Parker Writesand stuff

Succcess! The fact that I accomplished my goal and wrote once a day is victory enough, but I there are a few other successes here. Firstly, my writing was pretty long. I thought I would end up having to BS some one-paragraph-ers, but I never did.

I did have quite a bit of trouble squeezing in the time one night, so I ended up writing an improvised narrative. This was a bit of a disappointment, because I decided partway through the week that the skill that I wanted to work on this week was writing essays. So in a sense this post was something of a sell-out. Interesting, though it was the fastest write, i think that it’s the most interesting read. This either means that, as I’ve suspected, I’m not very good at writing essays (both at making them interesting and at writing them quickly), or that I’m good at writing narratives. Or maybe narratives are just easier both to write and read in general (this isn’t hard to believe). Certainly I would make a whole other marathon out of narrative writing. Maybe use a process like I did for my modernism project a couple years ago, where I improvise a story, then polish it.

I need to develop a mechanism for justifying the both lack of length and lack of completeness of thoughts. Experience suffers from a lack of both, but I think that it’s nonetheless an interesting idea, and worth writing about. These kinds of pieces can be meant to provoke the reader to explore the topic themselves, or even to discuss with others. I want to allow myself to do more thinking out loud, because I know that writing things out often helps organize my thoughts (that was one of the goals of this marathon week). This could be a really interesting format, where I just record my stream of consciousness while I reflect on an issue that I’m unsure about.

So let’s keep the momentum going. School is about to get crazy for the next couple weeks, but I want to make my crop rotation a priority as well. I’m going to keep blogging, but now I’m going to explore my above stream of consciousness ideas. Maybe I’ll extend this into finals week, so that I can trace the way that my logical process becomes altered as I slip into insanity.

The following things will bring me closer to productivity zen and computing flow. I feel like I hit this point right before I made the switch to linux, and I haven’t quite caught up again since. Part of this is a lack of effort to research and implement the necessary systems. Part of it is that I’ve increased my standards. And let’s be honest, part of it is that open source software is lagging behind by just a bit in some of these domains. We’re close to having Time Machine for Linux, but let’s face it: we’re just not quite there yet.

Implement a file backup system.
Perhaps some version of this. I want two on-site backups and one off-site. I’ll settle for one on and one off. I want these backups to be incremental (they don’t re-copy files that haven’t been changed since the last backup) and versioned (they keep old copies of files, in case I want to roll back to an earlier version). I want this to happen almost entirely automatically, and nightly. If I have an internet connection, my laptop automatically uses a tiny slice of my bandwidth to backup to my off-site backup server. If a certain external drive is plugged in, same thing, though I’ll also settle for these things just happening at 3 in the morning every day. I want to be notified when I haven’t backed up in 7 days. Same for when my hard drive hasn’t been checked recently.
Also, I want to use versioning to synchronize files, especially programming projects (but also papers, etc), across machines. More on synchronization later.

Implement a to do list system
When I was still using my treo 650, I was on top of this. I recorded my tasks based on what resources they required. I had a list of all the phone calls I needed to make, all of the emails I needed to send, all of the things that I needed to look up online, all of the errands I needed to run, etc. There are a few similar bits of software for the iphone, but I haven’t found one that I love yet. I’m looking for something fast (not really possible at all on the iphone, in my experience) and something that will sync with Sunbird (probably through ScheduleWorld or something).
I’m seriously considering downgrading back to my treo for this and a couple other reasons (can’t beat the speed and the tactile querty). I’d much rather get an Openmoko Freerunner, that way I’ll still be able to get email and web browse on the go, but hopefully it’ll be a little snappier, and it’ll almost certainly play better with my linux laptop. None of the available solutions are ideal at this point, and I blame proprionormativity.
It may be that I just need to start writing things down in my little moleskine. That seems to work fine for a number of people. It’s certainly got its disadvantages, but at least it’s a system, and perhaps it’s what i need in the interim between now and when the Freerunner has some more polished software (and i have the money to purchase one).

Synchronize Everything
I want to be able to add an event to my calendar on my phone, then edit it from my laptop, then confirm the location from another computer attached to the internet. I want to synchronize contacts, calendars, emails, tasks (to-do lists), other “notes” (simple text files). Also, I want to synchronize my feed readers. I love liferea, but I want to be able to read my feeds (and sync read/unread status) on other computers that don’t have it installed (including my cell phone). I want all this synchronization to be coupled with really good offline modes. I want my laptop to slowly download all of my emails while I’m not looking, so that when I don’t have a connection I can still process them and write replies which get sent off once I get a connection again. A really messy mixture of Google Apps, Funambol, ScheduleWorld, Thunderbird, Sunbird, and pixie dust have helped me implement a partial sorta kinda not quite there version of this.

Improved Email
Firefox is gem of open source technology. Thunderbird is “eh.” There are just so many little things. I’ve been so spoiled by gmail. It made searching so easy. And fast. And the way that the threaded view included my own replies. I just can’t live without that functionality now. But I don’t want to depend on gmail anymore. Maybe it’s time to give Evolution a try. Or maybe I should just go full haxor and implement something like alpine.

Take Back my Data
This is part of why I am using open source software. Whenever I add contacts to my address book, or songs to my library, or friends to my facebook, I am making an investment. With closed, proprietary tools, I don’t really own that data. DRM-infested tracks that I add to my music library can become unplayable when I switch players. My facebook friends become useless when I switch to another social network. My address book can be lost when I switch email clients or phone software. These are not all the same issue, but they are related. I want to really be in control of my data, and I want to be able to take it with me so that I’m not tied to any particular networks or pieces of software. For this reason, I want to stop using gmail and host my own email. I want to run my own calendar contact, etc sync server. I want to host my own photos and blog (check [mostly] on that one). I want to back up all this data, and keep it in a number of formats, most of them open. Figuring out how to do this while still staying connected to the social networks is incredibly challenging. I can put my photos up at my gallery2 install, but my flickr friends won’t see them unless I cross-post. Identica and Laconica are making great strides in this field, proving that you can host your own data while still connecting to the network (or, rather, to a few different networks).

I know that I’m not the only one struggling with these things. In some cases the technology is there, but nobody has made it usable and otherwise “pretty” yet. These things can all become a reality, and I do feel like we’re getting close.

So beyond a simple “to do list” for myself, the preceding can be thought of as a challenge to the open source community. Let’s make these things a reality, and let’s make them so easy and intuitive that they become invisible.

During the election, there was all this talk about “experience.” It was seen as a necessity for holding office.

But experience is not necessarily valuable. Especially in a system as broken as the US government (see also Change Congress) having the fresh viewpoint of someone from the outside is extremely important. This is something that I am experienced with as an activist. It’s easy to see the faults in a system and become convinced that change is needed, but once you enter the system and gain a position of power, your time in the system makes you complacent and the issues seem less important. This is especially true of the US government, where it could be argued that the system is corrupt to the point that more “experience” implies more corruption.

I recently read this post by Merlin Mann. His name is fitting; he is just a man, and yet his brilliance borders on wizardy. His ability to keep things in perspective is truly inspiring.

I like to do stuff. Especially making stuff. Lots of stuff. Different stuff. But important stuff. Yet I don’t do enough of this stuff. It’s easy to get caught up in schoolwork and other activities that the System expects us to participate in. School is certainly important and valuable for most people, but it’s important to keep perspective. I already wrote about finding empowerment within myself. Emerson wrote about Self-Reliance.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the things that I do now, what I want to do for the rest of my life, and how my priorities are ordered.

I like writing. Sometimes the essays that I write for class are neat. I played with stream of consciousness writing last year, and I want to keep experimenting with that. I want to write more essays on this blog. I believe that writing helps clarify my thoughts. Giving language to ideas makes them much more useful.

I like artwork. I remix clothing. I make sculpture with cheap and accessible materials like paper, tape, and marker. I take photos and use Free Software to edit them. I like asserting the accessibility of the tools for creation and expression. I like remixing things that we interact with every day so that they tell a story and become a unique work of art.

I like programming. I develop the web. It’s my day job. I like making websites that are pretty and useful. I’m focused on creating websites that empower users to create and update the content themselves, without the help of a web developer (see also Web 2.0). I want to write more Open Source code that people will actually use and build on.

Merlin’s post helped me form a clearer idea of what I want to Do, and it got me thinking about what I can do to Make Things Happen.

I would consider myself a Renaissance Man. Most people would say that, as a college student, it’s time that I start picking and choosing and focusing, for fear that i should become a “Jack of all trades and expert of none.”

But I think that having varying interests is important because information and perspective gained in one field helps form new ideas in other fields. Plus I really like all of the stuff that I Do (or, rather, love Doing but don’t Do enough). I can’t keep up all of my hobbies simultaneously. But I can still pursue all of them indefinitely. I can rotate pursuits, getting really into my photography for a week and maybe doing some web development while I let my sculptural work lie fallow for a bit. A kind of Hobby Crop Rotation.

But I’m having trouble doing anything at all in this new college community where I’m trying to stay on top of my schoolwork and make friends and carve out my Space. I need motivation. Inspiration.

So I came up with a few ideas. Today, I’m launching one of them: Marathons. For a period of X days, i’m going to do one Y per day. Some will suck. Some will be awesome. Some will be well thought-out and formed, and some will be thrown together at the last minute. I have a theory that there’s not necessarily a correlation between the amount of planning ahead that I do and the brilliance of my work (don’t tell my prof when I actually started that midterm paper). It has more to do with my mood and whether or not I can get into the zone. I work better when I approach something casually. Sometimes I can get to a place where the stuff just pours out of me and time passes without me noticing (see also Mihály Csíkszentmihályi and Flow).

So here it goes.

This is Blog Week. A post a day for 7 days. This is day 1.

So I’m a college student now. I’ve heard “No” quite a few times in the past couple weeks. It’s not necessarily an angry thing. But I still hate it. I hate “No.” As an improvisor, I’ve learned how to say “yes,” and even “yes and.” I learned that humor doesn’t have to involve “no.” As an increasingly socially aware person, I am very sensitive to “No.” I want people to be free and explore and experiment and be themselves instead of being “No”-ed into a mold.

I participated in a phone bank for the Obama campaign. I called some 15-20 numbers and didn’t get a single positive response. New Hampshire residents have apparently been baraged with propaganda from both sides because their votes are so important. To these people picking up their phones, I was just another solicitor. They were not happy to hear from me. “Don’t call here with that crap.” “No, I don’t know who I’m voting for, but if I keep getting these calls I’ll know who I wont be voting for.”

I applied for funding for my trip to the Free Culture conference. I tried a few resources. I wrote a proposal. I got “No”s.

I took three placement exams. “No” advanced placement for any of them.

I tried out for the two campus improv groups. I was sure I was going to get in, until i saw how many other talented improvisors there were in my freshman class. “No.”

I really really hate “No.” I like “Yes.” I like “Yes you can.” Encouragement. “I think that what you are trying to do is extremely important and valuable, even if i can’t help you with it right now.”

I don’t take “No” well. It’s a character flaw. I get depressed and want to quit. I realize that I’ve been lucky to get a whole lot of “Yes” the last few years of my life. I don’t think there’s going to be as much “Yes” from here on out. I want to be on the forefront, making the change. So, in a way, I don’t really want “Yes.” I want to get right in there with all of the “No” and stand tall and fight.

I’m going to work with friends to start a new improv group. I’m going to the Free Culture Conference, even if I have to pay for my travel out of my own pocket. I’m going to kick ass in my intro-level courses and use my exta time to Get Things Done. I’ve registered to vote in New Hampshire, where my vote will really count, and I’ll make sure that all of my friends do the same. This is important stuff. I’m not going to let the “No” slow me down.

My strength can come from my self, not from receiving “Yes.”

a person who just got shot with a tranquilizer gun and who favors government systems that emphasize equality over personal freedom?

a calmunist

however, if we had been playing the alliteration game:

sleepy socialist
lethargic leftist
maxed-out marxist