Dyepot, teapot, don't drink from the wrong one

Relocation

2007-04-27T22:00:00.000-07:00

I've been planning to do this for a while, but today was moving day. Dyepot, Teapot can now be found at http://dyepot-teapot.com. New blog server, new url, same posts by me. If you read this via the Feedburner feed, you should already be moved over to the new site. If you're subscribed to the Blogger feed directly, I recommend grabbing the Feedburner one instead (at http://feeds.feedburner.com/DyepotTeapot). The only group this might be tricky for are the LiveJournal readers. LJ has trouble with Feedburner, last I heard, but there's another feed hosted by Wordpress that you should be able to use, if someone would be willing to file a support request with them. Thanks!

The end of the road trip

2007-04-27T08:45:00.000-07:00

I've been home since Wednesday night, so it's probably time to finish posting about the road trip and move on to something else.

Sunday night I had dinner in the Mission district, first tacos at Pancho Villa, then a dessert crepe at Ti Couz.

Monday morning was spent on laundry, as mentioned before. Then in the afternoon I headed to SOMA to see Citizen Space. It's a nice office, comfortable place to catch up on email, and they seem very open to people dropping by.

After that, I took the cable car up to Lombard St.

Twisty as advertised.

Then back downtown to do a little shopping. I've been having some pants problems. I can't find an exact duplicate of the ones I like that wore out, and I hate ordering things online only to discover that the sizing isn't as expected. It's really irritating how many places don't stock their full size range in the store.

The Old Navy on Market has not just the XL and XXL sizes I've seen here in Portland, but an actual Women's Plus section of the store, all the way up to 4X. They even had larger mannequins for the displays. So now I have two pairs of reasonably comfortable pants. The fit around the waist is a little weird, but not enough to be irritating.

Tuesday we started the drive back north, but first I had a couple hours free to explore Golden Gate Park. I spent most of it in the Botanical Garden.

Laurie and I loaded back into the car and started north along highway 101.

This went fairly smoothly, though we had some trouble getting back on the highway after stopping for food in Santa Rosa. The highway entrances and exits aren't paired, and there are no signs directing you back to 101. Instead, they expect you to know the area well enough to follow the signs for highway 12, understanding that it overlaps with 101 through town. This is not very friendly to people just passing though.

We made it to the redwoods by dark, and camped at Richardson Grove State Park.

Scenic, but noisy. The year-round camping area is well within earshot of the highway.

Most of the rest of the trip was driving and driving and driving. With a couple of small detours, including an elk viewing area.

I had a really good time over the week I was gone, and I'm really happy that Laurie decided to take a road trip and asked if anyone wanted to come along. It was much fun.

And now I'm home, with too much to get done, and a really annoying cold I picked up at the hostel. Achoo.

Discussion points

2007-04-23T19:29:00.000-07:00

1) Tourists (the kind you can spot a mile away) look as astoundingly ridiculous as they do because these are people who only ever set foot inside a city when they are on vacation. As a result, they are completely unequipped to figure out what kind of gear would be practical in this environment, and instead substitute things that various catalog companies tell them will be practical and appropriate. Contrast with the gear and clothing of the city natives, which may appear impractical or even ridiculous and yet has not resulted in starvation or frostbite.

2) Any kind of usable reputation system has to find a good way to handle localized types of reputation. For example, I know enough people in the tech community in Portland that I can usually find someone to talk to at various events. Yet this is only useful in San Francisco if I ask someone I know in Portland for an introduction to someone here, or if I stalk my Twitter contacts aggressively.

3) I forgot what the third item was. Maybe something to do with blogging? Travel? Reasons I am not a rock star? (but that last one's probably only funny to me at this point.)

Parade! and other fun things

2007-04-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

I didn't write a post yesterday, so now I have two days to catch up on. This might be long and picture-heavy.

I'm writing from a laundromat on O'Farrell called Joey's. They serve ice cream, coffee, and sausages. The laundry prices seem competitive. And there's wifi (yay!).

A few highlights from Saturday:

I started my day at the Ferry Building Farmer's Market.

Then I took the streetcar to Pier 39.

A few piers down from there, I found a submarine.

Also:

Coin-operated gizmos.

My evening's entertainment was dinner at Edinburgh Castle, which is a pub that serves fish & chips, delivered in paper wrappings from a little take-out place around the corner. There I met Derri, a canned-foods journalist from London, who was hanging out in SF for a couple of days after a conference. She was disappointed that the bartender had never heard of HP sauce or mushy peas. The fish & chips were authentically bland, but they have a decent selection of beer on tap.

Moving along to Sunday: my general plan was to go look at the bay some more, then wander through Japantown for a bit. The first part went as expected.

Fishermen, seagulls, a view of Alcatraz ...

and people out for a swim?

This was about when I started wishing I could stay in town an extra week, go kayaking, check out SFMOMA, hang out at the beach getting sunburnt (oh wait already did that one). I'm on my last full day and there are still all sorts of things I'd like to do.

Next: Japantown. I had noticed a couple of things mentioning the Cherry Blossom Festival, but somehow I got it into my head that the festivities weren't for another week.

I'm very happy to have been wrong about that. I spent two hours sitting around and watching the parade. There were kimonos. There were swords. There were cosplay outfits.

I even saw the mayor riding a Segway. (He hopped out of his car to ask the parade volunteer if he could try it, then zipped around the group in front of him at high speed. His security guys looked a little nervous about this.)

It was quite a party.

P.S. Can anyone tell me about the shrines several groups were carrying, like the one above? It seemed to be related to celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Osaka-San Francisco sister city relationship. There were about 6 different groups carrying these, each chanting something different, but since I don't speak Japanese, I don't know what they were saying.

Orientation and exploration

2007-04-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

I've traveled enough to learn that I need to walk around in a new place to get the geography clear in my head, because otherwise I feel lost and uncomfortable. So yesterday I walked from the hostel to Chinatown and back, then around again through the city center area. This worked; I feel like I know where I am now.

Chinatown was sort of under- and overwhelming at the same time. Grant Ave. had clusters of gawking tourists, cheap import shops, some interesting collectibles and antiques, and a lot of restaurants with people outside waving menu flyers.

Stockton has a different sort of crowdedness: little old Chinese men and women buying fresh fish and roast chickens and unidentifiable (to me) dried things. I had planned to get lunch in the area, but after wandering around a bit I realized I had no way to work out which restaurants were any good (having failed to write this info down before heading out), so instead I wandered into a bakery and bought a couple of buns. The yellow bean and ginger one was really interesting, but I couldn't finish it. The unfilled pineapple bun worked out better.

Afterward, more wander wander until I was tired enough to come back to the hostel for a nap.

In the evening I met up with some of the Podcast Hotel crowd at the JPG Magazine gallery opening/party.

We hung out at the gallery for a while, then carpooled over to Velvet Cantina in the Mission for dinner. Lots of fun conversation with John, Alex, and Marshall about social media, reputation systems, and general internetty stuff.

Today's plan is to go check out the market by the Ferry Building, then head up to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39, after which I will probably want another nap and a shower. And then maybe I'll crash the Podcast Hotel wrap party.

Now I am here

2007-04-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

We made it to San Francisco safely. I am tired. Too much car.

But look, on the way we went to the beach:

We camped at the Umpqua Lighthouse State Park Wednesday night, then Thursday cut back over to I-5, and headed south until we were here. There may have been a little difficulty finding Highway 505 that resulted in going back over the same stretch of I-5 a couple times because you can only get to the entrance heading south. Maybe.

And now I'm at the City Center HI. We got in around 10:30 or 11. Slept okay, but the radiator in the room makes weird sloshy noises and I may have to try earplugs. There's a lounge with tables and many outlets.

In a little while I'll go see Chinatown.

Time for a road trip

2007-04-17T21:05:00.000-07:00

I'm taking advantage of my really flexible no-office schedule to accompany a friend on a road trip to San Francisco. Neat things about this: I can't remember the last time I decided to travel on ~3 days notice (and pulled it off), I've never been to SF, people I know from Portland will also be there for Podcast Hotel so maybe I can figure out how to meet up with them without paying the $50/day event registration fee, I'm bringing my camera (of course), and I expect to have ample access to wifi.

My plans involve a fair amount of sightseeing, so let me know if there's anything I really should see or do (already have Chinatown, sea lions, that really twisty street...). Brewpubs? Bookstores? Bakeries? Yarn/fabric/etc?

I'll be back a week from tomorrow, but expect to hear from me before then.

Yog blog

2007-04-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to think of ways I can keep people coming back to the Yog's Notebook site between new issues, and also do more to build a reader community. This week we launch a weekly blog for reviews, links, and other fun content. The first feature is a post from Lucas about Kurt Vonnegut and Cat's Cradle.

Crafty

2007-04-16T15:02:00.000-07:00

I have a shop on Etsy that has been very neglected for several months, but I just started listing some new things.

First up is handmade paper. It's a mix of recycled scraps and cotton linter. Occasionally there are letters from the used paper that stayed intact through the pulping process.

The second item is hand-dyed sock yarn. A while back (~3 years ago?) I asked my brother, who was working as a prep cook, to save onion skins for me, so I've had a couple bags of the stuff sitting around, waiting for me to do something. This batch came out a bright gold color. I'm really pleased with it.

I'll have more yarn and more paper soon, and probably other things as well. Any requests?

I see... the future!

2007-04-13T08:50:00.000-07:00

Someone on Absolute Write asked about near-future research, for the purposes of writing a story that takes place around 2025. People were jumping in with various suggestions, so I gave it a try, and I think it's an interesting enough topic to repeat here.

I think the main things I would expect in the next 20 years are:

We finally see the full extension of what always-on internet connectivity can do. Not so much in the "no need to leave your home" sense, but more of using it as an added layer to your daily life, using external computers to augment your own memory and mental power. We already do this when we use Google to find an address rather than writing it down for later. I think we'll allow ourselves to be more dependent on these aids.

Continued social polarization. Some areas following very liberal laws and community values, and some areas just the opposite.

Very complex and criss-crossed economic networks, down to the personal level. I might have clothing custom-tailored in Romania, buy gadgets from Finland and Japan, and medical treatment from India. Also imagine these networks in reverse. What skill can your part of the world provide that everyone else will want to buy?

Clothing isn't going to change a lot. It might get a little more utilitarian, with fibers engineered for particular purposes, and clever pocket arrangements for all the gadgets we carry.

Assuming that efforts to address climate change remain moderate, some areas are going to be wrecked by freak weather patterns the way New Orleans was. Expect a lot of disruption in travel and shipping at times, as well as displaced communities.

Customized (or highly targeted) media content will be much more common, either via a proliferation of content channels each after a small, specialized market, or smart agents that collect things based on your preferences. Actually, the combination of both would make sense.

Most things that can be digitized will be, but there will continue to be a strong interest in paper books, physical copies of music in whatever format, etc. Both because not everyone is going to have the same level of tech available to them, and because people appreciate the physical object. The production of these items may also tend toward higher quality special editions (already happening with books and records, maybe we'll see a movie version?).

Last item: it's going to be noisier. More things trying to get our attention, more content directed at us, more crowded urban environments. Take up meditation now, get a head start on dealing with it.

Like all predictions of the future, this one is liable to look utterly ridiculous within six months, if not tomorrow.

Your turn, if you want it. What does the future look like?

Green is the color

2007-04-12T21:25:00.000-07:00

Lucas and I went for a walk around Laurelhurst Park this afternoon. Last time we were there, they had warning tape around the duck pond and signs saying to stay out of the water due to toxic algae. This time, no yellow tape, but the pond was green.

Healthy green? Scary green? I have no idea.

Also, we saw a duck orgy. One female, three males, huffing and puffing and chasing her all around the pond.

A heron caught some kind of goldfish or koi while we were standing around, but I didn't get a picture of that. Just a blur of orange and blue out of the corner of my eye.

Food cart update

2007-04-12T12:23:00.000-07:00

I just did a massive update to the food cart map. I never really caught up after they kicked everyone out of the parking lot by Elephants last fall (or was it summer?), but now all of the major cart clusters should be reasonably up to date again.

There are a couple of new favorites in this update. Ziba's Pitas, on SW Alder (just west of 9th) serves Bosnian pitas, which are these flaky, savory, filled pastries. Nothing at all like a Mediterranean pita, but very delicious. I've been trying to think of an excuse to wander downtown today just so I can stop by this cart.

I also really like Taste of Poland, on SW 5th (right in the middle of all the bus mall construction). I always get the pirogi, but they also have several different kinds of thick juicy sausages, made from scratch just for this cart.

And if you were wondering what happened to Snow White Crepes, they're now on SW Alder, half a block west of 10th. I still haven't been there, but this is the longest-running cart I know of, so they must do something right.

Jaiku, Twitter, Tumblr, and lifestreaming

2007-04-11T18:08:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I followed a link from a post on Web Worker Daily that mentioned Emily Chang. I hadn't heard of her before, so I was curious. The first post on her blog at the time was about building a personal data stream, also referred to as lifestreaming. The idea is that you mush all of your personal content, Flickr and blog posts and Upcoming.org events and Last.FM data and so on, all into a single feed or webpage.

Emily says,

I kept wishing I could look at all my social activity from 2006 in context: time, date, type of activity, location, memory, information interest, and so on. What was I bookmarking, blogging about, listening to, going to, and thinking about?

Since then I've been playing with various tools to do this. I've already posted about Twitter more than enough, so I'll just add that if you were to post about absolutely everything that happened during your day, it could accomplish Emily's goals above. But I'm lazy, so I'd rather find some other way to collect things.

I signed up for Jaiku. It has similar short message and friends features to Twitter, but you can also import your other feeds. It's not a bad site, but I haven't found it terribly useful. The only contact I have on there is Stowe Boyd, and that's because I saw it on his blog.

After that, I decided to try Tumblr. Pretty much the same features as Jaiku, but I like the page layout better. Also, when it grabs multiple posts from an imported feed, it shows each one separately. I don't spend that much time on their site, but I used Feedburner to plant my last 10 Tumblr items on my main webpage, replacing the previous "current status" script that was months out of date because I kept forgetting to write an update.

And that's probably where this experiment will stop, aside from adding feeds to Tumblr. I don't know how useful it really is to aggregate all of this on to one page. No one else seems to be subscribed to the meta-feed yet, either. I like having it on my main page, so that people who happen across my site see recent activity, but otherwise?

The thing I really want, as a next step, is to aggregate all of my inbound content into a single pool. Mail, calendar entries, the feeds I subscribe to, friends on Livejournal, my web stats... It would be really nice to have a single location for everything I read or monitor. But that's a pretty big data organization project.

Things I wish people working with tech would do

2007-04-11T16:45:00.000-07:00

Maybe I should call this "clues for the clueless". I've been reading job ads and tech news articles and getting a little wound up.

1. Engage the local community. The whole MetroFi debacle might not be as much of a mess if the city had actually put some effort into connecting with local wifi expertise. When there are skilled people so passionate about something that they'll help out for free... give them a call.

2. Know when the specific tech (software, programming language, whatever) matters and when it doesn't. Smart geeks can (and do) learn new things. If you only want people who've worked with one thing their entire career, you're probably not getting the best talent. I just read a job ad looking for someone with 3+ years managing Flash projects. Huh? Also, don't pick heavy-weight enterprise apps just because that's what you heard the big boys do. Unless you want to be big and clumsy and expensive.

3. Don't be an old fogy. This is actually the gripe I wanted to start with, since it's been on my mind the most. Yes, "kids these days" post lots of personal details on their websites, talk online all the time, use weird sites you don't see any point for, etc etc etc. Okay, you personally don't have to use any of this tech. But I keep seeing this whine, asking why anyone would do this... And there isn't any answer other than to try it. Quit complaining about the fast pace of information. Just work with it. Or don't, go do something else.

That helped. Maybe I'll quit procrastinating on real work now.

KSR on permaculture

2007-04-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

One of the best parts of my Norwescon weekend was hearing Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy and other fine books, give a talk on climate change and permaculture. His work often plays "what if?" with environmental, social, and political issues, so it was really interesting to hear him talk about the real world ideas side of that.

My notes are a little jumbled, so I'm just going to make a list of the things he covered, and then follow with a short discussion. (I'd use the proper unordered list tags, but I'm tired of fighting Blogger to get the formatting right.)

* Suburbia is the most unhealthy environment we can create and live in, both on a social and environmental level.

* When we talk about technologies to effect change, this should encompass both physical technologies as well as social ones.

* The maximum sustainable human population on Earth is difficult to estimate, and the range of possible answers given is so wide (anywhere from 100,000 to 30 trillion), political issues are clearly a factor. But if we look at the estimates in the middle, that seem to have the best science behind them, the range can be narrowed to 2-30 billion. Still really wide, but probably more accurate.

* It's important to know if we've overshot the sustainable population range (or coming back to climate change, to know whether we've put so much carbon into the atmosphere that we can't fix things before environmental collapse) because people aren't motivated to work on a problem if we're all doomed anyhow.

* We should look at ways to have satisfying lifestyles that aren't at odds with our biology or our environment. So look at the kind of environment and daily life we had in the time period during our brain's evolution into its current state.

* This leads to a kind of "urban paleolithic" lifestyle where we evaluate quality of life based on: proximity to nature, outdoor activities like walking and running, community (the people you live with, different from one's network), social activities, eating with a group, staring at the fire together. Simple but fulfilling things.

* Another important element is the experience of the sublime, like when we stare at a looming mountain or off across the sea. We experience the sublime daily through our "techno surround", the technological environment. This can be overwhelming: too much is like being high or in a shaman-state all the time.

* One key personal and environmental choice we have available is to make things ourselves. Industrialized manufacture is energy-consuming and carbon-polluting. But making things also taps into a need in the core human mind.

* We can frame all of our choices with a few simple questions: Did you pay for it? Is it indoors or outdoors? Are you watching or doing? Is it fun?

There was so, so much more he talked about, but those were the parts I thought were worth writing down at the time. In the question and answer period, two different people asked questions about population density and privacy. KSR said that his "private area" where he writes is a small enclosed outdoor courtyard. Not a lot of room, but it takes care of his needs (and he's in CA, so presumably he's able to be outside comfortably more of the year). He also talked about primitive societies having a lot of awareness of what other people were up to, and when you live in close proximity with other people, we get used to the idea that they also sleep, go to the bathroom, have sex, etc. So the current personal separation is unusual, maybe artificial.

Someone also asked about our tendency toward violence, whether this is something to suppress, ignore, or maybe address in a different way. He said he thought there are other things we do, sports and hunting and target practice, and that even getting stuck climbing up the side of the house gives you a certain adrenaline rush. Also, since we're very isolated from the natural environment and its dangers, there's a whole industry around thrill-seeking. But maybe it would be better if California still had bears and we had to stick to running in packs for safety.

I've been thinking a lot about how all of this ties into my own modern technological lifestyle, but this post is long enough, so I'll have to follow up with that later.

The Cult of Scott Bakula, and other fanac

2007-04-09T09:45:00.000-07:00

I had a very good time at Norwescon over the weekend. Highlights: attending Kim Stanley Robinson's talk on permaculture (I'll have to post about it in more detail), hanging out with Marty and Fishy and meeting beaq, and of course the room parties.

Also:

I've never been to a book awards ceremony before.

Lucas loved the strangely themed Cult of Scott Bakula party ("his career died for your sins").

Darth Vader really draws a crowd.

Off to Norwescon

2007-04-05T16:55:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning, Lucas and I will be driving up to Seattle for Norwescon, copies of Yog's Notebook in hand. This is my first sf convention in five years, so I'm excited. Lucas has never been to one at all, aside from a brief stop at Orycon in 2003 (he attended one filk concert and the Geeks Without Borders room party, IIRC). This Norwescon should be particularly neat, because the Guest of Honor is Kim Stanley Robinson, one of my absolute favorite writers ever.

There'll be at least a couple of us using Twitter to keep in touch, so I'm curious to see how that goes. I don't normally forward updates to my phone (except the direct messages).

I'm impatient. Is it tomorrow yet?

Movie time

2007-04-04T17:33:00.000-07:00

I still think YouTube is really amazingly lame for not having anything that even vaguely resembles a customer service department, but I gave in and created an account there anyhow.

So now, for your viewing pleasure, here's Sputnik back when he was a tiny little baby kitten.

More on roles

2007-04-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

After I talked about the importance of writing roles while you're still a 1-2 person shop, I made a list based on the work we've done on Yog's Notebook so far. It looked something like this:

Editor
- acquisitions editor
- copy editor
- proofreader
- developmental editor
- layout designer
- web designer
Publisher
- bookkeeper
- business manager (HR, financial planning?)
- sales
- customer service
- marketing
Content
- writer
- graphical designer/illustrator
- contributing editor

When I came back to it a week or so later, I felt like it still didn't really do enough to describe the work, in a way that would be helpful in assigning portions to someone else. So then I listed every activity I could think of that we've done so far. Combined with the labels above, I have this:

Editor
- lead editor: send publication to printer
- acquisitions editor: read submissions, select submissions for each issue, sign contract for writer’s copy (and ours), respond to submission queries, send rejections for work not selected
- copy editor: check content for spelling, grammar, and conformance to style guidelines
- proofreader: verify that all content is represented on the page as intended
- developmental editor: discuss story changes with writers
- layout designer: lay out the publication, create cover design
- web designer: create website, set up domain name and web hosting
Publisher
- bookkeeper: record expenses, record sales
- business manager: write/create a contract, send contracts for selected work, pay writers, file contracts somewhere retrievable, file receipts, buy office supplies (envelopes, labels, etc), get quotes from printers, create financial analyses
- sales: send announcements of new issue, set up PayPal for purchasing copies, contact stores about stocking our publication
- fulfillment: package purchased copies for mailing, mail copies of zine to purchasers, email PDFs to purchasers
- customer service
- marketing: print promotional materials (stickers), plan release party
Content
- writer
- graphical designer/illustrator: create graphics for web, publication, merchandise
- contributing editor: write editorial content

I'm sure this is incomplete, and that there are other (better?) ways to organize the tasks and roles, but it's a start, and it was interesting for me to see how many different kinds of things were involved in getting that first issue out. If anyone who has submitted work to us (or any other small publication) is reading this, I hope it helps explain why it can take a little while to hear back; we have so many other jobs to do at the same time.

I think the next step would be to look at what roles could be handed off to other people (or outsourced to another company) but right now we don't have the resources. Still, I'm glad to have some idea of where I would start.

More signs that yours truly is a dork

2007-03-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

I came home from a fun evening of loud music and TA movie promo just a bit ago. On the way through the parking lot, I noticed that the only lights seemed to be on the other side of the building, but didn't give it much thought. Until I tried to flip on a light switch, and nothing happened. "Huh," I thought, "Did we burn out another lightbulb?" Nope. Half of the apartment building has electricity. Half doesn't. Guess which side I'm on?

I called PGE, which confirmed that I'm one of 4000 lucky customers spending the night in the dark. I wasn't going to try to get online, but the laptop battery is charged still, and for once there's open wifi somewhere nearby. So I logged on just to post this. Obsessed with connectivity? Hmm.

Been doing some stuff

2007-03-30T12:48:00.000-07:00

I made it through a week of self/un-employment without freaking out. (Regular paychecks? What's that?) The first two days were taken up just kind of getting comfortable, getting the right software on the MacBook, handling a couple zine orders, etc.

Tuesday I went to a Social Media Club meeting at Someday Lounge (a little dark in there, but a nice space):

Dan Harbison, Internet Marketing Manager for the Trailblazers, talked about the ways they're using blogging and podcasts and social networking to connect with fans. They have a site called I Am a Trailblazers Fan, billed as the "official online community" of the Portland Trailblazers.

The part I found most interesting is that Dan said that even when fans are negative or critical of the team, they'd rather have them giving that commentary within the sphere of the team's blogs and networking site. Even angry fans are still important to the organization. Apparently they only take down posts if the language is abusive or not PG, and even then the person will get an explanation and be asked to play nice, instead of being automatically kicked off the site.

Afterward, I talked with someone involved with the Platform International Animation Festival, which is happening this summer in downtown Portland (June 25-30). They're going to have a really incredible lineup of work there (the schedule isn't on the website yet, but the person I talked to mentioned John K. and Scott McCloud as participants), and they really want to connect with fan communities like anime clubs, as well as bloggers/podcasters/etc. If you'd like more info, let me know.

Wednesday I had two things on my calendar: a booksigning by the lovely authors of Mason Dixon Knitting, and the Dorkbot meetup.

Totally different venues and crowds. Both fun.

Yesterday, pretty quiet. Worked on some code for a blog aggregation project. Had lunch with Dawn at Cup & Saucer.

My plan for today was more code, but I woke up feeling kinda tired, so instead I'm putting together flyers for BarCamp.

Logo by Patrick Sullivan of Lov.li.

If you're even slightly interested in tech, the internet, geek stuff, etc. you should consider coming to BarCamp. I think it'll be a really interesting event. It's May 11-12 at CubeSpace (that's another neat thing I keep meaning to talk about. It's a workspace for the self-employed, with meeting rooms and desks. The place reminds me of the grad student research cubbies in university libraries.)

Tonight Lucas and I will be at a Timbers pre-season event at the Bitter End. The $6 cover goes toward a Timbers documentary a friend of ours has been working on, and they've lined up three bands, a bagpiper, a raffle, plus a sneak preview of the documentary. We'll have copies of Yog's Notebook for sale, too.

Busy busy.

Motivational trick

2007-03-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm halfway through my first full week of not having a day job, I'm starting to notice a couple of problems. I have this huge list of things I could be working on, some of it even income generating, and none of it automatically gives any organization to my day. I can work on anything I want! Which means I can also spend all day reading blogs and accomplishing nil.

And since I'm a complete dork, I decided the solution to this was to make a little checklist of things I should be working on a regular basis, so I can see whether I'm getting anywhere.

Most of this should be self-explanatory. I put fruits and vegetables on there because it's something I don't automatically remember to eat (vegetarian != only eats vegetables). The secret projects aren't really, but it's more fun that way. Personal online presence is shorthand for doing something to keep my website up to date and generally be visible online.

Most of my plans to track what I've been doing last about a week, so it'll be a little while until I know if this works. Worth a try, right?

Lappy!

2007-03-26T18:56:00.000-07:00

My laptop arrived this morning. I've been struggling to keep the kitten away from the power cord--yesterday he chewed through a speaker cable (stupid cheap wire is hard to splice back together), and a few minutes ago I had to chase him away from a mini-DVI adapter (at least the plug will still work even if the casing has teeth marks). I don't know what the deal is. Do I need to get him one of those chew toys they make for hamsters?

To continue on from yesterday... One of the sf/real-life tech crossovers I've been thinking about is the "fast folk" in some of Ken MacLeod's work (other people have used this idea too, but it first caught my attention in one of his books). It refers to people who've been uploaded into computers, and with that augmented processing power rapidly diverge from the rest of humanity, creating things that sometimes impact everyone else (usually not in a positive way).

As far as I know, no such augmented folk are actually out there, but the interaction he describes makes me think of how technology creators and promoters relate to the general public. So often we spew out all this stuff, programs and blog posts and trends and controversies, and little pieces trickle out into schools and workplaces and the mainstream media... but most doesn't. It isn't relevant or useful or interesting. I've been trying to figure out what that means for the work I do.

Last... This kind of intimidation is not okay. Mean kids? Do they miss what it was like to be 13? (I sure as hell don't.) Hand in hand with the discussions of blogging, and Twitter, and all of this tech that can give strangers a window into our lives, people ask "is it safe? will something bad happen if I expose myself in this way?" I've been sitting around talking about the subtle ways the tech industry discourages women, but nothing says "fuck off" more than seeing Valleywag reprint an image of a prominent female blogger with lingerie Photoshopped over her face, while spinning the story of said photo's origins as a petty feud. Wow.

Sunday is for etc.

2007-03-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's release party for Yog's Notebook went well. We sold a few copies, hung out and drank and talked with friends, and everyone seemed to have a good time. I completely failed to take pictures, but I think Lucas will have a few to post soon.

Monday is my self-imposed "get back to work" day, so even though I did work on the zine last week, tomorrow I need to call a few places about maybe getting it into local stores, send out the comps and review copies, and figure out what else I can do to continue promoting it.

I was talking to a couple of people last night about viral marketing, and how it's really funny watching big corporations try to get in on the action, because they think there's something special, almost magic, going on. It's just word of mouth. Two rules: do something interesting, and tell everyone you know. And if you don't know anyone who's into the something you're trying to promote--maybe you picked the wrong area to work in. I'm not saying you always have to be part of the market you're selling to, but it certainly helps, and it seems impossible without at least some kind of personal contact with said Market. How else do you know if you're getting it right?

My brain's been a jumble the last few days, still churning over Accelerando and other assorted readings. I'm in the middle of Perdido Street Station, but it's hard to read large chunks at once, because the setting is so extreme.

There's a bit of a backlash against the idea of information overload right now. Last year, the news was "all these things trying to get your attention all at once are rotting your brain!". This year it's a combination of "no, just go with the flow" and "who cares what everyone's eating for lunch anyhow? I don't have to read this stuff." Eh. I bet everyone's been in a situation when their problem was too little available information, not too much. (Watching the news on 9/11/01? Waiting for that hot guy/girl to respond to your email?)

The problem isn't that there's so much information on our screens and in our inboxes and feed aggregators and so on, it's that we don't know how to find the information we want right now, and how to get rid of the stuff we don't want to deal with now (or ever). Better filters will help. Learning to skim for content and not read every word will help. I know a bunch of people who've been clamoring for a smart news agent for years, one that will make sure the stuff we want to see is front and center. It's do-able, too, but the readily available tools still barely even acknowledge the problem. It's like the people creating them don't believe we want to track this much information at any one time. Well yes, we do. I do.

I have more things on my "write about this list" but this post is getting long enough. I'll do the rest this afternoon, or tomorrow. Whenever.

Yog's Notebook now on sale

2007-03-19T21:59:00.000-07:00

After two months of hard work and steep learning curves, Yog's Notebook issue 1 is now for sale.

If you're in Portland, we're going to have a little release party this Saturday at Lucky Lab on SE Hawthorne, from 5pm till whenever. Email me or leave a comment if you'll be there and would like us to hold a copy for you. And spread the word!