I'm a bit of a weather nerd.
I started chasing my knowledge of long-range weather patterns when we took up skiing as a family over twenty years ago; I wanted to understand the patterns, how forecasts are made, and the science behind them. I plunged headfirst into the world of weather science, scraping around the edges, learning what I could, and in particular, watching the people who really know what they are doing. Right now, my favorite is Henry Margusity, over at WeatherMadness. (The interesting is that many professional meteorologists have set themselves up, as Henry has, with their own small business, pumping out daily weather forecasts to subscribers, and often doing corporate work for energy companies and others. You'll often get better medium and long-range weather forecasts from these folks than you do the big public mainstream weather services.)
When my son and his bride-to-be sent out their wedding invitation some time ago, they told everyone that I would make available a short series of long-range weather forecasts. People could choose to sign up for my updates, and about half the guests have done so. I've been busy studying the long-range weather maps, watching the insight of Henry and others, and basically, weather-geeking out. The day of the wedding, October 7, is just about the time when the weather gets 'interesting' in the Muskokas, Canada, where the wedding will be held in just about 10 days' time, as the clash of the seasons begins in full force.
I dove right into the project, and so for my second weather update, I decided to use the full effect of my green screen broadcast studio. Here's the result that went out over the weekend.
It's not so bad for an amateur, I suppose!
Why do I go to this length for a simple update? Number one, it's a heck of a lot of fun. Number two, it's all part of my philosophy of life - never stop learning. Never stop chasing ideas. Find inspiration in discovering new pathways. Make your mind a ship of exploration on the vast seas of unexplored knowledge. When it came to the weather, I knew that I always wanted to film something like this, so I put it together last Saturday morning without about a 1/2 hour of effort. All of this came from my green screen studio in my basement.
Similarly, yesterday, I went into the studio and filmed a short clip related to the Inspiration I shared about implementing an AI Chatbot on my site; this time, with a different studio backdrop, describing how I put it together. This went out live to Youtube, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Little projects like this are a big part of how I keep up to date on the world around me - and it all goes back to my initial exploration of the online world way back in 1982.
My mindset? Never stop learning! Always keep exploring!
Futurist Jim Carroll ran his high school radio station back in 1975, pumping Led Zeppelin out to the masses at a time when disco was in full swing. It was the start of a time of wild exploration of the world of broadcasting. He continued down this path, hosting three national radio shows in the nineties, as well as appearing in hundreds of TV and radio interviews.