Ryan A Graves.com

Over the past 3 months I have traveled tons! Lets just put it this way, since I moved to Milwaukee in late December 07 I’ve put 10k miles on my Pathfinder. Crazy! Plus a flight to Kansas City and a flight to Charlotte. So I began tracking my trips using the awesome travel social network Dopplr. Recently Dopplr rolled out something called “Track your carbon” that basically tells people what the carbon footprint of their travel is. They teamed up with AMEE to track and measure this footprint. This is my carbon footprint for May, June, and July…check out Dopplr, whats your carbon footprint?

Also, you can track my travel using the widget in the sidebar.

This is a project is a collaboration between the Interactive Media Division and the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California. This video is yet another example of an awesome application of a mash-up of technologies. It will be fun to see the final product.

“Viewfinder” is a novel method for users to spatially situate, or “find the pose,” of their photographs, and then to view these photographs, along with others, as perfectly aligned overlays in a 3D world model such as Google Earth. Our objective is to provide a straightforward procedure for geo-locating photos of any kind, and our approach is to engage a community of users for a certain amount of human help. We specify that a 10-year-old should be able to find the pose of a photo in less than a minute, and we are convinced that this goal is achievable. While we are not entirely there yet, we are getting closer. This is our progress report.

April 3, 2008

This is ActionsTalk’s first holiday post and boy am I excited! For the Holiday, not the post.

This Thankgiving I’ll be headed south from Chicago to Kansas City on the busiest travel day of the year. The weather is turning for the worst and my flight is delayed 2.5 hours.  I’m very anxious for the upcoming weekend. The plan is T-day dinner at my girlfriends brothers house then on Saturday we are headed to the Mizzou(3) v. Kansas(2) game at Arrowhead stadium. 

An article in the Wall Street Journal this morning talked about how big this game is going to be and how much the states of Kansas and Missouri hate each other.  During a normal Chiefs game they usually have to replace about 15 seats from rowdy fans, Saturday they plan to replace about 500! When we originally purchase the tickets for this game early in the season they were selling for $40/person, now on eBay they are selling for well over $300/person! This is a very unexpected match up and makes a vicious rivally even more thrilling. What a fantastic way to rap up a turkey day weekend.

Pictures to come next week.

A few great images that remind me of my fantastic trip to Ireland in August 2007.

Left to right from top:

(Galway harbor, Dingle Bay sunset, coastal drive outside Dingle, Aran Island fort wall, flower garden in Tralee, Kylemore Abbey)

This city (NYC) truly is a great example of what we as humans are capable of accomplishing. There are dreams walking these streets. There are dreamers walking these streets.  New York City is truly an incubator for hopes and dreams.  The “American Dream” as cliche as it may sound thrives in New York City.  The United States is undoubtedly the nation of opportunity and equality.  Not everyone has the same experiences but everyone has the same equal opportunity. There are countless stories that display the success of this nation in helping anyone and providing literally any American citizen the hope and opportunity to live out there dreams. 

 I’m in New York this week on business and will bring you many pictures of the city in a post forthcoming.

Addition to this post 10/30/07:

I would like to take back a portion of this post and clarify.  A reader made critic of this post (offline) that my claim that everyone has “the same equal opportunity” is a false claim.  After some thought and review of the wording of this post I agree with the readers critic.  Not everyone in the United States has the same equal opportunity.  Things like location of birth, parents financial and social status, and ethnicity are just a few things that can make ones opportunites not equal to anothers.  However, I would like to say that I honestly believe that everyone in the US has the opportunity to succeed.  The American dream does live and especially in a place like New York City. Everyone will face different challenges, different speed bumps but this country gives everyone the tools and freedom to chase that dream and make it come true. 

Every American has the opportunity to ‘Live the Dream’.

Homecoming weekend is very appropriately named.  After four short years in college I think most of all feel a sense of comfort, a “hominess” toward the place we called college, and rightfully so.  Let’s be honest…it’s not like our lifestyle was difficult in any sense of the word.  Over the last 2 years of college I held a job, belonged to a Fraternity and participated in a student foundation, and all the while maintained a pretty reasonable GPA.  Even with all those things college was and will always be remembered an easy, enjoyable, and exciting time in my life.  I was living the dream and nobody could stop me.

 So this weekend is Homecoming, and for my college that means nothing more than alumnus return to fall back into the their habits of old.  I won’t bore you with how many beers will be consumed or any of those trivial details (although a lot of beers will be consumed), but I will tell you that I’m expecting a fantastic weekend in college.  The weather forecast is great and frankly, I deserve it.

Updates on the weekend forthcoming.

After spending 10 days in Ireland I realized that it is the infrastructure in the US that was set up by government that allowed us to develop so quickly.  The Irish government seemed to operate a little slower (similar to their lifestyles) a little less focused on development. Its seemed, while over there, that 85% of their roads are under construction so maybe they are starting to turn things around. Their government workers are just a hair worse than ours, 1 person works and 5 instead of 4 watch.  The things that makes Ireland such a tourist attraction are the quaint little villages on the cost, the green landscapes, and the tight, curvy roads that lead you there.  The beautiful countryside and the miles and miles of sheep land are what give Ireland the great reputation that it has, however (the capitalist in me speaks) it is those wide open grasslands that represent the under development there.  

 That said, Dublin, Ireland is the number one fastest growing city in Europe and it is apparent.  The city is beginning to host such corporations as Yahoo and Google, and growing rapidly. It’ll be the largest city in the world if it keeps on “Doubl’in”. 

 It truly was an amazing vacation. I spent 10 days in a tiny rental car, driving, and exploring with my girlfriend and thoroughly enjoy every minute. The country site is fabulous and the nightlife is even better.  Personal favorites were the small town of Dingle sitting right on the Atlantic coast where we fished by day and injected Guinness by night. Also, Galway, a city that drinks like Chicago and has an average age of 26. 

Soon there will be a picture page on this blog and I will include pictures of this trip on that pages.

Regarding the change in mood or topic of this blog: actionstalk.com will become a bit more personal than origianlly intended. I will still discuss how and why actions speak much louder than words in both life and business but I will also include personal anecdotes to live’n up the blog. Comments welcome.

 —pic above at Ashford Castle, North of Galway