Whee!

Yesterday, Sony released another firmware upgrade for the Playstation Portable. Among other things, it includes a more relaxed handling of video files. No longer do users have to rename video files according to some wierd system; the files can have any name at all. Just drop them into a "video" folder on the PSP memory card.

It's not all peaches and cream, however. There are still limitations on resolution or something that has so far prevented me from putting my own files in this folder, but files downloaded from Google for the iPod video now work in the PSP video folder.

This led me to make a more extensive search of Google's offerings. One of the videos I found shows San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom talking about same sex marriage. It's a stirring speech. I recommend that you watch it and forward the link to your friends.

Unfortunately, Google's video application doesn't work in the PSP's web browser, so I can't browse through it unless I'm at my computer. However, I did bookmark several files that I was interested in and then created an html list on my PSP of all the download links for these files -- where Google says "right click here and select save as", I right click, copy the link and paste it into my psp list. Now as I watch the files on my PSP, I can delete them and download another from the list.

( Here's my list so far )

Make sure you watch Gavin's speech!

Cool resource

Okay, so the plan was to delete video files from the PSP as I viewed them, then download new ones. However, I had the good fortune of starting with a series of speakers from the TED conference. This is a conference that gathers smart folks together so they can exchange ideas. It must be a very heady environment, judging from the few I watched so far.

There's a page of videos available on the TED site called TED Talks, where you can watch them online or download the video or audio.

I've seen five so far. Of those, I really recommend Sir Ken Robinson. He wrote Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. He talks about children, creativity and the school system. He's also very, very funny and a marvelous speaker. Here are a few quotes from his talk:

"I believe this passionately: that we don't grow in to creativity; we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it."

"Our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. And there's a reason: the whole system was invented -- 'round the world -- there were no public systems of education, really, before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism."

"And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued or was actually stigmatized."

Of the others I've seen, I also recommend Majora Carter and Hans Rosling. Especially Hans. His data visualizations are very cool, and are available at Gapminder.

It's fantastic to watch these brilliant people and see how passionate they are about their calling. So much so that I really don't want to delete these talks immediately. I'll move on to some of the others, but I want to keep these three for a bit and revisit them. My PSP will just be a little crowded, that's all.

In the meantime, I've subscribed to the TED Talks video podcast through iTunes. I'll soon have all of them! :-)

Hm.

Ken Robinson's talk put me in the mind of my own creativity.

Once upon a time, if you had told me I was an artist, I would have agreed with you. I dabbled with drawing, painting, writing and sculpting. Now, I probably would thank you for the compliment while privately disagreeing. Doodles on napkins and placemats don't rise to the level of artistry for me.

So what happened? I really don't know, but some of the stuff that Ken talked about resonated with me. I began to fear being wrong, I think.

My only attempt at sculpture was molding a little wizard out of the wax that I stripped from a round of cheddar cheese that was in our refrigerator. I was pretty pleased with it, and so were my parents. Being cool parents, they immediately went out and bought ten pounds of clay and little modeling tools for me to encourage this, but I never used any of it. The sudden investment was too daunting. I was afraid of wasting it, I suppose. Or I was afraid of disappointing my parents.

Suddenly, I'm thinking impostor syndrome. I think that I didn't want anybody to discover that I wasn't really talented at all. That sounds very right to me.

A couple of my junior high school art projects were entered into a student art competition. I don't remember winning any prizes, but one of my pieces was purchased by the Jacksonville Museum of Art. Luckily, it was the one that I didn't really care about. The other one, which I was very proud of, was vandalized by my young brother with a crayon or something. I was so upset that I threw it out because it was "ruined." That's something that I really regret.

I need to reconnect with the idea of just playing with whatever comes to hand and pushing my boundaries. It's certainly not too late.

Just for grok

Turnabout