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What? You were expecting humor? Heh.

tycho discussion of plans for tomorrow, turn to discussion of the weather: but it’s going to be fucking cold tomorrow, and I don’t want to have to walk 4 blocks in the snow.

C.E: It is going to be bad tomorrow?

tycho: you were the one who was out there today, it was hell.

C.E.: But I think it’s going to be like 40, I hear.

tycho outraged that the weather broke: What! G-d! What the hell kind of dumb ass weather is that?

Pause.

tycho: You know, up north I’d always just dress in the morning for the weather the previous day, and it was almost always right, maybe it’d be a little bit iffy in October and April, but generally, I was ok. Here, since May, it’s like the weather is out there to fuck with you. Snow, followed by the fifties. Sixty degree weather alternating with 100 degree weather. I hope someone’s amused because I’m not!

Pause. tycho returns to reading his book.

So I posted the following snip-it to TealArt.com the other day:

TealArt is a project that I’ve been running--with some great help--more or less for the last seven years or so. It’s been a great ride, even if I didn’t have a clue what I was doing most of the time.

But recently I have felt like I’m getting a clue. Wacky, idea I know. TealArt isn’t going away though, but it is changing. All of our archives, or most of them have been imported into our current sites here and here. Links to the archives should still work, for a while, but eventually those will break as well.

I’m in the (slow) process of a redesign that will bring out a new TealArt, for the future. It won’t be a blog, per se, we have those elsewhere. But there are projects that I think need a home separate from our blogs and TealArt seems like the place for those projects.

These are the projects that I’ve been talking about in various forums for months: station keeping and science fiction, group knit along projects, and knitting designs, maybe a podcast some day.

The thing is that to do this, we need a redesign. A totally new back end for the site. And I think a clean slate will do us good, so I’m taking everything down while I do the rebuilding, and I’ll see you back here in a few weeks with a whole new site and new updates.

I’ll see you around in the mean time, and do be in touch. See you soon!

tycho garen 8 December 2007

I’ve been mentioning the great TealArt redesign of 07/08 for a while now, and I think it’s time to get this underway. But because I’m an extrovert and this is my blog I’m going to explain some of my thinking. on the subject. It’ll be below the fold, so you won’t have to read about it if you don’t want to, and I swear for all the knitters, that I’ll post about knitting soon.

Ok, so the main things that I want TealArt to do in the near future are: be a space to host station keeping, host knit-a-longs, and display/sell some of my knitting designs. All of my web-projects before tychoish have been about community, and I like that aspect of--at least my thinking about them, even if thats now how the reality works out.

While I can’t blame all of the failure/faltering that I’ve experienced in the last 7+ years¹ to the software we used, it has been a problem. Wordpress is great for powering blogs and I think it’s probably one of the best things around in terms of server-side web-apps, and it is very flexable, but I feel the more you stretch it to do things outside of its usual profile, it gets a bit… kludge-y, and awkward. Community stuff and Multi-poster setups are difficult (I actually like the 1-10 system we had back in B2, more), and if you want to mash-up various kinds of outputs it can get tedious. And that’s fine. As I’ve blathered from time to time, having one piece off software that does everything isn’t always the best thing in the world, even if it feels like it sometimes.

So knowing that, and knowing that I want to have community features (discussion forums, user profiles, etc.) to support knitting projects and SK and maybe even a podcast. I’m thinking about switching to using a cms called drupal which is a great project and there’s tons of power here, and the best thing is that it’s designed to do exactly what I want, I think.

The issue is that the learning curve is intense. Intensely intense. And I mostly know how to use and tweak wordpress in my sleep. And while I don’t much like having to tweak code, I’d rather instead to spend time knitting and writing, I’m starting to feel like knowing drupal is something that needs to happen. I have another non-tealart site that really needs drupal, and I think knowing something about the system will be quite quite helpful.

So I’m jumping down the rabbit hole, slowly. I hope. Wish me luck. Unless I chicken out, if anyone knows something about drupal I’d love to hear from you.

Onward and Upward!

-- tycho

I really like big projects, you know a big project that takes a long time to finish, like say a long knitted jacket on needles with a 2.5 millimeter diameter, or a novel. I think it’s a personality thing. I also really like the thrill of finishing big projects; I also really like the fact that projects like these can get done. It is possible to finish a sweater. It is possible to write a novel. There are a lot of things that we dedicate time to (often “work” things) that are never ending, and I think this is why the big-project thing is a useful adaptation: it makes it possible to obsess over a project, for a while, but then, eventually it’s done.

I think this is part of the reason why I need to go to graduate school: it fits my temperament. It would, however, be impossible to communicate this with the admissions committee, but perhaps in person, I’ll be able to communicate it without coming off as creepy

In any case, while I’ve been pretty productive this week, what with the big paper and the grad school application, all my other projects got moved to the back burner. So I find myself without a big primary project underway. Here’s what I’m (thinking about) juggling.

• the redesign of the TealArt website
• Breakout, the novel project I’m working on
• design of the next sweater project
• more graduate school stuff
• station keeping, season 2
• revise the Mars novella and think about publication (contingent).

I figure I have 3 weeks before I need to have a new sweater design ready to go. Season 2 of station keeping depends on having the new TealArt website ready to go. The new TealArt is something that requires a ton of work, I think, but is something I desperately need to do in order to be able to host the knit along-s that I want to be able to host. And of course I want to write, and I haven’t been able to do that for me in a while, so that’s up there. The novella edits are contingent upon getting feedback from readers. I have a really entertaining offer concerning the book publication, but again, contingent upon feedback.

So that’s what I’m up to. Hows you?

Onward and Upward!

I submitted the first of my graduate school applications yesterday. The next four will be easier. I’m really happy with my statement of purpose, less happy with the writing sample (but I’m applying to be a social scientist, so most places don’t want a sample) but my sense is that the writing sample isn’t terribly important. And all I can do is be optimistic (which I think I have reason to be) and move forward. Though I’ve done the hardest work, I have to write a new zipper paragraph for each school, the applications themselves can be done in an hour, or less. So rock on.

In other news, I have one test and one paper left to complete in my work for this semester. The paper is written, save for some updates: I’m recycling with the professors consent a paper I wrote last year on clinical issues related to death and dying, so I need to make it less clinical and more developmental, but that’s a few hours of changes and not a lot of bother. The test is over the two parts of psycholingustics that find most interesting: language development and linguistic relativism. So that’s not too fearsome.

In terms of knitting, I’m working on the Morocco jacket. I’ve made it past the arm hole shaping, so the shoulders are fully set it, which means that it grows much faster length wise. There are 250 stitches + steeks as opposed to 400 stitches + steeks. I’ve decided to do the shoulders in a more direct way, which I think more closely resembles the pattern as written. I’m currently leaning towards making the armholes a bit longer than I would on a normal sweater because as a jacket, I think it needs to fit over a normal sweater. And it’ll look more like the sweater in the book that way.

Funny thing is that I’m mostly just knitting using the chart and the picture of the finished sweater, and going from there.

I’m thinking it would be fun to have a sweater knit along where everyone was given a chart and some pictures of a finished sweater and then everyone went about copying it in their own way, and the knit-along community would support people with the basic elements of sweater construction. Might be fun.

Anyway, I do have some things to get done, but sorry for the absence, and I promise that I won’t disappear for so long again. Though fellow bloggers, I must confess with some measure of guilt that I haven’t opened the news-reader in almost a week, so, I’m behind (unless you’re on LJ, LJ is sanctioned procrastination, and therefore doesn’t count. )

1. Woody and firm
2. Strong and Robust
3. Meaty and full
4. Fruity and delicate
5. Sharp and satisfying

1. I’ll work on this in the morning!
2. I’ve written twice this much in half this time before, this is easy?
3. I drink too much caffeine, maybe I need to cut back.
4. If I chew this tea bag, the caffeine will hit faster.
5. I’ll do better next semester.

Hello friends!

I’m sorry I’ve been so bad about posting things lately! I even have backlogged pictures that are ready to post and backlogged fives lists that I haven’t thrown up because it slips my mind.

I say, I better get into graduate school this time, if for no other reason that I don’t think I could take applying again and retain sanity. But we’ll see.

I have tomorrow off, from all obligations but I have to write about 7 very stressful academic pages (5 of which need to be perfect), and scores of emails and filling out forms, plus proofreading, possibly a phone call, some printing, revising my CV and making it look like a CV and not a resume again. Sigh.

We had a “cold snap,” which was just cold enough for me to wear one of my comfy sweaters without being actually cold. I hope I can move north (or a little bit higher up, even) again next year so that I don’t loose my cold tolerance.

I had a great exchange with a potential grad school advisor who I think is really swell. I’m not elated about the prospect of moving to WesternCity, but the depressing thing is that even though this prof isn’t doing queer studies work, her research is theoretically very close to mine, closer than just about anyone else. That makes the decision sticky, but I don’t want to put the carriage before the horse, and I’m just going to say, that I liked our email exchange.

Ok, enough blathering. I’m well. don’t be mad if I’m a little spotty for the next couple of days.

Also, thanks to the purloined letter for the link and the kind words!

Once I have some time to my self, I am for sure going to get a little closer to doing some group knitting projects, I just have to live through the end of the year first. See you soon.

Onward and upward!

1. In this direction I seek, to…
2. This project draws from both…
3. Multifaceted in my approach, I attempt to…
4. Drawing from Marx and Weber,
5. What began as an absurd notion is now…

I never know what to call these check-in posts where I’m like “so here’s what I’m working on…” bleh, sorry for the nonsensical titles.

I’ve been fairly buried in the academic writing and graduate school application writing. On the plate for tonight, I need to get, probably about a thousand words on my major paper for the semester, which will break the back of the draft. My concern is that it has to be perfect by friday afternoon, which is pushing things to the last minute, but on the account of this paper, that seems reasonable. But I’m not going to stress to much about this yet, and I’m in good shape. It’s just a little frantic making, I guess.

The blog will understandably be spare in the interim.

In terms of knitting news, I’ve not been doing very much: I’ve been writing with a sweater on my lap and I’ll knit a few little row-lets when ever I need a moment to think or plan for what’s next. The gray sweater is going slowly, I’m working on knitting the shoulder strap, and it’s going swimingly, aside from being kinda fiddly, it’s perfect for this kind of knitting.

Last night while I was listening to something for class I got the Morocco sweater into shape so that I could knit it in class and this week in those moments that seem to need knitting. It’s going much faster now, that I’ve started setting in the sleeves, and it’s as engauging as always. It’s kind of amazing how enjoyable I find colorwork, even when it’s devilishly complex like this sweater. I’m looking forward to casting on something else, but I’m being good and waiting till I have brain time and a sweater done.

Hope you all are well. Cheers!

Onward and Upward!