February 2005 Archives

I keep telling myself to do some blogging every day, even if it's boring- even-to- people-who- know-me journal entries in my persona blog. Why? For selfish reasons. When I'm keeping track of what I've been doing I get more done and I feel better about myself. I also notice patterns and figure out why I'm avoiding other things. I could do this all in private but I like the transparency and it's easy enough to ignore for anyone who isn't interested.

This weekend I saw Life Aquatic again, on Friday night, this time with the Reverend Bill and B, replaced the wound nylon C string on my tenor ukulele and got a big new bag of kitty litter, and then saw The Aviator on Saturday (liked it much better than I expected to). Sunday I went out for some wine and pancetta and for a copy of Pat Conroy's cookbook, which took way too much time, and then enjoyed watching the Oscar's with B and eating the lentil and pancetta soup she made.

Also, I nearly finalized my travel plans for SXSW next month but am tracking down why my listing at the website isn't complete.

Oh, yeah, paid some bills too.

I tore down the monolog at x-pollen and built it back up as a new standalone blog. It was a fake blog before. Now it has its own blog number in my system and for the time being it will only update when I update it manually (at least until I get a crontab working).

I'm going to play around with the new dynamic page generation features in MT 3 and see how they work. If I can get them doing something interesting for monolog then I will probably apply what I learn to Telegraph.

It's tempting, though, to just use something like CivicSpace which has a built-in news aggregrator and seems to know how to the do the cron stuff itself without asking. It's gotten very easy to install and even though I'm not a social movement, for the sites that combine content from multiple blogs it might turn out to be the best solution.

Checking my ego feed in my news aggregator yesterday I saw that two bloggers had posted reviews of the book. The first, Scot Hacker, a personal friend and longtime web colleague, liked the book quite a lot, calling it "an exploration - at turns straightforwardly journalistic, nearly stream-of-consciousness, and scholarly - on the transformative power of online communities," and he selected the following quotation from the book to illustrate his comments:

On first discovering online journals, most people find them puzzling, a paradox. Who would put their private diary online? ... Omigod, my mother read my blog! Indeed, there are countless stories of people who misjudged the effects of putting their thoughts and ideas into the public domain and who lived to regret the confidences broken, the parties offended by their snarky comments, their exposed secrets. In time, though, anyone who continues the exhilarating tightrope walk of online self-examination will manage to cultivate that gray area between public and private that seems just personal and revealing enough to draw in readers and invite scrutiny but that still holds back what truly belongs out of public view entirely.

The second, Andrew Sinclair, holds a nearly opposite view, finding the book lacking in insight and analysis and too heavily reliant on buzzwords and feature lists.

(He also thought our cover ripped off David Weinberger's Small Pieces, Loosely Joined. I tried posting a comment on his blog but it has not appeared, so I may have failed. In it I explained the my publisher actually hired two designers to come up with cover ideas - a highly unusual investment of resources for any publisher - and that we all liked the final cover design the best, but that any homage to Weinberger's book's cover was strictly coincidental.)

While of course I prefer positive reviews, I welcome any and all feedback on my books and other writing, as I strive to improve and meet the needs of my readers, so thank you Scot and Andrew.

Almost posted about this here first but instead filed it over at Radio Free Blogistan: Kottke at the mercy of his readers.

Interesting test of the "power of many" to support the blogging work of one.

Jerry Brown is blogging. He is also running for attorney general of the state of California. He is also the mayor of Oakland.

I voted for him in the California primary in 1992.

He still has the generic TypePad design.

Welcome!

Ooh, whee! Ride me high.

Tomorrow's the day my bride's a-gonna come, yeah.

Ooh, whee! And ain't we gonna fly?

...

Quoting from There are Feeds and Then There are Feeds

And about a year ago, I started adding Technorati watchlists, as well as Feedster and Pubsub search feeds, and del.icio.us, Furl and flickr feeds on tags, and looking up terms on Blogpulse and Bloglines, to see who linked to my blog, wrote about key words I cared about or were on a topic, project or company I was tracking. Sometime last summer, I realized that more than half my 300+ feeds were search feeds - key words, URLs and in some cases other focusing information like say, the middle 50% of bloggers based upon inbound links....

Then, after a while, I started reading all the search feeds first, and a few bloggers' feeds, but the rest of the single blog feeds have become less important. Often, I see those bloggers' (whose single feeds I subscribe to) posts in my search feeds, because they do blog on those topics I care about, though not all their posts are on those topics fit those search criteria. With a finite amount of time, increasingly defined information needs, and a desire to raise the signal to noise ratio, I rely more heavily on the search feeds, than other traditional RSS feeds that send me a single blog's or legacy news feed.

I woke up at 4:30 am on Monday for a 5 o'clock pick up to get to the airport by 5:30 for a 6:15 flight. As it was Monday morning, the security lines were incredibly long, but I had no problem making my flight (on Sky West, which shuttles for Delta). My plane on both legs (lay over in Salt Lake City) was tiny. I think I saw Buddy Holly piloting the first one.

It was snowing and cold in Salt Lake as we deplaned onto the tarmac and I managed to get some breakfast (a croissant with eggs, ham, and cheese; plus coffee) and read the Times while waiting for my next leg. I slept as much as I could but still arrived in New Mexico wiped out. It was cloudy but warm when I got into Albuquerque, but it got a lot colder during the evening - no thermostat in my hotel room as far as I can tell.

My original reason for arriving in town two and a half days in advance of the conference was to catch up on things with a good friend and colleague, ngm, but sadly he had a family emergency and couldn't make the trip, so I've been bumming around town on my own for the past few days, getting my wireless fix at Starbuckses and generally wishing I had packed a warm coat.

If I can make it to Santa Fe tonight, I will. Otherwise, it's more HBO and fast-ish food. (There's a Denny's right next door to my hotel.)

Jay's book is entitled Gatekeepers without Gates and if it's anything like his wonderful weblog, it will become required reading for anyone who cares about the future of the press and the impact of the living web on the media in general.

(Announcement: PressThink: Publishing News at PressThink)

I'm headed to Albuquerque early this morning for a pop culture conference that starts later this week. I'll blog from the site assuming connectivity is adequate.

I practiced chord forms (E, A) up the neck

I cleaned the bathroom, specifically the toilet, but used too much of the spray stuff so the room was thick with it and the floor is now sticky.

I spent most of the day digging through a year's worth of unfiled stuff in my room / office getting it on the floor, getting it sorted, filing it away or putting it in recycling. The room is now once again fairly manageable, but the closet still has stuff I need to pull out for the yearly bulk hauling pickup and my dresser is still six inches deep in papers and clothes and miscellaneous.
prepare room for Peggy

...but it looks like I didn't get as much done yesterday as I had intended:

Thursday, February 3
dropped off rent
practiced changes to "Friend is a Four-Letter Word" by Cake
Scales and modes, pick and fingering exercises
Practiced harmonized scales (D form, E form, A form)

I must have forgotten to note something, though.

I haven't taken this software out for a spin yet, but WikidPad (WikidPad - wiki notebook/outliner for windows) appears to be fairly similar to my favorite OS X application, Voodoo Pad.

I find the wiki format to be a convenient and addictive way to take notes and link together lists and work in progress.

In A Liberal Long March? at Greater Democracy, Jock Gill calls for a sort of Gnostic Liberal movement to revitalize the left (although to my mind his emphasis on disintermediation seems to point more to the Protestant Reformation than to Gnosticism).

How ideologies grapple with heretical views may be instructive here, though it appears we're at the beginning of an inquiry here and not near its conclusion.

Feeling productive:

Wednesday, February 2
work on modes
practice melody licks on guitar
get money order for jazzfest tickets
blog about state of the onion chat
chat about the state of the onion
iChat AV w/dad (birthday)
make petrale sole with sauce bercy
and salad and baguette

A random sample of stuff done this year excluding confidences, of course:

Wednesday, February 2
worked on modes
practice melody licks on guitar
IMd with culture kitchen diva Liza Sabater

Tuesday, February 1
paid for Moon over Briones picture
grocery shop
leftover soup for dinner
play guitar and uke with Dan
try, but fail, to record Stimulants poem

Monday, January 31
travel plans -> February Albuquerque DONE!
talk to briggs about travel plans, tuesday night
got briggs pcmcia card for thinkpad
8:00 am cleaning at dentist
12:00 suspend guitar lessons

Sunday, January 30
made scrambled eggs, bacon, coffee and orange juice for breakfast
got cat crunchies, eggs, butter, bread
Saturday, January 29
added bug and pinging to medastyle
bought lox
listened to Gans at splashpad park
practiced scales on guitar and bari uke
watched the rest of season 3 of coupling
made gorgonzola sauce for leftover steak

Friday, January 28
practiced pick technique
chromatic scales
A minor pentatonic extended sale soloing
played along with little wing (Bb maj / G minor Bb C D Eb F G A Bb)
finished labeling zero 10/14-16/1992 Healy mixes http://setlist.com/

Thursday, January 27
plumber
added all about george to diarists subscriptions
Fixed Telegraph design/layout
Made other MT fixes
watched Joni Mitchell
watched Coupling season 3 episode 3

Wednesday, January 26
groceries
Sorted out travel plans with Nick
figured out that the C major scale and the D# minor pentatonic scale together comprise the entire chromatic scale
like G maj and A# min pent, etc
grilled steak for dinner
didn't rinse chard sufficiently - it was gritty
watched West Wing and 2 episodes of Coupling season 3

.Tuesday, January 25
Upgraded to Movable Type 3.15
Moved root to mumble mumble
practice soloing in key A minor from C etc. mostly pentatonic
label zero 10/14-17/1992 Healy mixes http://setlist.com/
[nd]
[nd]
Discussed feature article / position with Micah Sifry
got Arizmendi pizza for dinner
watched House and Scrubs
got sample podcast working for MVRT
not-working, that is
called plumber

Monday, January 24
send jerome tax form
laundry
picante

Sunday, January 23
vacuum
JohnnyComeLately

Saturday, January 22
groceries (oysters, softasilk, chicken, apples)
coffee
willem's email forwarding

Friday, January 21
Gans

Thursday, January 20
groceries
get mediajunkie.com back - print form, fax
[nda]

Wednesday, January 19
therapy
[nd]
blog technorati award
Kaiser
get plumber name - drip under kitchen sink
[nd]
[nd]
[nd]
resched dentist (dr. fenstermacher)
make dinner - braised chard, ravioli (squash / chestnut)
the west wing
[nd]

Tuesday, January 18
B's laundry
visit/feed dot
b's laundry
guitar lesson
pick up dinner at Hyunh
post to GRDM

weekend, incl. Mon (MLK)
mostly feeding dot and resting

Friday, January 14
[nb]
kaiser
arizmend
fraidy out back
set up medastyle.com
set up virtual host for marielee.net
noticed mediajunkie.com was in hock (blog about this after secured)

Thursday, January 13
ordered usb to serial adapter for B's palm and thumb drive

Wednesday, January 12
set up edgewise.info

Thursday, January 6
Put firefox on B's puter - can't (OS 9 not supported)
Call vet re Fraidy's first stitches out (Saturday)?

Wednesday, January 5
send books to Levi
send guitar stuff to Arthur
Get new printer cartridge

Tuesday, January 4
[nd]
guitar lesson
new guitar (trade-in)
got capo
blog Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch

Monday, January 3
finish Groundspring proposal and send
8:30 am editorial conference call (PDF)
Grocery shop
Deposit checks
Pharmacy - alka seltzer plus
Pay rent
Pet supply - cat harness
Put sticker on car

Sunday, January 2
attempted grocery shop (bowl closed)
clean up 2004 e-files
order Gravity's Rainbow
sleep a lot

Saturday, January 1
sinus cold
sleep a lot

Personal Democracy Forum is hosting a State of the Union BackChannel Chat, Tonight:

We will be using "A Really Simple Chat" (ARSC), the simplest way we know of to do group chats. Unlike other chat tools, ARSC is a program that lets anybody with a Web browser -- any browser -- join in a discussion and see what other members of the group are typing.

To join in, anytime after 8:30pm (Eastern) go to http://fwiki.com/pdf, pick a nickname for yourself, and enter any password you like. It's easy to add your own message; simply type it and hit "enter" to send your message to the group.

Participants are asked to identify their party sympathies in order to maintain a strife-free discussion:

You will see a choice of three chats to enter: "Democratic-leaning," "Republican-leaning" and "Free for all." We've created those three rooms to allow people to self-select what kind of conversation they'd like to be part of. Please respect the other participants in the room; disruptive or obscene posters will not be tolerated.

Random tangent: The United States Constitution tolerates political parties the way a prison warden tolerates race-based gangs.

Bridgepoint Health, a health care complex in Toronto, has a web page where people can send messages to residents. Most residents don't have Internet access, but inbound webmail is printed out for them.

This came to my attention because a regular on the Copyediting-L e-mail list went offline for a couple of days. When other regulars started inquiring about his whereabouts, we discovered he had been injured in a fall and is in a live-in rehab facility for a couple of months. In less than two days, listmembers had organized dozens of goodies and messages to be sent in a variety of ways, including offers to provide a refurb laptop or PDA (declined). Cards, calls, and gifts came from Japan, Israel, Australia, and all over North America—all from people this man had never met.

In the midst of the flurry, one member said that it reminded her of the saying, "None of us is as smart as all of us."