Topic: Links

So I've noticed that my impulse on these shorter blog posts (codas) that I tend to just do my normal essay thing only shorter, which is more of an old habit than it is something productive or intentional. Weird. To help break out of this bad habit, I'm going to post some links that I've collected recently.

I saw a couple of articles on user experience issues that piqued my interest, perhaps they'll pique yours as well: Agile Product Desgin on Agile Development and UX Practice and On Technology, User Experience and the need for Creative Technologists.

Cheetah Template Engine for Python. This isn't an announcement but I've been toying around with the idea of reimplementing Jekyll in python (to learn, because I like python more than Ruby). Cheetah seems to be the template engine for python that looks the coolest/best. I need to read more about it, of course

I didn't get to go to Drupal Con (alas), but there were a few sessions that piqued my interest, or at least that I'd like to look into mostly because the presenters are people I know/watch/respect: Sacha Chua's Rocking your Development Environment Liza Kindred's Bussiness and Open Source James Walker's Why I Hate Drupal.

Sacha's because I'm always interested in how developers work, and we have emacs in common. Liza's because Open Source business models are really (perversely) fascinating, even if I think the Drupal world is much less innovative (commercially) than you'd initially think. Finally, given how grumpy I'm prone to being, how could walkah's talk not be on my list?

Anyone have something good for me?

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.

An academic group, interested in memory and narrative started to write a blog in october, but hasn't had the follow through that one might hope for. But then it's an academic blog, and getting academics to collaborate on projects like this, is terribly difficult. Maybe we'll see some more. I'm pulling out interesting bits from the intro post, and I'll keep you all posted, if more interesting things start appearing.

This interesting little bit from the first post. Not so much a summary, just something that got my eye....

Introducing the Popular Memory & Narrative Study Group:

"...the starting point for sociology, almost by definition, has been ‘society’ and its ‘institutions’; whilst in versions of structuralist social theory the individual has been something of a vanishing point, disappearing without trace under a deluge of language and discourse. Instead, a reinvigorated focus on narrative begins with individual stories, memories and life-histories and traces these outwards (and upwards) to the social structures and collectivities of which individuals are a part."

(Via Memory and Narrative blog.)

Exactly!