Jason Thibeault's Blog: From My Pen, page 10

Warning, Controversial Topic: When Faith Trumps Reason

First, let me preface this post by the statement that I am not anti-God (nor anti-religion for that matter as I believe the social and cultural constructs of religion serve a valuable place in the human psyche). My beliefs in the matter are completely irrelevant to the position that I am going to take around creationism vs. evolutionary theory. What concerns me most, as I will explain, is the danger of “extreme belief systems” that go against logical and rational thought.

Although it has flare...

How To: Publishing Video on the Web

Although getting your video onto the web may seem like a fairly simple task, there are actually a number of moving parts that, if ignored, can greatly impact long-term success.

Let’s start by explaining the basics.

First, everyone who wants to get video onto the web follows five simple steps. We call this the Video Publishing Workflow:

Create. First, you must create the content. Whether this is capturing it yourself via a video camera, purchasing it from a content provider, or getting it from so...

Defining Intelligence

Okay, I get it. The definition of intelligence is not something that we all seek everyday. People are smart. That guy or girl figured something out. They must be intelligent. But when you really tear that word out of usage you begin to wonder about what it truly means to be intelligent (well, at least I do). Intelligence as a concept (and its derivatives, like “genius”), fascinates me. And not just because I want to say that I or anyone else is or isn’t intelligent. It’s more the result of a...

Ad-sponsored E-books?

As the owner/author/founder of Dime Novel Publishing, I am often thinking about e-books, business models, and technology as they relate to evolution of publishing (which is definitely happening). In a recent post on the Dime Novel Publishing blog, I am exploring some concepts around electronic publishing, specifically the optimum size of ebook publications given Dime Novel Publishing’s original objective: to bring back the dime novel (short format, syndicated content) for the e-book generatio...

I’ll Pay For Opinions, Not News

There are a lot of blog posts going around right now about the upheaval in the media space, for example, the link below:

http://gigaom.com/2011/07/10/why-the-chaos-in-media-might-be-a-good-thing/

Actually, this is a dialog that has been happening since the Web really took flight as a method for distributing information. Prior to that, traditional media (newspapers, magazines, television) were the only ways by which information was globally disseminated.

But let’s take a closer look at “news” bef...

Great macro shot of the insect world

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/cactus-bee-flower/

Originally posted 2011-07-12 08:41:21.

Photo: How To Shoot Rainbows

Everyone loves a rainbow (well, some people also love unicorns and glitter but we won’t cover that here) especially photographers. There is something magical about capturing the spontaneous beauty of a rainbow (and, in reality, the simplicity of its formation which is all based on elementary physics).

MacWorld published a great piece on how to shoot a rainbow:

http://www.macworld.com/article/161650/2011/08/how_to_shoot_rainbows_with_your_digital_camera.html

From the article:

The first step is to...

Retooling School to Focus on Critical Analysis and Thinking

With four kids going through school (and a former university educator), I’ve seen the impact of curriculum focused on memorization and regurgitation: a complete lack of critical thinking skills. Students look to teachers to understand what they need to memorize in order to succeed on tests, not how to really grasp the material and apply it to both other classes and their lives. That is a failure on our part as a culture. And, unfortunately, an educational administration, deeply-ingrained cult...

Ten Aperture Plug-ins

Aperture 3 is an awesome photo-editing and management application for Mac. But, like any software, it’s always missing features we wish it would have. Thankfully, Aperture provides a plug-in framework for extending the software with additional third-party plug-ins. MacWorld has put together a great list of these…including one for $5!

http://www.macworld.com/article/161457/2011/08/10_super_cool_plugins_for_aperture.html

Originally posted 2011-08-29 15:43:42.

Have Words Lost Their Power?

TechCrunch recently produced a very exciting interview with the author of Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart. In this interview, posted on their blog as a series of videos, Gary expounds on his beliefs that words have lost their power because of a constant flow of information that people produce daily.

As an author, schooled in creative writing, and a publisher, I completely agree with Gary. Although I would go even further in saying that not only have word...

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