My Entourage

I need stability, meaning I need a person that fits my needs and theirs. So recently I've had to let a lot of friends go cause they can't communicate well.

So here it goes. I've decided to have 4 people I can trust unconditionally. Those four people must:

communicate well
not stress me at all
be able to effectively work with me as a team (like Ace and I)
and most importantly be trustworthy and utmost reliable

Over this past semester I had 3 nervous break downs due to unreliable friends
One friend just couldn't listen to what I said or had no clue about what was going on
Another seemed to have shit under control, but has the most difficult time being autonomous
Another just never showed up when I needed them.

I have 3 friends who have proven themselves

1) Was there in the morning when I woke up and felt like crying to sleep all day (you know who you are and I love you no matter how far away you are, if I can have nothing else I want you in my life even if life is short)
2) My friend who became my most trusted friend day one, (you know who you are too, I'm sorry for misjudging you in the fall, but you are truly of being called Brother)
3) A friend I've known for a while but never truly hung with

Proteins as Nanomachines

Proteins work like giant machines. They are made up of thousands of small molecules and atoms, these atoms and molecules react in various ways to change shape. Some simple as enzymes using one chemical to break apart apart oxygen and hydrogen in water, or some highly more complicated (the ones I'm going to talk about), like protein chaperonin, and ATP synthase. ATP synthase is a protein used in mitochondria to produce ATP. What happens is they are placed against a hydrogen ion gradient. Hydrogen ions flow down the gradient at high speeds changing the conformation of the countless atoms in ATP synthase to cause an inorganic phosphate functional group to bond covalently with an Adenosine Diphosphate (ADP), molecule. By using energy such as hydrogen ion's physical movement against an ATP synthase protein is a way to create molecular energy. My proposed idea which has already been brought up as an idea many time before, is creating proteins artificially on the molecular level to perform work. By assembling various parts a protein can be synthesized and utilized to perform work. The experiment would be creating a protein molecule in some way using DNA splicing, or mechanically building them. The protein will be hand crafted as a vessel to embark into a cell undetected and destroy a eukaryotic cell's nucleus. By using various forms of molecular energy
you could power the protein by allowing it to hold it's own fuel. The protein is made on the atomic and molecular level thus functions such as how atoms and chemicals interact with it physically
can be determined and modified.

This is highly theoretical, but given I'm entering into Biology with an intent of getting a medical degree and Ph.D in genetics I figure I will be going into this field.

Left: (Molecular Model of ATP synthase protein. note: these are all peptides and polypeptides)

An Equation of Productivity

There is no equation for how productivity works, just like there is no gene of faith. But productivity as a word is easily defined. Productivity is a general term used to show ones production scale based on the time to develop a production. So a simple equation would be:
productivity = production/time

So the more you produce in the less time the more productivity you have? The answer is yes, quality and other factors are irrelevant. A great example of mass automated productivity is the Storm botnet. They transfer billions of bytes of digital data per day, with near maximum efficiency. In a sense, the spam industry is by far the most productive industry in the world. They may be producing crap, however they are highly productive about it.

So what creates extraordinary work? Using productivity to create great products. That's where you add in two equations to the step. Productivity is your base equation then you have quality. Quality is defined as following the rules of quality. Meaning that a product that follows all of it's qualified design documents and requirements flawlessly, that results in quality.
In essence quality is the amount of development points and requirements followed thus:
quality = product requirements - product flaws

So what does this mean? It means in essence work hard, work smart, and work with quality. Make sure everything that you do is done fast, and make sure it's done right. That is in essence the model for quality and productive work.

The Collective

Anonymous: The New Digital Threat

Everyone always said that hackers were the biggest threat to the digital community, and the information age. Anonymous, not righteously a hacker community, but a network of teenagers, in the angst stage of life, following almost mindlessly, invisible digital leadership. The digital leadership poses the question, "Are these digital terrorist?" Yes and no. In actuality the collective body of anonymous speculatively consists of individuals between the age groups of 15-28, the prime young-adult age group, also the age group in which mental development is more dictated by environment and peers, in this case the internet. Now only by speculation to I point out that they have leadership. Facts and observations that reinforce this theory are the multitude of webpages that give out instructions, rather than collaboration as a collective whole. If viewed really closely by any observer the collective body of Anonymous follows the same patterns as gang culture. Like the Crips and Bloods, Anonymous has no "true leadership" only a few elite that give out information and instructions for the disciples to follow. In gang culture most of us know that they operate in the form of cells. Anonymous functions in the same fashion, which gives good rise to believe there is some decentralized leadership in the group. This phenomena results in a collective group of individuals lead through an aristocratic decentralized group of individuals, that cannot be neither seen, or heard. They communicate their plans and ideas through the digital battleground, the same way World War II propaganda was distributed through posters, radio, and other forms of advertisements and media during the war effort. The collective whole (even Captain America and the Avengers), were anti-Nazism, or anti-Hitler, they called for change in favor of the government but the collective followed the propaganda.
Once recruited the orders the anonymous members receive trickle down from the top. They are posted by various leaders and individuals from forum to forum until it reaches the members, in a trickle down affect the mafia has been using for years. (The "Don" or "Godfather" expressed his orders to his consiglieres who would then give the orders to individuals below them, until the order was given to it's intended recipient who would execute this order). This creates what some have referred to as, the social botnet. A group of individuals who take orders or commands from a higher power that they never see, hear from, or witness in anyway except for some text on a computer monitor. This is very much the same way a botnet receives configuration updates, additions to autonomy, commands to spam, etc. The scary fact of the matter is the intended individuals who are receiving these orders generally follow them without question or regards to the law, ethics, or morality; as the anonymous quotes state: "We are merciless" and "None of us is as cruel as all of us". The social botnet is a real problem because like the Storm botnet or the Srizbi botnet, they are only used for the intent of the owners. The botmasters of Anonymous have enemies. They infiltrate a multitude of infrastructures in the world, and are able to act as a fully autonomous "malicious system" without constraints due to "hardware or software". One instance of this was in the case of Anonymous vs Goddessmine. There was a "collective" expression of discord towards Goddessmine. An all out internet war broke out between the two. Goddessmine being a young Art college student, was no chance against the collective whole of Anonymous who's technologically informed leadership, had the ability to not only ruin this girl digitally, but were able to obtain highly sensitive and personal documents. One member stated "/b/I live in [the town where this girl lives], what would you wish me to do?" which is similar to the Storm bot responding to the next computer with "query?" to receive commands from the botmaster. This model is dangerous, truly dangerous, anonymous as a group can destroy any individual in the same manner the Srizbi botnet can take down nearly any computer network in the world. Anonymous reminds me personally of Agent Smith, a virus almost. They spread rapidly and swarm their targets until they are destroyed. This is a very scary thought because anyone out there could be a target if they were to piss off Anonymous. As a researcher I find this disturbing because from the historic stand point, the only difference though is when Anonymous, these kids, do something really bad, a lot of people are going to prison.

Key to Neo-Corporate Productivity

This is actually a true sentiment. The elitist in a corporation (the board of directors), generally have all the power in a company. In a sense their decision is the main one that counts, because they rose to their position by being highly effective at the job they direct throughout the corporation. Don't question them or you'll just become an unhappy worker and get fired. Does this really happen? In a sense yes, the reality is even though the company motto preaches innovation, and new ideas, especially software design companies, and artistic digital media companies, such as computer animators, or game developers, they tend to have a modern-conservative model, more so than the revolution of IBM's corporate viewpoint by Microsoft entering the industry, Google in the present is re-revolutionizing the internet with Web 2.0 with the gamer, hacker, slacker, webcomic reading, young adult being the forefront audience and consumer as well as leaders of these corporations. The semi-conservative model states that the elitist of the company have the most say, and ideas from employees are welcome all the time. But as long as the elitist are increasing productivity and your opinion only rubs the flow of productivity the wrong way, the saying usually goes, "You can leave if you are ever unhappy with any of our decisions", and if you really get in the way and decrease productivity you get fired. Even though everyone jokes around very liberally in the work environment, the roles of leadership are presented and enforced in the conservative business model to increase productivity and expedience in these fast passed times. The key element to productivity for the Web 2.0 era, and the modern digital media age, is to make employees do their job, if you are an elitist in a newer company or new entrepreneur, you and your fellow leaders should have no problems completing tasks and managing them, so when the expendable are incompetent, they are just that expendable. Just find a competent employee who can increase productivity by being educated and intelligent enough to complete their assigned jobs.

The New Noribang Studios

Noribang Studios is taking off. I have taken the position of the company's operation director so I make sure all collaboration gets done and a product is delivered, from the hiring process, to the delivery. I have found google apps is a good way to collaborate along with Skype for meetings and such. Google apps is intertwined with the company email system which is intertwined with the company site. Google apps allows for employees to collaborate easily with shared documents, web space, pictures and so much more. To manage projects, especially our new website revamp which should be finished in a few days, I've used google apps site feature to implement a universal grounds for collaborating. All company employees have access, it is a place to easily view the VRTM and Quality Assurance testing progress and bugs very easily. It's also a place to meet on like a conference table, where you can post pictures drawing, links etc. while taking meeting notes that update in real time throughout the meeting. I've found this method of digital collaboration has increased productivity by 50% even though a lot of individuals are in different countries. Google calendar allows for meeting, which allows for work to get assigned and deadlined. After the work is assigned individuals work fast in their free time outputting to the website, which serves as a product testing table and ground. Eventually when products are able to have published builds the website serves as a place to continually add to the project. Rather than trying to meet in person or sit around scrambling paper notes together everything is streamlined and accessible instantly, on any system. This definitely has shown to increase productivity even in it's infancy usage at the moment. Anyhow since email is a highly effective tool in corresponding to a team. A full application set based on it, allows for productivity to increase more and more as people check their email more often and collaborate. Soon the site will be up rather than the much later we had originally planned. (Website scheduled for finish originally fall of 08. However the site will be full operational now with this new system by June 1st). This feels a lot like being an industrial engineer, but I love complex systems programming. So it feels as if working with productivity is my calling. The new Noribang Studios framework is set up and we are going to start making money soon. So here we come!