Topic: Posts

So I have a bunch of knitting pictures that I’ve sort of been sitting on for a while. In part because I don’t take pictures very often, in part because the pictures are of poor quality, and in part because I’m not terribly fond of the sweaters that I have left. But lots of people always seem to like this sweater, so here it goes.

I’ve always called in my “Norge sweater,” but it’s just a really really simple norwegian style sweater, with a few minor modifications. Here’s the basic shot..

Yarn is Classic Elite “Montera,” that I got on cones at Susan’s Fiber Shop. It looked like it was pretty old stuff. It’s single ply wool/llama mix, and frankly, not quite as soft knitted up as I wanted it to be. And a good deal heavier than you’d expect. The patterns came from the “Traditional Scandivaian Knitting” book, and the shape was/is my own.

Though it’s probably the simplest sweater I’ve done that has color work in it, it was like my 2nd or 3rd color work sweater. I set in the armholes a little bit, and you can see that in the final. I also got to do short rows, which is nice.

Here is a detail picture of the pattern:

Things I learned from this pattern:

• Do cuffs in 2x2 rib, 1x1 is too elastic and doesn’t cuff enough. So it’s sort of limp.
• Shape the back of the neck on a sweater. It’s it can make or break a sweater.
• Never make a sweater collar longer than 1.5 inches, particularly in crew neck sweaters.
• When in doubt use the sleeves to build on and accent the body pattern. Simplify it perhaps, but never have it be totally different.
• Get used to using yarns designed for stranded knitting, like shetland, and don’t get all fancy on the process. Really. Works out better that way.
• Corollary: Accent patterns, don’t well.

I’m sure I’ve ranted about this r/evolution debate in the past, but this post about Bruce Sterling’s new novella in F&SF fired up my feelings on the subject, so here it goes.

First off, let me establish that I’m going to use the term evolution in an explicitly non-technical sense. I’m often annoyed that any sort of gradual change or adapatation is refered to as “evolution,” when in a technical sense, this isn’t even a good analogy to what’s happening. But that’s a different rant, for now I’m going submit to the dominant lexicon.

Secondly, I haven’t read Sterling’s novella, and this isn’t a reaction as much to Sterling as it is to Cory Doctorow’s gloss of the Novella. Just to be clear.

From the blog post:

“Sterling says of this story, “I’ve been in an eight-year struggle to write ‘a kind of science fiction that could only be written in the 21st century.’ With the possible exception of my forthcoming novel, this story is my best result from that effort.” I think he’s right -- about the story, anyway; I haven’t seen the novel yet.”

This seems to be a false premise. At least to me. The 21st century is an arbitrary unit, and while I think we do live in a very different world today than we did eight or ten years ago, that is always the case. Interestingly boingboing, gets a lot of milage out of looking back at forward looking bits of “culture” from the turn of the century, and the 20s-40s. These cultural artifacts seem as antiquated to us as “the kind of science fiction that could only be written in the 21st century,” will surely look in the next dozen years.

Which isn’t to say it’s the wrong thing to write, or bad, just that if you look at it the right way, “writing SF that could only be written in today’s world,” is exactly what every SF writer is (or should) always already (be) trying to write. And if you’ve been in eight year struggle to do this, maybe there some other issue that we should talk about. But then authors of cyberpunk are all about arguing that the present marks an revolutionary advancement from whatever went before.

Doctorow goes on to say:

“This is a genuinely 21st century piece of sf. It uses the slightly stilted, comic dialog form of great sf to unravel the social and technological implications of automated search, copying, governance and communications, with an enormous amount of compassion and heart. Sterling’s way of thinking about technology has often struck me as kind of stern, but years of living in Serbia appear to have given him a bit of a melancholy Slavic outlook that creeps into the story in a hundred little ways that tell you how much affection he really has for our poor tired human race.”

I fear that this mode of writing utterly current SF is really based on some sort of ill gotten notion that if we write about the present we’ll be seen as being “more real,” than if we write about space ships and lasers. Which is all kinds of silly, and this sort of critical trend is dangerous, because it doesn’t promote a diversity of opinion and approach. This is sort of a reenactment of the downfall of cyberpunk all over again. Or maybe more correctly given that it’s being propagated--at least primarily--by Sterling and Gibson (and Doctorow, though he wasn’t publishing during the “high cyberpunk period”), part of the protracted decent of that movement.

Don’t get me wrong, I rather enjoy the concept of cyberpunk, and some of the post-cyberpunk imaginations in much the way that I enjoy space opera: as a platform for story telling that isn’t necessarily true to what’s going to happen, but enjoyable and full of possibility nonetheless. At the same time I think the argument that cyberpunk is more real, and in touch with everyone’s lived realities, because it is gritty, and dark, and current is absurd.

And I think this goes back to the r/evolutionary argument: do we understand history as a slow progression, or a series of distinct epochs?

The question is open of course, but I tend to believe that revolutions, of the intellectual/cultural/historical scope that cyberpunk seems to be responding to, don’t really happen. Other kinds of revolution? Maybe, and if/when they do, they’re never has temporally clear cut as anyone would like them to be.

Sorry guys…

tycho out.

Onward and Upward!

News from the malaise that I’ve been battling this week: I’ve been able to get involved and interested in my knitting, to the point where I’ve been able to spend a few very restorative hours knitting. I also have made some good progress on the TealArt redesign, and some other planning related things. But this is a knitting post.

I just have the last final motif of the first sleeve of the morocco jacket. It’s looking a little big, but then again, it’s a jacket, and I’m not really worried about it. It might work out yet.

The turkish tile sweater is about 2.5 inches into the yoke. I’ve decided that in order for this to be the right size, I’m going to have to knit like, say 6-6.5 inches of the yoke before I begin the neck shaping, so that the armhole is wide enough. I’ve been over this before, but because there are going to be effectively 2 inches of sleeve decreased between the shoulder/neck join and the edge of the body (ie, the traditional point where drop-shouldered sleeves attach to the body), I think it’s important that I make the opening large enough.

Though to be fair, I do have a persistant fear of making sleeves to narrow. I had a couple--ok, maybe more like 3--of my early sweaters that failed completely because the sleeves weren’t just right, due to errors like this. And particularly since these sweaters are meant as jackets… I think all is well.

Current knitting television: old episodes of Star Trek Enterprise. It’s trashy and the writing/acting makes me cringe, but the dog is cute and I think the time travel that wove throughout the entire series could be really cool. But I have a thought about the future of Trek:

Trek makes good weekly television SF. I’d really like to see a new Trek series set a generation or two after the beginning of the next generation. And incorporate all of the things that has made previous trek shows great:

• Inside jokes with the fans (Enterprise, has/had the potential to do this by setting up story elements that we would see ramifications of in the “future”)
• A war (Deep Space Nine)
• Racial/Ethnic Conflict (DS9 the bajorian/cardasian conflict.)
• A Rebellion (The Maquis; TNG/DS9/VOY)
• Time travel (TOS Movies/Voyager/ENT)
• A variable cast of characters (DS9; Worf entered DS9 late, Rom and Nog became more important, the Dax change over. the arc of Garak. Etc. Characters were also promoted, and developed, and there were more regular-cast aliens than previous series.)
• Dynamic Captains/leaders (DS9 mostly, but also Voyager.)
• Suspense and Exploration, a sense of wonder. That is, good “shows of the week” (TNG/Voyager).
• Connection to “real world” (TOS).
• Some comedic elements. (TOS movies).
• Political Intrigue (DS9; this was the first series to have an admiral make more than a handful of appearances. And there were glimpses of ongoing battles inside of the cardasians and klingons.)

It might be an interesting exercise to see what people think makes good Trek. While I’m not a die hard fan, I think I’ve always found Trek to be pretty entertaining, particularly for knitting background, and I’ve seen a good deal of it.

Thoughts?

I have other things to do. Cheers!

Onward and Upward!

I wanted to write something, a week in about my experiences with OmniFocus, so here it is.

The truth is that I’ve been in a bit of a funk all week. Not writing, while I figure out I need to do with this story. But I’m also spending a more time this week knitting and sorting through things. I think some time to sit back and reflect on what’s going on before I dive into what ever comes next.

Good plan? Right?

Right.

So as part of this reflect and regrouping I’ve been knitting more, reports of this appear on the blog, so I won’t bore you with this. I also reorganized my files, which very much needed to happen. And I’m using omnifocus.

I want to say that I absoultly love this app. Everything about it just works the way you’d expect it to. There aren’t bugs, it’s pretty, and it all works with a really robust data framework, thingy.

The problem is that I don’t work very well with this program. I get a lot of things done, and that’s good but I’m not very good at doing my project planning in a way that works with the whole system. Which is something that I’m working on a little bit, but is still frustrating.

Such is life, I suppose.

Oh, and by the way I did a little bit of work with drupal last night. I’m not sure that I’m making progress, but I have a better idea of what needs to happen.

Onward and Upward!

Ha! So I was pretty much on the ball about apple’s releases yesterday. I think in general, it’s a good move, but it doesn’t affect very much for me.

My one complaint is that, you can get the base level MacPro for less than the MacBookAir with the solid state drive. As Dave says, “that just seems wrong.” Part of the joy of the 12" ibooks and powerbooks is that they were cheaper than their 14" and 15" counterparts, and only a little bit under powered. It’s clear that while the other apple laptops could (and often do) function as people’s only/primary computer, these new ones, are meant as second or third computers for people who have an imac or a mac pro already.

I’m not going to get a new computer for a few months, The consensus is that there’ll be new macbook pros sometime soon (WWDC?), and I think I want to wait and see what happens with that before I take the plunge. Particularly because my current computer, for good or ill still works.

Speaking of Zoe, I didn’t get her a new battery, which I should do at some point, I’m mostly lazy. My battery time is down to about 40 minutes, which isn’t too bad for coming up on 3 years.

In other news, I did some organizing of my subversion repository last night. I think I’m caught in some endless battle of file organization between the “one folder with lots of files and rely on search tools to find things” method and the “lots of specific folders” method. I’m back in the “have more folders” camp. For whatever that’s worth. It’s super nice that subversion keeps file history through renames and moves. I’m too nerotic for anything else.

Anyway, I got up a bit late, and I have a bunch of little things I want to do before work today.

Onward and Upward!

Ok, I got pictures of my first sweater class and I wanted to share this picture with you even though I look a little bit odd in the picture. Also I’d like to note that I do, often wear other sweaters at the shop, I just always seem to be wearing that one when my picture is taken.

In my knitting news, I decided that the gray “turkish tile” sweater was to the underarm point, so I’m casting on for the armhole steeks in this round. Exciting. The sweater will go much faster now, because I’m setting the sleeve in so far. I’m thinking that if I stick with it the body of this sweater will be done in the next week or two, thought I think it’s pretty unlikely that I will stick with it. The yoke of the sweater is knit over 114 fewer stitches than the body of the sweater. by the time I get to the shoulders there will be 108 stitches.

Speedy speedy.

Anyway. On with the day.

Onward and Upward!

So I knit 2-2.5 inches on this sweater (turkish tile) last night. That’s a pretty good amount for one day, and I’m pretty psyched about figuring out how this is going to go.

It’s going faster because I’m knitting over 114 fewer stitches, to set in the armholes to shoulder width. I like being able to have something that’s a bit more fitted than the drop shouldered sweater, which is by now, ubiquitous in my wardrobe.

This particular armhole shaping is soemthing that I haven’t seen (exactly) anywhere yet, so it’s kind of cool to be working on something new, having said that, this “garment framework,” will really only be useful in sweaters which have a pattern with a strong diagonal, because in other situations, there are sleeve shaping methods that would be more effective and aesthetic.

But I’m having fun with this sweater, and it’s a good sweater.

The one problem that I’ve come to realize is that because the armholes are so deep, in order for this sweater to fit over other sweaters (which it should because it’s a jacket), the armholes need to be even deeper/longer than I thought, because my usual armhole measurements are based on sleeves that are 3 inches shorter, or there abouts. I don’t need to make them that much longer, but a little would be helpful.

I’m working on putting together a small color-work (2 color/stranded) sweater “master class.” Because I want to teach something like this, and because I’m really insistent that this is not a difficult technique, and I think anyone who wants to knit this knit this could do a sweater. But then my whole knitting MO is to sort of jump in head first and see what happens, and I think it would work. It’s something…

Anyway, I have a busy day…

Onward and Upward!

Ok, my topicality and tagging system hasn’t quite readjusted itself, but I have an entry worth posting here. Almost.

I knit a bunch on the Turkish Tile sweater. I’m probably about a pattern repeat away from the beginning f the armholes, which means I’ve officially broken the back of the body. I am however, going to probably go back to the interminable sleeve knitting once I am to that point, because it’s the right thing to do.

I don’t quite have the whole thing figured out, I must admit. I’ve been looking over jared’s tomten for inspiration. I want to have a hood on this for some perverse reason, but I can’t fathom a way to get it to come out correctly because of the requirement to keep this all in the pattern. Wait. I just did. If all the increasing and decreasing happens next to the steek it should work, though I’m not sure that I could increase enough fast enough, and find a way to get the rear-top of the hood to not be pointy, again while maintaining some semblance of the color pattern.

My current plan for the arms/shoulders is to set them in really deeply, a la the tomten and joyce’s olive branch sweater, and do Jennie Bajus’ short row shaping in the round, and then continue that decrease down the top of the sleeve. With some short row stuff for 10-20 rows. Even if no one understands this knitting talk, I hope you are at the very least entertained

New Macs are going to be announced in like 20 minutes. Looks like the ultra small laptop is for real. Called the “air.”

I’m not yet sure how I feel about this. Questions that remain in my mind:

• Is it going to run real OS X and not some sort of embedded flavor (likely to be the real thing, but it’s a question.)
• Are we going all the way to flash hard drive and no optical drive, or is this really just a reinvention of the 12 inch ibook/powerbook? (I’m voting on the later; I think there’s a production capacity/supply issue with flash memory, and the small laptop is something apple succeeds with, so it’s been disheartening that they haven’t had something in this space for a while.)

While I’m not in the market for a new computer for myself yet, (talk to me in a few months) I will be ordering an iMac for my mother when the apple store returns this afternoon/evening.

Currently I have a 15 inch PowerBook. And it’s my only computer, and I’m likely to be in a situation where my only computer is a laptop for the life of the next computer that I buy. I don’ know that I want my entire digital life to be stuck on such a small screen, frankly. I think I could go to 13 inch, but probably not smaller. If the Macbook as we know now it is canceled, I’d consider buying one of the last ones, for this reason…

Anyway, I’ll post a recap in a few hours when we know something serious.

So stay tuned…

Onward and Upward!

Ok, I said a while ago, that I was going to run out of good titles for posts that weren’t essays any even the most informal sense, but rather journal entries in the most conventional sense. So here we have “cold feet” literally, the only thing on my mind. (Don’t worry, I’ve since put on wool socks.)

I spent most of this weekend relaxing and unwinding. I didn’t get enough reading done, of course, but I think it was good to have some time to chill. I got some good knitting done, I watched some enjoyable television, mucked around with the computer productively, and worked a number of hours, and while I have been costing into the new week, I think I’m feeling pretty good about the world and my place in it.

I am, apparently, going to reflect in this post on my current state of mind vis a vis technology. Because that makes sense. I mean I am a huge geek, but it’s clear to me that so much of what I do is constrained by my computer usage. Writing happens almost entirely with the computer, a lot of my knitting time happens while I’m watching TV on my computer, my academic articles and database is on my computer. You get the idea.

The rest of the post is below the fold, because I’m going to be humane, but you really should read it. ;)

I’m still using Tiger (Mac OS 10.4) Despite what Andy/Chris says, I kind of would like to move to the new operating system, at some point. My mother is going to buy an iMac this week, after it’s clear what Steve announces tomorrow morning, and so with the extra computer in the mix, we’ll have a spare that we can use to shift data around on so that we can do clean installs on all of our machines which should be nice.

I write here about productivity a fair bit, and I’ve certainly sussed a fair bit about organizational methodologies like GTD from places like 43 folders. I’ve never had a lot of problems that productivity geeks seem to address. I’m good at writing things down, I’m good at making the write kind of lists, I don’t have problems with things falling through the cracks, and generally I don’t spend too much time futzing with the system.

So usually, new programs and productivity doodads, seem really cool for about the length of time it takes me to write a blog post, and then I’ve moved on, back whatever it was that I was doing previously. Recently I got the distinct feeling that what I was doing earlier, basically project based text file lists, with no automation, wasn’t cutting it. This is in part because I’ve not been using it properly for a while, and perhaps more importantly because I’m starting to get busier, and I need something more robust. So I downloaded OmniFocus, which is the long awaited Killer GTD App from OmniGroup. It’s descended from a hodgepodge of apple scripts that I tried and abandoned a while ago called KinklessGTD, and I have to say that it’s really amazing. I mean I don’t quite grok everything, and my perennial problems with GTD of basically not using contexts and having projects that are too big and ongoing… But I mean other than that.

It’s to early to tell, but I’m giving a preliminary thumbs up.

Part of my frustration in this sphere is tied into my state of mind regarding the way my files are organized. While SVN, as I’ve written earlier has been a great tool that I’ve come to really enjoy using and depend on, it means that I’m disinclined to reorganize files, and rearrange how things are laid out. Which is bad because I think some part of my brain really thinks on a cork wall and wants to move files around just to see how it looks or suits my state of mind. This is something that isn’t productive, so I’m fighting it, but it is throwing me for loop and i need to figure something out here. Ah well. Time will tell.

The next post had better be more interesting. That’s all I’m saying

I often ask myself what separates the “real” geeks, from the rest of us?

Ok, maybe not often, but sometimes.

Apropos of my conversation with ProspectiveAdvisor this morning I’ve been thinking about the mis/remembered history of the “geek” identity. I mean at one point the geeks were the awkward and intense folks who were really good with technology and games (ok, I don’t understand that, but we’ll take it.) Being a geek wasn’t a cool thing, and being a geek wasn’t “sexy.” Now at least in some circles, with the rise of the commercial Internet, I think it’s fair to suggest that in some context geek and hipster have sort of meshed in some perverse way. I mean computers have gotten easier to use, and this means that the boundaries of geek is wider.

My grandfather quit using computers when windows 3.1 came out because he thought it would open the BBSes to too many people and ruin the joy experience. While I wouldn’t make that argument in those terms (or draw that line in the sand) I think I’m commenting on a parallel phenomena.

But I’m getting too far afield.

So now since, in a way, we’re all geeks, what separates normal geek from uber-geek. What sorts of usage things to the real geeks do that you and I don’t do as much?

Near as I can tell, there are two major things:

1. Templates 2. Automate

Which boils down to basically: your computer is great at doing repetitive tasks, so make it do them, rather than doing it yourself. I think this became most clear to me as I’ve made the transition to using LaTeX for any kind of document that needs to end up on paper. LaTeX really powerful, and really complex, but figuring out like 90% of what makes it go, is all in the header and footer, so all I have to do is get templates ready for my documents, and then drop in the text that I’m using. Simple.

In OS X, under file info (Command-I in finder) there’s a little box that says “Stationary Pad.” If you check that, every time you open that file, finder will make a copy of the file and then open that one. There are also ways to use templates inside of TextMate, Quicksilver, and so forth. Nifty. Ok, geek foo time saving skill number one. I have that.

Geek foo skill number two, is automate. If you find yourself doing the same thing again and again, stop. Figure out a way to automate this. Most programs have a macro function, which I think is utterly misunderstood. I you have a series of find and replaces, you can just open up a test document, do the find and replaces, and save the macro so you can do it again and again. If you’re a perl genius you could probably write it out in your sleep, but then, where’s the fun in that?

Ok. Nifty.

So the question is, what’s number 3. There has to be another trick, that I’m missing. Something you can do that doesn’t require learning Lisp.

Sigh.