White Christmas 2007
Every year, for the last five, I have done a quick version of the song “White Christmas,” here is this year’s entry.
Best New Music 2007
Decent year for music. Didn’t really get into any super indie stuff and it seems my favorite new albums were mostly from familiar artists. Both Jose Gozalez’s “In Our Nature” and Underworld’s “Oblivion with Bells” take top honors this year.
I like how iTunes has made making these lists objective, I filter by the year then look at the play count. No temptation to list esoteric bands for cool points! For example, I was surprised to see that I had not listened to the new Radiohead “In Rainbows” enough for it to make the top 10. So here are my 2007 lists.
Best of 2007
- Underworld - Oblivion With Bells / Live at Roadhouse
- Jose Gonzalez - In Our Nature
- YACHT - I believe In You Your Magic Is Real
- Maserati - Inventions for The New Season
- Caspian - Four Trees
- Daft Punk - Alive 2007
- White Stripes - Icky Thump
- Chromeo - Fancy Footwork
- M83 - Digital Shades
- LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Most listened to older albums of 2007
- Bruce Springsteen - Hammersmith Odeon London 1975
- Underworld - Everything Everything / Live @ Roadhouse
- Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto - Getz/Gilberto
- The Sword - Age of Winter
- U2 - Joshua Tree (Remastered)
2007 Rediscovered
- The Who - “Who’s Next”
I’ve also posted my lists from subsequent years. It is interesting to see which of these albums have held up over the years.
Best of 2006
- Colour Revolt - EP
- Junior Boys – So This Is Goodbye
- Film School – Film School
- The Blow – Paper Television
- José González – Veneer
- Thom Yorke – The Eraser
- The Killers – Sam’s Town
- Jeremy Enigk – World Waits
- Bruce Springsteen – We Shall Overcome
- LCD Soundsystem - 45:33
- Roger O’Donnell – The Truth In Me
- Belong – October Language
- Boris – Pink
Most listened to older albums of 2006
- U2 - Live in Chicago
- James Hall - Here Comes The Trick
- Jamie Lidell - Multiply / Additions
- LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem / Introns
2006 Rediscovered
- Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
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Best of 2005
- Sun Kil Moon – Tiny Cities
- Wolf Parade – Apologize to the Queen Mary
- Mars Volta – Frances the Mute
- The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan
- LCD Soundsystem – LCD Soundsystem
- Kraftwerk – Minimum Maximum
- M83 – Before The Dawn Heals Us
- Efterklang. – Tripper
- Harlan – The Still Beat
- Reception Is Suspected – The New American Etiquette
Listened to
- The Jackson Five - The Best Of
- RIS
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Best of 2004
- The Blow – Poor Aim : Lovesongs
- Arcade Fire – Funeral
- Modest Mouse – Good News For People Who Love Bad News
- Loretta Lynn – Van Lear Rose
- Kanye West – The College Dropout
- Owen - The EP
- Bjork – Medulla
- The Album Leaf – In a safe place
- Devendra Banhart – Rejoicing in the Hands
- Radian – Juxtaposition
Listened to
- Spoon (moved from Lakeview)
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Best 2003
- Radiohead – “Hail To the Thief”
- Sun Kil Moon – “Ghost of the Great Highway”
- M83 - “Dead Cities Red Seas and Lost Ghosts”
- Postal Service – “Give Up”
- The Fire Theft – “The Fire Theft”
- The Shins - “Chutes Too Narrow”
- Bobby Birdman - “Heart Caves”
- Manitoba – “Up in Flames”
- The Decemberists – “Castaways and Cutouts”
- Justin Timberlake – “Justified”
NY Times Interview
My personal assistant asked me to do an interview with the New York Times on the benefits of outsourcing to small business. While not named in the article the author, Dan Fost, mentions a certain “web designer from Louisiana.” Nice.
Read it here.
Ink & Kiss
Our old friend Scott (Malachi) has made an absolutely killer remix/mashup of Ink & Type using one of our old industrial favorites Pigface’s “Kiss King.”
More new RIS stuff coming soon….
What is your wallet?
I am really digging my new “All-Ett” wallet, it is billed as “the world’s thinest.” No more sitting on a brick or droopy pants from a weighed down pocket.
I have the “European Junior Leather” model which is slightly bigger, but a little more sturdy and elegant than its nylon clothed brother. The unique fold over design provides plenty of room for the necessities.
I am able hold:
Cash
1 License
1 ATM Card
1 Credit Card
4 Personal Biz Cards (I keep replenished)
1 Car Insurance Card (In case I am driving someone else’s car)
1 Health Insurance Card
That is it. Everything else like restaurant punch cards and other peoples cards are locked away in the glove compartment. I really enjoy the size constraints which force you to keep your wallet organized and down to the essentials. It fits in with my current minimalism phase, plus it frees up room in my pocket for that iPhone!
My Outsourcing Speech To Dr. Johnston’s Class
Background
Two classes ago Dr. Johnston talked about prioritizing your daily tasks with an analogy of fitting the two most important rocks into your daily jar first then filling the jar with the smaller tasks or pebbles. And while I agree with her point that a single person should only focus on the two large tasks, what if you where not a just one person but team of people? You could certainly fit more pebbles into the jar? Well now you can, by outsourcing your life.
Intro
Today I want to talk about delegating those pebble tasks, overseas, through outsourcing. I am going to briefly highlight the history globalization, the backbone of outsourcing, give you an example of how it can be used to help American small business, and finally talk about how you as an MBA student can use outsourcing to your advantage.
A Whirlwind History of Globalization
In order to understand outsourcing, you first must understand globalization. There is a long history to globalization, but I want to focus on the acceleration that has happened in the last couple years.
In the late nineties American companies raced to lay fiber optics on the ocean floors connecting the world to the internet. They made good money charging high fees to access these pipes. But when the tech bubble burst they were forced to drastically cut the fees thereby allowing developing countries to become our neighbors overnight.
In his authoritative history of globalization, “The World Is Flat,” Thomas Friedman explains that the playing field has been leveled, and our competition has not only quadrupled, they now have access to the same information as we do.
Friedman also warns against the popular misconception that America’s creativity will outwit the Easts work ethic. He states “In China today Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today Britney Spears is Britney Spears.”
Example
It isn’t all doom and gloom for us here stateside, there are options of how we can use the benefits of Globalization to our advantage. You see, outsourcing isn’t just for tech support and car makers anymore, outsourcing is now affordable for everyone. There are millions of well educated eager Indians, Chinese and Eastern Europeans begging to take care of all the pebbles in our lives for very low cost.
Let me give you an example of how outsourcing can help an American business. Outside of my nine to fiver, I own a small design firm which mainly creates websites for small businesses. Six months ago I was overextended with work from my day job and had taken on too many projects with my design firm. Loyola hadn’t even started yet and so I was contemplating closing up shop.
Luckily, I happened on to a brilliant book by Tim Ferriss called “The Four Hour Work Week.” Which talks about outsourcing the 20% of the tasks that take up 80% of our time. He describes how to do this by using companies such as Brickwork and eLance that match your needs with highly skilled assistant for as little as $5 an hour.
So I decided to give it a try and went with a company based in India called GetFriday. They matched me with a recent college communications graduate named Santhosh, who eagerly assumed the two most tedious tasks for me as a web-designer, searching for images and finding icons.
I could give you a whole talk on how much time and headache Santhosh has saved me, but the short story is my design firm is still open and I have now become a bit of an outsourcing addict.
Outsourcing Your MBA
So you are saying “Brian, this sounds good, but how can outsourcing help me the MBA student?” Well, one of the many benefits of outsourcing is that it teaches you to communicate and manage people effectively. Because of the language barrier you are forced to be clear an concise in your instructions. And what better way to learn how to manage people than by doing it?
On top of the educational aspects, I am able to off load a ton of school tasks to my assistant. For example, Santhosh wrote this speech… No, he didn’t but he did help me find the articles.
I asked him what he would want a group of American MBA students to know how outsourcing affects his life and he replied in, “Knowledge is wealth in India and wealth allows you to stay close to your family. Everyday his clients ask him to research things that are out of his knowledge box and therefore he gains wealth and can be successful at home.”
Closing
So in closing, we talked about a brief history of globalization and the competition we are now face. I also gave you my personal example of how outsourcing can help a small business. And finally we talked about how MBA students can use outsourcing as a source of education.
The company I use, GetFriday, offers a free 7 day trial, try it out and I’d love to hear your results.
Thank You.
Oblivion with Bells
Nighttime driving at its best.
Underworld are still making brilliant albums.
Faxed Invitation
Coda
My web development workflow use to involve a slew of applications starting with BBEdit, CSSEdit, Transmit, then including all of the browsers for testing. As you can imagine my memory was on overload. Enter Coda, an elegant all in one app made by Cabel and friends over at Panic. This all mac app crams the functionality my previous tools into one beautifully designed IDE like interface. I know what you are thinking bloat bloat bloat, but Coda is brilliantly designed and low on intensity.
While there are tons of features such as over-the network collaboration, courtesy of SubEthaEdit, Panic wisely decided to not throw in the kitchen sink in orderto compete on functionality with the stand alone apps. The beauty of Coda lies in its simple approach to a “one-window-web-development” scheme. The app just “feels” right, already improving my workflow and beating down clutter.
Coda is yet another reason I use Mac over PC.
