Topic: Posts

Dear Readers,

I’m--or my alter-ego[^two name]--is going to be at Drupal Camp Chicago on the 24th and 25th of October, baring an unforeseen catastrophe.

So this presents several possibilities:

1. You are already going to Drupal Camp Chicago and want to hang out with me or talk me into presenting something with you. To this, I say rock on.

2. You are or will happen to be in Chicago that weekend and don’t give a rats ass about drupal, I’m going to be (hopefully) meeting friends from school on Saturday after the conference and I’d love to have blog people there too.

In addition I’m thinking of proposing a session on Open MicroBlogging and drupal, which I think might be really fun. If you’re interested in contributing to this, I’d love help/co-conspirators. And I’m just a guy who thinks this shit is cool.

I’m cross posting this but lets try and coordinate meet-ups and whatnot in the comments thread of the tychoish.com post. You can always email or jabber/xmpp me at garen@tychoish.com Rock On.

[^two name]: I so need to figure out how to have two buttons made/get some sort of official “tycho garen” name tag. Ideas?

I posted a while ago about redoing my assbackards email downloading system. I finally did it. And it works great (and runs a bunch faster). The main sacrifice is that I now have to store two copies of my email directory on my server, but disk space is cheap and git is really effective at saving disk space/transfer speed, so it’s not a really big deal.

It’s also much more straightforward, and I’m going to post the two (2!) simple shell scripts that I’m using along with a couple of recommendations/hints if you want to try this at home. I do recommend that anyone who does this should be familiar with git before attempting this. Sound good?

Great! Here goes.

You need:

• A repository on your server where your email will “land.” This should be a git repository that’s origin is:
• A bare repository that is also on your server. These directories should not be web accessible, and indeed, technically need not be on the same server even, though they need to be always-on servers at static locations, so that you can clone repositories on:
• A repository on your personal computer(s).

Inside of the repository is a great place to keep your scripts (and indeed all settings for mail-related programs.) The two scripts you need are:

syncserver:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Get situated
cd /path/to/mail/

# Pull Changes from the centralized (canonical) repository
/path/togit pull origin >/dev/null 2>&1

# Add in the new mail and push to the central repository
/path/to/git add .
/path/to/git commit -a -q -m \
"server: mail drop commit, pre-push to central"
/path/to/git push origin >/dev/null 2>&1

syncmail:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Do things on the server  synced
ssh USERNAME@DOMAIN.TLD sh /path/to/mail/syncserver >/dev/null 2>&1

# Do things locally to get changes upstreem to central
## Get Situated:
cd /path/to/mail/
## Pull new mail down,
## everyting after the | is to produce a mail notifciation
##  using growl on OS X

/path/to/git pull origin | /usr/local/bin/growlnotify -n mutt -a Mail.app -t "tycho garen (or maybe sam)'s mail status:"  >/dev/null 2>&1

## Getting setup and then pushing any changes upstream
/path/to/git add .
for i in `git ls-files -d`; do
   /usr/local/git/bin/git rm --quiet $i;
done

/path/to/git commit -a -q -m "mail changes from NAME_OF_COMPUTER"
/path/to/git push >/dev/null 2>&1

Feel free, of course to change the commit messages and take out the comments. Other thoughts on usage:

1. Have public key sign-ins enabled on any machine that you use regularly. It’s more secure, faster.
2. By all means, run “syncmail” in a launchd daemon/crontab.
3. I’ve used absolute paths, starting with a “/” so that the shell doesn’t have to look for relative paths in order to run, which probably only gives me a marginal speed advantage, but you’ll want to figure out where your executables are and then put the right locations in. It’s a short script.
4. While eventually, you’ll be able to tweak the syncserver file and after two runs, the changes will propagate, you have to put the file there manually (or run the pull yourself.)
5. If you need to download mail from more than one source, you can run fetchmail at the beginning of syncmail

This almost makes sense, finally. The only thing that I’m still trying to figure out is if I were to get, say an iPhone or a BlackBerry into this system. IMAP into my existing gmail account would be ok but not desirable for a number of reasons. I suppose I could forward email from my server/computer to a “mobile” account, but that would be like having an email cadet branch and there wouldn’t be syncing, which seems bad. On the other hand, it means I could pull out only the stuff I really need. It’s a ways off, but it’s pretty complicated.

Onward and Upward!

In my fair city this week and last there’s been a lot of Scottish music. There’s a woman who’s been active in the local Scottish community (who knew?) for years, and she’s a retired music teacher and she does a program each year where she brings in top notch Scottish musicians to teach in local schools. It’s pretty cool, and it means that a lot of great Scottish musicians do concerts here. Anyway, this is a much more macro entry into this story than you really need, but it’s my blog and it seems fitting.

Anyway, Ed Miller, an amazing folklorist and singer did a concert and sang “A Bottle of the Best” which some googleing has revealed is written by Jack Foley. It’s a perfectly good song, and one that I’d heard dozens of times before, but it wasn’t something that had really stuck with me as you might it expect. It does, however, have the following “make fun of the English” verse:

And the English like their ale warm and flat, straight oot the pail They aye slitter wi' their bitter; it would slaughter Jack the Ripper, And they sip their cider rough, they huff and puff and sniff and snuff, And as if that’s no' enough, they start tae sing.

When Jones' Ale Was new, or John Barleycorn’s fine brew Fathom the Bowl, the Barley Mow, Bring us a Barrel, just a few But their songs are far surpassed by the tinkle in the glass When you’ve broken oot a bottle of the best.

Which is, on the face of it, not a particularly clever verse as these things go, but he was able to sing it in a way that perfectly captured a very English way of singing. It was hilarious, or at least I thought so, because while it’s a fine verse, the musical pun really made it.

It helps that I really like that kind of singing. There’s something really cool about standing around in a doorway with friends or strangers singing a song, and it’s not so much about the redeeming musical value--I happen to like it, but it’s admittedly an odd taste--as it is about the value to the community/spiritual¹ sense.

And maybe I’ve answered it, but the question I’m left with is, what makes those sorts of songs so awesome? And really, is there a quintessentially English way of singing? While we’re at it am I the only one who finds this entertaining?

One of the things that “gave” in a great life-shakedown of 2008, was my interest/intention to design/publish knitting patterns. I design a lot of my own sweaters and things, I enjoy the technical and creative aspects of knitting, and I really enjoy the meditative aspects of knitting. At the same time, I’ve worked in a number of different yarn stores, taught knitting classes and lessons, and tried to write patterns, and each engagement with the “business” side of the craft, leaves me feeling drained and weary of wool.

And so in the shakedown, I decided that while I probably have more knitting skill/experience and knowledge than I have of just about anything else, I don’t have the interest or the energy to make a go of it. Or maybe more clearly, doing the things I’d need to do to become a full-time knitter would make knitting less fun in all the other ways that I find relaxing.

As I more fully return to knitting I’ve had to revisit this decision a fair piece. I ask myself do I want to try to teach again? Do I want to apply to give workshops at Folk schools and craft centers, let alone yarn stores?¹ And I think the answer is, mostly not. I do a lot of things very seriously, and I don’t know that it’s worth my time and energy to work on knitting more seriously, given that I want to do other things and, blah blah blah.

But, and you knew there was a but coming, I’m not sure that I want to just give it up. Not knitting, but knitting seriously, and writing about knitting, and all of that. Part of this reflection are thoughts about my niche, and my role in the discourse of knitting.² Which is maybe what I should have thought about when I was trying to figure out how to teach knitting, or write patterns a couple of years ago.

Unlike a lot of popular knit bloggers, I’m not big on taking pictures of my knitting, in progress, and my knitting tastes don’t tend to suit “knitblogging” very well. I knit big projects in fine yarn and so I finish something very infrequently. And as a designer, I tend to knit for myself and I tend towards non-typical construction techniques.³ Also I’m not nearly as [funny][harlot] and/or [polished][franklin] (let alone accomplished). So figuring out where I fit into this, or what my niche is is something of a personal challenge.

The last--and pretty key--piece of this personal puzzle is what I get out of the “knitting discourse,” I don’t subscribe to the magazines, I don’t really follow patterns except tangentially and as inspiration, I haven’t made a Clapotis, I’ve never taken a knitting class (aside from Knitting Camp), and I tend to buy really boring yarn.

So I’ve thought about writing knitting patterns more as essays, and less as instructional documents. I enjoy writing essays, and I really like writing about knitting, and I like reading about other people’s knitting, and I’m not terribly interested in writing touchy-feely essay about how knitting soothes my soul or makes me feel closer to other people. But patterns as a story? Patterns that attempt to communicate not just the object, but also the design process, and the state of mind of the knitter during knitting? Am I the only person who would find this interesting?⁴

Onward and Upward!

Hey folks,

Just a quick note. I’m going to take a two day break from posting stories to Critical Futures at the end of this week.

The reasons for this are twofold. First and probably most importantly, I need a break. In the last three months, I’ve posted about 28,000 words of fiction (nearly all of it my own) and even though much of it has been old content that I’ve been editing and revising as we go, it still takes a lot of time. And because, I’m my own boss, and can do these things, I’m giving myself a break. These are the perks of “going it alone,” and besides, we’re only talking about two days.

The second reason is that I’ve just finished posting the third chapter of Knowing Mars, the novella that I finished a year ago, and that forms the core of the first six months--or so-- of Critical Futures posting. Given the milestone, I think I want to release the first three chapters as PDF files so that people new to the game can catch up. This will form the core of next weeks posts, and it’ll take a bit of extra time to prep. This means my break is effectively a little bit longer, you get special content, and we’re all happy.

I’m starting to talk to other people about writing/sending stories to Critical Futures, which is something that in my more overwhelmed moments seems really good. If you have nifty SFnal work that you’re tired of sitting on and want to see what it looks like in “print,” consider submitting. I enjoy doing editorial work (and I’m at least half decent at it, my alter-ego makes a living doing something similar,) and I think Critical Futures is the ideal space for some pretty nifty writing. Get in touch and we can talk in greater detail about this. I see great things happening.

So it turns out that the old laptop that I spent lots of time in the late spring fretting about updating finally gave up the ghost last week. Now the astute among you will remember that I bought a new laptop mid-summer, and you maybe wondering why I’m mentioning this.

Even though the keyboard was worn out (hence my reason for upgrading), with an external keyboard that we had lying around it worked fine, so I passed it down to my mother who was in need of a newer computer for routine home tasks, where it continued to function abely.

And then it broke.

Which caused all manner of strife around here, as we’re all pretty set in our computer usage habits and it’s really hard to share computers with people, no matter how much you like them. And while the loss of this computer brought the net number of computers to equal the number of people in the house, one of the computers is a 12" iBook from mid-2004 which is slow and small, and uncomfortable for anything other than casusal use.

So we tussled with a number of different possible solutions which were all uniquely unsuitable. Eventually we came to the following solution:

My father, who has heretofore been running on both a 2005 era mini-mac (primarily) and with the recent addition of the ibook, will switch to the ibook exclusively. The ibook does a suitable job at powering his external monitor, and if we put his itunes library on an external drive (which we should have done a long time ago anyway) the hard disk size isn’t an issue. Mom gets the Mini, with a as of yet unpurchased monitor, and I blessedly can keep out of the whole mess.

The truth is that this has me thinking about my computer useage. I’ve realized that while I’m probably the most “power-user” in the house, I’m not doing anything particularly resource intensive: text editor, terminal emulator, mutt, IM program, news reader, web browser, pdf viewer, calander/pim tool, and that’s about it. I used the 12" iBook myself for a week or two, and while it’s still a bit underpowered for my purposes, it wasn’t that underpowered--it’s major offense is that the screen is pretty low-res.

While I’m probably going to get a linux desktop in the next few weeks (sooner, I guess, now that we’re going to be making an order for one monitor, I might as well buy the monitors for my set up), I’ve been thinking about my own computer usage habits and needs. If I have a desktop computer, do I need as much umph in my laptop? Could I get buy with something like this fit my mobile needs more clearly (smaller, capiable, linux-y)? I think that if you asked me tomorrow, I’d probably say “not yet,” but in a couple of years? I’m not sure.

Once upon a time, the major concern when buying computers was finding a machine that had enough resources to serve your needs for the next 2-4 years. These days, just about any computer you buy is fast enough and has enough storage space. There are lots of ways in which this is a good thing, but I think it’s most interesting/important in the sense that it forces computer buyers to get computers on the basis of the needs of the workflow rather than on some negotiation between budget and feature list. And that, I think, is a really good thing for technology.

Onward and Upward!

rms, Mr. GNU Project himself, recently interviewed with the Guardian and came out against “cloud computing.” While there wasn’t a great “splash” on the blogs I read--no one was surprised, a lot of people disagreed respectfully, and we all went along our ways--but I think he raises an important point that we/I should discuss.

rms' argument is that “cloud computing” services, like gmail, twitter, livejournal lock people into their services and force computer users to give up control of their computing and data, and that this is as bad or worse than using proprietary software.

I too have been a pretty big opponent of some “cloud computing” developments, not simply because they restrict freedom in the sense that rms is speaking of, but also because in a lot of cases, it’s not a very good or user friendly environment for a lot of tasks. And I’m pretty stubborn about not trusting my data to a format that I’m not positive I’ll be able to export into an open and useable format.

As it turns out there are a number of cloud services which are “more open,” than others. That allow users lots of very standard/open access to their data. It’s not the same as open source, of course, but I think it’s important to suggest that all “cloud” services aren’t created equal. Here’s a brief review:

1. GMail provides full pop and IMAP access to their accounts. They also make it easy for you to use your gmail account to send “from” other accounts. While you get more freedom from hosting your email on a server you control, gmail isn’t less free (in my estimation) than using the email address supplied by your ISP or employer. 2. Gcal similarly exports to ical format, which is the default calendar standard format, among others. 3. Most “cloud” news readers export OMPL files of all the feeds, similarly the “make RSS feeds of everything,” mentality of web 2.0 means that a lot of data is pretty open to access.

There are of course some web-apps where data is opaque and not easily/openly exportable. Twitter is a great example of this, and I’m blanking on a more extensive list, but I’m sure that you, dear readers, can come up with many more examples.

I think what this means in the end is that the problem of freedom in software in the age of service-based computing rests more on user education than on a legalistic mechanisms (like copyleft) or open source code. Not that the later isn’t important, but I think it’s worth considering.

So I’ve been talking about how close I am to getting back on the knitting game for weeks and weeks. While for the past two months I’ve knitted more than I had in the previous two or three months, until this last week, I still hadn’t been knitting much.

And then, this last week, I’m not sure what happened, but I got enough momentum on my projects that I’ve been able to make some real progress on projects, and with that progress my interest and enthusiasm has grown pretty significantly.

I don’t have pictures or anything instructive yet, but I’m paying attention to projects again, and thinking about what’s going to be my next project. I’ll post the highlights and blog over the next several days/week about more specific details.

1. I was knitting a teal sweater, using a possum/merino yarn that I despise. Despite finishing (and steaking the neck opening,) I’m tossing it in the frog/sell pile. The yarn sheds, it looks like there are multiple dye/carding lots, and it’s a really fuzzy yarn, to the point that knitting it made me sneeze, and it shed, and it was too warm to sit under and knit, let alone wear. Anyway, I think this is well reasoned, and having it off of my plate makes me feel incredibly good.

2. I finished the “Grey Sweater of Doom,” or what I was fondly calling “that god damned sweater,” by the end. This is a sweater that I cast on in the fall of 2005, and have been slowly working on, off and on since then. The sweater is knit with a fingering weight lambswool and alpaca. It’s mostly plain but there are some small cable accents. In a feat that I’m pretty proud of, I was able to make a perfectly fitted sweater without swatching,¹ and since I knit off a cone, with wool there were only 2 extra ends to weave in, in addition to the normal edge ends (that is there were 6 ends total, but 4 of them are conceptually unavoidable.) I’m proud of this one, and even though it took forever, I want to make another one kind of like it.

3. The Latvian Dreaming Sweater. I have finished the body of this sweater, so all that remains is the collar and the sleeves. This is a project that where I’m conceptually giving away the pattern as I knit it. I’m a bit behind, and have to write some instructions for the shoulders. But this is a part of the pattern where there are a lot of options, so there’ll be a number of posts about this in the next few weeks.

4. A pair of socks. About a year ago I visited Sheri at the Loopy Ewe and bought a skein of yarn, because it was amazing looking, despite the fact that I don’t really knit normal socks very often. So this skein lingered in the stash, rolled up into a ball: apparently I got pretty close a while back to casting on, but chickened out. Then on Saturday I picked it up and cast on 64 stitches for a sock. It’s going well, and I already have 3-4 inches done.

That’s all I have right now. How has your knitting been going.