Monthly Archives: March 2006
Change Your Relationship To Your Food – Introduction
Food; our attitude towards it and our relationship with it affects every facet of our lives. Alongside sleeping, eating is one of the two things that you have to do. From a biological perspective, just about everything else is optional. Funny how so many of us treat sleeping and eating as if they were optional… I know I did. Previously, I ate in the same manner that I have seen a lot of folks in my generation eat; no breakfast, some sort of sandwich or something else mindless for lunch around 2pm, at my desk of course, and then dinner whenever I got home from work, having not really ever been concious of the food I had eaten. Not exactly a healthy way to approach eating, but that was what I was doing, and what I see a whole lot of other people doing too. It stands to reason then that anyone who is trying to become more in tune and directly involved in the stuff of their own lives should look first at their eating and sleeping. Because of the primacy of these two needs to the… Read more
Thirteen Random Facts About Me
I am compulsive and irrational, except when I am compulsive and rational. I had a lawyer earlier than most people. As a matter of fact, I had a lawyer before I could say “lawyer”. I have one brother and one sister. They should receive medals of commendation, along with my parents, for living in the same house with me as a child. I like dogs and I have two; named Ursa and Gibson. Ursa is named for her breeder, whose nickname is Bear. Gibson is named for a science fiction author. Both of them are in desperate need of training. I like cats too, and have two as well; named Oscar and Flannery. Oscar is named for Oscar Wilde, and Flannery for Ms. O’Conner. I am a complete and utter cynic, except about projects and ideas that I dreamed up, which makes me kind of obnoxious. I miss having a fish tank or two (or three or four). Fish tanks are my Zen gardens. I have had a rather large number of jobs. I have cooked in many fast food and short-order restaurants, cooked in a few good… Read more
On The Importance Of Blogging – Part III
Yesterday I wrote briefly about Julia Kristiva, and her idea of shared codes through which a text is connected to other texts, and on which any reading depends for meaning. Considering that from the point of view of an author (blog or otherwise), one would assume that the codes she speaks of are the subconcious clues that bind together a corpus of texts into a coherent system of signs that is also itself a sign. As an example, no one mistakes a Charles Bukowski poem for anyone else’s work. It is uniquely his, and the reader can easily recognise it immediately, if that reader has been exposed to enough of Bukowski’s work previously to have absorbed the unique codes present in all of his work. However, those are not the codes that blog writers should concern themselves with, because they are predicated on a naive conception of what it is that a writer, especially a blogger, does. This misconception is where Dave Winer, or more specifically, a piece he wrote in 2001, comes in. Now,… Read more
On The Importance Of Blogging – Part II
Yesterday I wrote, in Part I of this series, that I would expand a little on the idea of applying syntactic and pragmatic weight and structure to private semantics, and how that applies to how I think about blogging. In many ways, blogging is, as Claude Lévi-Strauss would call it; bricolage, and most bloggers, especially link bloggers, can be rightly called bricoleurs. Here I use bricolage in the strict sense of Lévi-Strauss: “…dialogue with the materials and means of execution.” (Lévi-Strauss 1974, 29) and also with regards to the choices and options for expresssion afforded an author by their choice of materials (journal vs. blog, Wordpress vs. Movable Type, etc…) the use of the medium can be expressive. In such a dialogue, the materials which are ready-to-hand may (as we say) ‘suggest’ adaptive courses of action, and the initial aim may be modified. Consequently, such acts of creation are not purely instrumental: the bricoleur ‘”speaks” not only with things… but… Read more
On The Importance Of Blogging – Part I
One of the things that has suprised me when comparing this blog to my previous (private, paper) journals, is how much more difficult it is to write a blog entry than it is to write a journal entry. At first I thought that it was a function of having an audience (however small) and wanting to present myself and my thoughts in a particular light to that audience, and that journal entries were easier to write because I could let my guard down and simply “be myself” without pretension or artifice, since a personal journal, by definition, has no audience. As I have been discovering about a lot of things recently, it turns out that the opposite of what I thought was happening was what was actually going on. Journal entries are not easier for me to write than blog entries because they have no artifice to them and are more “real” or “honest”. They are easier to write because they have no audience, and having no audience, do not have to explain anything. Journals are a form of emotional… Read more
Suburban Uniformity Vehicle
The SUV, that station-wagon-on-a-truck-chassis that is all the rage with aspirationally minded suburbanites who think that cheap ladder-frame trucks with solid rear axles and the aerodynamics of a shipping container are some sort of status symbol, and an appropriate conveyance for around town driving. Every time I see one, a Superman-esque scene plays out in my head: Look, at the stoplight; Is it a car? Is it a truck? No! It’s Design-by-committee! It’s big like a truck, and has a lot of room for hauling stuff, but it’s all on the inside, carepted and full of seats, so nothing can be hauled in it. It has a lot of seats, so it must be a car, but it handles like a dump truck and eats fuel like a school bus. If the car/truck hybrid was such a great idea, the Country Squire and the El Camino would still be around, and thriving, instead of consigned, as they are, to the scrap-bin of automotive… Read more
Multitasking
Multitasking is a very popular idea, a buzzword with wide acceptance, and one of the best ways to waste your time and raise your stress level, both at work and at home. University of Michigan psychologists demonstrated in a detailed five-year study that multitasking actually makes people less effective at their jobs. Because the human brain needs time to shift gears between tasks, the more switching back and forth you have to do the less proficiently you will tackle any of it. The “time cost” of refocusing your attention may be only a few seconds with each switch, but the researchers found that, over time, it reduced people’s total efficiency by 20% to 40%. “Multitasking” is just a stupid “new economy” buzzword for “I am incapable of paying attention to anything for more than two seconds”. How exactly did such utter inability to concentrate and get work done become the badge of honor that it is for so many small business owners and middle managers? Here’s a thought; if you… Read more
So, What Do You Do?
That question is the favorite conversation starter in America, where identity and career (or mere job function) are deeply tangled in each other, where “you are what you do”. Almost without fail, the answer to what we do (a verb) is usually replied to with a noun: “I am a ____.” No one “polices” or “administers” or “politics”, we are all “Police Officers” and “Administrators” and “Politicians”. The more evasive, who are usually those low enough on the job totem-pole to be ashamed of their function, say that they are “in the ___ industry.” These issues are weighing on my mind recently, since I am no longer traditionally employed and am attempting to make a go of writing and otherwise creating beauty, and the question of whether or not I am self-employed or unemployed is a matter of perspective, personally decided by my position on the Pessimism-Optimism scale on any particular day. Technically, I am “freelancing”, though on some days it feels like I am freeloading instead of… Read more
Thirteen Things That Make Me Feel In Control
Everyone has those weird little victories that we never really talk about, but are what make up a good mood. Those silent victories that make us feel in control and more like ourselves and happy to be alive. Here are thirteen of mine: Sharpening my kitchen knives Eating the last of left-overs Turning the ringer on my cell-phone off on Friday afternoons Watching people eat my food, and enjoy it Sweeping (this is my “Chopping Wood & Carrying Water”) Putting hand tools away Drinking tea on Sunday morning Roasting a batch of coffee Sipping a Black&Tan with friends at my local pub Polishing my shoes and boots Getting Micron pens or Derwent pencils on sale Making the words say what I want them to Putting groceries away Links to other Thursday Thirteens! (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!) Get the Thursday Thirteen code here! The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting… Read more
MT Socialize Ideas
As I was reading this article over at seroundtable, I started thinking about what else the plugin could do that would make the whole thing easier. I have a couple of ideas: give users an option of `showing the tag as it is now, or having a dropdown box with the bookmarking sites in it. Tie the tag into the TechnoratiTags plugin, or the Movable Type keywords for the entry, which would allow for automatic submission of your keywords A couple of other configuarble options, such as being able to easily change the “Bookmark This” verbiage to whatever you want, and choosing to pop up a new window if you wanted. However, I need to know what people who are using it want. Leave your ideas and requests, as well as bug reports, in the comments for this entry, and I will see what features people really want and try to get those included. …and of course, you could always click on the Paypal Tip button over there on the right and drop me a buck or two if you like it…yeah, I’m a… Read more