Over the past few weeks, I have developed (redeveloped?) the habit of pushing through a few hundred words of fiction writing a day on the train. If nothing else, this means I get a few pages done a day. I sometimes wish that I were able to write more, writing something is better than nothing, and I’m within a chapter and some change of the end of this beast, so I’ll take it. Some, dare I say most, days the writing is pretty easy, but it can get a bit rough. The problem is really when the writing is impossible. After all, if writing were easy, than we wouldn’t really think of it as work.

Most of the time, I don’t feel “blocked,” but I got close last week. I got to the end of a section and I realized I was in a bit of a corner. I’d changed the order of a few little events, and I didn’t think it would change much.

Except it did, which left me pretty stuck.

It wasn’t an unsolvable problem, but because I was faced with writing a scene under a different set of assumptions than the one I’d been thinking about, I didn’t know how to proceed. My solution was to take a step back, think about things, and then redesign the next scene so that it accomplished what I needed. This took a day or two.

Most of the time the only real marker for progress in writing is in “number of words recorded,” but the truth is this is the fun part of writing. The hard part is, and the part that I had gotten stuck in was, figuring out what’s worth writing. Here are some interesting lessons about writing for your consideration:

• Sometimes the most productive thing you can do as a writer is to not write and spend time figure out what doesn’t need to be said. It doesn’t make your writing longer, but it does make your writing more clear and more useful as a result.

• As a corallary, sometimes the most important thing you can do to a text is remove stuff that is distracting.

• Although having too many “open projects” on your plate can make you feel like you’re spread too thin, it’s true that having a lot of things in the air increases your chance of getting thigns done, because having multiple projects in different stages lets you get more work done in general.

  Sometimes the best way to solve these kinds of problems with writing is to take a break and go for a walk. Or a couple of walks. This is difficult to do on the train and can be hard to practice effectively in more conventional situations life. What’s the difference between taking a break to clear your mind, and breaking your writing ritual/habit? It’s hard to say.

If you do it right, the great thing is that after a break and some serious thinking time, a clear mind makes it possible to get past bigger challenges accomplish something important. I’ll leave the judgements of “how much time away is enough,” and “how much time is too much,” to the reader (and myself!) as an exercise, but don’t always be afraid of taking a break.

And if you won’t, I won’t either.

Onward and Upward!

I wish there was a good way, in the context of a blog post or some other convenient digital media, to regularly say: “I’ve done some things, you may be interested in them,” and “I’d like to do some things, here are some notes of what I think I’d like to be working on in the next little bit.” I’ve yet to find a good way to get in the habit of writing this kind of post.

My instinct is to have something that I can template and automate pretty strongly so that I can mostly focus on doing things rather than writing blog posts about doing things. Or as is presently the case, blog posts blog posts about doing things. Oy. Ideas and suggestions on this topic would be most appreciated.

So what have I been up to? Well…

• I got back into writing fiction this week after several weeks away. I was in a difficult part of the story and life got very… full… and I stopped writing regularly. These things happen, but it’s good to be back at least some.

  After the work I did just last night, I realize that I’m much closer to the end of this novel than I had thought. Even if things go very slowly for the next few months, I think I’ll be able to get this thing done by the end of May. I just have to write about a thousand words to finish Chapter 11, and there are three to four little vignettes in chat per 12 to wrap the whole thing up. And it’s going to be awesome.

  I’m super excited to be done with this project and to be able to spend some time cleaning it up and making it an awesome text, but also being able to work on making other things I’ve written better, and to be able to write new things, with my undivided attention.

• I’ve updated the /posts/anti-rodentia and the associated discussion page with some changes that I think make the system work much better.

• I’ve upgraded to Firefox 4, which I really like a lot: it’s much faster, it’s much more minimal (visually) which is great. Also all of my plugins and extensions work without issue. Good job!

• I went through a blast from my past when I pulled together the queer theories page, which does some--at this point utterly redundant--definitional work about what it means to be queer, and potential limitations on queer identity/politics in the era of a broadly defined queer.

• I’ve started adding recurring tasks to keep me on track with writing and posting entries to this post. This means I don’t end up posting things months after I write them. As was the case with Mutt Sucks Less, a post I wrote many months ago and posted with some revisions last week.

• I made a folk page for frequent comm enter and discourse participant Matt Lundin that includes a snippet which makes a list (and RSS feed!) of all pages that link to “madalu” or are tagged with “madalu” (his handle). You can see this by editing the page, and use it when making your own folk pages. Which you should totally do.

Have a good weekend!

At POSSCON there were a lot of talks, most of which did little to interest me. I don’t think this was the fault of the conference: I’m a weirdo. I tend to be developer-grade geeky, but am still not a developer and I wasn’t otherwise representative of the general audience. By the end, I was starting to think that the thing most people talk about at conferences isn’t very cutting edge. I don’t think it’s just POSSCON (surely not!) but I’ve not been to enough conferences to be able to speak definitively. In any case, I’d like to propose in open forum (i.e. this wiki,) a number of conference presentations that I’d like to see or would be willing to present.

If you’re interested in any of these presentation, or want to help/inspire me to work up notes, please create or add to the wiki pages linked to below.

Emacs Productivity and Production, Org-Mode and Beyond

Emacs, with its extensive feature list, endless customizations, and arcane approach to user interface, is often the butt of many jokes. While some of this is certainly valid, there are many incredibly innovative and intensely useful pieces of software written for Emacs. This talk would center on the org-mode package, but would branch out to talk workflows and automation in Emacs and using Emacs to help people make awesome work.

The Year of The Linux Desktop: Amazing Window Manager Paradigms

I’m always distraught by the way that discussion of “The Linux Desktop” revolves around convincing people that the major desktop environments (KDE/GNOME) either: are feature comparable to the Windows/OS X desktop or are able to “out-Windows” and “out-OS X” each other/Windows/OS X. Both of these propositions seem somewhat tenuous and unlikely to be convincing in the long run, and do little to inspire enthusiasm for the platform. This is sad because there is a lot of very interesting activity in the Linux desktop space. This talk would present and explore a couple of projects in the tiling window manger space and explain why this kind of software is what should drive adoption of the Linux desktop.

Cloud Independence, Infrastructure, and Administration

The “cloud computing” paradigm and the shift to thinking about technology resources as service based raises some interesting questions about software/computing freedom and the shape of data ownership in the contemporary moment. This talk would address these questions, provide an overview of how to “go it alone,” and how to be responsible for managing and administering for your own personal “cloud infrastructure.”

I use a mail client called mutt. The quality of this software may largely explain my opinion this post on the continued relevance of email

I think mutt warrants a bit of extra attention for two reasons. First, because I think there are enough people out there who don’t use mutt who could and perhaps should, and I’d like to do a little encouraging; and second,like all fundamentally wonderful pieces of software, mutt can teach us something important about what makes technology great and pleasurable to use.

Working with any new kind of software is always a challenge. It is unfortunate that “features” and “functions” are the currency by which we judge software. Which is unfair to both the technology and ourselves, as the utility and quality of these features/functions depends on a number of subjective/individual factors. That said, with regards to mutt, my list is as follows:

• Mutt is agnostic on the editor question. I suspect the fact that I could use any text editor I wanted to write email was probably my original reason for switching to mutt in the first place. It’s amazing what a sane editing experience can do for the overall experience of writing emails.
• Support for PGP/GPG encryption. Signing and encrypting emails with PGP is probably only a minor advantage, and of limited actual utility, but I think it’s important and valuable to have this capability in your email client. After all, the success of PGP depends on a crowd effect: if it’s easy, sign all your email and hope that others will join you. Mutt makes this easy, which is a good thing indeed.
• Mutt operates independently of mail transmission protocols, which are universally flawed. In many ways, by not including support for mail transmission, mutt is more useful and more flexible than it would be if it was designed to handle mail transmission. Having said that, recent versions of mutt have internal support for IMAP/POP/SMUT. Not that I’d use it or recommend that you do use it and I suspect most mutt users don’t either.
• Mutt operates independently of mail storage format: you can maintain complete control over your mail data, and store email pretty much however you like. While this may be a burden to some, I’m somewhat controlling when it comes to data storage and preservation, and I think email archives are incredibly important. And I’m a weirdo about email storage.
• Mutt’s “sidebar patch” isn’t even a part of the core of the software, but it’s absolutely crucial to my experience of the software. Basically it gives you a heads-up-display of your mailboxes and tells you at a glance: if there are new messages and how many messages (new, flagged, read) are in an mailbox. While it eats into some screen real estate, it’s generally unused screen space and it’s more than worth the expenditure of pixels.
• Mutt runs on console and can be compiled on pretty much any contemporary UNIX-like system. Chances are there are packages for most operating system. So I feel pretty confident that I’ll pretty much be able to use mutt no matter what kind of system I end up using. Also console apps generally run pretty well in screen, which makes them accessible (and persistent) across the internet.

Onward and Upward!

This is a post about mobile technology in an unconventional sense. I think I’m probably an extreme “mobile” technology user: I ride a lot commuter rail and use my laptop extensively on the train. Then, I work on a laptop all day. In the evening, I often do at least a little additional work, again on the same laptop. There is, after all, always writing (like this post!) to fill any remaining free time.

I’m not a terribly typical mobile user. My main “mobile device” is a little ThinkPad (and sometimes a larger ThinkPad,) running Linux and a lot of Lisp (emacs and otherwise.) It’s not ideal for every situation: there are times when I just can’t bare to open the laptop again or it’s unfeasible (and there’s always the Kindle for times like those.) Most of the time it works well.

It’s hard to omit discussion of the “tablet” and the iPad. For me, the fact that tablets are not general purpose computers is a huge deterrent. This is probably not the case for everyone, though there are lots of shades to this debate. I think the more interesting question is not “do people need general purpose tablets?” and more “how will more ubiquitous embeded-type systems effect the way people will approach ‘general purpose’ computing environments” from here on out? Honestly, this in computing practice has already happened, but I think it will continue to pose important questions for users and developers as it continues.

The struggle, for me, revolves less around the question “how do I work remotely?” and more around “how do I also work when I’m at a desk?” The adjustment can be hard: For a while, I was so used to working on the train, and in random chairs, that I had a hard time focusing if the computer wasn’t actually on my lap. Bad ergonomics is only the start of this.

The current solution is to set up desks and workstations that use the same laptops and systems so that I’m not perpetually switching between fixed computers and mobile computers. I’m also keen for these desks to have their own appeal: bigger monitors, nice keyboards, and easy to attach power cords. I’ve also attempted to tie together all of the “I’d like to switch between laptop-mode and desk-mode,” functions (e.g. network connection, monitor attachment, window layout) into easy to trigger operations, so I can get started more quickly. Nice. Seamless. Efficient.

The lessons: There are many ways to maintain technical (cyborg) coherence despite/during geographical movement and sometimes that technology isn’t particularly cutting edge. Sometimes the best way to break yourself of a habit you don’t like is to play a game with yourself where you establish a more attractive option. Finally, a very small change or automation can be enough to take something difficult and make it much easier or something unpleasantly and make it workable.

I realized that I made a lot of changes to the way my websites were arranged and worked recently, and I thought that it would be good to write a few about the hottest new thing, and my rationale for messing everything up. Again.

Basically, I took the CriticalFutures.com site, and turned it into the posts section here, moving a bunch of content back to tychoish.com that used to be here. This time, everything is powered by ikiwiki, and while I callously dropped all comments¹, I think the move is one of general and overall improvement.

At the same time, I think there are challenges. Rather than comment pages, there’s now a “discourse” link at the top left of the pages, which lets you sign in and create a new page for discussion related to the page you’re currently viewing. I liked the name “discourse” rather than “discussion,” but I fear there may be some confusion. I can change it over back without much issue, if any one feels strongly.

Mostly, it’s still the same blog that it’s always been, and I’m having fun with it. The essay/rhizome divide may turn out to be tenuous in the long term, and it might disappear, but for now it makes sense. I’ve not been doing as many wiki-based things, though I have worked on a queer theories page, and the technical writing section is something that I’m pleased with. Wikis are much more difficult to use and produce than one would initially guess. The concept is simple, the software is simple, and the work is remarkably time consuming and difficult to do right. And then there’s the problem of contributors.

I don’t know how it’s going to sort out, but I look forward to hearing from you, and making stuff on this domain.

I recently attended POSSCON as part of my day-job. I don’t usually blog directly about this kind of stuff (“You like to keep your church and state separate,” a fellow attendee said, which fits.) But, I had a number of awesome conversations with the speakers, attendees and sponsors, that may spawn a series of brief posts here. POSSCON is a regional open source convention that drew developers, leaders of informational technology departments, and IT consultants of various types.

I had a number of conversations that revolved around the adoption of open source in opposition to proprietary systems. People asked questions like “what do we have to do to get more people to use open source software?” and many people apologized for doing work with proprietary software for mostly economic reasons (e.g. “I have a .NET development job,” or “people need windows administration and I can’t turn away work.")

This led me to have one of three reactions:

1. Working with any specific (proprietary) technology, particularly because you have to make ends meet should never require excusing. There are cases where “working with proprietary technology,” may more like “building a business model on proprietary technology,” and that sort of thing needs to be watched out for, but I don’t think it’s morally ambiguous to make a living.

2. I’m not sure that the success of technology, particularly open source, is determined solely on the basis of adoption rates. Successful technology is technology that efficiently allows people/cyborgs to do work, not overwhelmingly ubiquitous technology.

3. In many many contexts, open source technology has triumphed over proprietary alternatives: Linux-based systems are the dominant UNIX-like operating system. OpenSSH is the dominant SSH implementation (and remote terminal protocol/implementation). Darwin/FreeBSD is incredibly successful (as Mac OS X.) Other domains where open source packages have very high (dominating) adoption rates: OpenSSL, gcc, perl/python/php/ruby (web development), Apache/Lighttpd/nginx (web servers) etc.

While I think the end-user desktop isn’t unimportant, I think there may be merit in playing to the strengths of open source (servers, infrastructure, developers.) Additionally, it seems more productive to have the discussion about “how do we advance open source,” couched in terms of a battle for technological dominance in which open source has already won.

And Free Software/Open Source has won. While there remain sectors and domains where non-free software remains prevalent and business models that don’t value user’s freedom, I think that most people who know anything about technology will say that all paths forward lead toward a greater level of software freedom.

Maybe this is a symptom of the situation in which I work and maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I don’t think so. Thoughts?

I hate computer mice. A lot.

The closest I’ve gotten to liking a pointing device is an acquiescence to the TrackPoint on the laptops I use. That’s the little red dot in the middle of the ThinkPad keyboards. My problem with computer mice is the context switch between “typing-mode” and “mousing-mode.” Moving between the modes is jarring and inefficient. I’ve been using StumpWM and other similar window managers for years now and as my need for the mouse decreases my irritation with needing to use a mouse increases.

I’ve been struggling for a few months with a bit of a problem: Several months ago I got a new bigger ThinkPad, a T510, while it has my beloved TrackPoint there is also a TouchPad. After years of only using laptops with the red dot, this was very disconcerting. How did I keep from triggering the touchpad with my wrists? Couldn’t I just turn the damn thing off?

I did, and everyone who tried to use the computer after that was dismayed, and I didn’t care. Except, I found out that, apparently, disabling the touchpad also disables all non-TrackPoint pointers. So when I plugged the laptop into the docking station, the external mouse didn’t work.

Blast.

The solution to disabling and enabling the mouse on the fly, that follows isn’t as pretty as I’d like, but it works.

UPDATE: Turns out that my original procedure only appears to work. I’ve made the following modification to the toggle-mouse script, using a stock xorg.conf file.

File: /usr/bin/toggle-mouse

#!/bin/sh

TOUCHPAD=`xinput list | egrep “TouchPad” | sed -r ’s/.id=([0-9]).*$/1/'`

if [ [xinput list-props “$TOUCHPAD” | egrep -o “[0-9]$” | head -n1]{.title-ref} -eq 0 ]; then xinput set-prop “$TOUCHPAD” “Device Enabled” 1 elif [ [xinput list-props “$TOUCHPAD” | egrep -o “[0-9]$” | head -n1]{.title-ref} -eq 1 ]; then xinput set-prop “$TOUCHPAD” “Device Enabled” 0 else xmpp-notify “Your mouse is probably screwed up somehow” fi

Test the output of “xinput list | egrep "TouchPad" | sed -r 's/.*id=([0-9]*).*$/\1/'”, and inspect “xinput list” to make sure that the value of $TOUCHPAD is the xorg id of the touchpad (or other device) that you want to disable.

I’d actually recommend not putting this in /usr/bin/, but just so long as it’s in the path. Then run toggle-mouse at the command line. You may need to run this as root-suid, for your system system is configured. Tweak the TOUCHPAD variable as needed.

If you have a better solution, I would be terribly interested in hearing about it.