Categories
Stuff

End goal

I have some things I want to publish by the end of the month – long delayed LAMP essays, not to mention some older material on domains I’ve let lapse that I want to duplicate here so the work is not lost.

I am surrounded by half-started projects and half written essays and good intentions and now I’m choking on them. Now is the time to finish, and be done.

I want to end this month on a good note. If there are any comments to these new posts, they’ll be related to what I write, or they’ll be gone. And under no circumstances can my space be used by people wanting to get a message to someone else, or to fight battles that originated elsewhere–abusing the privilege I accord my readers, not to mention the hospitality of my home.

I would rather have comment spam then webloggers who use my space to hit and run. At least there is a form of honesty associated with the spam.

Additionally, I am taking great care in my writing to make sure there is no flint to spark against, no flames to fan–unless the flint is of imagination, and the resulting fire is the same flame I hoped to spark when I created my first weblog page, back in 1995. No battles will be fought, no dragons to be slain–all I see now are windmills.

Which means that my space will probably become very quiet.

Categories
Stuff

The ultimate wakeup

I have a task that needs to be finished tomorrow and am most likely going to be working all night, or close to it. The work is such that I can’t do it for many hours in a row, without getting frustrated, so I take breaks–such as the break to work on the new looks for the weblog.

To help me focus tonight, I pulled in the big guns: grande caramel machiotto with four shots instead of two. And Krispy Kreme donuts. The combination of extra caffeine and sugar is guaranteed to keep me going for 24 hours; after that, I’m a goner.

As effective as my ultimate solution is, a problem with it is that the strangest things enter my head when I’m so buzzed. For instance, I came this close to naming the Fire & Ice stylesheet Burningberg.

And have you noticed how slow everyone drives on Sundays? The roads haven’t changed, but you always end up behind some SUV or mini-van, with a couple of kids in the back, poking along at five miles under the speed limit. The rest of the week, Mom or Dad will haul butt down the road, but not Sundays.

I figured what happens is the family goes to church on Sunday and sings a rousing chorus of “Nearer my God to thee”; all the way home they think to themselves, “Nearer my God to thee…but not today! Nothing like church to remind you of your own mortality.

I also noticed today, when I went to get another cup of coffee, that you can tell an older man’s political affiliation by their hair and what they wear. You can’t always tell with a woman – well, unless she’s wearing heels and black leather and carrying a whip, and even then the same lady can be dressed in a demure cotton frock on Sundays. And you can’t tell with guys under, say 30-40. But guys over 40, sure enough.

Liberal guys almost always wear a beard. It’s gotten to the point when I see an older guy with a beard, I immediately think, “Yup, liberal”.

If they’re extremely liberal, they might also have long hair worn in a pony tail, though you have to be careful with pony tails – lots of real conservative folks in the back country of Missouri have long pony tails. Still, if you live in the coastal areas, or in most cities, the length of the pony tail gives away the degree of liberalness. That and the amount of cotton and natural fibers they wear. Wearing a button that says, “Anyone but Bush in 2004″ tends to give this away, too.

Now, conservative men keep their faces shaved as smooth as a baby’s butt–unless they’re a college professor or on the lecture circuit or in journalism, in which case they wear the beard as protective coloration. I wonder if this is a consequence of economics? Upper management in major western corporations haven’t worn beards since the 1800’s.

The extremely conservative men have a pinched look to their faces, as if they smell something bad all the time. Don’t have to believe me – just take a look at the current administration.

As for the libertarians? They wear black. Even when wearing white, they wear black. Oh, and sometimes they carry a gun.

Of course religion and culture and nationality and economics and education and marital status and personal choice changes all of this. And so does access to a razor.

I think I need to go get another coffee. And a Key Lime Krispy Kreme donut to go wwwwwwiiiiiiittttttthhhhhh iiiiitttt.

Categories
Stuff

May Day what day

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Today is May Day, the global labor day, or something to that effect.

In celebration I’m asking: Who here has a job? Independently employed? Retired? Student? Fulltime homemaker?

Kept man or woman?

Categories
Stuff

The Fifth sentence

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Okay, I’ll play, since Doug was kind enough to post a giggle earlier.

  1. Grab the nearest book
  2. Open the book to page 23
  3. Find the fifth sentence
  4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions

From Suicide and the Soul by James Hillman, page 23, the 5th sentence:

For experience is the soul’s one and only nourishment.

I would credit the origination of this particular meme, but methinks this has been lost in the sands of time.

(The closest book was really Salt & Pepper, a wonderful cookbook I picked up from the library–to enjoy the philosophy and photos, and to copy some recipes–but it didn’t translate to this exercise at all well, so I picked the second closest book.)

Categories
Stuff

A9, A why?

I tried out the latest new Internet toy, the new search environment, A9 from Amazon. I searched on both my name and my weblog and thought that the results were rather cleanly presented. There were some surprises, too. For instance, someone had fun signing my name to comments on other weblogs in regards to the TypeKey topic. Always good to know when I’ve given another a bit of fun, or a giggle.

The Site Info feature attached to each link is rather interesting. Accessing my site I saw that, first of all, it displays a snapshot of my page from over a year ago. I have no idea why they have such an old snapshot; nor am I particularly overjoyed at seeing my page listed in the context of Amazon’s already overburdened and cluttered selling environment–as if this site were a ‘product’ rather than what it is: a personal writing environment.

Still, no biggie. It wasn’t until I was looking at other sites that I noticed that you can actually review the site, just as you can review any Amazon product. Others may dislike A9 for potential privacy issues, but I thought this was nothing but trouble waiting to happen.

For instance, look at the entry for Scripting News. Already the game is being played out with people either loving Dave Winer or hating him, and do we need to have this permanently recorded within the Amazon marketing venue?

Book authors and editors have long been wary of Amazon’s little star and rating system. The problem with it is that anyone can make a review, without attaching their name, and the quality of the reviews can vary widely–but the stars all add up the same. If you look at the reviews for Practical RDF–not an activity that gives me that much joy, unfortunately–you’ll see some thoughtful, though negative reviews, side by side with a throwaway one from a person who said the entire book is outdated because it covers an older version of one specific tool. (And totally discounting the fact that I published tutorials and new sample code for just that tool at the Practical RDF.)

The process is too easy, too anonymous, and too permanent.

As difficult as it is for an author to go through these types of reviews, we have to expect it as part of doing business, and to be expected when writing professionally. However, I can see great potential for abuse of this rating system when it comes to personal weblogs and other web sites.

You only have to read the reviews attached to Scripting News to realize that people can be personal, hurtful, and petty. In our weblogs or comments, these types of writings pass into archives and fade over time. Not with good old Amazon’s permastar ranking and review system, though. Now, pettiness can live on through the ages.