Category: Just Shelley

Lots of writing

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date January 17, 2002

Lot’s of writing lately. Most of it has been focused on the books (RDF and Unix Power Tools, both for O’Reilly), but I have been making time to write new articles for the BurningBird Network (long overdue).

Some of the articles are technical; some are not. Of the non-technical articles, I’m writing about hiking trails in San Francisco (finally, content for NetJetter), going to Universal Studios in LaLa Land (“One Ticket, Please”), and one for the dog lovers in the crowd, “Walking Among the Dog People”. In this latter article, I’ll introduce you to Arial the Black Lab and the Shmoozing Red Dobie.

As for the technical articles, be forewarned: I am a technical anarchist. I believe, strongly, that chaos is an essential element of innovation. Yes, there are times when standards and global agreement are essential; however, there are also times when any form of organizational control inhibits rather than enhances growth. So RDF and RSS 1.0 and open source, yes; UDDI and RSS 0.93 and Passport, no. And there can be no controller within a cloud.

In the 1950’s, our reach exceeded our technical capabilities. Today, our technical capabilities are exceeding our reach; we put a half-egg with a screen attached to it on the cover of Time and call it innovation.

Blogicon item – Mike at Keep Trying mentions that we need a verb that will encompass both writing and reading blogs. We could extend to blog to mean both read and write a weblog. What think? Other suggestions?

<edit > I forgot to mention that the articles discussed above will go live January 25th. As a form of discipline (discipline, what’s that?), I’m going to a semi-monthly publishing schedule at Burning Bird Network – publishing new content (and there will be new content) on the second and fourth Friday of every month. This will, hopefully, keep the spider webs from forming over my content. </edit>

<edit> Jonathon caught my ba-a-a-d use of markup. To mark newly added content, use opening and closing <edit> </edit> tags; for removing content, replace it with the empty tag: <edit />
</edit>

Just Shelley

In St. Louis

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date January 15, 2002

In St. Louis I’m visiting one of my best friends, who also happens to be my ex-husband. Divorce isn’t always a negative event, and sometimes both parties can grow from the experience, as Robert and I have done. Oddly enough, both families and associated friends have also come to see that our relationship has evolved into something as close but different and have adapted to the change well.

Rob and I share joint custody of an intelligent, loving, playful cat named Zoe. She lived with me last summer when Rob was in Alaska, and is now living with Rob in his very cat-friendly place in St. Louis. Today I spent the day playing with her, cuddling her…and of course I have a photo of her to share with you.

Just Shelley

Life Jan 15 2002

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date January 15, 2002

Beautiful sunrise, too little sleep, and only instant coffee to drink since I forgot to get beans yesterday. Incoming mail box with 83 emails. The sweet and the sour. Yin and Yang.

I’m still thinking of the SF Gate article. One thing I liked about it was the different look at Islam portrayed in the article. Since September 11th, we’ve all looked for common points of connection between the three major religions – Christian, Jewish, Muslim. We looked in churches, in shared services, in philisophical discussions, and in the books representing each faith; in other words, within the sublime elements of religion.

We should have been looking at the everyday practice of faith, at the fact that all people have one thing in common: sometimes we would rather take a nap than attend a meeting, religious or otherwise. We don’t tiptoe at the tops of temples; we walk at the base. If we want to connect, we have to join hands on the ground floor.

My, aren’t I deep early in the AM. Must be the instant coffee. I promise to buy beans today.

-earlier-

Nothing like having to go through your postings for the day, correcting all the misspellings, fractured grammar, dangling participles, and unwashed pronouns.

However, I have my fishies to keep me company.

Nice fishies. Tasty fishies. Gollum. Gollum.

Watched Shrek tonight; it suited my rather off the wall mood resulting from writing on books, articles, and this heah (that’s accent, not misspell) weblog for 18 remorseless, unforgiving, and unmerciful hours! Fingers are permanently hooked.

To bed!

Writing

O’Reilly book cover spoofs

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date January 15, 2002

On the light side, take a look at O’Reilly book cover spoofs. I like a company that laughs at itself; too bad Enron figured that one out too late.

However, why do they keep showing book covers with an eagle kicking my asp?

I wanted a cute little fluffy kitten myself. Furry. Sweet. Big eyes. The kind that people go “Oooo, that’s so cute!”

But nooooo. I get a deadly snake. Hissssssssssssssssssssssss.

Writing

Too much writing

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date January 15, 2002

Another day of 16-18 hours of writing…Burningbird is burnt to a crisp. Nothing but fried chicken. I’m going to take a break from the weblog for a few days and try and get some of my other writing caught up, and then be able to come back with a fresh zizzle and ping.

I know, you’ve heard this before. But this time I really mean it.

For your listening pleasure while I’m gone, a little tune.

Or, did I mean this tune?

Or this?

(Whatever did we do before Google came along?)