Topic: Journal

No secret, I’ve been stressed. Readers of the blog who are friends with my parents (Hi Angie!) have even told them “wow, [tycho] looks stressed.” One of the things I’ve been doing for a few weeks now, in part to manage this is to begin some sort of exercise regimen. There’s a park not far from where I live, and I’ve taken to going out for an hour in the late afternoon, when my brain is tired and I can’t really write anyway.

Amazingly, it’s been a great thing. Exercise helps the mood, I had enough psychology to know that to be true, and one thing that I’ve lamented, since I stopped commuting, is that I haven’t really listened to podcasts in any concerted way. I’m incredibly behind as a result, and the walks, including doing good things for my mood and stamina, have been a good excuse to spend some item consuming media that I find very refreshing and informing.

Exercise is a tough things, I’m a skinny, reasonably active guy, but I tend towards short bursts, rather than concerted activity. Which is fine, but dance weekends are really tough on me, as I wear out too quickly. One really needs to be in shape in order to dance well, but I’ve found that it’s hard to get in shape only by dancing. So making a point of going out is a good thing indeed, and I feel better. So there.

I knew I said that I’d post coda things now that I’m going to bi-weekly essays, and today would be the first day of the new order and I’ve failed. Alas. Today was spent going glaring at my outline and waiting in doctor’s waiting rooms. I did read a really great article from Kristine Kathryn Rusch about recessions, short fiction, and it was pretty inspiring. Go read, and then read some more. I’ve also had some interesting twitter and identi.ca conversations about git and emacs, which keeps me entertained at least. I’ve also been trying out new RSS readers, as I’d really like something that ran locally. Canto seems to be leading the pack, but I have so many feeds at the moment that switching seems onerous, and I need something that I can sync between multiple machines, so the whole switch process gives me shivers. Maybe tomorrow. In the mean time, I think I’m ready to get back to writing actual fiction (forward progress) in a day or two, if I can get through one or two more blasted sections of this re-outline; which despite the pain, has been really good for my thinking about the book.

If you were wondering, that really is what it’s like to be in my head. And you thought that my writing was scatter brained.

Dear Readers,

I’m both really excited and really scared of this change that I’m going to announce in this post. From my journal entry, you can probably tell that I’ve been busy and having something of a rough time. I’m coping, and I’m not writing this as a plea of any sort, just it’s been… interesting. I’ve been sort of distracted, and running back and forth between my home town and where my grandmother is (3.5 hours away) a lot, and a thousand other things.

One thing, of note is that today (by your clock) is the 9th Yarzeit of my grandfather’s death, which is hitting me a bit harder than it has in years past. Yeah. Weird. I don’t know what else to say.

In any case, I’ve done some tweaking to the site including some cool JavaScript visibility toggles. I’m still using Wordpress, because I’m still making pretty heavy use of the post scheduling, and there are other projects that demand my attention. Someday soon. My intention with the design changes is to make the content a bit more prominent and minimize menus as much as possible. Because content is important and menus are boring. (Really, I get paid to help people with the internet. Amazing.)

I’m also going to change my publishing schedule.

I’m going to post essays, in the form that you’ve grown accustomed to on Tuesday’s and Thursdays, and then, try and post something to coda once or twice a day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday’s. I’m reading a lot of other blogs, and I feel like I’ve gotten worse about referencing some of the really cool stuff I’ve been reading. And I’d like to concentrate on writing for other projects, getting Critical Futures (also redesigned) back on it’s feet. If you read the site via the feed coda posts and essay posts all look the same. Notifications for all posts make it onto twitter and identi.ca, and I bet that despite the change the amount of content in general is going to be about the same. It’s just a different mindset, and I think that’s what I need the most at the moment. We’ll see how it works.

I’ve also, in recent times taken to modifying the way the home page renders, so that there are only a few entries on the home page, and lists of “recent entries,” in both essay and coda categories. I might do a bit more tweaking here, but the general template with “less stuff on any given page” and links to other content, satisfies my desire for minimalism and a wealth of content. Note to self: write a post about the “blog” trope and the amount of content on pages.

That’s about all I have for you this time. Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back tomorrow with some sort of an essay.

Cheers, tycho

Ok, I’ve not done a “journal” post n a while, and I think one is long due. It’s been a wild week (or two) in the life of tycho, and I think without the opportunity to parse through some recent events:

1. I’ve been ferrying back between home and my grandmother’s about twice a week for, what seems like a few weeks. Everything is fine, and she’s doing very well (and reading the blog again! everyone say hi!), but it’s jarring if nothing else. I think I’m home for the better part of a week this time, and I’m slipping back into getting things done. Though, being home (and ready to leave) isn’t exactly restful, particularly when so many things need doing at home. So many things.

2. I’ve not been writing very much. All the unsettledness seems to mean that I’m a total mess. I’ve written (and semi-abandoned) lots of blog posts, which never take that much concentration usually. I’m in the middle of reoutlining the novel project and have been on hiatus with that as a result. I’m convinced that a couple of hours should be able to get me back on to track with that, and jump starting that project will help revive my flagging conentration/focus.

3. I finished the shawl for my grandmother (I might have mentioned that) and have started working on another shawl. There’s a lot of lace in my future, but I do want to knit sweaters more/again. The good news is that I’m actually knitting stuff. So “woot!” for a project that isn’t really going by the wayside.

4. I’m not, as I thought, going to Drupal Con. Given all of my travels and responsibilities here, it just wasn’t feasible. I’m disappointed, but I’m sure it was the right thing, as taking one of the balls out of the air lead to no small amount of relief.

5. I’m finally reading at a pace that I find acceptable. I’ll write a post about this at some point, but I’ve finally managed to figure out a way to prioritize reading in a way that lets me get it done. My pile hasn’t started to dwindle very much, but I can imagine that I’ll be able to make progress. I’m also finally into new territory with the Robinson “Mars books” and am enjoying it. There’s something very similar about the way we approach a story that I really like, and a lot of things that he (not surprisingly) pulls off much more effectively than I am. It’s good stuff.

6. While I switched to brewing tea loosely many months ago, these days I’m not using any fancy brew pots, opting for more traditional infusers and strainers, which seem easier to manage. I’ve discovered that I need some sort of thermos (as my 16 oz. travel mug isn’t enough for a morning out.) and I’d like to get a 40 oz tea pot with a built in strainer/doodad, but I’m good for now unless I see a deal that can’t be missed.

7. Battlestar Galactica continues to boggle my mind in a good way. I continue to be really impressed with how the story progresses, the kind of science fiction that they’re doing, and the quality of everything. I’m, typically, a bit sad about the end, and I’ve been hording and watching in 2-3 episode chunks, but I think in the long run it’s a good thing that the show is going out on such a good note, and I think seeing (parts?) of the production team go in to do different things will be much more powerful than getting another couple of seasons of BSG as we know it now. As much as I hate to admit that.

8. I did some things along the lines of reconfiguring my blackberry, to reprogram some of the buttons along the side, and I’ve started to use a private emaill address that I set up to take notes on the fly. I should probably begin to figure out how to do some sort of procmail filtering something or other to get these notes into something in my org-mode files. Later. In general, I’m really pleased with how the phone is working out, even if I still need to get the music/ring tone situation sorted out, but I’m lazy.

9. I’ve been, as I can, going for long-ish walks every day. I’ll write about this, eventually, but I think it’s been really good for clearing my mind and working. It’ll also be nice to be in a little better shape before the dancing season really picks up: stamina and all. If I can convince myself that this is a habit worth keeping, and I buy tennis shoes (for the first time in… ten or 12 years, yay for boots and clogs.) I’m considering joining a gym, in hopes of being able to do weight stuff and being able to do lower impact aerobic stuff. As a skinny geek, whose been moderately active (dancing) heretofore, this whole exercise thing is quite strange and intimidating. There’s all kind of stuff that I don’t know at all. Very strange.

10. I’m rejigging my family’s computers this week. I tried to explain what needs to be done, but failed. Basically what I need to do centers around: copying a lot of stuff off of a computer, getting ipod syncing working with linux, and then figuring out a creative solution for getting either getting the audio signal from the office, to the living room without wires, or getting the network to a computer that doesn’t have wireless. Additional challenges include: remote control of the jukebox machine player using laptops/cellphones (proto home automation), and possibilities for podcast fetching that don’t necessarily involve the ipod software (thinking about using my phone for this). Thoughts on any of these issues would be great.

Sorry for the eccentricity of this post, and my posting this week, I’m almost back on track.

Outward and Onward!

During my middle year of college, I took a class on gender and literature where we had to write a series (10? 12?) of “journal” entries. The assignment was to write 250-300 (hard boundaries) words due by midnight on Friday during most of the weeks of the semester. And there were other rules regarding the speed or frequency you could turn them in that I don’t remember, but there were notably few restrictions on what they could be about.

A few interesting things happened. One is, that though we could write all of them in a weekend, we never did. My roommate(s) and I would write them while everyone was drinking on Friday night. We got pretty heroic about how close we’d cut these to the deadline. There was even a night when I was driving a friend to the airport (3-4 hours in the car) and I argued for an extension through an intermediary whilst driving quite assertively on I-90. Another is that we all got very good at editing our writing to a limited number of words, and it’s a good skill to have. But the most important thing is that all my classmates wrote about the texts we were reading. I wrote about, g-d knows what. Not the things we were reading, except in loose tangential ways.

A roommate asked about if this was, an acceptable thing to do, and I wrote the professor somewhat worried that maybe my journal entries had strayed too far afield. In fairness, the professor’s lectures had a similar tendency to stray, as near as I could tell, but it seemed like the thing to do.

The response was something along the lines of “Don’t worry [tycho,] I quite enjoy your widely synthetic entries. You’ve received credit for all that you’ve submitted.”

Needless to say “widely synthetic,” became my new slogan.¹

I think my blagging style developed in that class, such as it is, which is all sorts of scary.

I started writing this post with the intention of discussing the Sapir-Worf and programing languages. Which I think certainly qualifies as being “widely synthetic,” hence the story, but I think I’ll have to save that for next time.

Take care of yourselves, dearest readers.

I’ve not posted very much about the cats in a week, and I want to remedy this. As you probably know I got two kittens at the end of May. I’d been vaguely looking for cats for a while, what with “reality” setting in around me. A friend adopted a cat who had a litter of kittens somewhat unexpectedly, and I said that I would take one. Well turns out that there was a remaining kitten that had been unclaimed, and my family has generally enjoyed getting kittens in sets before. So it wasn’t a hard sell.

These cats have been something of a journey. We spent the second night that we had them at the emergency vet because Merlin was lethargic and crying a lot. This was bad. Turns out the poor thing was constipated and had a slight fever and maybe a little dehydrated. So the vet gave him a little bit of fluids and I talked them into giving us syringes so that we could shoot water into his mouth. Turns out he hadn’t really grasped drinking. In the subsequent months we have noticed a general unburdened intelligence in this animal, despite his very pleasant demeanor.

The pecking order of the cats has been pretty fun to observe. It seems that Kip, the shrimper kitten has sort of established himself at the top. This happened with the last kittens too. Very strange, though last time, the alpha kitten was also the most personable. While Kip is friendly and relaxed, Merlin is clearly the more affectionate cat. Merlin’s response to being picked up or held is basically to go completely limp. Which makes carrying him around interesting. He’s a bit bigger, but feels much more heavy as he makes himself all dead weight.

They’re now 9-10 months old, so we think that they’re mostly done growing. Merlin is 13-14 pounds, and Kip is probably 10ish pounds. The other large cat in the house--Nash--is 20 pounds. We were, for a while, concerned that we were going to end up with another couple 20ish pound cats. Which isn’t a bad thing, so much as an overwhelming thing.

I’ve never really had a cat that is as well adjusted as these. All previous cats have been shelter cats, because that’s just been what makes sense. And since these were from a friend’s cat, and she let them stay for as long as they needed to. They’re very well adjusted, and very affectionate, and nothing really bothers them, which is nice. We’ve had a lot of neurotic cats over the years.

While I really enjoy having kittens around, there is a point where the constant playing and activity can be tiring. I look forward to the day when I can wear headphones in the house without risking that the cats will chew them to shreds, and the day that sight of my toes underneath the covers doesn’t raise the “attack,” instinct. I mean, for now it’s great, but I enjoy headphones and my toes.

The only other thing of note is the fetching thing. Merlin first, and Kip to a lesser degree, adore playing fetch. Merlin will find some toy, carry it to you in his mouth drop it and then bat toward you. And then he sits and watches you until you throw it, at which point he’ll tare after it, play with it for a moment and then bring it back. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

This is cute, and a fun trick, it is however, a bit of the problem when I’m on the phone with coworkers and clients.

But that goes with the territory. And it’s good territory after all.

Onward and Upward!

So soon, probably during the end of this post or somewhere in tomorrow’s post, I’m going to pass the half-million word mark on tychoish.com. This is a bit inflated because I incorporated the posts from tealart a couple of years ago, and some of that material includes quotes and links that I don’t think should count toward the site’s word count odometer. But there you have it, and in any case this is a milestone, that’s worth commemorating.

There’s a quote out there along the lines of “everyone has a million words of crap in them before they get to the good stuff.” If we count the writing I do here, this means I’m getting close. If we count blog posts and academic writing, I think I’m probably well into the “good stuff.” I suppose some of that is up to you.

I wrote a “journal”-type post about myself and what I was up to beyond what I blog about here (and a few of my posts since then have veered in that direction, alas). While these used to be the “easy posts” that I would just sort of blather out a year ago,¹ I don’t feel like I miss them.

I’m doing well. I have a lot on my plate, and a lot of “loose ends” floating around that are causing some stress, but I really can’t complain. Just for grins the things I’m working on right now:

• Fiction Writing

• Station Keeping, Season 2 (about 5 thousand more words to go).

• The Novel, (half done, 4-5 more months till first draft; leaving 3 months for rewrites, and a podcast launch in August.)

• Trailing Edge. (Hibernating. 3k more words, and then scores of edits).

• Open Source Research

  I’m working on turning the research project that’s been sort of sputtering along into something more coherent on a number of different levels. I’m not ready to announce this exactly but it involves:

  • Writing lots of emails. Lots of emails.
  • Turn a fairly linear paper into a wiki.
  • Collect a more complete bibliography file.

  • Website things
  • Get Critical Futures back on track.

• Tychoish.com Redesign project. Not to mention writing for the site like I do.

• Something for the open source project described above.

• Life things

• I probably have half a dozen small/midsized trips this year. Knitting things, dancing things, work things, science fiction things. That’s a lot of stress there.

• I’m going to be moving this summer.

• For someone who views himself as being a shut-in mostly, I do a lot of stuff “out:” dancing 3 times a week, singing from time to time, and so forth.

• Knitting things

• The grandmother shawl, plus two other lace shawls in progress.

• My Starmore cable sweater. I’m 20% done with it. That’s not very much.

• The color-work sweater that just needs another sleeve.

So that’s what’s on my plate. I really need to start knocking this stuff out.

Will this blog be around in another half million words? I figure that that means that I’d have to keep up doing this for another three or three and a half years, at my current rate. It could happen. It could definitely happen.

I’ll see you on the other side.

I’ve talked about this before, but it seems like a perfect explanation for my recent absence from the pages of TealArt.com.

My good blogging friend and often-mentor, Amy, said this thing a while ago that really stuck: Live first, first blog second. Sure it’s not original, but I really liked the way she said it. Something about not writing about what might be, or what could be, what’s going to be. Not jinxing things. That blogging in the way she (and TealArt does occasionally) does it is about recording things after they happen, not while they happen.

The kind of content that TealArt presents doesn’t exploit the instant kind of media that most blogs are known for. While we may not proofread, or plan or rhetoric extensively, this isn’t a blog the current construction of that term, it’s more like some of the sites that were around a few years ago (like Amy, and an earlier incarnation of Noah’s work.) I have to keep reminding myself, that although TealArt hasn’t “made it big” in the blog world, Chris and I have been at this for a long time.

While I didn’t quite set out to write a ‘history of blogging essay’ or a commentary on the current state of TealArt I guess I have one more point about this. I know that the categories system needs some serious revision. The comments only work sporadically, I’ve found. And there’s a new design desperately needed. And the links/quote blogs need better integration with the main log. And, probably most importantly, we’re going to try and play with the template to lighten/soften the tone/mood. But… My recent computer problems haven’t completely resolved. I’m using an old iMac with OS 8.1 on it. So until I get a real working computer that will allow me to do the work that I need, things are going to stay the way they are. Sorry about this.

But what I started writing this post about:

Today I took the second to last test for my International Baccalaureate Diploma. There are two papers (technically two tests), back to back in a week. So I’m basically done. Yes. You heard that right. Wow. I thought it was weird to be “almost done” well actually being done is even weirder. Despite the fact that I’m dead tired and my brain feels completely fried I feel inexplicably liberated. It’s awesome. It’s also the story of my life, and while I just thought about saying “Given the choice, I’ll never do something like that again.”

And then I realized, that of course I’d do something like that in an instant. That’s part of my personality and who I am. Lets hope, I’ll get better at managing my resources and my life. I can only hope.

In any case, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past month. Living, perhaps not what I’d ideally like to spending my life doing, but defiantly something that I needed to just live through. So I’m done with that, and while there’s always next time, I’m hoping I got some time before next time gets here.

In slightly other news, there’s queer stuff happening at school. It’s a good thing I think, predicted, and a bit old. I’m not totally sure of what to make of it just now, but I think I’ll probably (you had to expect it) muse a bit about this, I want to see if I can get into some more stuff soon. Stay tuned.

As of 11 am Thursday, 19 December 2002 I was finished with the work and all the exams for this semester are completed. Thank God. Also it’s really nice that I don’t have to go back to school until the 6th of January. I need the time to rest, recuperate, and recharge, and also to do some of the things that I haven’t been able to do for the past few months. Writing, reading, computer coding, and staying up and going to bed really late are all fairly high on my list.

I’ve also been working with Amy to get TealArt converted to the new Quarto CMS. It’s going really well, and I have two files that I need to create, one that needs to be fixed and two functions that aren’t working the way they should. The file that doesn’t work is a related problem to the functions that aren’t working, I think; but my knowledge of such things is somewhat limited as anyone who’s ever helped me with PHP will attest to. In a few days we’ll get there.

One of the things that Amy said in her weblog at one point that I’ll probably talk about more latter is that she “saves the present and future for herself and writes about the past for her site” (a rough paraphrase, I’ll get the entry at some point.) This really struck me, and I think its something that might separate a good weblog from a lousy one (the term is used loosely). This should be the prime directive of blogging. Go Forth, he said, and Write only about the Past. So there.

Here is the whole scoop. The server’s been gone for a few days and there really hasn’t been an explanation, and now the pages aren’t quite right, and plus the archives have disappeared, and I’m sure you want to know what happened. Right? I mean if there’s anyone reading this after all that is happened.

Some how sometime the server crashed or something. I haven’t gotten a good explanation for what happened, but it was fairly clear early on that things were gone and that they weren’t coming back; but for some unknown reason our email was still working. Sort of: Mary Beth was having some problems and in retro spec my email was sporadic at best. Finally that gave out too, and so I arranged other hosting and as a result we’ve moved into much more spacious and equipped digs and I only had backups for the files but not the databases where all of the important things were. I managed to zap some life into this instillation of b2 and everything works as well as it might, sans data. (And for some reason things aren’t being pushed off the index page as they should which is part of the reason for this post.)

In any case I remembered that Amy of Domesticat.net offered to let me have a go at her new (and really fab Content Management system). It’s a little buggy now, but I’m told that there’s already an update on the way, and I really like it, the main problem is that Amy hasn’t yet posted (she’s making good progress on this one too) the PHP functions necessary for display. Given my knowledge of PHP I could probably write the functions myself, but I’m not really up for that right now so I’m biding my time and currently have b2 and Quarto until the display functions start to work. Thankfully though, Amy’s functions will work perfectly for me given that the idea for most of my code features come from things I’ve seen used on her site. When we switch over in addition to all the things you’ve grown used to, we’re going to try to add a surfing diary/link list as well as a really neat category system.

On a more personal note, Chris (but we call him Andy) has been done with school until next semester for about a week, and I’m free as of this Thursday at 11 o’clock. I’m hoping to get a sizeable chunk done on the book, as well as a few other writing and web project work. It’s going to be an interesting break, and I really can’t wait for the freedom, again. I just need to get done with this semester. I have two more papers to finish up and then its home free.

More later, I should get back to work; and I’m sure there are tons of typos so just lay off.