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Saturday, May 16, 2009
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog
I stopped blogging for quite a while because I felt I was mostly interested in posting articles and commenting on them. Not enough of it was Original, Profound Thinking. Screw that, I'm going to comment on articles.

And occasionally spit out a good original thought.

Might also occasionally talk about the house I'm trying to buy, cars, and so on.

All that said, though, I'm going to have a tough time accomplishing my resolution to blog once every three days, given that I frittered about a third of the year already.

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posted by Steve @ 8:04 PM   0 comments
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Benefits of Loserdom
I tend to jot down blog drafts when I have an idea for an entry. These tend to be ignored – especially over the last few months when work has been difficult, and the first thing I’d like to do after a day of work is walk away from the computer. Certainly I don’t want to stay there and keep writing. So out of curiosity I looked up how many blog ‘drafts’ I had. 43. That’s too many. So I’m starting to take care of my backlog.

Normally, in a popular blog, this would be really bad because half of the new material would be created in a way that readers are unlikely to ever find it (several months in the past’s archives). Fortunately, I suppose, this isn’t a popular blog! It’s just for me! So I don’t have to worry about it. This is the benefits of loserdom – the only person that I’m trying to wite for is me.

This is also the case with the album I’m writing. Because it’s just me, writing for me, I don’t much care that it’s almost 2 years overdue.
Precious few people know that it exists, and that doesn’t bother me in the least.

The disadvantage, of course, is that without someone hanging on my shoulder asking where today’s blog is, or when the album is coming out, the likelihood of a punctual work schedule is slim. But hey, if Guns & Roses can publish Chinese Democracy, maybe there’s hope for Ignition as well.

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posted by Steve @ 6:07 PM   0 comments
Thursday, October 02, 2008
I'm back
Part of my new years' resolutions was to blog a lot. I retired for the summer because I was mostly linking and bitching about politics. Lots has happened and I'm going to write about it.

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posted by Steve @ 10:21 AM   0 comments
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Irony watch
From Andrew Sullivan's post about exaggerating The Surge:

"The neocons aren't stupid. They always advance the arguments that help sustain the case for more American control everywhere, indefinitely."

I'm pretty sure that first sentence contradicts the second.

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posted by Steve @ 10:03 AM   0 comments
Saturday, August 02, 2008
New chair, desk, blog
I bought my first desk chair from Office Depot today. My previous chair was old, ugly, free, and not very good for my back. The new one is bright red, has lumbar support, and tilts back. I didn't install the arms because I'll be playing guitar while sitting on it.

I know I was blogging at the time, but I don't think I covered the fact that I threw out my back at all. Oh yeah - it's because it was extremely painful to sit in my chair! What a nice way to wrap that together.

Anyway, because I couldn't move for several weeks, I'm building a new desk that actually functions ergonomically and moves the noisy hot air blower under my desk (i.e., my computer) to somewhere that it has a chance of not overheating every time I play Team Fortress 2. It will probably take me the better part of a month to do it, but there you go.

Oh yeah, and the blog. Haven't blogged in a while. I decided I was becoming another noisy political pundit and not only is that niche pretty well-covered, it doesn't satisfy my 'writing for the ages' rule, which is that in twenty years I want to find these posts interestingly biographical. This is a public blog, but that's not really the point. The point is that I have lots of interesting, funny, and quirky thoughts and experiences that my poor memory lets slip. I would like to retain them and this is how I'm doing it.

Of course, when I find an unusually interesting political or sociological story, I will post it, because that is part of who I am. But again, the point is to write down some of my more interesting ideas for future reference, not to post current events from other blogs, interesting though they may be.

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posted by Steve @ 9:58 PM   2 comments
Monday, June 23, 2008
Continuing.
I stopped blogging for a while because I realized I was usually just freaking out about politics, which is neither wholly engrossing nor remotely indicative of what I'm usually doing every day.

So I'm going to try again.

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posted by Steve @ 11:16 PM   0 comments
Monday, April 21, 2008
Best Blog Comments, Part 1
On a political blog:
I was totally out raged.

Try harder next time

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posted by Steve @ 8:40 AM   0 comments
Sunday, February 03, 2008
First!
The curious phenomenon of people feeling gratified about making the first post in a popular comment thread (such as this example on Barack Obama's website) always weirded me out a little. Those people would have no trouble on my little blog, since I hadn't had any comments posted on it since early 2006. Since it's mostly a means of getting ideas down, and cataloging things that I think are awesome, I don't mind yelling into the black hole that is the blogosphere. I've been keeping a homepage for similar reasons since 1994.

I hadn't had any comments from people I didn't know until a few weeks ago, on the 24th. I had my first 2 comments posted by people I didn't know in person. It took me almost two weeks to even notice.

The first post was in response to my short riff on responsible feminism, which also applies to most activist ideas. A very nice person named Cate basically posted an agreement post, which I appreciate in bewilderment at the frightening idea that people might actually read what I write.

The other one, amusingly, was in response to my Will Rogers anti-consumerist quote. It said that the best way to save money was to get coupons and provided a link to a coupon website; this is possibly the best bit of spam I've ever seen.

The prospect of people actually reading my work prompted me to re-design the blog's look for the umpteenth time. I hate using templates (I'm a web designer, after all), and I take nice pictures sometimes, but I've had a terribly difficult time getting a good photo to work. So I am eating a lollipop, and notice it's very green... and there you go.

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posted by Steve @ 4:57 AM   2 comments
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Hive Mind vs. Groupthink
In general, I like Microsoft Vista. They made a lot of changes that obviously needed to happen, added a bit of chrome, and generally it works for me. Now, I realize this is because my computer kicks ass: two dual-core 3GHz 64-bit processors, 4GB RAM, two RAID arrays totaling 1TB, and a pair of 512MB video cards connected to a pair of flat monitors.

Yeah, I know.

The trouble with Vista, though, is often that it's new: compatibility and configuration are a bit harder. I had this problem when I couldn't figure out why my video card wouldn't display higher than 1024x768 (I prefer 1280x1024). Thankfully, there was this little article on softpedia, describing the symptoms exactly and how to get around it.


Apart from the incredible convenience of the article, it's remarkable how specific the article is. This is an example of how the Internet allows for group thinking that isn't hampered by "groupthink." The first time I saw this potential was way back in 2001 when the movie A.I. had the first really successful alternate reality game (later named by its participants The Beast). The game was impossibly difficult for any one person - it required people to work together. Unfortunately for the developers, their own puzzles (which required knowledge of dozens of languages, expertise in chemistry, physics, philosophy, programming, and other sciences) would be solved within minutes by the thousands of people who worked on the solutions. Inevitably, someone in the Cloudmakers (as the participants named themselves; the website is down but the link goes to the Wayback Machine cache from 2002) knew how to solve the problem.

I love this concept: the Internet allows communication between people. People are generally inherently capable. MIT created "Fab Labs" that were able to create most anything (3-d printer, circuitboard printers, etc.). 3 students at MIT are doing their theses on the work of six year old villagers in Africa, who had better basic designs than the engineers in the U.S. Harnessing the total knowledge of a huge group of people is something that, if it can be done efficiently (i.e., with a minimum of groupthink), would be as massive a step forward as the Industrial Revolution.

I'm pretty glad to be alive sometimes.

This dissemination of information isn't limited to merely solving technical problems or riddles. It has also been suggested by Scott Adams (who writes Dilbert) that if a massive e-mail pen pal initiative among all nations would make it vastly more difficult to go to war:
"You might support your government in a war against a country full of people you don’t know. But would you support a war that has a good chance of killing your e-mail friend Phlubanakawahaha and his entire family?"
Also, if that family helped design your super-cool phone/lamp/radiator, you might think twice if you wanted to upgrade anytime soon.

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posted by Steve @ 5:46 AM   0 comments
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Paragraph length
Upon reading this excellent article about the inverse relationship between legislative experience and presidential abilities, it struck me how short the paragraphs are. They're almost blog-like in length. I liked the article's content a great deal, but I thought it was very nicely readable as well. I've noticed that occasionally when media is transfered from print to Web, the longer paragraphs make things harder to read.

This begs the question whether paragraph lengths are, as a whole in well-educated writing, becoming shorter. A study done in 1992 (and therefore not aware of its significance vis a vis the Web) summarized:
[The study investigates] whether readers are aware of and have any preferences about paragraph length. Finds that readers are aware and have a more positive attitude toward writing with paragraphs of less than 100 words. Finds that paragraph length does not affect attitudes toward the expertise of the writer, ease of comprehension, or quality of the passage.

So there you go. I've been fretting over whether or not I sounded well-educated since I habitually use two- or three- sentence paragraphs, but apparently all that matters is that I need to have a complete point in each one. I also habitually use very long sentences extended by parentheticals, semicolon extensions and lists. I should stop that, but apparently the paragraphs are O.K.

So it seems that the more finely-chopped paragraphs seen most often in blogs will become more common. Long, meandering paragraphs that looked good (4 to 10 lines or so) in the printed page look so much more monolithic on the Web, where text is wrapped more often, so we'll see more breaks in paragraphs.

If shorter paragraphs mean more pointed logic, that's good, but if it means less useful information, I'm not sure this is a good thing. I fear the latter - we have enough sound-byte commentary as it is. A good example is that Hillary keeps crowing experience when she's not half as experienced as the people who are already out of the race; but people only know about the experience angle.

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posted by Steve @ 11:07 AM   0 comments
Thursday, January 10, 2008
No doubts: Barack Obama
Though I'm not sure I like to admit how much Andrew Sullivan has to do with it, I've been pretty convinced that Barack Obama is my candidate of choice for President for quite a while now.

There's a lot of reasons:

- He recognizes the difference between being informed by his beliefs and creating a nation of Christian Values.
- He recognizes that Health Care should be optional for people who already have it, want a private institution's health care, or just don't like being told what to do.
- Hasn't changed one whit his notions about Iraq from the beginning, and yet doesn't oppose force when it's necessary.
- Recognizes why Presidential power doesn't mean universal power.

There's a few things that concern me:
- Like most Senators, was a bit of an absentee, even for issues that he really should've been voting on.
- His ability to actually do the things he has promised.

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posted by Steve @ 11:01 AM   0 comments
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Blog's finished.
I've finally transferred all of my old MySpace blogs to this blog, and am especially glad of it after finding out (through Nyssa) that MySpace apparently owns copyright on blogged entries.

Yikes.

Now I can start working on my homepage's gallery, and hang a zillion things around the house.

Random thought of the day:
Did Harry Carey die because of disease, or because he was a life-long Cubs fan?
Wouldn't that be enough to pretty much kill anybody?

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posted by Steve @ 2:51 PM   0 comments
Monday, December 18, 2006
I am becoming open to the idea of being more open.
I am going to begin blogging again.

I have decided to let my students add me, but will not add them in the interest of protecting myself.

I am so very close to being where I want to be: out of debt with a steady job.

I am re-opening doors I had shut with my Dad, with people I'd done business with that had gone sour, and within myself.

I am listening to a lot of Muse, GYBE!, Mogwai and Snow Patrol, because epic change should be met with epic music.

I am finishing a Design homepage that I can maintain and is up to standards - mine as well as the Web's.

I am going to start making mix CD's and post them in the same way that online blogs do.

I'm going to get my blogs together; MySpace for some reason won't let me date blogs before 2005, despite the fact that some of them were written in 2004. But I'll repost them.

I'm ready as I'm ever going to be.

Close eyes. Breathe in, slowly.
Open eyes. Breathe out.

Begin.

Currently listening :
Eyes Open
By Snow Patrol

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posted by Steve @ 8:11 PM   0 comments
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Exciting Event no. 10: Intermission
I am now in Tucson for Spring Break, and this allows me to do a few things - basically, to clean and plan. But that stuff's relatively boring and relegated to the bottom of this blog.

I decided recently that I'm still a pretty big slacker. So I'm trying an experiment. I'm letting myself slack to an extent, but I'm limiting my options to "acceptable" ways of slacking. I've decided that all of these things are ways I can allow my self to slack off:

  • Post a MySpace blog.
  • Play guitar and work on Ignition (my new album).
  • Dream up new Art class assignments.
  • Consider and note new ideas for my car.
  • Update my homepage.

I'm hoping that by doing this, I'll either stop slacking or at least, have a good blog, finished album, an interesting Art class, an awesome car, and a cool homepage by the time I learn not to slack.

To clean the apartment to help prepare to move; I've already fixed a toilet and am about 7/8ths of the way through re-organizing and going through all of our files (W2's, reciepts, titles, etc.).

This also has other, cooler things I can do with a week of time on my hands. I inherited a pile of about 300 CD's from Maloney's when they went with an all-Mp3 based system. A lot of them are crap, and a lot of them are scratched, but I figure this is as good as any an opportunity to add to my Mp3 collection.

I can attempt to give Rachel a functioning computer (again). I even have a legit copy of XP to use now, too, so that'll save some headache.

And to plan for the rest of the semester at school. I really jumped into the semester but had a lot of problems with organization. Now that I'm more or less caught up with that part (heh, though I still have a huge pile o' grading to do yet), I can start planning lessons a bit better, maybe through the whole year (I hope).

Currently reading :
Silverlock
By John Myers Myers

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posted by Steve @ 7:55 PM   0 comments
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Random Thought no. 3: Going public on MySpace
Don't you hate it when you write a blog and it disappears into HTML 404 oblivion?

This is a boring blog entry. Fair warning. I'm also experimenting with making highlights and such so that my blogs can be read more quickly, just getting the high points. I'm debating whether or not to attempt to actively find friends on MySpace, so to make my little blog a bit more public.

On the plus side, I would like to have feedback for all of these little ideas and stories I have. In particular, it occured to me to start posting songs that I've been writing for feedback. I have about seventy song ideas and demos recorded already for the next album, not including the songs I have written out but aren't recorded yet (that's another dozen or so). It would be nice to be able to say, 'you know what, this idea isn't working' and just ditch it before I waste too much time on it. Also, having an active readership and feedback encourages me to keep writing.

On the downside, it takes time. And I really don't need any more excuses than I already have to not work on my at-home job, being graphic design. Also, when you've got little numbers like 'views', 'kudos', and comments and such, it's easy to qualify your work based soley on those numbers and comments. This is not good. Public be damned, I do what I do. No offense.

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posted by Steve @ 1:26 PM   0 comments
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
One more try at a blog.

I've started a lot of journals in the past. In some cases it was because I as a bored/moody/lovesick teenager. Later, it was to catalogue my trip(s) to Japan between 2000-2004.

This time, I'm writing as to get my thoughts down. I am blessed with an active mind and cursed with a terrible, lazy memory. I have more ideas than I can keep in my head at once, and both the good and bad vanish very quickly from me. Hence, this blog.

A few rules for myself: nothing I'd find boring to read. I will link when appropriate. I will write well. I will write twice weekly. I will not censor myself despite the fact that my parents/in-laws might read this. I reserve the right to break my own rules.

Currently listening :
Feel Good Inc
By Gorillaz

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posted by Steve @ 4:30 AM   0 comments
 
About Me


Name: Steve
Home: Tucson, Arizona, United States
About Me: I like to think about things, and I occasionally like to write what I think.
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