to use social media there are annoyances. I know the pet peeves I’m about to list are hardly new but it seems that they have recently shown themselves in full force in my news feed. I also know that at times I too am guilty of perpetrating them.
Before I continue, a disclaimer: If you are reading this and are a Facebook friend of mine please don’t be offended. Though it’s possible that you practice one or more of the items listed please know that I am not writing it about any one person in particular. I have several Facebook friends whose actions lately have prompted this list. It seems like several people in my feed have been practicing more than one of these (each) lately leading to my feed being cluttered with this type of content. It’s an issue of critical mass and not criticizing a particular person or entity.
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Cuomo Meets The Godfather
I read an article in The New York Times this morning about former New York Governor Mario Cuomo seeing the film The Godfather for the first time. It has been well documented that Cuomo had refused to see the film since it’s 1972 release because it paints Italians in a negative light. He said that movies like this make people think badly about all Italians.
With all due respect to Cuomo he’s missing something here. The idea that someone would see this film and apply an understanding of it’s core characters to everyone within their race is ridiculous. Every race has it’s heroes and villains. It’s bad actors and good of heart. When I watch The Godfather I don’t think “Italians scare me, they’re bad people”. I can view the film and recognize that it is based on a subset of the race it’s main characters belong to. I can understand that although the Corleone’s are a ruthless and violent group they don’t represent all Italians. Or even all Sicilians.
Toward the end of the article Cuomo finally admits that the film was “great, if you’re referring to artistry.” Yes, Mr. Cuomo, it’s a film and not a depiction of real life. Call it art, entertainment, whatever. What’s on the screen is rarely, if ever, a depiction of the full ethnic group it’s main characters belong to.
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