Hunting The Muse

Really Super Easy Breakfast

How to make a very fast very healthy breakfast:

Step One: Buy some 21 oz. glasses

Step Two: Buy a Braun 200 watt vertical Hand Blender. It is very important to get the Braun because the blade is detachable from the motor, which makes for risk-free cleaning. Other blenders that are one piece are scary because you can forget to unplug them and can hit the button to turn the blades while you are cleaning it. I don't know if it's enough to take off a finger, but I wouldn't want to find out. The Braun is from $19.99 to $39.99 depending on if you get extra attachments like whisks and nut choppers.

Step Three: Always have the following ingredients on hand: A bottle of organic flax seed oil, a carton of organic soy milk (I like vanilla flavored), organic bananas, organic strawberries. I usually just buy a bunch of packages of frozen organic strawberries. That means the only thing you have to time are the bananas. I live alone, so I usually get one bunch (7-8) of newly yellow bananas, and one bunch of green bananas. It usually times it perfectly.

Step Four: Make a shake every morning. Take out your 21 oz glass, cut up one banana into seven or eight pieces. Put 4-6 frozen strawberries in the glass. Cut up another banana. Pour in enough soy milk to go 1/4 up the glass. Pour in a couple guggles of flax seed oil - 2-3 tablespoons. Attach the blade to the blender, blend it (15 seconds, easy), detach the blade from the blender, put it in the sink.

Step Five: Drink your shake. It's so smooth I usually drink it in one tip-back. Then all you have to do is rinse off the blade and rinse out the glass and put it in the dishwasher.

Easy easy, I do it every morning.

Now I need a couple of other similarly easy things to help with lunch and dinner to make sure I get full nutrition every day. Two bananas, strawberries, and flax seed oil is a heck of a good start, though.

Good Blog

my analog life - I don't really know who this guy is, but it's a good blog - pete, you should read it too. right in line with other stuff we both post.

This Dentist Isn't So Bad

So I had another dentist appointment today. And it went well, and there are no problems, which has me really relieved. Ever since my last dentist appointment, I had been nervous. After that last appointment, they called me back to tell me that my bone loss was more concerning than they thought and that they thought I should come back after four months rather than six. That turned me off. Then I went off Cobra and lost my dental insurance. I called them after seven months or so to ask about costs and they acted really concerned that I hadn't come back yet, and that really turned me off. So I reacted badly and put it off even more until I just decided to stop following recommendations and go to the Yellow Pages. I went to the local Gentle Dental and it was no big deal at all.

They're recommending sealants for $1700 but I think I'll just find a dental plan to go on before I do that - it's strictly preventative anyway. I'm also going to go in for an ortho consult but I had been thinking about that anyway. But no major gum problems, no cavities, not even a major word of concern about bone loss, just remarks about how it was common for people that have had braces and to just be vigilant about flossing. No big deal.

Really pisses me off about the other two dentists I had seen. Like I said to them earlier today, it wasn't always the case that finding a dentist was supposed to feel like finding a car mechanic.

Bush, Blair, and Lionel

Jason DeFillippo's Weblog has a link to a quicktime video you just have to watch.

It just isn't a proper conspiracy without the required homoerotic ballade-singing world leaders element, is it?

Rebuilding PreWar Iraq

Everyone agrees that Iraq is a messed up country. Everyone agrees that Saddam is an outrageously awful man. I believe that he really does murder and torture people and that he's guilty of all sorts of horrible crimes. I think it's a reasonable statement to say that the Hussein regime itself is... bad... and that it would be better if a different regime were there.

So there's all this talk about going in to invade Iraq, remove Hussein, and then rebuild Iraq. We'd go to war "preemptively", win, and then rebuild Iraq with democracy.

So why don't we just skip the war part? I say we just pretend he doesn't exist and start rebuilding Iraq first. Heck, even warn him. Say, "On March 15th, we're going to start laying cable. Fair warning. Feel free to use it, we're letting everyone else use it."

Invade with global humanitarian groups. Start building better infrastructure in outer Iraq. Don't train militias, train professors and build schools. Don't ask permission from Iraq, just start building. Install autonomous universities. Install telephone lines. Reroute a communications satellite or ten. Just be generous without restrictions. Make it impossible for America OR Hussein to control how the resources are used. Give them net access, send resources. Leave instruction manuals. Waltz right in with explicitly peaceful generous purposes, don't route the aid through the Iraqi government, and just start building. If the Iraqi forces try to get in the way of that, THEN smack them down. Eventually Hussein will be found crying on a street corner in his underwear.

Yeah, I know it's a silly suggestion (once you figure in the supporting forces required to defend the humanitarian groups, you're probably describing an invasion anyway), but maybe there IS something more sophisticated along those lines that isn't being considered. What the hell is it about rebuilding Iraq that makes killing civilians a pre-requisite?

Beginning Commenters

Hunting The Muse: One thing I hate

This is a very old blog entry that someone just now decided they would like to comment on. I think that's hilarious. I hope she comments on more of my old blog entries, because that means that when other people read my blog history, they will think I am more popular at the time those entries were written than I really was. It's like blog revisionist history. That's so cool.

Flattening the Power Curve

Much has been said about The Power Law. Much has to be done to flatten the curve.

On the steep end, the recipients have a very different experience than the rest of us. They've already got the advantage so they are already being slammed by feedback. They don't have a need to market themselves so they have freedom to make whatever idiosyncratic choices they want in terms of who to follow. These idiosyncratic choices should be encouraged. However, they are also already very plugged in to the scene (given that they are the ones creating the scene). It's among this class that there is the most inbreeding - popular sites reinforcing the popularity of other popular sites. So to be responsible citizens, they could do a service to the rest of the population by working together to decrease redundancy and working hard to find new sources.

The medium edge can be served well by Technorati's new "Recent Interesting Blogs/Entries" lists and other services that watch the popular-blogging stats and turn them on their heads to reward sites that are quickly rising rather than just massively popular. However, this still rewards popularity rather than quality (a sometimes correlating but wholly noncausal relationship).

On the flat end, this requires a service like the one I've been musing quite a bit about lately. Consistent with my Conjectures On Truth And Quality, there needs to be a service where people can submit their news items and have them be rated and then recommended (using collaborative filtering?) to other interested subscribers. (muse: decentralized kuro5hin?) Perhaps this service could watch for these particular entries being mentioned on blogdex/daypop/technorati and dump them when they get too popular, and also dump other entries that get too high a ratio of negative ratings. It could rate both quality and newsworthiness. It could tie into RSS clients. It could give an excellent but unconnected writer a deserved shot at an audience.

Too Many Ideas

Life can feel like it sucks when you have too many ideas to even keep in your head at one time. Sure, it's exciting on the outside, but on the inside you can just feel like you are treading water while exhausted, scrambling to evolve rather than stagnate.

As I get older, I find that my overall theme of technical interest is getting more focused, but as I delve deeper I also find more people, many of whom are younger than me, even more intensely into it and more productive than I am.

Most simply and abstractly put, it's about empowering the mob without having the mob mentality. Finding group opinions without risking groupthink. Aggregating public opinion without ignoring individual inspiration. Interpreting group preferences, encouraging group creativity, decentralizing group productivity. All these topics spin in my head and they are so easily interrelated, so exciting, so overwhelming, so paralyzing.

Just in the last few days I found all of Joi Ito's writings on Emergent Democracy, and also something of a low-key job offer to work on collaborative filtering technology with someone who owns a bunch of patents on it, and there's so much to consider.

I want to feel like I'm a delver rather than a scanner, but the deeper I go, more I feel like I've only begun to scratch the surface. How much harder do I have to work before I actually feel like I'm moving forward?

Repression vs. Talk Therapy

Plastic: Put It In A Bottle; Keep The Cap Tight: Healing Through Repression - This idiotic post about this idiotic article got me riled up to write a reply, but it looks like plastic.com is having server problems so I'll have to post my reply here instead.

The emphasis was on comparing repression to "talk therapy" where people are encouraged to go into their feelings by talking about them. The flaw with this approach is that many people assume talking about it all is what "going into your feelings" is all about, and they don't go any further. I know that there is other healthier counseling, but I still believe it's the exception rather than the rule. Here's the reply I wrote:

I can't believe anyone hasn't pointed out the basic flaw here; that repression versus traditional counseling are the only options. What a false choice.

Repression means you're refusing to let yourself feel the pain. Talking about it often just means you're talking around the pain, getting all mental about it, verbally acknowledging that you have pain, admitting it, etc.

Neither one of them show a commitment to actually feeling the pain. Feeling as in letting yourself submit to the feelings, committing to them, physically expressing them.

It's a way more complicated subject than it sounds because many "mentally ill" people think that that means a nervous breakdown or that people will take them away, or angry people think it means that they'll lose all control and hurt someone or themselves, or anguished people think it will lead to so much despair that they will just off themselves.

But it's really the refusal to feel it that's most dangerous. From the repression that might not have any immediate external symptoms but can lead to severe depression and a dehumanized existence later on (or an explosion), to an overemphasis on "talk therapy" which can lead to more and more anxiety as the feelings surface but never quite get expressed...

No one seems to accept anymore that a really, really intense cry, or bout of fetal-position shaking, or screaming and punching into one's pillow until exhausted, can be an immensely healing experience. Because when they think of someone suggesting that, they only hear the scoffing and impatience of someone judging against their weakness.

People need to be reminded that being encouraged to physically express their emotions isn't always evidence of intolerance or ignorance of trauma or mental illness. It is *the* most important part of any emotional healing. And it does not require either repression or talk therapy.

Kung-Log new features

I made three feature requests for Kung-Log:

• The ability to hide the "Excerpt" box
• The ability to have the bottom drawer not show up automatically on start
• A hot key for post

And Adriaan got them all implemented within two days. Awesome. I donated at the same time. Now I have a very clean interface.

Organic! Wink, Nudge

damon wright | administrivia: Organics

So, according to them, we'll have exacting standards for Organic unless it, you know, costs more than the other stuff. In that case, the engineered stuff is organic too.

So the effect could be that people could advertise food as organic when it really isn't, which would remove the market for the ingredients that really ARE organic.

What's the defense for this? How could they honestly make a case for this?

Net Radio Tricks

O'Reilly Network: Homemade Dot Mac: Home Web Radio [Dec. 13, 2002]

Aaron pointed the way to this. See, I could write a service so that when I blog via kung-log, it could speak it into an mp3, and could then be uploaded to a streaming server that would always play my last five blog entries.

Am I going to do that? No.

One Less Obligation

I donated to Kung-Log. Well done, Adriaan.

Why, That Was Easy

I had been putting off my 2002 IRA contribution. Why? I don't know. I had the submission money just sitting there. Probably because I was nervous about tying up my money in my first year of free-lancing.

Anyway, inside of a half hour, while talking to friends on iChat, I was able to open a new Roth IRA account at ETRADE, activate it, link it to my checking account, and fund it. No telephone, no forms, no stamps. I only had to get up to find my checkbook. That was so easy!

Just In Case It Disappears

kuro5hin.org - PIN vulnerability

I have no interest in the comment of this article, but one of the comments of this article has a freenet link to a contested document, "just in case it disappears".

This is the first time I've actually seen freenet be mentioned and used for the purpose it's designed for. Up until now my exposure to it has all been people demonstrating it. So even though I'm sure it's been used for a while, for me, it's a new chapter. (And it's all about me.)

Future Weblog Utilities

As people start reading too many blogs, it'll be like owning too many mutual funds. So you know what there will be a market for? Blog portfolio balancing and diversification tools. It'll analyze your links and say, "You have an overbalance of this category of news. When these kinds of items occur, you'll notice they get reported in your collection of news sources multiple times. It's redundant; consider pruning blogs x, y, and z, since they're just repeating stuff you're seeing in your other collection of blogs anyway. Also, you can get rid of blogs a, b, and c if you consider replacing them with blog d which you don't know about yet."

I won't write that app, not interested. I hope someone else does.

By the way, this is my 750th blog entry.

Conjectures on Truth and Quality

Conjecture on Truth:

For you to accept a happening as absolutely true, you must either:

• Witness the veracity of the happening firsthand
• Have the happening reported to you by a source you know and trust absolutely

Conjecture on Quality:

A quality judgement is the same as a Truth judgement, except with the added variable of your own subjective preferences mixed in. Therefore, for you to accept an item as being high quality, you must either:

• Judge the quality of the item firsthand
• Have the item referred to you by a source that you absolutely trust can interpret your quality requirements (tastes) accurately

What technology can do for you is approximate the second requirement in both cases. However, there are tradeoffs.

For truth, if the happening is not reported by a source you explicitly trust as truthful, an alternative is for the happening to be reported by several independent and non-conspiring sources. This is corroboration. There is a loophole here in that if you don't explicitly trust any of the sources yourself, it is possible for them all to be fooled. You are choosing to trust a safety in numbers, rather than trusting one independent personally-known source.

For quality, it requires the recommending source to know your tastes. In the case of a source that knows only your tastes, it is difficult if not impossible for the source to judge your reaction to an item when that item's qualities do not have a relationship with the taste qualities you have shared.

If you want your source to be able to recommend items to you that you might like even when its qualities don't have a clear relationship with your communicated tastes, then it is necessary to compare your communicated tastes with those of several other participants to find commonalities. If any of these participants have judged the quality of the item, your probable reaction to an item can be extrapolated. But the requirement in this case is for the item in question to be rated by several sources before it can be recommended to you.

Therefore, if a happening is reported to one source unknown to you, and you hear of the happening through only that source, it is impossible for you to reasonably trust that it is true.

And, if you find an item through a recommending source, and you have not shared any preferences for qualities of that item, and no one else has shared opinions on that item, it is impossible for that source to predict if you would find it of high quality.

In either case, if you want to be exposed to new happenings of truth, or new items of quality that you haven't explicitly described beforehand, without witnessing these happenings and items first-hand, it is a hard requirement for these items and happenings to be rated by multiple sources before you can trust them.

Comments?

You Think Our Cows Have It Bad

Erik Benson

For $200 he could've shot a grenade launcher at a cow--strange place. Very very strange.

Oh my god.

Payment Utility

I think a useful web utility would be one where you record the various things you intend to eventually pay for but haven't got around to yet. Like owning a credit card, except you yourself are the bank. You can record the item name and description, and the link to where payment is accepted. If it's a cd that you own the mp3s for, it could be amazon's "buy" link. Or for shareware, their paypal donate link.

Then you could use it as a reminder service, or sort by amount, or urgency, or whatever. I guess it wouldn't have to be web-based. Actually, I guess someone could store it in a private html file, but that's boring.

This Is The Life

You know, I'm really enjoying this. 18 months ago I was just about to be laid off from my second salaried job in five months. It sucked. Now I'm freelancing full time.

Right now I'm sitting in bed, pillows behind me, with my beloved iBook, with my timesheet program silently calculating (by the second) the hourly rate I'm billing my client for doing perl/database development work on their intranet. I set my own hours, work when I want. I'm blogging using Kung-Log, listening to a really great tune:

Touching Cloth At The End Of The Day Dervish

(which I was able to put in here just by pressing a button), and controlling it using pthitunesnotifier (find it on versiontracker, I don't feel like finding the link), which lets me control iTunes without using any desktop space.. I'm on iChat with Damon, helping him install something, all while I'm working on this project.

Life is good. I guess I need a wishlist to make it even better. What's a more comfy work environment than sitting on my bed? I think I need an easy chair. Something where I can lean back in a comfy chair but also work, and have freedom of arm movement. Any ideas?

Just To Be Clear

It's Damon Now, From Now On, In Perpetuity

I told this yahoo that he had two problems: a branding problem, and an existential problem. It looks like we've resolved at least one of these. From now on, he's Damon.

Audio Dramas

Slashdot | Internet-Created Free Audio Dramas? There are a lot of good links in here. Of course, I had to mention StorySprawl.

PeteDamondoc.TheGoodDoctorYeah,DoobyFreakShow, check out the stuff about the Amateur Voice Actors.

Bush Logic

Protests let president know that he's right - Sort of a boring article that is a Bush apologist piece, but it does have a killer ending. Hee.

Asking The Enemy

Xbox Linux group seeks Microsoft seal | CNET News.com

I think this is an excellent, excellent, excellent idea. Sometimes an enemy can be so painted as "The Enemy" that the conflicts against that enemy only serve to further distance the two camps from each other. Here, they're breaking all the unsaid rules and attempting to reach out. Kudos to the people participating in this effort.

This ties in to another Basic Emotional Misunderstanding that I'd really love to see change. When someone has anger against the other and wants something to change, it too often gets translated into the anger only being expressed AT the other, as blame. The draw the choice as "express the anger at the other, or do nothing". (Protest or perish.) The alternative, of course, is to express the actual anger separately, and then seek to actually solve the problem by negotiating and finding win-win solutions.

Lazy Connections

Scripting News - Weird. I went out drinking with this guy and mutual friends a couple of times. I doubt he remembers me.

Quote Of The Day

"Manny Moe, you get the bathroom first, followed by your copilot."

MC Hammer, to Emmanuel "Webster" Lewis, upon waking up together after sharing a bunk bed.

I don't know. I just don't know.

Books

I'm playing around with AllConsuming.net. There's some bugs but it looks pretty cool. It can't find one of my favorite recent reads, though, Mockingbird.

More Bloogle reactions

Erik Benson's Weblog: Google buys Blogger

have to admit that there's a little bit of a jealous factor in the back of my head that wishes this wouldn't work out. And then I craft possible reasons why it won't work out and present them as clear-headed opinion, just like Anil has done as well.

Thank God this guy has said what was in my head (well, being jealous, not wishing it would fail) and helped me to feel better about thinking it. And also for getting a dig in at Anil, who, to me (in a read-him-five-times-randomly-and-came-to-a-snap-judgement kind of way), just seems like a bit of a jerk. Did I say that? I don't really think complete strangers are jerks. He wrote an entry about cleaning his shower once I thought was really cute. Am I a good citizen again now?

Chappelle's Switch

CapsGetPeeled finds a new Switch parody. Damon, you'll like this. But I still think your commercial was better.

Public Opinion And Reputation

Mindjack - Feature - Spinning the Web: The Realities of Online Reputation Management

The chaos of the bazaar may spread a meme - but not a consistent image. The online medium (or protocol, or social model) that defines reputation will not be as narrow as a laser beam. Yet it must have the attribute that moves mountains: the convergence of opinion.

It's already linked on slashdot, but it's a really good article. Again ties into all the areas of thinking that I hope to eventually unify... or of what I'll hope to witness.

Blogging Tools

Just learning how to use all the new blogging tools is an adventure in new journalism. I pulled together all the media for the previous entry in under ten minutes after hearing about the show. How? Well, I went to Daypop and searched for O'Reilly Glick. I found Tom Tomorrow's blog entry. Then I used Technorati's link cosmos bookmarklet to see who was talking about his entry. And I found the mp3 and the discussion of what O'Reilly did afterward. In that entry I found the link to the Democracy Now interview, and in the comments to that entry I found a link to video footage.

Damn, what's it like to be a high school student writing a report these days?

O'Reilly and Glick

You remember Mr. Glick, who said "Let's Roll" on 9/11? Well, his son was on The O'Reilly Factor because he signed the "Not In Our Name" declaration. O'Reilly tried to embarrass him, Glick kept his composure, and O'Reilly promptly embarrassed himself. Here's the transcript. Here's the audio. Then there were the moments afterward. You can hear Glick talk about it on a Real Audio interview from Democracy Now.

Evidently O'Reilly apologized to the audience after the break for having Glick on the show, saying that he never would have had him on the show had he known what Glick would be saying, and said more in later days about Glick spewing anti-American hatred and propaganda and was behaving crazily like a maniac.

Update and Correction: Evidently Jeremy Glick's father was not the "Let's Roll" Glick; he was another Glick that died in the WTC. "We regret the error."

Minority Football Coaches

NFL's hiring practices starting to draw fire

A few entries ago I wrote about Detroit's decision to hire Mariucci. Evidently they ignored a rule to interview minority candidates before hiring Mariucci.

Well SF hired Erickson after interviewing several minority candidates and for some reason I think it stinks. Again, I'm basing both cases off of my own suspicions, but it's very possible that Detroit followed the spirit but not the letter of the rule, while SF followed the letter but not the spirit. I don't know if either are true, but if they both are, SF is definitely the creepy one.

Kung-Log Rocks

Despite the minor pain I reported in upgrading Movable Type and Kung-Log, I have to say that I'm glad I switched to movable type if only to be able to use Kung-Log. It truly makes blogging more seamless - lots of features with the option of a minimal interface. Now it even has image upload.

I have this way of putting off my shareware/donationware fees until I feel like my environment is stable, but I think that once 2.61 comes out I'll be paypal-ing away.

Invisibility Cloak Clip

CapsGetPeeled finds a video clip of the invisibility cloak.

It Knows All... Sees All

So, does this plus this equal "Big Blogger"?

Sorry.

Google Buys Blogger

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Google Buys Pyra: Blogging Goes Big-Time - Is this for real? Wow, I mean, wow. You'd think it was 1998.

Fear Will Protect You From Terror!

Salon.com News | Orange agents - Reporters also placed too much emphasis on the dramatic congressional testimony by the heads of the CIA and FBI, says Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief. He notes those presentations didn't happen because threatening new terrorist information had just been uncovered. Instead, they're prescheduled annual events.

I don't watch television news. I saw a few articles on the web and saw a couple of extra warnings and didn't think much of it.

Then I sat down and watched an episode of Buffy. Here in Portland, every commercial break had a newsbreak with the anchors saying things like "Tune in tonight to see what landmarks in Portland have been named as terrorist targets!" while showing pictures of local churches. While watching 24, they actually shrunk the screen and had a flashy graphic that said "TERRORIST TARGETS IN PORTLAND".

I watch the beginning of the newscast and it's a wide angle start showing three anchors, extra bustle and activity, alarm in their voices and concern in their eyes, with teasers about what other Portland residents are doing to prepare themselves. (They even found a couple of people to interview on the street who said something about buying extra bottled water or something.)

After the break they cut to an anchor to explain what they meant about TERRORIST TARGETS IN PORTLAND. They had a guy standing in front of a church with his 13-page report from the FBI... saying (with alarm in his voice) that the FBI had said "Christian Churches MAY BE A TARGET!"

The FBI said... Christian Churches... may be a target.

Duh.

I don't know how to communicate the disgust I feel about the shamefulness of this whole thing. My mind was racing that night to the extent that I was pacing around the apartment muttering to myself about what I would have said to the fucking news anchors had they stopped me on the street.

More and more, news media reminds me of junior high school. It used to be we looked UP to journalists, to Walter Cronkite, to the all-american senior. Now there's all these snot-faced hyper nerdy kids - not the smart kinds but the kinds that throw glueballs at the teacher and pull wings off of moths - who think that Fox News is the cool kid. And so they try to emulate him. They have no room or patience for integrity because it complicates things too much, slows down the pace too much.

They are blatantly encouraging fear. (Have you seen that "High Alert" terror icon they have in the lower right of their screen 24x7?) It sounds silly for me to say - I mean, it's so obvious that everyone sees it and so making the observation doesn't really even have any power anymore. But it is still harmful even though people have moved on to talking about it off-handedly. When people feel fear, they become convinced they need more protection. And protection from what? Really, what? Terror? We're terrified of experiencing terror? We better get scared enough to take steps to protect ourselves from terror? Or terrified enough to be thankful that others are protecting us from terror? What?

It is hard to be too blunt about this because it isn't that there isn't something serious going on here. It isn't that the emperor is wearing no clothes. It's just that it's been co-opted so thoroughly. And it's so distasteful to imagine someone co-opting 9/11 that it's hard for us all to collectively accept it (even if we all might secretly individually believe it). Should we respect that there's a major imbalance in the world right now, of a greater clash in culture and ideology, with all parties mutually committed to not understanding each other? Yes. But should we really be worried about the odds of ourselves being victims of a terrorist attack? More than we worry about being in fatal traffic accidents?

Power Laws

Sifry's Alerts: Breaking the (power) law - More on the argument over the assertion that freedom of choice necessarily leads to undeserved inequality.

I really like what this guy is doing to challenge that "reality". What he does is turn the metrics for blog popularity upside down, by refusing to award already popular blogs for becoming more popular. This way he measures "fresh" blogs.

However it's not complete because it still doesn't work unless a deserving blogger has already figured out how to reach a large (for them) number of people and make them notice.

I think the remaining part to address is how do we help the person that writes something amazing but with very low likelihood of it being noticed? Think political dissent, or the occasional diamond entry in the rough of a bad blog. I've had some ideas for a couple of services that I'd like to see exist. Say I'm an unconnected guy that writes a new entry and thinks it is deserving of attention. I want a shot. Where do I get my shot? It's not as if I have a lot of people reading it and then deciding they don't like it. I don't even get the readership.

That's the power law to break. How do we give those folks a shot?

No Apple Envy Yet

Well, I've had my iBook now for quite a few months, and through two revisions that compete directly with my 700Mhz. The iBook 800, and the new 12" powerbook. I was convinced that I would love my iBook only while it was the top-of-the-line, but you know what? I still love it and don't feel limited by it. The most I want to do is get a bigger hard drive, but I can do that easily without trading the whole thing in.

Maybe in six months I'll feel differently, but I don't yet have any need or use for Bluetooth, or a cinema display. The iBook is really hardy, less fragile than the powerbooks, which suits me since I tend to be rough on my stuff. Right now I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface. My biggest annoyance with the iBook isn't anything to do with my computer as it is with my organizational skills. I just have so damn many things on my desktop with no place to put them even though I might use them if I remembered they were there. Hopefully I'll figure it out someday. I will probably write more on this later.

Chris Matthews Interview

Salon.com Interview: Chris Matthews - All right, I guess I do read Salon a bit still. I didn't pay attention to Matthews too much during the whole Clinton fiasco but since then I never found him too annoying. Neat interview.

My Face

Sweet! Kung-Log supports file upload!

What Peace Movement?

Billboard Ban - The First Amendment loses meaning if the corporations keep gaining the power that the government keeps abdicating.

Movable Type Upgrade

The site is running 2.6 now. Hilights, I'm under a Creative Commons license now. Attribution Required, Non-Commercial, Derivative Works Allowed if they use the license I use. But upgrading was kind of a pain.

I enjoy running Kung-Log as my blogging tool. I started it up tonight and a pop-up box came up saying, "Hey, new version! Upgrade upgrade upgrade! Click the pretty button!" Well, that's not exactly what it said. So I clicked the button and downloaded.

The download automatically opened the window for me to drag the application into place. Here's where I should have read the Readme. I didn't. I'd read them for all the other versions I downloaded and it was boring. So, I overwrote my previous installation. Tried to run. Errors. Checked the Readme. Surprise, the new Kung-Log requires Movable Type 2.6, which came out, like, an hour ago.

I don't like updating immediately. I like to wait for the inevitable x.x.1 release. But now I'm without my blogging tool. I went to all the version sites and couldn't find the old version of Kung-Log.

So, I decided to upgrade my movable type installation. I downloaded the thing. Then you have to copy all your files into your mt install directory - directory by recursive directory, since it's not all on one level. If you haven't upgraded before, it isn't clear what files to avoid. It says to NOT overwrite files you've modified, only files you haven't. Well, I've modified stuff through the web interface, does that count? It doesn't say. (After experimenting, the answer is NO. If you haven't modified anything on disk, you're okay.) So that took a while. Now I know a faster way, but there wasn't enough reassurance beforehand to make me feel like I wouldn't be a cowboy for doing it.

Then, there's all sorts of crazy instructions for upgrading. Basically, after you upgrade, your site doesn't have all the features enabled that it would have if you did a fresh install. I hate that. I guess it's the only way though since sometimes people make customizations after they install. So they have these extra instructions on how to enable things.

So I replaced all my templates with the new default versions, taking care to maintain the one set of customizations I did for my index page template. The instructions didn't tell me I had to do that, but I did notice subtle instructions in the new defaults from the ones in 2.51 that weren't mentioned, so I just did them all.

So it all looked okay. Things were working okay. I decided to enable my optional Creative Commons license. The form worked, and then there was a link to hook it back into the movable type system.

It failed, no error message. I posted a message on the site and then did some perl digging. It turns out the answer was to su to root and do a chgrp -R apache after the initial install instructions didn't require this.

The upgrade was more annoying and confusing than the install. Overall I give the upgrade process a C-, and a D if you factor in the Kung-Log upgrade trap I fell into. What can I say, I'm demanding. But if it turns out I have to upgrade to 2.61 in the next week, it's a big fat F.

BitTorrent Is Cool

BitTorrent is awesome. I downloaded it, found the url for my Angel episode here, loaded it in BitTorrent, and five hours later I had my episode. The programming approach behind it is just a stunning example of a well-designed solution to a very large problem. A true example of how elegant solutions to massive problems really can be found with enough care and consideration. It's not simple solutions that are effective, it's elegant ones.

Estrada Status

Estrada Filibuster: A generic explanation, an exploration of hypocrisy, and an absolutely fascinating description of what it means to filibuster.

Everything You've Ever Searched For

Google as Big Brother - Shudder.

Sip Deux

I just finished my Fat Tire. Yay me. I have the hiccups.

BitTorrent

So, I missed Angel tonight. Really bummed because it said it had a "spectacular" ending. Then I promptly read all the spoilers. But then, I discovered BitTorrent. One URL and you can download the file. I'm downloading it now, and it's automatically uploading back to other people as I download, it appears. 2.2% done now. We'll see how it goes... 450 MB onto my Firewire drive.

Sip

It's one in the morning and I just cracked open a Fat Tire. Yay me.

I'll Make A Deal

I've got this Blogroll. Well, there's also the Blog Reciproll. I'll put anyone on my Blogroll who puts me on theirs. That's the deal. Any takers? Gotta say, this is getting addictive, the comments and the trackback and the crosslinking...

Marketing Techniques

In the comments of my entry on MLM, Damon writes:

Philosophically, I have a real problem with Sales and Marketing. That's the irony of being a marketer. I don't like the fact that advertising and marketing creates ... nothing. No ingenuity, no magic, no brick & mortar. Yet, there has to be some mechanism to evangelize new products to people who haven't seen them before in order to grow business, grow economies, and perhaps, change someone's life a little bit. To date, I haven't met a better system than traditional marketing.

That's what gets me brainstormy. Let's look at it in three ways.

A product that fills a hole in the market; an existing need This is the fun stuff, I think the kind of product development and marketing that is most closely tied to innovation and invention. Someone notices a glaring need and imagines a stunning solution for it - they create the solution, it's obvious to others that it solves it, they want it.

A product that fills absolutely no pre-existing need Like Chocolate Coated Sugar Bombs. You manufacture the need through input overload and emotional manipulation. I hate that stuff. I'm susceptible to it sometimes.

The in-between stuff. :) Like, an accountant. You can do your own taxes and you might find it stupid to pay extra money to help you do something where you'll already be paying money, but then you realize you've reached a point where the money you'd spend on them is less than the money you save by using them. Or, I'm a software contractor. There might be clients out there that are content with what they do but don't realize that by using my services, they will get greater utility that will actually save them bottom-line money even after paying me. That kind of marketing isn't a clear need beforehand, but it's business education.

So, the problem is that it's a spectrum. That third option is on a sliding scale between the above two extremes. Someone can bring up another product or marketing effort and they can ask me where it is, and really it would just be my opinion. Which invites a lot of opportunity for rationalization. ("Everyone's entitled to their opinion," code for "Your opinion is stupid and irrelevant.")

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. Marketing. A "mechanism to evangelize new products to people who haven't seen them before in order to [...] change someone's life". I think there isn't a system for this. At its nut, it requires essence in the person practicing it. As soon as the personal touch is taken out of it, I think it knocks itself out of the "personal plus" column. Honest helpful marketing is a desire to serve first, profit second? All right, I'll try that one on.

Estrada Filibuster

ABCNEWS.com : White House Rejects Democrats Demands on Estrada Hot Damn. They're filibustering. Just like I asked.

This makes me happy. And still just as pissed off at Bush. They are rejecting the demand for more information.

MLM

damon wright: Tonight

Network marketing freaks me out. It's a rare bird that can get involved with a network marketing product and not be creepy about it. Pete's one of them. The non-creepy rare bird kind, I mean. I lived with Pete while he sold Pre-Paid Legal and it was actually kind of fun hearing about it and seeing how he and his friend did their business.

I think that the people that get creeped out about MLM are the people that have had creepy experiences with it. I've had a couple. My worst was that I made these two new friends that mentioned offhand they were working for an environmental products company, and hey, want to go out for dinner? We have to stop by for a quick meet-up with some coworkers first, and they might actually be running through a product demonstration you'll find interesting.... anyway, by the end of the night I was getting the hard sell from the girl that six hours previously I thought was cute.

My other creepy experience was that I was sucked in by a product. I went from skepticism to enthusiasm to thinking about how I could bring all my friends in under my network umbrella in about three hours, and it didn't wear off for a day. And then after realizing that I wasn't actually looking out for my friend's best interests, and was instead thinking of how my friends could serve my advantage, made me ashamed... and I was of course ashamed of admitting I was ashamed, so I instead just got vehemently anti-MLM. That's easier.

As for what I still believe? Obviously, I don't believe that all MLM folks are creeps; I'm good friends with two or three folks that have MLM history. I don't believe that MLM products are necessarily suspect in quality.

But I do believe that structure of MLM businesses are socially unhealthy. It doesn't mean that everyone participating in them is unhealthy or even contributing to the unhealth - a good soul can be a positive influence on other workers. But I believe they're the exception to the rule. There are just a bunch of really creepy people in MLM. People that are okay with becoming successful by feeding off of others' lack of integrity. People that capitalize on another's weak spine, or another's susceptibility to guilt. People that use the defense, "Hey, all they have to do is say no and I'd be okay with that!" and skip past the fact that it really isn't that simple. The structure of the commission-only downline (especially the variants with an optional buy-in) has a predatory subtext that attracts a lot of people that respond to that energy.

These are all old impressions I have, that I admit, have that tight feeling inside of me that usually indicate that something is amiss inside myself. Usually meaning that it reminds me of something else that has probably hurt me in the past. I don't know what. So I can't entirely defend my points as anything extraordinarily logical... they are just more indicators of where I am in understanding it I guess. It's just that when I think of MLM, I can't help but remember that videotape, down in that carpeted basement with the low ceiling, of that fat MLM president with the wet lips, who, at the end of his on-stage speech about his company, lowered his voice, squinted his eyes (camera zooming in slowly to his spotlighted sweaty fish face), and said, "The only reason not to get involved and COMMIT to a company and opportunity like this one... is FEAR."

Blogroll News

I re-implemented my blogroll list. I got rid of Scripting News because every single other blogger in the world already links to him, and because I find it a frustrating experience reading his blog sometimes, anyway.

Also, I found out I couldn't set up a second blogroll for my "Favorite Entries" column. Boo. But then I realized it's probably better because I can make a category for it and then just have the Category listing there instead.

iTunes Display

I'm just testing out a little thingy. I'm listening to iTunes, I'm blogging, I want to tell people what I'm listening to right then, I click a button, and...:

Ten Cent Wings 10 Cent Wings Jonatha Brooke

Goodbye Salon

I think I've officially moved on from Salon. It used to be that I had a morning routine of four sites. msnbc.com, slashdot.org, aintitcool.com, and salon.com . Hard, Geek, Movie/TV, and Liberal.

Well, Salon has gone and loused it up by not telling me anymore which articles are premium and which aren't. I see a teaser to an article, I click the link to read more, and I see another teaser. I hate that. It was fine when I knew up front. I would occasionally consider being a premiere member, but I just never spent quite enough time there to justify it. But now I see an article and commit to it and then am told AFTERWARD that I'm denied. It's really aggravating.

So I have to find a new liberal news site now. Indymedia.org is unreadable and isn't objective enough. Any recommendations?

Mind Mapping

Pete/Damon responds to my previous entry, which, uhm, got me thinking.

Actually I just wanted to trackback to him trackbacking to my entry.

I actually put in a feature request to the OmniOutliner folks to allow two things:

• Allow one to check off a parent and then have its children shift once to the left (like marking a pre-requisite as done)
• multiple parent capability

Turns out that the mulitple parent thing was in a lot of old outliners and was called "Cloning". And a lot of people request it. So it might be coming someday.

Those two things plus a tighter integration into OmniGraffle might accomplish a lot of what Pete's talking about.

But if not, I'll fire up Project Builder and port my web app to Obj-C... SOMEday...

Portland Bloggers

Well, I'll be. I found a bunch of Portland bloggers. Pete, you might want to go check them out. I hear they meet at Kell's every so often, which is a great Irish bar that I've heard a lot about, that Tamara wants to go to as well. I wonder if they do caelidhs? ceilis? caileighs? those jiggy things?

Clinton Interivew

Clinton: 'I Regret I didn't get Bin Laden' - It's a lousy headline but it's a great interview. Read his words and think about what Bush would say given the same questions.

Ideas NEW, Violets are BLUE

So, I was thinking about my previous entry. And I looked up some outliners yesterday. And I came across an opinion (sorry, can't find it now) that believed outliners are not good thinking utilities because they force us into a structured way of thinking that isn't the most conducive to new ideas. Top-down, hierarchical, single-parent, etc. Sure, I agree with that, why not?

And I was thinking about my todo list app. Multiple parents. What I like about it is that it helps me free up my head in one particular way - I come up with a goal, and then I can say, "okay, what do I need to do before I can do this?" But it's still structured.

Which got me thinking about thinking, which is something I'm especially good at. What's the best way to come up with ideas?

Ideas are elusive. They do need to be captured somehow so you can refer back to them. But you don't want to overcontrol them and make the structure too rigid.

And somewhere in here, I realized that the whole process reminded me of poetry. The problem with ideas isn't that there's too many of them, it's that they have all this cruft embedded in them. They just need to be distilled down to their smallest essence and then allowed to interrelate freely.

I haven't really gotten further than that and am just letting my brain blather, but I thought that was interesting enough to weblog... make brainstorming like poetry.

Whistling, Working

Another day gone working. Actually I did okay today. Woke up at 11:30 after about 5-6 hours sleep, and put in another seven or so hours today, and finished a deliverable only a day late. Not my fault here, the schedule was just way too aggressive and the client knew it. Now I have to kick ass for my other client by Thursday.

Sort of exhausted with technology now. I seem to have a pattern lately of four or five main things I'm cycling between. My clients, a side technical project, almost doing some music, cleaning. And then various social things. I'm making very slow progress on my "self-improvement" things (music, side tech), but nothing dramatic. I swear I don't know how other people do it. If I could only have one more life I'd do all this plus finding my house, buying/practicing my piano, and writing a television series.

And now I get to have some wonderful uninterrupted sleep. Been looking forward to this all day.

Flattening The Curve

Power laws and priorities [dive into mark] He blogged. I commented. Now I'm trackbacking. Wonder if people will read what I wrote in my comments. Maybe they'll leave comments here.

World's Most Depressing Ad

God, I so want to be that guy.

Link Whore

Hey, any of you regular readers also have blogs? I want a bit more traffic. Link to me. :)

Music In My Head

Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra: Misterioso from the album "The Music of Joseph Schwantner" by Joseph Schwantner

That's what I'm listening to right now. And it's really, really, really cool. :-)

Crime Rates

Bowling For Columbine did get me thinking about a couple of things. Rather, it reminded me of things I've thought before, including how press coverage distorts the frequency and presence level of crime. Like how kidnappings go down and coverage goes up, that sort of thing.

So how do you control coverage? Well, you don't. But you can encourage.

When I was in elementary school, I did a science fair project that involved comparing local crime rates with the phase of the moon. I think I got second prize (there were multiple first prize winners). But the key to that project was that I found a person working in the police station that had access to all the statistics and was able to give them all to me by date.

These days, I would think those statistics would be available in real-time on a regional basis. I'd like to see a live indicator that actually showed the violent crime index compared to previous dates. A little graphic shown each day so people can see the crime rate go down when they actually think it is going up. Actually, I'm sure that quite a few newscasts have got to be already doing this. But I'd also like to see it as a web service.

By the way, the upshot of my 7th grade science fair experiment was that the crime rate was noticeably more active when there was a full moon. My conclusion was that the moon has an impact on many people's moods, making them more aggressive. A couple years later, thanks to an old Shoe cartoon, I thought of an alternate explanation: That the full moon makes it easier to see.

ABCNews models MJ's face

I was thinking this just has to be fake, but it came from this abcnews.com article. This is evidently what Michael Jackson would look like if he had had no plastic surgery.

I'm thinking about this all and it just really bothers me. I mean, for more entirely separate reasons than I can count right now. There's Michael. There's Michael's denial of the problem. There's the press's irresponsible handling of it. There's the demand for the computer projection, there's the news site that publishes it... plus, the picture is actually a pretty bad picture of that particular imaginary person. Isn't there something inherently cruel about that? And where does racism play into this whole thing? The whole thing is just a complete fuck-up.

And then Mister Guilt comes along and asks pointedly, "Why are YOU posting about it, then, Curt? Huh? What do you think of THAT?" Then I smack Mister Guilt upside the head and tell him to go back to hell.

And yet, it does annoy me when something pretends to be meta and then doesn't follow through. Like the news shows that act like they are concerned with such-and-such, run through all the salacious details, and then never follow through with the compassion. Concern, my ass. False emotion, more like.

There is something important about this whole MJ drama, and the annoying part to me is that I can't quite put my finger on it. It is like a pattern is being run through. Denials feeding on denials. MJ sheltering himself and inviting bad experiences to him by not facing his problems, and predatory forces noticing that and feeding on it, which in turn confirms to MJ that he should shelter himself further, which the press interprets as validation for their approach and opinions. Neither of them are right, but the behavior of the pattern makes them believe they are.

Bowling For Columbine

So, I finally saw Bowling For Columbine tonight.

I'm left with a frustrated feeling about Michael Moore. It could have been a better picture if he had just gotten out of the way a little bit. It's like he has a good eye for the subject material but then he has to run over it that last little bit.

Here's a good example of why I'm bothered. There's a school shooting and he goes on location and films all the other press groups. He films a TV reporter being on camera. "Many tears shed tonight..." says the TV reporter with a respectful look of gravity. Fade to black. He immediately starts bitching about technical difficulties and his hair and the satellite van. He jokes around and looks like a real egotistical prick. Take two. Re-adopt look of gravity. Do his thing, fade to blank, turn into a jerk again. It really was amazing how over-the-top it felt, when it really wasn't over the top. This guy really was this false. Right after saying the words about this six year old girl being murdered, RIGHT after, cracking jokes about his hair spray. Anyway, I felt all indignant watching that. The filthy tricks those people play with cameras to manipulate viewers' emotions!

So at the end he's interviewing Charleton Heston, who tires of it quickly and leaves. There's Moore saying, off camera, "Can you look at this picture of this six-year-old victim?" as Heston walks away. There's a cut - to Moore holding the picture looking after Heston walking away. There's Heston again, Moore saying off-screen, "Please, Mr. Heston! Please take this picture!" There's a cut to Moore holding the picture again looking distressed as Heston walks away.

HE ONLY HAD THE ONE CAMERAMAN. I immediately put together the backstory in my head. Heston walks off with Moore heckling after him. Camera gets turned off, Moore says, "ok, now, set up focusing on me holding out the picture! That'll be great!" Camera turns on. Moore poses. Again, The filthy tricks those people play with cameras to manipulate viewers' emotions!

I mean, how am I supposed to feel? That was just sloppy. Why include the scene with that other anchor earlier in the movie? That was just a big clumsy double standard. "Feel indignant about being manipulated unless I'M the one communicating the message!" That's what I mean about Moore getting in the way of himself. Anyway, it soured the movie for me. If someone's going to take on the mantle of exposing hypocrisy, they have to hold themselves to a higher standard.

Deadlines

Monday: Curt demonstrates software revisions to Client A, promises it be done by a week from Thursday.

Tuesday: Curt's server (with customers) crashes due to a webhost-provider error. Tuesday is shot.

Wednesday: Client B comes up with several extremely hot deadlines for the following Wednesday. Curt works on webhost server. Wednesday is shot.

Thursday: Curt's server is mostly up, Curt goes in all day to Client B, then takes a break Thursday night due to stress from previous two nights (working straight for two days). Thursday is shot.

Friday: Another full day at Client B, important social engagement Friday night. Workload for Client B grows, Curt pushes back. Friday is shot.

Project due Wednesday, project due Thursday, struggling to not cancel social engagements. I'll make them, but man. Justification for higher short-notice rates?

Measure 28 Counterpoints

A reader responds to my previous entry on Measure 28, with the following theory on why others voted No:

You didn't mention one rationale for NOT voting for it that I think was a biggie: sending a message to Salem that we're sick of their panic last-minute tactics and don't believe it's truly a crisis and don't believe in band-aid fixes. That, I think, is a bigger motivator for the negative vote than saving 100 bucks was.

That's enough to get my brain really curious about things I might have missed about the whole drama.

First, is it possible (or true) that most of the problems (school layoffs, prison releases, etc) were invented by the Democrats to motivate people to vote for 28, and that it really could just be solved easily through bureaucratic streamlining?

Second, if that's true, is that a reason to vote against it when the reality is that we're dealing with the school/prison approach anyway? Is taking a principled stand really principled when it's people other than yourself that are making the sacrifices for your principles?

Systems and Jesse Jackson

Systems fascinate me. By systems, I mean... structures that approximate intent. Intent is inherently based in emotion. But in order to manifest, you have to put a structure around it. A system.

And yet, a system, by its very existence, can suggest that the emotion that brought it into being is irrelevant. The emotion can be leeched out, only leaving the framework, leaving it devoid of essence.

Law is a system. Someone feels, "but that is wrong!"... and they realize they can't trust everyone to not do that wrong thing, so they create a system. The system works for a while, and then there's a loophole. A loophole is what happens when the essence of the intent is being ignored. Letter versus Spirit.

What got me thinking about this? Well, there weren't enough minority hires in the NFL. So the NFL adopted a policy for every team to interview at least one minority for every coaching opening. Mariucci was fired for SF and hired by Detroit. He grew up in Michigan and was their only interviewed candidate. Reverend Jesse Jackson is protesting and asking the NFL to prohibit the Lions from this year's college draft.

What do I think about that? Well, what do I think about the policy? I think it's an honorable intent and a clumsy implementation. In this case several black coaches refused to interview with Detroit because they knew Mariucci was a shoe-in for the job. I mean, maybe they're a bunch of racists up there, but maybe this was a clear case of a homecoming for him and him being the clear best candidate. In other words, if those were true, you could hardly make the case he was hired there in Detroit because he was white. Even as a "tiebreaker".

So, in this case I guess I feel like while Detroit's choice might have gone against the structure of the agreement, it wasn't clearly against the intent of it. And I feel like Jackson is reacting to the structure of the agreement being violated, not the essence.

Structure versus essence. The problem isn't that the two are inherently opposed to each other. Structure marries to essence quite well when they are looking out for each other, when the people participating in them are committed to both. The problem is that there are these little warriors out there that keep setting the two against each other. Folks that scream to defend the structure of an agreement without even keeping the original intent of the agreement in mind. Or folks that deliberately break structure out of protest of its control and restriction.

Both are morally lazy. Jackson is being reactionary and unreasonable. Detroit was lazy. Detroit would have also been lazy to just go through the motions and give lip service to a minority candidate without it going nowhere. Detroit could have remembered the intent of the agreement - to respect and encourage diversity in the coaching staff - and actively brainstormed something, even if Mariucci was a foregone conclusion. Jackson can choose to lobby for Detroit to take a positive pro-diversity action rather than asking for them to be punished for not following the routine.

Soooo Tired...

I really think there might be something to that 90-minute sleep theory. The theory goes that are best waking up at 90-minute intervals. If you wake up after six hours sleep or 7.5 hours sleep, you'll have a more alert day than if you wake up at 7 hours or 8 hours.

I've been testing that out the last week or so - if I was short on time I'd set my alarm for six hours sleep and I'd do okay. Today though, I woke up badly about 6.5-7 hours after going to sleep and I am having the damndest time concentrating on anything. I'm at a client's office today and am totally dragging.

Of course it doesn't help that we have superlite 40's big band singing on the background. Like "I've Got You Under My Skin" but with nooo energy. zzzzz...

Server Down :(

Well, I asked rackspace for advice on upgrading php 4.0.6 to 4.2, and one of the guys there went ahead and did so, and also upgraded glibc and gcc - partially - thereby breaking most of the rest of the server.

In order to fix it they had to reinstall the ENTIRE SERVER, which I don't exactly understand. The new vanilla server is up now... but without any of the old software. Sucks. They said they'd do what they could to have it up and running by morning. I really doubt that will happen. Argh.

Update: Well, it wasn't up by morning! They got email running by about 4pm PST, and the user directories and websites shortly afteward. It took me a while to get the blog system back up (I took a break in the evening), and it looks like we're working again now.

I had some mailing list software and I forgot what a bitch it was to install, and now I have to reinstall it. mailman 2.1 with qmail. Yuck. Hopefully tomorrow...

Reading My Blog

Just earlier tonight I was glum about the huge throngs of people who are not actively reading my blog, and then someone I know messaged me (unprompted) and said they read my blog regularly and really like how I think. Thanks!

Of course, I think the secret of getting more people to read my blog is to DO more stuff rather than THINK more stuff... still thinking about this DO thing. I'm also Doing Thinking though, so at least I'm even there.

Estrada Filibuster

Looks like I'm not the only one who is calling their Senator to support an Estrada filibuster. There's probably a bunch of other places doing so, as well.

Thinking styles

Being a programmer and also a musician, I come across a lot of different thinking styles. Not just thinking styles, but creating styles. I'm one that loves the idea of creating and can occasionally do so, but I think first. Think first, then create. I am continually envious of the people that skip the thinking step and just create.

One of my clients is also a programmer and has hired me to help him out. It's a bit odd because he is actually a much faster code producer than I am. But I help him design the code and clean it up, and a lot of the code I've been cleaning up the code is the stream-of-consciousness code that he originally produced. So yes, maybe my code is cleaner, more elegant, easier to maintain. But he's used his creative style to form a very successful company, by emphasizing the doing over the thinking.

In music, I plan, analyze, and direct. But there are tons of people that write wonderful music without even knowing how to read it. I consistently got the highest grades in my classes for music theory and ear training, but I've written less than a cd's worth of music in my life. I think so much, and I don't do much... at least, not much compared to how much I think.

I know that my thinking isn't a flaw. I know it's a really great strength. So it isn't that I want to de-emphasize my thinking. But I really do want to find more ways to free up my DOing. If anyone has ideas... I'll think about them. And then, I think wryly, maybe I'll do them.

I want 17 inches

I just thought of a way to justify buying the Apple 17" flat-panel monitor, even though it won't connect to my iBook. See, I get a desktop with it, and then I hook the firewire cable up from the desktop to my iBook, and then boot the desktop from my iBook. Then I've got a flat-panel hooked up to my iBook! Hooray!

Isn't that just tastily wrong?

Programming Ughs

You know, I like writing elegant code. I also like architecting. I also like maintaining. But, taking badly written code and trying to remold it into something elegant is really hard. Not because the coding is hard, but because you're under pressure to keep as much of the existing code as you can. And that's hard. Some things you can tear apart and rewrite which will save you time, others put you on a slippery slope to doom, and it's hard to tell before you're already slippy-sloping.

Write now I'm converting poorly organized php code that tried to overmeta itself without allowing for extensibility, trying to put it into classes and objects while also retaining the metaness, which is making me start to think about stuff like class introspection, which I really don't want to do.

Taxes

I never wrote about Measure 28. I voted for it. Thought it was a no-brainer. It failed. Life sucks.

The thing is, I just don't understand the people that voted against it. For people in my income bracket, which is the mean income level (I don't know about median), it was something like an extra hundred bucks a year. That's nothing. And if that extra hundred bucks isn't there, school days are chopped off, teachers get laid off, community colleges have less classes, we all get impacted.

The most common reasonable-sounding argument is "The economy sucks, why make us pay more?" Well, duh - if you're laid off, you aren't earning money, so YOU AREN'T GETTING TAXED.

The other common argument is "We rich people pay most of the taxes so why should our taxes be raised the most?" As if $1,000 means exactly the same to them as it does to someone in poverty.

The other argument is that republicans think that democrats are pulling fear tactics "if you don't give us money then we'll release people from prison!" when ACTUALLY the democrats could probably just throw less three less toga parties a month and save the money that way, or something like that.

Meanwhile I won't be able to get into my continuing ed class in the spring, my friend in Eugene won't be able to continue with her degree program at the community college, her mentally-disabled patients are having their caretakers' positions cut, two teacher friends of mine are about to be laid off, and I have an extra hundred bucks in my pocket. How do I help them with my hundred bucks, or even twice that? Take them out to dinner?

This was a real wake-up call to me about Oregon. For all the pseudo-liberal stuff around here there's a lot of selfishness. Slightly more than half of us are selfish enough to sacrifice education and needed social programs in favor of an extra two or ten bucks a week.

Studying Money

Well, it looks like I am in an investment club now! I'm really excited about this. I talked to Peter about this idea about a year ago, and then independent of this, his buddy Ted got into the idea, so it ended up hitting critical mass and now it looks like it is rolling. Seven of us met the other night, and there are at least two other definites. I think we're aiming on 10-12 people, and then we have to incorporate and make bylaws, and then we'll have monthly meetings to talk about stocks and companies and research, where we will then pony up money and invest into what we collectively decide. Hopefully we'll all end up learning a lot and actually end up making some money!

Leaping and Looking

I've convinced myself that all of a sudden I might be developing a problem with doing things impulsively. Deciding to do things without thinking them through. That's a very bizarre problem for me to have, of course, but in the last few days I've done a bunch of things that after doing them I've second-guessed whether I really wanted to. It isn't that I've ever thought that I really DIDN'T - I haven't regretted - but, I've found myself wistfully wishing that I had decided more emphatically to do what I did before I did it. I'm most worried that it will grow into something I really will regret. Not sure exactly how to get a hold on myself without totally paralyzing myself...

Weblog Plans

Well, I have a variety of things I want to do with this new weblog. I think I'll be crafty and list them out on the next page.

• I want a blogroll of my "All-Star" blog entries
• Gotta move my old links and blogroll over
• Better header and icon/logo
• Try out an actual background color scheme
• Figure out a good email solution (spam-free)
• About Me page
• Probably many others, but I just got really sleepy.

New Weblog

As you can see, I've switched around my weblog. New frontend, new backend. Right now it's pretty basic, but I will be gradually adding more features as the days wear on. I'm much happier about this feature set, though. The comments work better! The articles look better! Easier to find past writings! More reason for others to read my blog. :-)