All posts by johncohn

Saturday night – geek day

Blissful day spent mostly by myself. Gabe was up at stowe,, Diane and I took a quick snowshoe this morning then She went off to a baby shower leaving me at home alone with  the dogs. I think I went almost 5 hours without speaking.. It was such a treat.. I spent the  time on a couple of geek projects I’d been putting off…  I have pictures.. but for soem reason I can’ get pictures off my phone this evening (and I call myself a nerd ?!)

– project 1 was an emergency trasistorectomy on my medium sized tesla coil . Last time I used it it stopped with a bang and I knew soemthing was up. it tunrs out that it ate one f the four big IGBJT transistors in the driver. Luckily, I had  areplacement.. unluckily.. those replacements are over 20 bucks each.. yow. It was a bit tricky finding the bad one and wrestling it free from its mates.. but once I got it extracated, the new one went in easily and voile la .. the thing sprung bakc to life with 40 inch sparks. Nothing liek a million volts ot make your moring.

– project 2 is goign to be part of my next big dream. I’v ebeen tlaking to some folks about building a really nice stylized statue of the lake Champlain monster “Champ” jus toutside the Echo museum. My idea is that folks would be able to send the scultpre a tetx message form their phone aand it would shoolarge jet of t fire (how cool is that ? ) it was inspird by a dragon sculpture I once saw in Krakow Poland. Today I did the first steps of wiring an odld cell phone up to intercept txt messages.. I also have a solar poweed charger for the thing.. so it should be self contained.. The whole thing is going to be pretty cool..

– project  3 is actually for work.. so I can’t talk much about it here.. / It’s a wireless project.that invloves both hardware and software  ; I realize that this was the first time I’ve picked up a soldering iron ithe course of my day job in a long time.. actually.. maybe in forever..  I hope to get some more time in that tomorrow..

– project 4.. after gabe got home, he and I completely finished his splitboard. It’s a conversion in which we cut an old snowboard of Sam’s in half then addedsoem hardware from a kit that allows it to clip back to gether as a snowboard, or unclip into two skis to be used with climbing skins. It’s been a great project.. and it’s been really fun to make togeter.. Gabe is hopign to test it out tomorrow.

Hmmm.. I guess that’s all for the day..   I love these islands of peacein my busy life.. Hope you all found peace today too
nite all.. nite Sam

-me

ps. The Engineers paradise vid is up to 26,000 hits. I think we’re going to rerecord the chorus tomorrow based on a bunch of feedback. Any other suggestions while I’m in there editing ?

Friday – leggo my ego

Alll day long I’ve been getting comments on the goofy rap parody I put on YouTube on Tuesday night .  It’s gotten about 10,000 hits in the last 2 days and it’s starting to find its way around. This evening it was picked up by the techno-blog Gizmodo and got anoher 8,000 hits.. and a bunch more comments.. At first, i was really psyched to see folks watching it… and apparently liking it..  but then I started obsessing about some of the negative comments I’d gotten.. and I mean.. really obsessing..

          “Engineers can’t sing. They need to use their own invention, the auto tune“

           “That is one creepy engineer. Technicolor lab coat FTL“

  All night I’vve been plotting how Im going to completely redo that damned video before another person sees it..
   I started thinking about how much ego goes around some of this social media.. I also remember obsessing about the blog comments around the Colony Our producers warned us never to read the blogs for fear that would happen. Early on I used to obsess about how many folks read this blog.. or how many Wacebook friends I was picking up.  
   I’ve always relied way to much on external validation.. I thin all this social media stuff just better automated and streamlined my ability to obsess. I now have convenient hit counters and link statistics to precisely calculate my self worth for me.. it’s very convenient.. and really insane.. I know.  

Oh wait.. someone just posted abotehr comment. better go check it out…

nite folks.. Nite Sam
-me

Thursday night – opposite day

Man.. I cannot say that I have a predictable life . Yesterday I stood basically in one place for 3 hours in one of the busiest places in the planet.. as thousands and thousands of people walked around me..   

And today I spent nearly the entire day holed up in a hotel room without seeing another soul..   I was up at 6 for my first call.. and except for a 15 min break to grab a shower.. I was on the phone and working until the minute I left for the airport,

I have to admit.. I loved being in my quiet cave today.. I think I’m still an introvert living in an extroverts hairstyle.

I did allow myself the one hotel luxury I always do .. I did manage to jump on the bed … since no one was around to say that I couldn’t…

nah-nah-nah0nah-goo-goo…

..

Not much else to report.. and I’m kinda grateful for that every once in a while.
So.. nite folks.. Nite Sam
-me

ps.. The Engineering Paradise video spoof  I posted Tuesday has been getting around. It’s had about 7300 hits in the last 24 hours.. !.. If you like it.. send it to your friends !

Wednesday night- Grand Central Station

Today was amazing.. I am down in NYC helping to make a commercial for my company.. The cool thing is it’s about something I truly believe in…. our Smarter Planet intitiative..  so it’s both an honor and fun to help them communicate this vision.

we started today at 7:30   with wardrobe and make up.. htey didn tdo muh on either.. I wore the clothes I walkied in off the street in.. thoguh they gave me a tweed jacket to wear (and Keep).. and powederd my nose and head (ah the indignities of old age)

First we did about an hour and a half of in depth interviews in a  wing of the Hyatt that overlooks 42nd street..

Here’s Ben on camera…

Somehow I managed to miss gettign a picture of Hillman the producer.. a very cool guy. he exudes calm.. which was great for me ,, because I was as nervous as all hell/ 

Then we went in the next room and the producers chose extras. waht a strange process..

After a short break we were out in Grand Central to start filming. i had thought that we’d be placed in some out of the way corner.. but we were right in the middle of that glorious building..   These bug helium things were our lighting. ..

As we sat and filmed, the entire city moved around us.. really amazing.

I was baout 20 feet fro the famous clock for nearly 3 hours.

Here’s Ryan one of the ‘Creatives’ and a really awesome guy.

Here I am on set.. looking.. addled

Two of the cool extras. we all spent a lot of time talkign to one another.. Im sorry I didn’t get everyone’s names.. I know this woman’s last name is Ng.

Here I am with Karla.. she had a beutiful singing voice.

They had glorious food for us.. unfortunately.. I didn’t have time to eat much of it.

Here are the grownups from the Ad agency Ogilvy and IBM.   all great folks.

Here’s a view of our set from above. .. you can see what a big chunck of the floor we were taking !

Here’s my friend the steadycam guy..

Every few takes we’d stop and watch.. it was a n eerie feeling watching myself again.. this part of the process is really unnerving .

I remember thinking we were almost done at three takes.. it took us  23 (I think)..

The whole process was so boring and mundane that it was fascinating.. I got to watch all these tiny differences between scenes.

Finally we were ready to wrap. I’m already missing the cast and crew..

I went for a city run, then came back and dressed for dinner. Th Ogilvy folks took out out to the ‘Lure’ fish restaurant.. Great Sushi.. and great company.. I love learning more about these smart folks working here.

I’m struggling to stay awake now.. so I’ll end here.. I do wan tto say that I’m truly greatful for opportunities like doing these commercials.. My life is never boring..
Good night everyone, good night Sam !
-me