Riding a bicycle is liberating.

Passing motorists stuck at lights, covering city blocks unhindered by the stop and go of the masses in commute. It’s liberating to be able to park anywhere a lock will hold, and feel the stiffness in the legs that got you to your destination. Your range is unimpeded by MPG’s and speed limits.

Biking exposes you to a different side of your city's roads - a side that automakers have worked so hard to mute with shocks and springs. A road and the rider live as example of Newton's third law; adapting and reacting to one another, creating a unique experience everytime they meet.

In contrast to walking or driving through a city, your legs carry you at the perfect viewing speed as the city unfolds around you like a montage from a movie. You're in one place long enough to appreciate it, but you're gone in enough time to not take it for granted. This way each moment becomes special, a distinct snapshot of the trip. Together these snapshots begin to reveal something greater, another side to your city. You begin to appreciate the patterns of humanity that flow through it, the hustle and bustle of everyone going through their respective days.

Riding a bike forces you to notice these things. Hyper-awareness is a necessity for not being run over, or running someone over, but the peripheral benefit is getting to know your city in a whole other way.

I've noticed a trend in older professionals and social media. Many of them are looking for the hard facts, the "de-mystification" of social. Many more have labeled themselves as experts that can help in that regard, I disagree with this.

I will take the "myst" out of social for you. At its essence, social media is a collaborative tool. It's a means for the human collective to share their ideas and get real time feedback. 

What does this mean? Many executives think of their children's obsession with selfies or #ThrowbackThursdays. From a Marketing/ Advertising standpoint, Social Media should not be treated like a separate department, but a new channel with unique capabilities to learn.

Why segregate your social media from your marketing department? That is the #1 problem I can observe from the majority of businesses I have come into contact with. Community Managers and Social Media Coordinators should stand right along side your more traditional marketers. At both their foundations, the ability to understand and communicate with a Target Audience's needs is essential.

Social Media isn't dark magic, or a Millennial exclusive language, it's a two-way conversation. Chances are you've had one of those in your lifetime - so don't overcomplicate it!

The people lived in a network of caves carved into a cliff-side. Cool air breezed over a tumble-weed populated plain, through the openings and the windows of their homes at night, the air gently rocked fabric covering their doorways, moving hammocks of knitted grass back and forth. These people lived in awe and respect for this wind, crafting chimes and spinning fans that played a twinkling orchestra with the breeze.

At night, they watched the sky.

The stars and the wind combined to create their nightly ceremony. The breeze carried lumbering clouds and scattered wisps across the backdrop of shimmering stars. The people painted shapes with their light - telling stories of past and future, recording their histories in the twinkling infinite.

The shapes of these stories weaved across the sky, combining to create epilogues, dividing to mark new tales. The variety of these paths and tales all originated from a single spot in the sky. The Tree.
The sky's foundation, the mother constellation - the tree was the beginning of every story any of the stars had ever told. 

Four years ago I was a freshman in college. After a few weeks of excitement, confusion, and general mayhem, I found my university experience had settled into a rhythm. Going to my entry-level classes I almost felt like I was back in high school, except now my commute consisted all of 5 minutes. I found myself with odd and inconvenient pockets of free time between my responsibilities, and I was looking for a fulfilling way to use them. At this point most people would have joined some sort of club or student organization, but I bought a ukulele.

This sounds anti-social. But do you know just how anti-anti-social this decision was? I’ll let you borrow it sometime and I challenge you to walk around one day without talking to a single person: impossible. It’s funny how disarming this little oddity is. It’s disruptive, and the fact that someone would walk around campus with it even more so.

The ukulele is just one manifestation of my passion for music, but it’s one that has taught me so much about being human. It doesn’t just break the ice. It melts it completely. People forget that there is even supposed to be ice when they see it. This is a testament to the power that music has to bring people together. The ukulele started as a productive way for me to spend some time, but has evolved into a prolonged social experiment. It has forced me to become more outgoing and confident in the way I interact with people, while also inspiring others to feel the same way. Suddenly awkward introductions vanish in lieu of a commonality: music.

When it comes to blogging, most people find themselves in one of two schools of thought that seek to answer one of the internet’s perennial questions: Wordpress or Blogger? What the vast majority of new bloggers fail to question though is - what I am actually going to be using this blog for? New bloggers should ask themselves what they hope to achieve by starting a blog. This knowledge will not only help you create a more effective blog, but it will also point you in the right direction in terms of which platform to use. The realm of blog platforms is not solely inhabited by Wordpress and Blogger either, there are many other options that suit a variety of blog needs and skill levels. For example, the blog platform Joomla could be considered a step up from both Wordpress and Blogger in terms of the services and hosting power it provides.

Turns out one half of the grand debate I mentioned previously is right, Blogger is a great platform to get your blog started on. Blogger is the easiest to use from the three platforms I mentioned, and you can go from registration to typing your first post within minutes (http://lifehacker.com/5568092/five-best-blogging-platforms). Blogger is also part of Google’s family of services, and users with existing Google accounts will find registration an even quicker process (http://hellboundbloggers.com/2011/12/19/reasons-why-you-must-choose-blogger/). Its ease of use and accessibility makes Blogger a great platform for traditional journal blogging and article writing. However as a means to display a portfolio of artwork or other materials it falls short. Blogger’s user interface and display are not very well suited for hosting static pages that portfolios need. The limited number of plug-ins available also inhibits Blogger’s functionality.

Verdict: Good for traditional blogging and article writing.

Wordpress users needn’t worry though. Their proclamation of Wordpress’s supremacy is also true, although their preferred platform excels in other areas. Wordpress’s main advantage is its ability to host static pages that resemble a regular website (http://www.blogtechnika.com/8-greatest-advantages-of-wordpress/). This allows users to create multiple pages to display and link to content including…oh, let’s say a portfolio? As a CMS, Wordpress ranks as the easiest platform to use and manage. It offers users a huge, and constantly growing, library of plug-ins, themes, and widgets (http://www.blogtechnika.com/8-greatest-advantages-of-wordpress/).

Verdict: Free (non-custom domain name), relatively easy, lots of third-party support, better suited for visual content hosting.

Joomla is the wildcard CMS here. As students looking for cheap and easy options, Joomla may not fit our needs the best. Joomla is a popular option for people with websites that have relatively higher rates of traffic than a student portfolio is likely to see. Users are offered more flexibility and hosting power, as Joomla is recommended for "small e-commerce sites, directories, or membership sites" (http://www.artisteer.com/?p=nl_article3). Thus, if you're looking to sell a catalog of products or services, Joomla might be the best choice for you.

Verdict: Not quite suited for a student’s needs, more tailored to a small business looking to host an e-commerce site.

So, I went and saw Wreck-It Ralph the other day and enjoyed it quite a bit. Although it probably wasn’t as gripping or deep as some of Pixar’s movies, Ralph was a great time and had an entertaining story. Lot’s of nods to other video games of course and I’m not quite sure I caught all of them. John C. Reilly’s voice is a great match for Ralph’s character, but what I found to be the most amusing was Fix-It Felix. The same actor that plays Kenneth on 30 Rock, also voiced Felix for the movie…and their characters are pretty much one in the same.

One aspect of Wreck-It Ralph that did strike me on a level deeper than entertainment was the perspective the movie provided on “glitches.” Glitches are considered anomalies, castaways, and discrepancies among otherwise perfectly coded operations in a video game. In Wreck-It Ralph, the “glitch” is a character that is alienated from others, but is later redeemed and celebrated.

As a casual gamer I've come across glitches before. Often times they're annoying, but in a way they humanize the video game you're playing. Playing video games and coming across a glitch is an experience gamers relate to, and sometimes finding a glitch adds to the fun of the game. Whether it makes you fall through a level, get stuck in an impossibly tight space between rocks, or lose a race on the last lap, you share the experience with your friends. Glitches are an essential part of the gaming experience, and I appreciate how Wreck-It Ralph paid homage to an aspect of video gaming that I previously had not thought about in such a way.