Picking One's Battles

When going through life their are some times when you have to makes sacrifices and concessions. Yesterday I made one, to be able to use a free piece of hardware. With it I can do a lot more, more easily. Without it I would have to do a lot more work. The catch was installing some software that I had no intention of EVER installing. I installed the software to be able to use the hardware, because it wasn't worth the battle to find another way.

To be honest, I've never been an Apple/Mac fan, not that I'm particularly fond of Microsoft either. It's just that I've seen Apple programs try to install other programs while updating, and I don't like the closed nature of their development stuff. This goes to the point that until yesterday, I've refused to install Quicktime onto my laptop. Then, my free iPod Nano 5G arrived in the mail.

With it I can record video clips. Those I can use to make compilation videos and add audio as I choose. Those can be used as internet content. Lots of potential for using the videos on blogs, for presentations and just doing silly stuff. All that because I was willing to install iTunes and Quicktime, which I didn't want to do.

If I had balked at that, I would have a piece of hardware that others want, that I couldn't use. Doing the videos would have been a little more of a pain using a digital camera, that isn't mine, putting together the digital videos so it doesn't seem like a boring slide show and covering all the content myself, rather than getting other people's voices into the videos.

Yesterday's Lesson: Choose your battles carefully.

This lesson is brought to you today because I was too busy with my new toy to even think of this post.

Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan
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Picking One's Battles

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A New Start

First, I've been sick for almost two weeks now and still working on this new start of my initiative. It's a cool little booklet I think will be really useful in helping people, and it will be freely available. Creativity, media literacy and play are big parts of the contents of the booklet, to help people in daily life. The other big thing I think I should mention is the description of learning cycles. I'm hoping this booklet will be helpful in applying for The Mind Trust Education Entrepreneur Fellowship.

I'm writing this little booklet, changing my initial focus in my initiative and still going for the same goals. Yep, that's about it for the moment. So, why am I posting this? Well, this is a blog that was started for the sake of the initiative and effort combining learning science and game design. That's not it though.

Or, at least I hope it's not all.

I like watching the Dog Whisperer, because it says that the problem behaviors of dogs are because of the behavior of humans, and proves it. There are several behaviors that just cause problems in life that become obvious while watching the show, but something else becomes obvious too. It's not enough to just hear, listen or intellectually understand ideas. Some of the people on the show are avid fans of the show and are failing in implementation, not memorization. Cesar Millan shows, corrects and encourages these people as they confront their fears and make mistakes.

One of the things noted in my house is that the dogs are behaving better, since I have been at home sick. Consistency, preventing escalation of unwanted behavior and encouraging wanted behaviors is all that has been different in their lives, because that's what I do that some of the others don't do as much. Yet, one of the big points that Cesar brings up constantly is the mental and emotional state of the human affecting the dogs. Staying calm through it all is important for the human and the dog the have a positive experience.

I think the basic guidelines and information on the booklet will help people stay calm more of the time. The reason is dealing with stressful situations and approaches to life. If you can approach life in a way that causes less stress, and have better ways of dealing with the stressful situations, life on the whole will be less stressful.

Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan
Read more!

A New Start

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