The carefully researched random thoughts of Ryan Long

Soaking your sorrows away April 10, 2008

When your troubles start to weigh you down, it’s time to get away and relax. What better place to relax than a hot springs? This was my mindset on Friday, the 11th. My significant other and I decided that it would be a fun, relaxing trip to go out to Chena Hot Springs. The first place I checked was their website, which was put together quite nicely, and didn’t see any accommodations that fit my price range. I called the resorts front desk to find out if they had any cancelations on their cheaper rooms. The girl said that they had vacancies in their number 3 cabin and that I would pay the Alaska rate $119, that was $60 less.

I booked the rooms right away and started packing. It would be 55 miles from where I was, but it would be worth the wait. The drive went by quickly; it took just over an hour to get there and we saw a few moose on the way. After checking in, we took a look at our rooms. The rooms were clean and had cable, but no phone and the wireless internet wasn’t working that day, which they apologized for. We changed into our bathing suits and I met her in the outdoor pool.

The water out there is magic, we stayed in the pool for what seemed like an hour or so and decided to go get dinner. Unfortunately we had actually been in the pool for over 4 hours and quickly rushed into our dinner attire. We grabbed our room keys and practically ran to the restaurant. We got there 15 minutes too late.

We heard some music playing from the lounge and went to sit down. The man playing the guitar and singing was Pete. We decided if we couldn’t have dinner, we could stay for Pete’s music and maybe some soft drinks or appetizers would be enough. Pete came over after his song and gave us a list of what he plays. Ring of Fire seemed appropriate so we picked that.

We got up early the next morning to make sure we didn’t miss breakfast, we were still awfully hungry. After ordering half the menu and drinking a lot of coffee, we packed our stuff and checked out. We were melancholy about leaving, but enjoyed ourselves immensely and would recommend the trip to anyone. It’s my favorite place to escape to when life in town brings me down.

“The Nenana Ice Classic” April 5, 2008

April 5th was the last day to guess when the ice will go out for the year 2008. This is the time of year when everyone checks the thickness of the ice in Nenana, which is now 45 inches thick, to find out how much longer it will be before the ice starts moving the tripod set up on the Tanana river. Then when that moment comes the bells, whistles and sirens go off and the celebration begins.

Usually there is more than just one winner in the Ice Classic, not just because of the likely hood of someone picking the same time but also because of ice pools. People will join into pools to blanket certain days or possibly weeks to increase their likely hood of winning.

There are several ways that came to mind when picking dates and times for the ice to go out. The first is using science to deduce an answer. You can check previous years where the ice was 45 inches thick to see when the tripod was finally tripped. You can gauge how warm the winter was and use it to pick your date. Of course then there is just random numbers and luck. How would you pick a time for the ice to break up?

Crime in Fairbanks March 24, 2008

I was researching property values in Fairbanks and heard that one of the things affecting the value was the high ‘per-capita’ crime rate in Alaska, particularly in sexual assaults. In fact, Fairbanks has one of the highest per-capita incidences of rape in the entire United States.

There has been a study on this by UAF, in an attempt to acertain why these figures are so high and this type of crime is so prevalent in Fairbanks.

I have some other theories about the skewed statistics on Fairbanks. First of all, the FBI UCR on Fairbanks lists the city size at around 31,000 people. But those figures don’t count the surrounding areas just outside the borough and the Universities student population.

Fairbanks serves as a hub for Ft. Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base. North Pole Residents regularly come into Fairbanks because of the number of products and services available here. It is also a hub for residents of villages and workers on the North Slope.

Ryan Long’s explanation For high crime rates

Interview with local resident, Danielle F.

Fairbanks serves a much larger area than most people realize. With the increased traffic, there is a higher chance for crimes to be committed. The per-capita crime rate based on just the inner Fairbanks population is misleading and makes Fairbanks look like a haven for criminals.

Ice Sculptures in Fairbanks March 14, 2008

It is the time of year, March to be precise, when sculptors come from all over the world to compete in the Winter Carnival in Fairbanks, Alaska. It is a spectacular event with Americans, Japanese and Russians all trying to be the best. However, it wasn’t always this way. My mother cames here in the 1950s and they celebrated it much differently.

There was a king and queen for the carnival with thrones and elaborate seats carved out of ice. Then they would place huge hides on the seats made of bear, grizzly and moose. The ice came from lakes and gravel pits. there was a huge ceremony and crowns made of ivory, gold nuggets and diamonds were placed on their heads. There was a banquet, followed by an orchestra and dancing; although, everyone was dressed in formal clothes. The North American Dogsled Races were held at approximately the same time. The natives all came to town wearing their finest fur parkas, mukluks and hats.

Now the words Winter Carnival are hardly mentioned because it seems like all the events are separated. There wasnt a big competition in the ice sculptures, if you wanted to participate and carve you just did it. Now it is a world wide competition. The ice sculptures are now much more exotic with themes and large crews to beat the sunshine and get the sculpture finished by deadline. There are a lot more power tools available now and that makes it faster to cut through the big blocks of ice. Now there is a sort of park by the Comfort Inn to go through and look at all the sculptures for a fee. It is a much grander scale now but this is a little bit of history I thought everyone might enjoy.

New multimedia resource sites!!! March 13, 2008

Quick post for the day, CreativeCow.net offers a peer-to-peer support community for anything multimedia and/or interactive. They have an extensive forums system, articles library, newsletters and podcasts. Support in their forums is offered by program and by subject. It’s easy, you can read and search the posts without registration. Even then registration is quick and easy.

Another free site I use quite often is called kuler. Kuler is quite useful for coming up with new color scheme’s for web designs. You can browse through the most popular schemes used on the site or pick out a particular style of schemes which kuler can then browse for similar schemes.

Posting to a Blog seems like Gossip March 10, 2008

Which is why I am always uncomfortable about posting new topics. I’ve never felt comfortable about posting comments about someone indirectly. It’s so one sided. The only way the party can respond is through comments, which don’t even show up unless you click on the blog. I try and be as careful as possible when posting. Internally I have to go through a mental check list about any new post:

1-Will this offend anyone?

2-Should I use the person or company’s name or leave them anonymous?

3-Do I have enough knowledge on the topic to even have an opinion?

4-Is the post being jaded by my particular mood that day?

The first item is the most difficult because if you post an opinion about something, someone, somewhere will disagree with you and possibly become offended. You have to think to yourself, “How active am I going to become in the defense of my opinion?” This can eat up a lot of time, so I try to post carefully.

Using the person’s name is difficult because if I post about people around me, it’s undoubtedly without their knowledge or consent. Even if I don’t like the person, I still don’t want to attribute a critical post to them. This refers to the topic of gossip, which I’m uncomfortable with. I’d rather say an opinion face-to-face with someone, so we can have a dialog about it.

Do I have enough knowledge about the topic to post. This is extremely difficult to deal with if it’s a controversial topic with several points of view. When do you know enough to post something about it? I mean, at some point there are time constraints. Topics could take days or weeks to properly research. Even then, you will have to deal with the flak from people who disagree.

Last, am I might just be pissed off that day and looking for something to vent on. I could also be in a good mood that day and approach a serious topic too lightly. Writing anything is by nature subjective. The grammar and words used in the post are your choice. This can present a jaded view to the reader.

What are some of the things that go through your head before you post your blog?

Adobe’s Monopoply on Creativity March 8, 2008

Acquisition after acquisition, Adobe has been following the same business plan as Microsoft. Their recent purchase of Virtual Ubiquity is the most interesting. This is a suite of network able office tools. Collaboration software is becoming popular with companies because of it’s goal oriented nature and rapid communication of ideas over long distances. If this purchase can replace the Microsoft Office suite of tools as the most commonly used tool, Adobe will have taken over almost every aspect of creativity: drawing, writing and composing.

The reason this makes me nervous is because of the trend of actions Adobe has taken for every new acquisition. Basically, it follows a simple pattern. Adobe Acquires Company –> Adobe Rebrands Companies Products –> Adobe Raises Price On New Products. Don’t believe me? Look at the price raises on Dreamweaver, after the Macromedia acquisition, or Audition, which was originally called CoolEditPro. It’s not that I’m against Adobe’s success, I love the company and their products. I just can’t keep up with their prices. Working as a designer is tough enough without having to worry about razor thing profit margins from expensive licenses.

My friend has spent months of his life in World of Warcraft March 3, 2008

My friend showed me his game character’s age in World of Warcraft recently. He was talking about how long it took to get this higher level tier armor set and how strong and unstoppable his character will be when he finishes the set. However I was somewhat oblivious to his comments as I was still stuck on his characters age or days played on that character. 147 days played on that character. 147 DAYS! That’s 3,528 hours playing a video game. Or more accurately, 3,528 hours sitting on your ass, staring at a monitor and clicking a mouse. But this figure assumes that they did nothing more than play for that many hours straight, while in reality you have to sleep, eat or go to work at sometime. So, counting all these added breaks from the game, it becomes more like 250 days spent playing this game. I am being quite generous with this figure, as it assumes that maybe they left the game on all night or had a bunch of weekends dominated by this game.

I started thinking, why is this game so popular. The last figure I had seen, said there were 8 million accounts for WoW. So people enjoy playing this, it’s success hasn’t been limited to just niche markets. I came up with some potential reasons that people play this. The first one is:

* Community – While the game can alienate the player from their physical community, it provides a virtual one. Maybe they don’t socialize well in person or this virtual world doesn’t have the same prejudices and stereotypes as theirs. In this place, a persons age, looks and gender don’t matter and play no part in either changing or restricting communication.

* Escapism – This game is used as a form of escape in many instances. If someone is having trouble dealing with something or they’re just unhappy with the state of their own life, they can jump into their game world and find refuge there. This is why there is so much story or detail in this game and others like it. It makes it more immersive for the player and it’s easier for them to get lost in it. This works for the game company in two ways: it makes the game a primary source to turn to for comfort and makes the player time committed to his character so they want to finish their progress. Both lead to profits from continued subscription to the service.

* Accomplishment – Or rather, the false sense of accomplishment. It used to be that most games didn’t have anything tangible to show how long you’ve played. Sure, skill level might give a hint to it, but someone might just be good at the game and fairly new at it. The opposite can also be true. But with WoW people can point to something on screen, a rare weapon or armor set or ranking to show the trials that they have overcome.

People never make the next step of realization though, that this is just all 1′s and 0′s in your computer. In 5 years, this game will have almost no impact. People will have moved on and the community will dry up. All the time that they spent playing this will mean nothing. Sure they had fun but it’s not really something you can share with someone later on. This realization never occurs because the game is immersive and people simply don’t want to think about it. I wonder how many people will get sucked into the next big mmorpg?

Alaska Festival of Native Arts March 2, 2008

I went to the Festival of Native Arts, held at UAF, with my girlfriend. I have to admit that I wasn’t that interested in going because I was raised in Alaska so I had thought I had seen most of it. But she’s from California and wanted to go because she hadn’t been to something like that. I assumed it would consist of a small bazaar with people selling necklaces and maybe a lecture in the Wood Center auditorium, boy was I wrong.

When we arrived at the Wood Center there were mostly children there but hardly any adults. I thought we had missed the festival and felt bad that I had been dragging my heels. My girlfriend went up and talked to a Native girl by the pizza stand. She asked where the Festival was. The girl responded, rather cryptically, that it was in a building near here and to follow the drums. I figured the only other place large enough would be the Fine Arts building so we started walking over. Sure enough, the sound of drums emanated from the building as we drew close.

As we entered into the Great Hall, I saw that the entire room was filled with vendors from various towns and villages around the state. I couldn’t believe how many people there were, there were close to 80 people filing around the vendors in a slow clockwise motion. Vendors were selling jewelry and outfits with complex bead work designs. Fur trappers had several booths filled with well prepared pelts, gloves and Mukluks on hand. There was a ivory carver named Mike who had duplicates of the traditional spears used when hunting. He explained how to throw them, what the markings were for and the history behind them. My girlfriend bought three necklaces, a mammoth ivory piece for herself and two walrus pieces for her friends.

The best part is when we entered the Davis Concert Hall and found the source of the drumming. There was a crowd of about 150 people cheering and clapping for the dancers on stage. We sat down and watched as an elder took the stage. She must have been in her 70′s as she walked slowly and quietly on stage. She was dressed in the traditional parka, mukluks and mitts, which must have been quite hot as it was already warm in there with the size of the crowd. She started slowly dancing as the others behind her started singing and accompanying it with some soft snare drums. Then the large percussion drums began from behind and the singing took an intense tone. The crowd erupted with cheers and applause as the elder leaped across the stage with the speed of one half her age.

After the dances were over, we left and got something to eat. The festival was very entertaining and we plan to go the next one they have.