Clarke Keranen

Lately, I have gotten more and more interested in homebrewing. Brewing beer at home that is, thanks to the legislation that Jimmy Carter passed back in 1979. I really enjoy trying different kinds of beer and analyzing it, just like people do with wine. Beer just has slightly different characteristics than wine that it is graded on, like appearance, smell, taste, mouthfeel, and dinkability. Through doing this I have realized there i much more to life than the run of the mill beverages you can find at the grocery store, that stuff is not appealing to me at all. After reading informational sites on the internet such as BeerAdvocate.com, I really wanted to try brewing my own, specifically tailored to my own taste specifications. The other day I visited the U-Brew Store on the corner of Mansfield and Washtenaw in Ypsilanti and picked up a homebrewing kit, along with a nice chunk of information from their knowledgeable staff. I haven't got a chance to start brewing yet, but I'm sure that by the end of Christmas break I will be well on my way...

Last class, Professor Gibson showed us the De.licio.us site and I thought it was a pretty good idea. I too have found myself in situations that I wanted to find something that I know I had bookmarked, but I wasn't on my own computer. De.licio.us is a very handy tool for these occasions, and I also like how you can look at what other people are bookmarking on the internet. I'm sure if looked for a while you could find some really interesting things. And to think some guy who already had a great job managed to create this and sell it off, sending him spiraling into retirement.

I know many people don't like snow all that much, but I would much rather it be cold and snowing than just plain cold. The reason for these feelings is the fact that I really enjoy snowboarding and haven't gotten a chance in quite a while. Last season I could hardly afford to go and when I actually could space the money, there wasn't any good snow. I have to make up lost time and from what I hear, we are really in for it within the next 24 hours (6-12" expected). I really want to go to Alpine Valley because it has the biggest hills within an hour drive and the scenery is very nice also. Mount Brighton is close too, but in my opinion it is more geared to freestyle riding, like jumps and rails etc. I'm more partial to carving down the slopes really fast, getting back on the lift, and doing it all over again. Hopefully I get some good opportunities to go in the near future.

The Alyssa Martina segment was nice. Metro Parent an idea that became a reality. The need is good, creative, and patient parenting. The realty is that parents all need support and want a "pat" on the back for a good job and confirmation from parent peers. Metro Parent, the innovation of entrepreneur, Alyssa Martina, is a great learning and comparison shopping tool for all parents. Alyssa saw a need and created it. Happy successful parents create happy successful children in turn creating happy successful adults.
A good quote...

"Never fear spoiling children by making them too happy. Happiness is the atmosphere in which all good affections grow..-Thomas Bray

Ron Suarez, interesting, independent and innovative. Do you have to like music or business to be successful in the music industry? I would say both must be true. Ron has succeeded in both recognizing a need and cutting out the middle management and part of a controlling entity. Thereby artists can market their talent and business sense at a low cost in the embryonic stage of their career and can grow in financial strength as they become more successful. Ron provides services to emerging artists and those in mid-career. There is definitely a need for these promotional services. Artists should be able to perform their art and work with an experienced promoter.

The new movie "I am Legend" comes out today and I would really like to go see it. I heard about it from my cousin months ago when he showed me a trailer for it on You Tube. I hadn't seen anything bout it prior and it seemed ok. Then he told me about the book, which he had just finished reading. Thats what really sparked my interest. He said it was about a bird-type flu that turned everyone into vampires. I really like vampire movies, so this one is right up my alley. Plus it has Will Smith in it ans he wouldn't do anything unless he say a huge potential in it right? I don't think i will be seeing tonight, more likely sometime this weekend.

I just watched the segment on Michigan Innovators about Bob Holland and I really liked it. It sounds to me like he has been very successful throughout his career, building up businesses and selling them off, only to buy another one and do it all over again. Now hes at the point where he probably has so much money he cant find enough things to spend it on, and now he wants to help other entrepreneurs. Buying and selling businesses is something I would really like to get into. I feel like with skills I have learned so far at EMU I could find ways of perfecting a business, making it more profitable while raising the value of the business itself. I would love to attend on of Bob's retreats too. To be able to hear what he has to say and meet with all the other successful CEOs and such would really be something special. I bet it costs and arm and a leg though.

In the Michigan Innovators segment with Al McWilliams, I thought it was interesting to find out about the inner-workings of a publishing house. Not a very big one, but a publishing house nonetheless. I like how he didn't outsource as much as, say, Lou Rosenfeld's company, because that is a great way to increase their bottom-line. It seems like a relatively straight-forward business, relying mostly on how many clients they can accumulate and in turn expanding their operations. I think they should get into distributing for other companies smaller than they are as well.

I really enjoyed the segment with Aaron Crumm discussing how he started his business Adaptive Materials Inc.. Of course, the fact that he holds a Phd. from U of M doesnt't hurt, but I can really respect him for using the knowledge he had, coming to the realization of what his strong points are and putting it all to good use. I too aspire to start a business of my own and it is great to listen to first hand accounts of various things one encounters in the process of building a successful company. It was also interesting to hear about how important it is for his company in particular to have all of their technology patented, for if it wasn't, a company more powerful like IBM could just crush him like a bug.

I watched the segment with Wayne Millette and his experience of starting up a charter school. It sounds like starting a one of these schools is quite difficult. You have to come up with an answer for everything far before the first day of school. Wayne had to think about how he was going to come up with the money to pay his staff, knowing his first revenue stream wouldn't come until October. He also had a hard time finding a place to hold classes. At first he was holding them in an old church that didn't have any air conditioner. It seems to me that with over 100 students in a church with only four classrooms, sessions would be pretty uncomfortable. I give Wayne credit for pursuing his goal and achieving it through a ton of hard work and persevereance.

I found this interesting article on the Advertising Age site about Facebook and thought it would be good blogging material. Advertising on Facebook is coming and its just a matter of time. Marketers are always looking for ways to unlock the mysteries of word-of-mouth and to understand how consumers influence each other. Facebook's "social graph" or large scale modeling of interpersonal relationships can be very helpful for advertisers to target the right market. One issue though is that there is supposedly a lot of fudging of the truth on the site by people in respect to themselves and their social lives. This could cause a lot of money to be wasted on advertising directed to people considered to be part of a certain market when in actuality they couldn't care less about the product or service. I just hope that advertising and marketing products will be the only thing information obtained from personal pages in Facebook is used for.

As I was browsing other people's blogs looking for possible blog topics I saw Terry's about home automation. I think there are a lot of positive aspects to this kind of technology, especially being able to control lights and have some or all of them come on if a motion sensor is tripped, close blinds automatically or monitor the perimeter or rooms in the house by internet when you are out of town. I would surely utilize these tools, but I'm not too sure about the concept of having it feed my animals. I am sure there are a lot more features even more far-fetched than pet feeding, which leads me to wonder: What if things go wrong? What if for some reason there is a glitch or malfunction that sends your once once peaceful residence into a state of anarchy? Lights rapidly turning on and off, electronic devices having a mind of their own, cabinet doors opening and shutting wildly, your surveilance cameras start broadcasting to everyone on your block, and the next thing you know your cat gets devoured by the machine that feeds it twice a day. I think for now at least I will just feed my dog manually.

I wanted to see what came up when I typed my name in at Google and I figured I would see some stuff from my learning remix blog (which I did) but I also stumbled onto something else I thought to be interesting. I came across this site about a certain Al Keranen who supposedly masterminded one of the largest fraud schemes ever in the San Fernando Valley by luring investors with flashy jewelry, a spacious home and an appeal to old-fashioned religious values, former clients say. He ended up swindling 12 million dollars from about 200 different investors and got caught but never served any jail time. He paid only 148K back so far and leads a peaceful life in Oregon. I don't really know or have heard of any other Keranens besides the ones in my own family so it makes me wonder what my relation to this character is. Maybe he is also curious about his liniage and has been reading my blogs?

While using the W3C Markup Validation Site, I encountered a little issue that still has me stumped. Initially it told me that I had no "DOCTYPE" so I looked up the one I needed and pasted it at the top of the page. The validator was pleased by this, but now when I click any of my "back to top" buttons at the bottom of my pages they don't do anything. I have toyed with it for a while and still no luck. Hmmmmmmm.

I have been working on my personal portion of our group project and its coming along nicely. When I view it with my browser all of the pictures show up and all is well. I wanted to get what I have so far up on the web so I uploaded it on people.emich.edu and for some reason my pictures aren't showing up. I have been playing around with it for hours and still no luck.

Watching the Peter Morville conversation on Michigan Innovators really made me think. Especially when he said "information that is hard to find will remain information that is hardly found." I always thought of librarians as old women that didn't have anything better to do other than spend their days at the library renting out books and re-filing returned books, but I honestly have a new outlook on them. The way information is filed is indeed very important and someone has to do it. I personally have also noticed a change in the way libraries are accessed. I can remember having to write a report on something and going to read articles and periodicals at my local library. Now I'm here at EMU and if I need to write a paper or get information for my own personal use I can hop on the internet and access Halle Library's infinite amount of articles and databases at any time. It is so convenient I couldn't imagine actually going to the library ever again unless I needed to check out a book.

I watched the Lou Rosenfeld conversation on the Michigan Innovators site today and found it quite interesting. I love how he is making campaigns out simple sales just by giving every item its own discount code. After tracking how the discount codes are passed along, he can really paint a nice picture of how people are networked together. I couldn't believe he's doing all that just with simple programs like Excel. Also, I think its very interesting how he's getting people to buy these books by providing them in a format where the information is most useful. Its almost like Cliff Notes. If you would like to find out more about Rosenfeld Media, you can click here to go to the site. I went there and found it to be very straight-forward and easy to navigate.

I have been meaning to align the Sitemeter widget with the Creative Commons widget on my sidebar. I didn't have a clue, but i remembered it being covered in class so I looked around at other people's blogs and found Kyle Tomlin's post about it. I just mirrored the div tags like he said and when i checked to see if it worked, it did!

Today I watched the Michael Heatherington interview and found it to be quite interesting. I have never heard of the Train Simulator software, but I am familiar with Flight Simulator. I frequently played it in my elementary years and used a joystick to get the full effect. Michael Heatherington was really onto something when he started thinking about possible ways to make the game better by utilizing more 'conductor friendly' controls. I am actually surprised that Microsoft didn't come out with their own version of Rail Driver along with the release of the Train Simulator software. Also, if you check out his actual Softrail retail site Michael has some other nice software to go along with the Rail Driver device.

Initially, I had some trouble getting the SiteMeter widget to appear on the sidebar. I followed all of the instructions to the best of my ability and still no luck. After a while of trying different things, I realized that SiteMeter was listed under 'Installed Widgets' and also under 'Available Widgets.' Anyways, I deleted the available one and suddenly the widget appeared. After that I felt it was pretty easy to figure out how to customize the widget and I ended up changing it so that a counter appears directly below it.