Friday, August 27, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
hyper local cultural sustainability
Hyper Local (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlocal)
Culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture)
Sustainability (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability)
Culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture)
Sustainability (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability)
So I have been toying around with this thought of cultural sustainability. It occurred to me while meeting with an online radio station right across the street from my office (wynwoodradio.com).
The idea behind the meeting was simple: how could we help you and how can you help us. It occurred to me that within our neighborhood and surrounding area, are many local business within the same artistic culture mentality or love for something somehow artistic. Many of us really love our work and our work becomes who we are or vice versa. Some, as the guys at Wynwood Radio, do it as a labor of love while maintaining other careers. Some like us at Macias and The Alten Group, are lucky enough to earn a living (hahahaha) doing what we love.
So where am I going with this? Well truthfully I don’t know yet. However, thinking of ways that we, within this culture and local area, can help sustain and grow this culture for ourselves and for those who follow us is the basic idea. The same way cultures can sustain themselves through farming (food, electrical, water), but in this case we are sustaining our local culture by helping each other in some way (promotions, events, advertising, barter, etc.)
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Joaquin Phoenix guerilla wall post. (pic)
Ramon E. Branger
The Alten Group
3250 NE 1st Ave
Suite 313
Miami, FL 33137
305.893.8858
www.thealtengroup.com
www.facebook.com/thealtengroup
www.ramonbranger.com
www.twitter.com/ramonk82
Pick Two: Good, Cheap, Fast
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Glazed Pork Tenderloin Recipe
The picture is what's left of the one I made. Thanks to JustAskBoo for the recipe.
Ingredients for marinade:
1.5 - 2 lbs boneless pork tenderloin. 1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup cider vinegar (I used balsamic)
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp honey
Ingredients for glaze: 2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 cup apricot preserves
Mix all the marinade ingredients together and pour over tenderloin. Cover and place in fridge overnight. Turn several times. Take pork out and place in baking dish. Spoon 1/2 cup of marinade over pork. Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes or until pork is tender. Mix the mustard and and apricot preserve together. After pork has been in the oven 30-40 minutes take out and spread the glaze over pork. Put back in the oven for 10-15 minutes.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
YouTube Killed the Secret Spot
rbranger@thealtengroup.com read this Surfer article on Zinio and would like to share it with you!
Reading Revolutionized.
Go digital at www.zinio.com
YouTube Killed the Secret Spot
BY KIMBALL TAYLOR
CAN SECRET SPOTS SURVIVE THE AGE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING?
I’ve often thought that a good sandbar is a kind of a temporary laboratory for the real kind of surf cultureâ€"the stuff that actually happens in a lineup. Just recently, however, I realized that a good sandbar is also the perfect laboratory for the idea of a secret spot as well.
Think of any long and relatively unhindered stretch of beachâ€"from Hossegor to Big Surâ€"and you’ll find a clutch of surfers who keep an eye on the movement of sand. When a bar shapes up into something special, only a couple of trajectories can take place that essentially determine the culture of its lineup.
Either the first couple of surfers who discover the new break simply enjoy it and return alone, or they blab and the lineup grows, maxing out a limited resource, causing the development of a hierarchy, and creating conditions for the purging of excess and unwanted surfers. The entire evolution can occur in the short lifespan of an average, middle-of-the-beach sandbar.
In essence, either this new “spot†remains a “secret,†or it doesn’t. But I would argue that a lineup that quickly develops on a sandbar is simply a condensed model of what happens to all types breaks when surfers communicate over time. The surfers who establish a spot make an agreement, an unspoken contract, that decides whether a particular break is granted a “secret,†or reserved, status. Either that agreement holds or it doesn’t, but the process is well established. In fact, the very idea of a “secret spot†has held such an ennobled, even mythical, position within the surf culture worldwide that it’s as iconic now as the idea of “the perfect wave†was 50 years ago.
As a cultural development, however, the “secret spot†may not last much longer. In fact, the tools of communication available today threaten to destroy the entire category of the “secret.†And those new media tools employ our personal vanity, or our professions, to do it.
Former Dream Tour surfer Shea Lopez has spent much of his retirement from competition surfing rare, out-of-the-way, or localized spots. He says documenting those spots is a tricky proposition. “As a pro surfer, documenting your sessions is your livelihood. And so surfing and recording secrets is always a balance. But often times, I’m looking for waves that the average surfer just isn’t looking for, because they’re too remote, too heavy, or just too difficult to surfâ€" rivers, currents, extreme tides, dry rocks, sharks, cold water, or all of the above,†Shea says.
Surf magazine editors have long employed tricks to throw potential seekers off the trail, too (usually at the behest of photographers who want to return to these spots). Personally, I’ve seen a lighthouse erased, and headlands disappear. Shea says there are standards videographers adhere to as well: no geological anomalies, obvious markers, or even locals (because, let’s face it, some locals are so dedicated they might as well be geological features.)
But the democratization of the Internet has created a new phenomenon.
Earlier this winter, I traveled to a break I’d kept my eye on for a couple years because a man-made structure began to accumulate sand in its lee. It was like watching a geological feature being born, and when the first ridable waves appeared and the shape continued to grow into the extraordinary, a small group of surfers established the classic rotation and hushed tones of a secret spot. A video camera arrived one day, but I didn’t think much of it. Lots of surfers like to review and relive their sessions. The next swell, however, brought a celebrity surfer and his camera man, and the next swell brought more cameras and more pros. And then the crowds came in mass. The jig was up.
Later, I learned that the first videographer had placed a clip on YouTube with that ever-attractive subhead: Secret Spot. In the video were markers, evidence, and plenty of clues.
Googling “secret spot†netted video clips from the coast of Georgia to a river in Switzerland, from Northern Sumatra to Los Angeles. Knowing surfers to be some of the most self-interested people on the planet, I found this self-inflicted blow amazing. The logic of it spun my mind it tight little eddies. It was like discovering King Tut’s tomb and tweeting the GPS coordinates.
Then the inevitable happened, a surfer posted a clip partly titled “secret spot†to my Facebook page. This was an online “friend,†mind you, not someone I actually know, but someone I understood to be a regular, unsponsored surfer. And that very week, this surfer had surfed a spot he/she considered “secret,†and enjoyed it so much, they posted a video clip of the session onto the WORLD WIDE WEB.
EVERYDAY SURFERS WITH EVERYDAY VIDEO EQUIPMENT AND SOFTWARE POST THEIR SECRETS ON THE INTERNET FOR BRAGGING RIGHTS, AND NOT MUCH MORE.
Here is a sample of the responses the video accrued:
“Score!â€
“Secret spot video rocks.â€
“WOW!!! Way cool!â€
“I know where that spot is but I’ll never tell. Great video.â€
It turns out that it wasn’t one person, but a surfing couple who posted the video. The woman worked in PR, i.e. a professional crafter of messages. So, I had to ask: Why would you want to post video of a “secret spot†that you enjoy? What about the surfers who you shared the lineup with, and who also considered the spot “secret� Did you perceive the conflict? And did your perspective on the act of posting the video change once you read all of the comments?
“We learned a lot in 12 hours of posted comments,†wrote my online friend. “I work in marketing so I know how powerful a headline can be. I think the lure of listing the secret spot is like saying ’Neener, neener, neener’ to the rest of the worldâ€" like ‘I was there and you weren’t. Ha ha.’ You want to be the star, not the rock you are surfing over.â€
So in this case, the one thing that trumps a surfer’s best interest (or the ability to return to a secret spot and enjoy an uncrowded lineup, as well as honor the pact of that lineup to keep it secret) is the immediacy of one’s own glorification in the Internet age.
But the aspect about the slew of video clips titled “secret spot†that I found most alarming was that all of the issues that might cause a professional to blow the lid off of a spot appear absent. Everyday surfers with everyday video equipment and software post their secrets on the Internet for bragging rights, and not much more. Yet, the very amateurism that makes those videos interesting also gives away the secrets: landmarks, road signs, reef markers, lighthouses, headlands.
You score, you edit, then you publish. But the power of the information age to exploit vanity, it seems, is stronger than this bit of culture called the “secret spot†that surfers have forged over the past century. Like the lifespan of a sandbar, I fear that the idea of a functioning secret spot will only have held a temporary place among us, degrading in the current until only the lesson of its passing will remain.
California surfer films great white sharks circling his board
via grindtv.com
OMG!!!!!! I almost shit myself watching this.
How iPad Could Transform the TV-Watching Experience | Co.Design
via fastcodesign.com
Cool idea to enhance the TV watching experience. The technology would display additional information on a device such as an iPad which would mirror what you are watching on your TV. Imagine watching a football game and being able to see stats or fantasy football information on demand? Or watching a cooking show and be able to see the ingredients and/or print a shopping list or share it with you mom via email.
I think an even better idea would be to integrate all of this dynamic data directly into the TV sets themselves, thus eliminating the need for an additional device. I mean, most TV programming now a days already is supplemented with digital content online. Why not integrate them all together?
I love the future and its possibilities.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Double Rainbow 1-8-10 (VIDEO)
via youtube.com
This is why I love the Internet.
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