Austin Neaves

Back from Break

2009-09-10T18:19:00.004-05:00

I haven't blogged for a while. I've been traveling a great much this summer and writing and reading a lot. Now that summer is pretty much over I'm going to be blogging more. I always hate to see summer go, but I enjoy Fall and Winter too.

It's Mother's Day!

2009-05-10T16:16:00.002-05:00

It's Mother's Day today. Since my mother lives several hours away I didn't get to see her today, but I do get to see her in two weeks. My cousin is getting married, which means I'll be visiting the great state of Iowa.

Where is the Republican Party Headed?

2009-05-05T10:52:00.005-05:00

Demographics is important in marketing. If your customer base is shrinking, you've got a problem. Products often change in order to offset the changing demographics of the customer base. In politics, the same principal applies. It's hard not to see that the Republican party is in need of change. Here are four fundamental changes that need to occur in the Republican party in order to stay relevant.

1. Embrace real libertarian principals: The mantra should be that small government is an effective government. Encourage private investment. The tricky part is all politicians (even Republicans) can't help but bring home as much pork as possible for their local constituents. I really do believe this needs to be the central most talked about concept in the party. Which leads to my next point...

2. Back off social issues: Abortion and gay marriage will no longer fire up the base. Time is working against you on these topics. Public opinion is rapidly changing on gay marriage and more and more "pro-life" supporters are becoming more moderate on the issue. I don't think this trend will change.

3. Adopt an immigration plan that appeals to the Hispanic population: At least partial amnesty is going to be necessary. People will not vote for you if they see you as breaking up families.

4. You can no longer count on the south: States in the south are up for grabs. The entire northeast is becoming untouchable. Democrats made waves in the last election because they became electable in all 50 states. They didn't cede any ground.

Personally, I hope the Republican party heads in the opposite direction. Sometimes parties need to end.

I'm getting so old.

2009-05-04T21:29:00.002-05:00

Ugh... I'm getting so old. I'll be 25 on July 1st (two months away). I think that is the age where you start to transition from young adult to real adult. I guess it comes as a somewhat welcome relief. At some point everyone starts to grow up even if they don't want to. Oh well, a mid-life crisis is only 15 years away. It could be worse. My favorite age so far has been 19. 19 is perfect. Your old enough to have a fake id and young enough to still be excited to just go into a bar and enjoy a drink with your friends. I still wouldn't go back and do it all over again. Maybe this year I won't lock myself in my room for a whole week and sit in the dark grumbling about getting a year older. Maybe.

Should Obama Prosecute Bush Era Officials for Torture?

2009-04-23T11:36:00.002-05:00

Politics has recently asked a question with few good answers. It's no secret that during the Bush years, the United States began to change its definition of torture, freedom, and the right to privacy. Many of us in the states were willing to give up some of our rights in the belief that it would keep us safe. As time went on, and these infractions on the basic values long held by Americans throughout our entire history became worse. Eventually, people started to take issue with these core changes.

With the end of the Bush era and the beginning of the Obama administration, changes were made swiftly. Recently, official memos regarding the Bush era changes have came to light. People have generally been shocked by the depth of these abuses of power. The question raised is whether the people responsible for these apparent violations in abuse of power should face the consequences of their actions.

While I have no doubt that a focus on the past abuses of the Bush Administration would be horrible experience for the country. Personally, I believe that to ignore these criminals would be a greater injustice. These people have hurt America. Exposing them is to face the problem in hopes that the mistakes won't repeat themselves.

After President Nixon resigned, President Ford faced an issue of whether to pardon Nixon for his crimes. He chose to spare the country the very real pain and injury a trial of the former president would cause. Over 30 years later, the crimes of the Nixon administration were repeated. Maybe action now, while painful, would prevent another repeat of these crimes in 30 more years.

Miss California Deserved to Lose

2009-04-22T12:02:00.005-05:00

There is quite a bit of controversy going on over Miss California's remarks in the Miss USA pageant. Normally, I wouldn't get too into something like this, but Miss California was asked a very important and very relevant question by Perez Hilton.

She was asked about about the hot topic of gay marriage and whether she believe other states should also follow suite with states that have legalized gay marriage. (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont have legalized gay marriage at this point).

Her answer sparked outrage and controversy because she believes marriage is between a man and a women and said as much. This has sparked a debate not only on same sex marriage, but a persons right to their opinion. I'm for same sex marriage and for me the issue is just common sense (even though that's not a fair statement). I guess I live in a liberal bubble because I don't really know anyone who is against it. I do sometimes feel a little bad about how people have treated Miss California. She is entitled to her opinion, HOWEVER, she must understand that opinions have consequences. Opinions have an effect on what people think of you (Especially when your in a contest which is based on people judging you.

While pageants may be an indulgence of all that is shallow, most people still don't want a divisive Miss USA. That is why her answer cost her the crown. She might have won if she said "I think it should be up to each individual state like the founders of our constitution intended." However, she feels she stayed "biblically correct." Good for her.

It's hard not to see how this issue has been great for her. Nobody even really remembers who won the contest. All eyes are on her. She's a smart girl in that she playing it out to her base. In the short term (which is what a Miss USA career is) she has benefited from it greatly. In 10 years, people will probably look back and laugh at her for her idiotic beliefs. I know I already am.

What I've Been Up To

2009-04-21T19:28:00.003-05:00

I haven't written in a while so I thought I'd write a little bit about what I've been up to. I've been working, getting up early, exercising, and working on some writing projects I hope to someday publish.

This weekend I'm heading home (to the Quad Cities) for a charity run. I'm looking forward to seeing my family. My mom's garden is beautiful this time of year.

Spring is finally here and it's proving to be quite the motivator for me. This past weekend I did some major spring cleaning, which involved me throwing out a lot of junk.

Musically, I've been listening to FrankMusik who is going to be huge in 6 months. He's my newest obsession in the music world.

Well, that's it. I'll write more soon.

Personal Update - 03-10-09

2009-03-10T19:33:00.002-05:00

I've been staying busy by working, writing, and reading. I started reading "The Reader" after I saw it in cinema last weekend. It's better as a book and an easy read. I recommend it if your looking for a nice book to read in a day or so. Tonight, I'm cleaning up my closet (My top shelf fell down and made a mess) and afterwards going to Caribou coffee to write for an hour or so.

Personal Update: 03-01-09

2009-03-01T19:12:00.003-06:00

I'm super excited that March is finally here. Before long, warm weather will be a daily occurrence. I can't wait to actually eat at a restaurant with outdoor seating. I love winter, but I love when it's over even more.

I had a great day with my parents yesterday. I think they enjoyed China Town. We ordered way too much food and I think I'll be eating left-overs for a few days at least.

Today has been pretty relaxing. I've been reading "Increase your Financial IQ" by Robert T. Kiyosaki. I'm almost done with it. It's pretty good. His whole style (and substance) is pretty simplistic, but I do find his books motivating (although a little repetitive).

Oh, and I've been listening to Kelly Clarkson's "My December" album which I never liked before, but am finding quite nice today.

I'll probably go to bed early tonight. I want to wake up early and do yoga before work tomorrow.

Personal Update

2009-02-28T08:38:00.002-06:00

So I'm starting to become a morning person. It was one of my New Year's resolutions this year. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. without too much trouble today, on a Saturday morning. I guess the test of a true morning person is whether or not they wake up early when they don't have to do so.

Well, besides that, my parents are coming to visit at noon today. It was my mom's birthday a couple weeks ago and since we live in different cities, it's the first time I've seen her since Christmas. I'm taking them to China Town for lunch, followed by shopping downtown. I also want to take them to a new coffee house I discovered in Chicago, Noble Tree. It's a pretty cool place. It's three stories and the whole place is gutted so they can have tables and chairs everywhere. I think they'll like it. They, like me, have a thing for coffee shops. I can see them opening up their own one day easily.

The last thing I've done is clean. And do I mean clean. I scrubbed the walls, mopped the floor, dusted everything, and made sure ever corner or cranny is spotless. It wasn't that dirty to begin with, but it's nice to have everything in perfect order. I use products with bleach and like the smell of it, which is kind of weird. It's sort of relaxing to me.

Well, that's all.

P.S. Loved Obama's speech on Tuesday. It was a great first state of the union address.

Where Display and Text Ads Meet

2009-02-22T16:58:00.004-06:00

With the the economy in recession, many businesses have begun to re-examine how they spend advertising dollars. Suddenly, return on investment is becoming increasingly important in today's market. Since display ads typically have a lower direct return on investment than search ads, companies have been focusing advertising dollars away from display and into search based ads.

This has had a negative effect on companies like Yahoo who are strong in display type advertising and weaker in search related advertising. According to Yahoo's fourth quarter results, display revenue had dropped 2% while search revenue had increased by 11%. In response to this, Yahoo came up with a really amazing idea, which are "rich ads in search". Basically, now you can search for something on yahoo and instead of a sponsored text add popping up, a picture with, perhaps a company's logo, will be displayed at the top of the search results along with a text based link. Video also has been included in this new program.

While, this new source of revenue is still in the testing stage (only big name companies have been allowed to participate), I thought it was a pretty innovative way of getting your strength (display ads) to work with the current market (a market which is currently seeing a high demand for text ads).

If you want to read more about this business idea, the NYT has a great article on it here.

Are Hulu and iTunes the Small pieces in the Big Pie

2009-02-18T17:44:00.004-06:00

There was a lot of talk about the show "Dollhouse" premiering on Fox last week. I didn't watch it (I don't watch TV), but did read about its unimpressive ratings (4.73). Normally, I wouldn't pay much more attention to the show beyond that. However, the show was the most downloaded show on iTunes and the most watched on Hulu. This is an interesting bit of information and really reflects the way scripted TV is heading. Many people believe that iTunes and Hulu (or the Internet) are the future of scripted television.

In response to this, the blog "TV by the Numbers" published this article, which I found really fascinating and it really shows (mathematically) why iTunes and Hulu are a VERY small pieces in a VERY big pie. While I disagreed with some of their math, the point they make is hard to miss - TV Shows make way more money on TV then they do online.

It's not to say, the Internet won't eventually be important to TV. Eventually, the two will merge in the same way that the Internet has merged with video games, cell phones, and many other devices we use. However, this might not be for some time. Meanwhile, The traditional advertising based TV broadcasting format will still be the main concern of TV producers because that's where the money is made.

"What is RSS? RSS SOS"

2009-02-17T17:30:00.003-06:00

Since I have been writing a lot about RSS feeds, I figured it might make sense to explain exactly what an RSS feed is and why it's so useful.

First, RSS stands for REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION. What does that mean? Well, RSS Feeds are a subscription. Think of it as subscribing to a magazine or an e-newsletter. RSS simply brings information to you. In order to access RSS you need an RSS Reader. In my opinion, the best RSS reader is Google Reader which is free and can be found at www.google.com/reader.

An RSS reader is an application, which can either be located on your desktop or on the web. I like Google Reader because it makes things easy. This application's purpose is to gather all your RSS feeds (this may be articles, updates, or anything else that uses RSS) and display it to you. Then whenever any of your subscriptions are updated, the information will immediately show up on your reader.

Still confused? Let's use an example to explain. Let's say I read the New York Times ever day online. But, let's say I'm only interested in articles which relate to fashion. Well, you can log on to Google Reader and do a search for "New York Times Fashion" and it will display an RSS feed which says "New York Times - Fashion." You'll notice a description of the feed as well as a "Subscribe button." If you click subscribe, you will instantly get any New York Times articles that are fashion related. Each time a new fashion related article is added, it will get sent to your Google Reader for you to read.

Once you add several "feeds" you will find that RSS is a great way to have all the stuff your interested sent to you (in one place) instead of going to several different websites to see if they updated anything that you are interested in. Basically, RSS is a huge time saver and makes it easy to not miss out on anything.

Finally, you should know that RSS Feeds are used for all sorts of things... RSS is used on Craig's List, for newspapers, for magazines, for blogs, for wikipedia, and much much more.

The best way to learn about RSS is to play with it. So go to Google Reader and play around. Hit the Search or Browse Button and type in some of the things your interested in. Hit subscribe (you can always unsubscribe if you don't like it) and find out how useful this tool can be.

Free Language Lessons on iTunes!

2009-02-15T08:47:00.004-06:00

I've been learning Russian for quite a few years. I've just discovered something pretty cool for anyone learning a language. You can get free audio lessons on iTunes under the podcasting section!

It's really nice, because pronunciation is one area of language that people usually need help on. It's one thing to read it in a book, but entirely different to hear it spoken aloud.

I did a search for "Russian" in the iTunes search bar and got more results than I can count. Not all of them are great. Some give you just the first 10 lessons free and then direct you to a website where you can buy more (a great business idea actually), but there are some that have a huge archive of lessons. I'm still playing around with which ones I like and dislike, but since they are all FREE it's a no-risk great reward situation.

I also downloaded a few French lessons that seemed pretty nice and easy.

This discovery has only fueled my belief that podcasting is going to grow tremendously over the next few years. There certainly is a lot less competition in podcasting then there is in blogging and it seems like there are good opportunities to sell audio advertising on popular podcasts.

Anyways, I thought it was a cool discovery that I could share.

Cutting the Fat from RSS Feeds

2009-02-13T20:06:00.003-06:00

I stopped checking my feeds for a few weeks in Google Reader. Waiting for me was over 10,000 articles to read when I logged on this morning. Instead of reading them, I deleted them all. Sometimes a fresh start is better than catching up.

Next, I went to my podcasts and started deleting my subscriptions. I'm trying to get it under 10 a day. It's nice to have one or two podcasts recap the news so that I know how to pronounce words (such as foreign leaders and such). The rest are mostly motivational or geared toward giving me business ideas. I think 10 is a good number to aim for.

I'm also cutting my twitter tweets I receive (a process which is taking a lot of time). Deleting a lot spam can be a good way to increase the effectiveness of having twitter. The thing I like about twitter is you can find out news hours before the media picks up the issue. Plus it's a nice way to discover some interesting articles or feature I might have missed on Digg or Mahalo. Both of these advantages become more apparent when there is less distraction from junk I'm not interested in.

Basically, I want to cut back on how much I digest (in information) so that the information is more manageable and more focused on the strength of each platform.

Cutting the fat is healthy.

To Do List Tip

2009-02-12T20:13:00.002-06:00

Sometimes I can get in a rut and procrastinate for weeks on end. I can put things off until the project becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. Eventually, it becomes too big and doesn't get done.

To solve this, I've came up with a solution which I've been using since High School. I make a "To Do List" everyday. I carry this with me at all times to remind me of what I want to get done. The problem with these lists can be that they can be viewed as one long list of boring things I have to do. Thus, sometimes I procrastinate on starting my list until it's too late and I think "I'll just do it tomorrow."

My trick (and it's been very useful) is to include fun things to do as well. Say I want to watch a certain movie tonight, I put it on my list, or go shopping just to browse, I put it on my list. Those things are objects that I'm going to do, why not include them. I kind of try and alternate fun and boring tasks so It doesn't seem as bad. It works great for me.

When you add time frames (Time Boxing) to the mix, I find that I accomplish everything I wanted in a day, including fun activities.

It's not me, It's you.

2009-02-11T20:05:00.004-06:00

If your looking for some great new music, I highly recommend Lily Allen's new Album "It's Not Me, It's You."

It's clever, memorable, and enjoyable. I've been listening to it non stop.

The best songs are "Who'd of known," "Everyone's at it," and "The Fear."

Where the Republicans Went

2009-01-29T13:11:00.006-06:00

It's a hard time to be a Republican. Widespread disdain for former President George W. Bush has infected the entire party Republican party. This was certainly felt in the last election when Democrats won the White House and gained a sizable majority in both the House and Senate. Now, a new Gallop Poll has been released that seems to show what everyone already knew: Republicans are in trouble. What I discovered was that the problem, for them, is bigger than anyone thought.

According to the most recent Gallop Poll, Republicans only have a solid advantage in 5 states (which make up about 2% of the American people). Wow, I remember when Republicans thought they were invincible. That was just a few years ago. It was an age when Homosexual marriage was being forced upon the nation, the rest of the world hated us and we thought they were just plain scary. People were actually talking about privatizing social security with a bold arrogance and faith in the belief that a market without regulation would create wealth for everyone.

Those people were wrong. It turns out that mistakes eventually catch up to the vastly incompetent. The result is massive layoffs and reduced opportunities, and a world which people feel less safe in.

These statistics speak for Itself: People have lost faith in the party that brought them there. Thank god for Obama and Democrats.

Writing a Novel

2009-01-28T13:31:00.003-06:00

I've been working on several short stories and a novella which I hope to publish someday. My first novel I've been writing is mystery/suspense and I've taken part of my inspiration from a variety of shows and books which have been my favorite. I want to play around with the concept of how the reader visualizes time to help tell the mystery or question of my tale.

President Obama

2008-11-06T12:51:00.003-06:00

Saying the words President Obama feel pretty good. Watching the youth of this country generally excited about something other than Britney Spears feels even better.

It's hard not to think that we are entering a new era in American politics. Barack Obama has inspired a generation of people and given them hope for change. It's an amazing historic time to be an American, live in America, and have that feeling of hope.

Being in Chicago is especially exciting. This was a huge victory for the home team this election. Obama's Grant Park speech was watched by millions. For one night, the entire world was focused entirely on Chicago. All day yesterday, the mood of the city was elevated and had a real sense of euphoria.

It's a good time to be American.

Useful Copyright Information

2008-09-30T12:12:00.002-05:00

I read an article, which I found useful, about your rights over what you write.

Click Here to read it.

Reading another Epic

2008-09-10T12:20:00.003-05:00

The ability to envision an entirely new world, write it down in a cohesive manner, and tell a great story is the mark of a great novelist in my opinion. Not everyone can do it (successfully at least). I recently embarked on another epic imaginary journey, Stephen King's The Dark Tower Series.

Set in a alternate universe that is as much post apocalyptic as it is wild west, The Dark Tower series tells the journey of a lone gunslinger. I've only read a few chapters and while I honestly don't understand the plot, I already feel a little drawn into the world it creates.

It's hard not to compare what little I've read to other great epics that came before and after it. I'll take that as a sign I've stumbled upon something worth reading.

The MakePeace Experiment

2008-07-31T22:54:00.002-05:00

So I found a new book that I'm excited to read. It's a soviet novel from the 60's called The MakePeace Experiment. It's suppose to be the soviet equivalent to Animal Farm (at least from what little I've heard about it).

The translation is pretty good. There is a lot of footnotes to express meaning which might not be picked up from a literal translation. So far it's pretty good. It's short though. I should have it finished by the weekend easily.

Anyways, that's my exciting news. I'm traveling this weekend once again so it's nice to have something to read on the plane.

Catching Up

2008-07-29T12:21:00.002-05:00

I've been super busy lately.

New York was amazing. It's my favorite city in the world. I can't wait to go back. I think my next trip will be to L.A. (Worst City Ever) to see friends.

Lately I've been listening to Lady GaGa. She is a new artist who (in my opinion) will be huge soon. I think 2009 will be her year.

There's probably more going on in my life, but I'm having trouble putting words to thoughts.

I Love New York

2008-06-18T10:19:00.003-05:00

I'm going to visit my favorite city in the world this weekend... New York City. Somehow, I can't image a city in the world that could capture what New York has...

Sometimes, Chicago seems a bit conservative for me. I'm ready for the change (even if it is for just a few days).

I think it's the New York attitude which draws me in... I love that part... It's bigger than life.