Flashes of Chaos

This week I'll be posting video interviews, blogs, photos, and general updates from the EMS expo in Atlanta. A friend and fellow filmmaker, Thaddeus 'Ted' Setla, a paramedic for Alameda County AMR, tapped me to help him out with the content production for EMSexpo.net , which is the official social media and web video coverage for the event. After some confusion over rooms (both at the hotel and at the convention hall itself!) which was eventually handled brilliantly, we found ourselves a home base. For the past few hours we've been setting up the site, which I must say, is looking great. there's even a way for Flickr users to add their photos to the page via a tag ('EMSExpo2009'). Pretty cool. This event, and the challenge of covering it, will be a great experience for us, and I think that it will open up many doors for future gigs, similar to this. I- and we- hope that we can add to the experience of the expo for the attendees. Stay tuned!

Today is my birthday, and I'm 28. I thought that things would be a lot simpler and more straightforward in life at this point, when I was growing up. But I realize that as a kid I had two concepts of people: children, and not children. I figured that the not-children would have it all figured out. I was wrong. I also realize that many of the people I expect to be not-children actually fall into the children category. we all know these people. boy, that was vague. sorry. The real reason I wanted to post was to show this vertical aspect video that I put on vimeo. I attached my camera to my bike handlebars to test out the shakiness of it. I have to say, I was kind of impressed at how stable the image was: vertical aspect ratio test from Dridge on Vimeo . I hope to put more vertical aspect videos up, because I think that certain content will really benefit from it. Mostly short-form, and mostly on the web. I think that it is totally underutilized though.

I learned an important lesson today. A lesson that was learned on the (disc) golf course. It's something that many players call 'course management'. The basic idea is that, when faced with a competitive or high-pressure situation (such as a game of golf or a business negotiation), one is better off being realistic about available moves, choices, and the probable outcome of those choices, based upon how well you know yourself. The key thing is to resist the temptation to attempt an improbable shot, even though you've hit it a few times before. Take the shot that you have practiced, don't overshoot beyond your ability. most of the time the result will only be finding yourself behind an even bigger obstacle than when you started. If you can develop a solid game and really hone certain fundamentals until they are second nature, then the improvements, and the distance between you and those 'long shots' will narrow considerably. It's all about knowing that th