I’m of two minds about email which should be a surprise to absolutely none of you.

On the one hand, I love it. It’s great to be able to shot off quick notes and information to people without having to bother around with post offices, telephones, IM or some-such. It’s also great that in most cases email gives you leeway on response time so that you can decide how to prioritize your actions. Good plan, right? Right. I mean that leeway is often the rope we use to hang ourselves, but ignoring that for a moment, it’s good conceptually.

On the other hand, bleh. Right? I mean I have a couple of emails to write out today, that’s like my main task for today, and by god I don’t want to. There’s really nothing more stressful and really, frankly, emotionally draining than writing emails to prospective advisors for graduate school. Gah!

In other non-related news, it looks like the big gay college student conference (that’s unfortunately not the real colloquial term for that gathering,) is going to be in FlatCollegeTown at the end of February.

/me ponders trip

Have I mentioned recently that I really hate writing emails to prospective advisors?

I have to say that the whole “podcasting thing” is something that I quite enjoy. I’ve done radio--for years in high school, and occasionally still--and while I worked with a loosey-goosey community/public access station, it’s something that had been a big part of me. It’s weird working in the yarn store, people I’ve never met recognize my voice from time to time, and I’m not used to that at all. And so at the very beginning, when I heard about podcasting, I thought, “yeah, I’ll take a pass. I mean, It’s a cool new technology, but sorting out the copyright rules independently for music, and then you have to edit, and gah--” so I’d never really thought about doing one myself.

But I think part of my problem is that with one brief exception, I’ve always done live radio, the thought of having to do serious audio editing kinda freaks me out. And I think there lies part of the problem. While the notion of podcasting sounds pretty cool, I’ve for too long thought about it too much like radio and not enough of it in it’s own regard. Thinking of podcasts as something more than just radio shows on the Internet, or as something that has the possibility of being more than just the Internet, is something that has been pretty helpful to me.

Part of the TealArt redesign effort, which I suspect I’ll be writing more about in the coming days/weeks, is to support a possible podcast that I’ve been thinking about doing for a while now. It’s still a ways off, but it’s something that I’d like to think about. But this is a post about podcasts I listen to, or at least it was supposed to be.

The thing is, I have a really big problem listening to podcasts when I’m doing something that involves text, and really I’ve pretty much always been this way. I listen to music constantly, but if I’m trying to read something more than a few sentences or write a like amount, and there’s television or radio or some-such, and I pretty much can’t do it.

Which means I listen to podcasts when I’m driving, and that’s about it. It also means that I want to listen to a lot of podcasts than I actually do. A little secret: I’ve not synched my ipod since the end of august. And I’ve been listening to a bunch of them, and I’m still not out. I’ll sync up again this week, because I have a road trip at the end of the week.

So here’s the podcasts that come up near the top of my queue with a lot of frequency.

2. Cast-On Podcast for Knitters - Brenda does an amazing podcast, frankly radio quality and then some, and while it tends to get metaphysical a tad more than I would under similar circumstances, it works great, and it’s a lot of fun. 3. Cory Doctorow’s Craphound podcast - I think if I did a podcast, it’d be a lot like Cory’s, with a little bit of the Boing Boing Boing Podcast thrown in for good measure. Anyway, I like how the podcast is basically Cory and a microphone and various recorded things he’s done. Stories he’s working on, panels and lectures that he’s given, books and papers that he finds interesting, and so forth. Great stuff. 4. Jared Axelrod’s “The Voice of Free Planet X” This is an ironic one, that I absolutely love to death, and I can’t explain it. I don’t really enjoy short short fiction, and yet the fiction on VFPX is great. I’m not big into alt/indi music, but somehow the music is amazing. And while I really like Jared’s commentaries and updates, we’re definitely very different kinds of geeks. And yet, it works out in this amazing sort of way, and I think you should all go subscribe. 5. Prometheus Radio Theatre - Great radio drama science fiction stuff. I’m a big fan. Actually Scott of PRT reads this blog, --waves-- I think I’m basically caught up as far as the ones I have on my ipod at the moment, but I know there are more waiting for me. 6. Escape Pod I think it’s really cool that a podcast that’s only a bit more than two years old has one of the highest distributions of science fiction magazines. Period. Again, I’m not a huge short fiction fan, but I like hearing stories read to me way more than I seem to like reading them myself. 7. I should be Writing I really like Mur’s work and ISBW is good stuff. While I think it’s clearly possible to OD on writerly advice, and even though I’m young, and even though I’m really not that accomplished between the writing list and my own travels, I’m not feeling like I’ve missed a lot of the things Mur talks about, it’s good to hear it from time to time. 8. Lime and Violet Yep. Great stuff. Not to be missed. Again an ironic one because I’m not much of a sock knitter, and don’t really buy yarn recreationally, but they’re fun. 9. TWiT podcasts - Not going to lie, I like the TWiT stuff, many of it anyway. I think the roundtable format is pretty cool for podcasts and it lets me connect to a geek element that I frankly have a hard time reading in text. And they sound good and they’re interesting.

There are others, of course, but I think that should be enough for now.

Onward and Upward!

Hey folks I’m writing this entry actually sitting at my desk because I’m offloading about 35 gigs of crap onto my external storage. Which means I have to be connected by a cord. So I’m not sitting here with my feet on the desk and the computer on my lap. How lame is that?

I think some days that I really just need to suck it up and buy an external/wireless keyboard. Non really inspire me, and I’m so incredibly used to laptop keyboards, that other keyboards feel awkward. I’m thinking of actually getting one of the new apple keyboards, but I can’t quite stomach that either.

I found a ruler and measured the new knitting project. I need to take a preliminary picture, but it’s 5 inches long now! And I only started on it Thursday night! It’s knit with slightly bulkier yarn than my last sweater. By comparison, this one has 335 stitches total; the last one has, nearly 400. Same needles.

So I’m zipping along on it. I figure another week or two till the underarms, if I force myself to keep a moderate pace, and work on nothing else. The former will probably happen, but the later almost certainly wont

I’d get started on the sleeves but I’ve promised to cut steeks on jacket as a sort of performance art thing at the shop. If you’re interested in seeing a steek cut in person and you’re in St. Louis, drop me a line, or leave a comment and we’ll make a to do of it. The sleeves should go fast. The armholes are huge (it being a jacket and thus needing to fit over other things), so I can safely decrease two stitches every 3 rounds the whole way without worrying about anything. The pattern is also pretty straight forward. I look forward to being done with this project, but I’m not as close as I could be and there’s no particular reason to rush this.

Also, my mother made Ice Queen last week, and I really like the object. A cowl/hood/hat/wimple thing, and I’m looking for a way to sort of. ahem butch it up. I’m thinking if I do less conspicuous increases to get rid of the lace, and use a heavier yarn (like sock yarn,) and avoid the picot edges, it might be worth a go. It’s a quick little thing, and it might take a couple of tries, but there’s possibilities: I just have to fiddle.

Anyway, the copying is done and I have hard drive space again, so I’m off to try and be more productive.

Onward and Upward!

So I’m wearing this sweater today, and I have to say that even though it’s a bit too big for me (both in shoulder length and in general dimensions), I really enjoy wearing it.

There’s something about theses shetland sweaters that really can’t be topped. I’m a big fan. I think everyone should spend some time knitting with shetland. If my yarn store experience means anything, shetland is a hard sell. It’s not cheap, it’s not snazzy, it’s not particularly soft. But it’s really amazing, and the sweaters are so much fun to wear and to knit.

Particularly in contrast to this other yarn that I’ve been knitting with. Speaking of the Morocco sweater: I’ve gotten to the collar. Which is shaped, not at all in the shape that I intended for the collar to be shaped in, but it’s not unacceptable. I have to knit the collar, and put it on a holder before I move on to the sleeves. Since it now looks almost like a sweater, I’ll get a picture of it up sometime.

In the mean time I’ve started knitting a grey on grey sweater. Initially I said light and dark grey, but I think the colors are more like, charcoal and off white. So it’s lighter than I expected, so I’ve done a little bit of quick changing to the pattern to put a few more of the darker stitches in the repeat, but it’s fun to knit with the yarn again. And it’s going fast. In only a couple of hours of knitting time I’ve gotten like 12 rounds done. Not bad I say. It’s going to be a jacket.

I’ve been in a jacket kick of late. The next sweater I have in the cue is going to be a pullover with a little v-neck, because I think it’s about time I did one of these sweaters. I’m knitting it with Louet Gems Merino. It’s a super-wash wool, and I’ve made a sweater out of this that I quite enjoy. I even ordered the yarn today, so that’ll be fun.

Ok, that’s all the knitting news I have. There’s work to be done, and I’m sorry that I haven’t had better content here for you all recently. I’ve been thinking, so something good has to filter to the top soon. Right?

Onward and Upward!

1. Your Gmail inbox.
2. Your recent Amazon purchases.
3. Your currently running software applications.
4. Your Xenga “blog.”
5. Your Facebook Mini-Feed

I feel really bad using this title on a post about knitting, rather than something academic (either in Gloria Anzaldúa’s sense; or in an Eriksonian inspired developmental sense.) But it is what it is.

I’m working on the home stretch of the Morocco sweater. I’ll probably be done with the knitting sometime today. I think it’s going well, I’m a bit worried that the neck is a bit long, but it’s a jacket, and I don’t think that the neck will be too wide, so it should all be fine. I’m real close though. That’s exciting.

I’m working on getting set up for the next sweater and have the provisional cast on all set up and I’m going to get started in earnest in the next few days. I think it’s good to have the body of a sweater at least started when you’re working on the sleeves and collar and hem of another sweater. It prevents the nasty problem of “running out of knitting,” and also only having complicated knitting that requires tools, complexity, concentration.

Other than that, work in the yarn store to do, and some paper writing, and not a lot else going on. I’m hoping that I can close out these applications pretty quickly next week. I think my sequence on this project is:

1. Write professors at two Northeastern Universities.
2. Have GRE scores sent to one school.
3. Fill out and complete application for Southern School, while waiting for response from the two professors. (Including my zipper paragraph for this school).
4. Write zipper paragraph, and finish application for larger Northeastern School.
5. Write zipper paragraph and finish appliaction for smaller more urban Northeastern School.

Then I’ll be done, and I have a couple of weeks to get it all done, but I would of course like to get it all handled and done with speed so I can concentrate on things like:

• working on the new tealart.
• writing on the novel.

Well that’s all for now.

Onward and Upward

As you might know, for a good deal of my college career I was (one of) the ringleader(s) for our campus queer organization (indeed, between the queer group and the feminist co-op, there was only one semester where I wasn’t over involved.)

Anyway, the queer group always had an end of semester bash called wine and cheese. Frankly I’m not sure how we got away with it, I think technically because it was always early in the evening and we had an invite list, rather than just opening the door, everyone just let it be. Anyway. So we had an invite list that we always generated before the party. It was made up of:

1. People who participated in our events.
2. Our friends who we wanted to party with.
3. Professors and advisors who weren’t associated with the student-life folks (and thus wouldn’t report us.)
4. Other clubs (like the feminist co-op) that we wanted to support alliances between.
5. Queers in the community, who might not have come to our events but were at least tangentially supportive, that we wanted to reciprocate the support.
6. People who had previously been part of our little ring-leading group.
7. People we had crushes on/people we thought might be queer.

Note that categories 5 and 7 had very little overlap, indeed category 6 had little overlap with any other category.

I dunno, but that strikes me as being pretty darn funny, particularly in retrospect.

By the end of my time at AlmaMater I was pretty happy to be done, and I was more than ready to be done with the ring leading of the queer group. But now, I kinda miss that party, as odd as it always was.

Ok, so. I’ve decided to create a list, in some order of importance of features that I’d like in an email application. Note that I run OS X, and I’m not using Leopard yet, but I will be at some point. Suggestions are always welcome:

1. This needs to be a program that runs on my computer, downloads the emails and then lets me view them. I cannot work with web mail, nor do I have any desire to. I’m off the grid just enough to want to be able to have access to my email without needing to be in a web browser, or a live connection. 2. Ability to use any editor software. Ok, I want to be able to compose email using the TextMate system. I’d also like to use vim/gvim if I should ever learn how to use one of those programs. 3. I need IMAP syncing support, and at least potentially the ability to receive mail from a couple of different sources. 4. Software needs to work fast. I get a lot of email, and need to be able to read and process it quickly. 5. I need to be able to deal with multiple folders of email. 6. I’d like to store emails in mbox format, or at least have easy export to mbox format, I’d like the files to at least potentially make sense independent of the reader, and I think Maildir is kinda lame. 7. I need to be able to install it and get it working without much fuss. I’m good with computers and I’m good with a command-line, but too much fuss and my brain can’t cope. 8. Software must tie in with the system address book system. It’s just easier that way, I think. Thoughts?