Hello friends,

I’ve been in something of a slump the past few days and really haven’t gotten things together to write in a couple of days. But never fear, I have some entries backlogged, and I was able to sketch out a bit more than a week’s worth of posts, which I should be able to write pretty quickly once I’m de-funk-ified.

Lets see what I have to report:

• Station Keeping is progressing, I think we’ll start soon. It needs momentum, and it won’t get it any other way.
• The Midwest Morris Ale is in St. Louis this year, which means I’m part of the host team. I’ll be doing that all weekend. If you’re in the area, stop by tower grove park for the saturday tour, and say hi. You should be able to pick me out of a crowd… I’ll be wearing white. (with black, yellow, and red ribbons).
• I just finished Samuel Delany’s The Einstein Intersection which I quite enjoyed (particularly the ending, which I thought was quite well done. I also listened to an Escape Pod, which I really like. After spending a few years at a school where the “science fiction and fantasy association” was the second largest student group (the first was the queer alliance, which I was one of the leaders for many semesters, but don’t let that mislead you as to the ratio of geeks to queers), I’m back into it. I feel like I’m a better fan/consumer theses days. I’m working on James Tiptree Jr.’s Brightness Falls From the Air which is simply amazing work.
• I need to have my damned wisdom teeth taken out.
• I need to find a way to boost TealArt’s readership. I thought that more regular posts would help this a bit, but it isn’t really. My next move is to focus, at least my own posts a little. If you, any of you kind readers, have ideas about this. I’d love to hear about them. I’ve thought about pod-casting a little, but that’s not something I want to do all by lonesome. Thinking…
• I’m going to try and rig up the next few posts. Wish me luck, and stay tuned. Have a good memorial day weekend!

Best, tycho

Maybe it’s tied into what I said earlier about “being bad at watching television,” but I have an admission to make: I’m really rather bad at listening to podcasts, and I feel bad for this inadequacy. I think podcasts are great things, and I think that there should be more podcasts and more people listening to podcasts, but I’m just bad at it.

The thing is that I have a hard time consuming media, particularly non-music audio, when I’m doing anything else. I can even sometimes work when a television is on, if I have headphones and something to do¹, and I really like radio as a form (particularly what some podcasters are doing with it), but sound can really be distracting. So the only time I often have to listen to podcasts is when I can’t do anything but listen. Like I listen to podcasts during road trips, or when I’m doing some sort of rote task like data entry or filing, there are a couple of other situations where I don’t get too distracted (knitting, but I often use knitting time to watch TV).

But no matter what else has a claim on my attention the fact remains that I’m pretty tragically behind on my podcast listening. Particularly in light of RSS, I’ve found blogs so fun to read because one can squeeze a few posts in, in-between other tasks, but I find myself trying (or needing) to schedule in time to listen to podcasts.

Merlin Mann, said of video podcasts and his “The Merlin Show” on a podcast months ago (see I’m behind, actually I think I was more caught up at that time, but you’d never know) that independent media has a niche to feel in shorter form content of 30 mins and less, that there isn’t a market for on television, for instance (more so on radio I suppsoe, but it’s different.) Anyway, I wonder if this has something to do with the difficulties of scheduling “consumption time,” for podcast listening. Thoughts anyone?

Anyway, Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment ;)

Best, tycho

I’m somewhat hesitant to write a post about this new habit I’m forming, because I kind of like this habit and usually no sooner do I write about some productivity related topic, as I decide to completely reorganize my process. Here’s what I’m doing:

I’ve started keeping a daily archive of what I get done/finish/do in any given day. This includes information about everything from knitting, to the number of words I write on a project, to what I read. There are a couple of ideas at play in this:

1. I do more things than I give myself credit for. Even when I’m not doing things that need getting done in the strictest sense, its not like I’m not doing anything. I’ve found it helpful to keep track of these things, and give my self credit for all the things I do, not just those things that I think need doing before I do them.
2. Knowing what you’ve done is useful for project planning. I must admit, that when I do something on my To-do list I delete it, rather than strike it out or move it to a new list. This additional helps me stay aware of what I’m doing through out the day, and keep track of time.
3. Allows for more proper reviews. The only way to do a proper review is to collect data in the moment, rather than in retrospect, where memory and mood can play havoc on an accurate view of the past. I almost always feel like I’ve gotten more done after reading a list than I would otherwise.

I maintain this list using a markdown template that I keep in my Quicksilver Template Folder. I append new accomplishments using Quicksilver¹ or a nifty shell script that I wrote, and keep an eye on the list using GeekTool (It shows up on my desktop right next two the todo list), and I have to say that it’s pretty darn nifty. I keep tweaking the template every now and then as it suits. Should I ever need to produce a report, or whatever, I can simply combine the files that I need and run it through a markdown converter and have a great looking XHTML file.

I’m a big fan, and maybe you will find this kind of a list helpful in your day-to-day organization.

cheers, tycho

I posted about my academic contrarianism, earlier and I think I’d be foolish to claim that this tendency was limited simply to my academic half (2/3s?). In knitting, this manifests as a tendency to reject patterns and come up with my own designs, though you probably wouldn’t know it from the designs: they tend to be pretty normal looking traditional-ish knitting designs. The contrarian comes out in the process, first by rejecting prepared patterns, but more by the ass-backwards way that I think about sweater construction. I fear that this approach appears in the patterns I write.

Now perhaps I give myself too much credit, because it’s my sense that I’m not that atypical amongst designers and other renegade types; furthermore, I think this approach to knitting is not detrimental, and actually allows me to make better patterns. So there.

As I was writing the pattern for a sweater that I made this semester as part of the project-of-infamy, I realized that while I could (and did) go through every little step, in the day to day knitting of this sweater, which took me 6 weeks, a knitter wouldn’t need access to the entire pattern. At the same time, I tend to think of patterns as having a number of landmarks, turning points where some sort of change needs to happen, otherwise there’s a lot of just knitting as you were.

So I decided in this pattern--which is otherwise pretty complicated--to write a “Quick Reference Guide” that summerizes all the major turning points of the sweater in a couple of paragraph. I’m going to reprint it here for your personal edification, with the hope that you’ll be able to use it as a model to summarize other knitting patterns, or as a blank slate on which you can develop your own patterns. This is for a fair-isle stlye/gauge sweater with a crew neck: adjust your numbers and style appropriately.

Cast on the key number (320), knit a hem (ie. ribbing for 2 inches). Knit one row plain, (optional: switch to the larger needle and increase), establish patterns and knit for 12-13 inches in pattern. Begin the gusset, increasing 2 stitches every three rows for 3 inches. Place gusset stitches on holder and start underarm steeks. Knit 7 inches and begin the front neck shaping and neck steek. Decrease on either side of the steek every round for 1.5 inches, then establish the back neck steek and decrease on either side of the steek every other round on either side of both steeks for 1.5 inches. Bind off the shoulders together using the 3 needle method.

Cut the arm hole steeks, and pick up stitches. Establish the patterns on the next round and decrease on either side of the gusset for every third round until there are no more gusset stitches left. Continue decreasing sleeve stitches on every 3rd round until the sleeve measure half of it’s total intended length (aprox. 9-10 inches). Decrease every 4th round for the remaining length of the sleeve. Knit a round plain in the background color decreasing radically for a fitted cuff. Knit the cuff for 2 inches, and then bind off the sleeve, and repeat the process for the second sleeve. Cut open the neck steek, pick up stitches around the neck opening and knit a collar in corrugated ribbing for 1.5 inches. Maintain the front neck steek for the plackets. Bind off the collar, cut open the neck front steek and pick up stitches around the placket edge independently. Knit each placket and a turned hem. Sew down placket hems and weave in all remaining ends and block the sweater.

I hope the warmer weather in the northern hemisphere is treating you all well, and not keeping you from knitting too much.

Cheers, tycho

Hello everyone, I know that this is supposed to be the “Meta” Series for Station Keeping where I talk about my progress on the station keeping project and my thoughts about the prospect of blog fiction, and the intersection of storytelling and blogging. I have, however, begun to view this Monday entry, as a sort of “editor’s notes,” section like you might find on the inside of a magazine, and I think it’s a nifty way to start off a week and a Monday¹. So here I am.

Wither Station Keeping

I actually have news of Station Keeping: I wrote another installment, and while it isn’t stunning prose, I think it helps establish a few characters, and is by far better than the other two installments that I’ve written so far. It’s nice to know that with a little practice I can get back into the fiction writing mode: it stretches muscles that I’d almost forgotten that I had. These installments are necessary background and serve to establish characters, and the situation that our story is set in. They’re pretty standard fiction, and while I like them, they’re not “short stories” in any normal definition of the term. I have three more that I want to lay out at some point, but for the next little bit I’m going to be working on some funky not very plot(ting)posts, and a little bit of character documentation for internal use.

I realized, this week, that I do a great deal of character development in my mind, and sort of expect the other writers to be able to pick up on this. Thankfully they can’t read my mind (there are dark corners that no one needs to see), but this means that I have some writing to do. We also sectioned off the wiki, so I hope that we can use this as a place to develop the story a little more. Still looking for 4 writers, at least, but the more content I/we are able to write, the greater our overall success. I hope. Stay tuned.

This week, on TealArt

I have some great content this week for you. Including free instructions for designing your own knitted sweater (brain power not-included), also now that the hypertext series has formally wrapped we’ll move on to our new series. I wrote another one of the friday series' articles today and it was a blast. What is this series you ask? Wait and see. Friday has typically been the home of a more academic-related essay, and that will remain for the moment.

So lets recap where we are on TealArt these days: Mondays are for letters from the editor, and SK, tuesdays are for knitting, Wednesdays are a grab bag, Thursdays are geeky, and Fridays are for academic stuff.

It’s almost like I have a plan, and five blogs. That said, I’m actually pretty pleased with it all. I’m still trying to figure out how to boost our readership (other than imploring you to tell your friends, which you should,) but someday it’ll work, in the mean time, I’m having some fun with the site, I hope you are too.

Stay tuned and be in touch.

Cheers, Sam

Dear loyal reader(s),

As you’ve probably noticed although I wrote earlier today of TealArt as a magazine, the truth is that it is a perverse sort of magazine. The other character of TealArt is that it’s basically epistolary. This isn’t really a problem, but has produced a somewhat (un)interesting question in my mind of late…

How should I sign letters.

For some now unknown reason, for many years I signed my letters, emails, and blog post with “cheers,” which was somewhat quirky, for someone of my age and location, and I came to like it.

Then, recently, as in the last couple of months. I’ve begun signing my emails “best.” The origins of this is equally unknown, but I musts say that I don’t like it very much. Best what? I’ve always assumed that the answer is “wishes,” but I think it’s kind of dumb.

The sad thing is that it’s kind of automatic by this point.

What are you signing your emails with? What do yo prefer?

--tycho

Initially, it seems that the term “hypertext” served as general classification for any kind of dynamic text with “hyperlinks” (which of course we just call links these days). In 2007 (as opposed to 1987), hypertext is ubiquitous, and we’re constantly interacting with hypertexts, to the point that it’s just “the web” or “text,” and “links” are assumed to be intuitive at this point. As a result, the main time I hear someone say hypertext these days, they’re artists exploring the creative possibilities of the medium separate from normal (relaxed?) text. That wasn’t my intention, and thus the reason I said “hyperdigitaltext,” the expressive possibilities aside, I’m interested in the day-to-day practices of consuming and producing digital-text, and in a lot of ways, this series is a trip back to the first usages of hypertext in an attempt to think about might happens next.

Not being, you know, psychic, I’m not sure how successful this project has been. But in any case, it I have enjoyed the space to think about these issues, and I hope that you have too. This is just a roundup post, a sort of directory of the hypertext posts on Tealart for your referencing pleasures.

• Wiki Hyper(digital)text
• Hyper(digital)book Futures
• Publishing Hyper(digital)text
• Writing and Producing Hyper(digital)text
• Reading And Consuming Hyper(digital)text
• Intro to HyperText

I’ll be back next week with the introduction to the next Friday series!

Best, tycho

I have a confession: I’m really bad at watching television. Well not really. I’m just too good at it. For most of my life I haven’t grown up around a television, and so I’m not used to having TVs on, so when they are on I tend to give them my undivided attention, which is a deviation from the cultural norm where television becomes a backdrop to life. Actually the truth is that the family television spent a few years in my room, because there was space for it there, and at most I watched a couple of SF shows when they aired every week but there were periods where I wouldn’t turn it on for months.

Because of this, I really enjoy television, but these days I watch almost all of my television on my computer, usually while I knit. I also feel as if this puts me in a unique position think about the fate of video/film in light of the internet. So as customary for me here on TealArt, I’m going muse at whim! So there!

I remember collecting digital videos, usually ripped from VHS recordings of television broadcasts with commercials edited out from way back when (long before bit torrent). It wasn’t feasible for mass consumption because the files were huge, and bandwidth was narrow, but with the broadening of bandwidth, and better compression schemes, to mention nothing of phenomenal like YouTube, iTunes, pod-casting ‘the web has become much more amenable to video. This of course changes the way that we interact with video content. No longer do we have to watch the content on demand, or rent physical disks, or go to a theater, but rather download and watch, more or less at whim.

In the end, I think that this makes us more active consumers of television, because counter to conventions, watching TV is really an activity in itself worth doing, rather than something that we half-expect ourselves to be doing other things during. This is compounded by the fact that while bandwidth is wider today than it was even 3 years ago, a “hour long” (40-45mins) television show can still take several hours to download, especially at higher qualities. So independent productions tend to be significantly shorter which means that the kind of purposeful watching doesn’t take as much time. The downside is that dramatic video hasn’t really found a home on the internet outside of the traditional media via iTunes, which doesn’t really change the model very much.

With the video iPods and the apple TV (but also the Zune and PSP, I suppose,) it’s become possible for digital video’s to become more accessible, clearly portable, in ways that traditional television has never been able to be. I wonder how the on-demand aspects will interact with the portable aspect of contemporary digital video. I’d also think that there’s a space here for audio only content, I can’t imagine that video podcasting, would ever really present a challenge to audio podcasting (much less the textual blog,) in the same way that TV really superseded radio.

New technologies and media consumption practices take time to mature and grow, and I think it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of years. Will YouTube begin to have longer and more substantive content? Will we be able to get more content into smaller packages? Will production costs go down so that there will be more content avilable? And of course the question that lingers in the back of a lot of people’s minds, how will the money work out? I don’t have answers, I just know that it’ll be interesting.

best, tycho