blog (December, 2007)
quotes: db dabbling; meta-work
Like cleaning the house when there's a more important task to be done.
I'm moving my many masses of quotations into a database I used Dabble DB to create.
I like to capture and stash away quotes from books, blogs, essays, lectures -- to enjoy, refer to, and write about later. My old, long-growing quotes page currently stores the majority, .txt-style, on this server. Many more are on strewn about: in other files, on various pages on my personal wiki, in Google Notebook, elsewhere.
A few years ago I began blueprinting plans for a Mac software app called iQuote, (clever, eh?) outlining how it would begin as a personal, searchable quote catalog, and eventually grow into a net-aware, community-oriented (del.icio.us-like) quote-sharing system. My revenue stream would be in Amazon referral dough from click-throughs on sources.
I never got around to it. I give it to you, lazyweb... go for it. Open-source it, and I promise to maybe help out, (or at least report bugs and criticize your implementation.)
So, though a cosmic-sized, crowd-wise, social-ized, (lowercase-i'd,) quote-sharing system hasn't proved a pressing need for me -- Perfect is the enemy of good enough -- a bit more organization and efficiency has.
"Dabble DB helps you build an online database on the web." The interface is quick and slick, and it's free if you agree to share all of the data you stuff into it. Adding and editing entries, playing with columns, and creating views... all cake. It's responsive and so-far solid. I haven't played with relating tables yet, or querying from externally.
Here's the public page for my new Quotes database. I've already fed it a bunch of blog fodder (that I've been not blogging about.) Next up is my quotes page, for which I'll try out Dabble's Import functionality. Then, to make that page db-driven and searchable.
At a Christmas party, my mom was relating to someone the traits I earned from her and my father. She neglected to mention that I, too, am constantly "trying to get organized." I tend not to use her phrase, or I'd have to choke on all of the times I've buddhisty-boasted ~ emptier-than-thou ~ that it can't be achieved; her seeking precludes its own satisfaction.
We both know that sometimes it's just fun to sort stuff out.
in chunks
- Made it to work today by bus(es) in just 25 minutes. The Euclid Corridor is quickening.
- A cop pulled me and my bicycle over on Saturday. That's twice this year.
- Felt a new and disconcerting snap in my knee while stretching (improperly) Sunday.
- Wrote WestSoy about the un-recyclability of their aseptic packaging a few weeks ago. They responded with a vacuous letter and coupons, (for more of same product & packaging,) to purchase my silent compliance
- My living room found a couch on a neighbor's curb. There were no back-cushions, but we're making do with replacements.
- Great email today from my supervisor at CleveMed: "I have a goal next year to reduce my needs for commercial software..."
I call them nature band-aids because there's a general idea in American that the remedy for mutilated urbanism is nature. And in fact the remedy for wounded and mutilated urbanism is good urbanism, good buildings. Not just flower beds, not just cartoons of the Sierra Nevada mountains...
-- James Howard Kunstler, The tragedy of suburbia (TED | Talks 2004)