blog (January, 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.
crazy do-loops, mental poots
I twittered this morning to talk about laundry, a-mung other things. Could be one of this life's low points.
Gab for gab's sake.
In fewer than 4,000 days, we have encoded half a trillion versions of our collective story and put them in front of 1 billion people I have reviewed the expectations of waking adults and wise experts, and I can affirm that this comprehensive wealth of material, available on demand and free of charge, was not in anyone's scenario.
-- Kevin Kelly We Are the Web, Wired, 13.08 (August 2005)
Nor is it always meaningful.
technological significance and technological novelty are rarely the same--indeed, a given technology's grip on our awareness is often in inverse relationship to its significance in our lives...we are wrong to associate technology solely with invention, and that we should think of it, rather, as evolving through use.
Steven Shapin, What Else Is New? (The New Yorker), found via Heather Rae's Ductless on the Cleantech Blog
So, now I prolong the insignificance by commenting on it using a different medium.
The day for blogging about blogging and podcasting about podcasting is long gone.
-- Chris Pirillo, 10 Ways to Eliminate the Echo Chamber
Sure it is.
George Clinton called it Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis. (YGIAGAM (Your Google Is As Good As Mine.))
how I read, online/offline
I've noticed more than a few people that don't usually read magazines in real life like to read them on aeroplanes. (I won't make broad, sweeping generalizations about most being women.)
Maybe it's because the content is bite-size chunky, and they fit well in the seat pocket?
Even if the subject is non-trashy, though, magazines themselves are trashy. Or at best, recycley, which is preceded in preference by reducey.
(I still read books, but) I don't read the newspaper or magazines; I read from the web. I'm not iPhone hip, though, and still rock the off-line, often. I used to print out web-reads for off-line consumption, but I've made another step in paper-less. (The soapbox I'm standing on is 100% post-consumer recycled cardboard.).
My new-school/old-school combo is an aged Palm Pilot with Google Reader and del.icio.us, and Plucker.
Here's my online/offline web-reading strategy:
- Browse the blogs and news feeds I read with Google Reader.
- Kick stuff that looks interesting off to a new (Firefox) tab -- using keystroke
ffwith the Google Reader Quick Links Greasemonkey script (or Better GReader Firefox add-on.) - Mark everything else as Read (keystroke
A,) close Google Reader, and sift through the opened tabs. - Consume what I have time for, and tag longer items for later in del.icio.us as to_read. Using the del.icio.us Bookmarks extension, keystroke
CTRL-D (CMD-D)then typing the tag name does it all. - Use Plucker to grab all of the pages at 1-link depth from my del.icio.us/to_read list, and convert them to a Palm-readable format.
- Sync the Palm
- Read tagged items at leisure, on- or off-line.
No trees, no inks, no waste, no shipping!
No big glossy pictures, either, (yet.)
meaningful mindless chatter
She was goofing around:
"I'll leave you a comment on MySpace, or
write on your wall in Facebook, or
tag a link for you on del.icio.us",
and began flinging flickrs, Google Calendars, LinkedIns, Upcomings and Twitters --
fad upon mimeographic fad --
til she erupted into a dizzying spell of
"blog blog blog blog blog blog blog blog -osphere",
and an exasperated, "but one's really saying anything!!".
In fewer than 4,000 days, we have encoded half a trillion versions of our collective story and put them in front of 1 billion people,
-- Kevin Kelly, We Are the Web (2005)
Sometimes overwhelming and pointless and empty.
The discovery of the alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves... You give your disciples not truth but only the semblance of truth; they will be heroes of many things, and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing.
-- Socrates, "Phaedrus"
He says disciples, though, whereas our new media means democratization. We should celebrate and experiment and practice.
Discovery and exploration and browsing; moving about and looking at many things; the linked structure of the web; when you come across a link, it's a distraction engine, which, in terms of the memetic incest, is actually a great thing. It's how we get past that incest; we're brought from one site to another.
That is so fundamentally different from the basic idea of how we communicate in print; in print you're trying to cover the topic, and be comprehensive, and be done.
-- David Weinberger on podcast: Technometria: Everything is Miscellaneous
The process continues; between the lines and off the page.
Peak Suburbia, and Suburbia 2.0
we had better prepare to make other arrangements for living in this country, by which I mean specifically re-localizing, de-globalizing, with an emphasis on local agriculture wherever possible, the emergency restoration of passenger railroad service and related modes of public transit, the rebuilding of local commercial infrastructures, and a radical rethinking of how we inhabit the landscape under New Urbanist lines.
In any case, those who keep wringing their hands over the bulldozers leveling the plots of prairie, or cornfield, or desert -- those distressed folks can direct their anxiety elsewhere. Worry less whether one final strip mall will tilt up out in gloaming, and think harder about how you are going to feed yourself and your family in a couple of years when the stupendous motorized moloch of American life begins to sputter, and the Cheez Doodle shipments can no longer make it to your supermarket shelves, and all that is "normal" melts into air.
-- James Howard Kunstler, Peak Suburbia, (Clusterfuck Nation)
I've been tossing around some ideas for a plant/seed/produce/tool-sharing site to grow a community around local gardeners, (urban, rural, and in-between.)
It seems a nice blend of [my interests in] web, software, ecology, and local community -- helping to build that economy/ecosystem that'll become necessary as our current concoction collapses, (as Kunstler continues to promise.)
I need a good project, but it might be more than I'm up for right now.
Cleveland Recycling Locations Map
I found the City of Cleveland's list and locator pretty poor, so I rolled my own (Google) map of Cleveland Recycling Drop-off Locations. The map shows all of the public bins where city residents may deposit recyclables.
For the bins I wasn't familiar with, (the majority,) I used the address provided, pointing to a spot right on the road instead of their exact locations, which are at times somewhat hidden. If you can help me pinpoint bins you know about, (the Satellite map view helps) I'd appreciate it.
The map is shared for viewing on Google Maps, but I believe I'm the only one that can edit it there. Please export the data and do what you like with it, though.
it's not ROI, it's EU
(End User.)
A question posed to Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, during last week's Q1 2007 earnings call, and his response:
Anthony Noto (Goldman Sachs): Eric, I was wondering if you could comment at the management level as you make investments, what measurement do you look at holistically for the company as a return-based measurement to ensure that the overall business and overall shareholders are seeing an aggregated return from each of the individual investments?
Eric Schmidt (Google): We don't approach the questions quite the same way that you phrased them. Our primary focus is on end user happiness, end user traffic, end user growth. [styling mine]
-- Google Inc. (GOOG) Q1 2007 Earnings Call (transcript or liveblogging summary)
I'd say "overall shareholders" are satisfied so far. When will user-centric become business-as-usual, again?
bandwidth efficiency
I'm focusing on resilience of network resources by offloading them into the net-cloud.
I've recently spent some time following Coding Horror's four tips for Reducing Your Website's Bandwidth Usage:
- Switch to an external image provider.
- Turn on HTTP compression.
- Outsource Your RSS feeds.
- Optimize the size of your JavaScript and CSS
I saved this longest for last, but have finished moving all of my blog's photography content onto Flickr, which now hefts transfers of images embedded in site pages -- instead of my server and its connection.
Quick (flip apache switch) and dramatic fix to reduce file size transfered. I wish I'd known of it earlier.
Same concept -- and almost as fun -- as #1. I trimmed the site down to one (atom) feed (please update your link) and let Feedburner host it, alleviating constant newsreader requests.
I didn't take this one too far, preferring code read-&maintain-ability.
Stay light :: quick, safe, balanced, distributed.
info consumption, attention, denial
I've been wondering why the Twitter bug hasn't seemed to have caught on in Cleveland yet -- or at least not in my circles (btw, me, ok.) But maybe it's better it hasn't.
Aaron Swartz on junk-food's information equivalent:
Everyone in America knows that it's easy to accidentally find yourself stuffing your face with junk food when you're not paying attention. But no one would seriously maintain that junk food is better than fine cuisine. It's just easier.
The same goes for reading stories on Reddit or your friends' pointless twits about their life. Looking at photos of sunsets or reading one-liners takes no cognitive effort. It's the mental equivalent of snack food. You start eating one and before you know it you've gone through two cans of Pringles and become a world expert on Evan Williams' travel habits.
-- Aaron Swartz, Everything Good is Bad For You (Raw Thought)
I criticize reality TV as being the fast-food of entertainment, but MySpace and blogreading can prove just as fruitless.
Ultimately, it's intention and attention. How are the feeds in your newsreader feeding you? How do you take it inline and offline?
my eggs in google's basket
I've moved mail service for this domain over to Google Apps.
This was a big step. I've been hosting my mailserver on this domain for a number of years, and, though it's posed certain hassles, there are benefits to DIY and control. But off-loading it into the cloud has already begun proving worthwhile, for spam prevention, speed, searchability, tagability, and dependability.
The transition wasn't beautiful, though:
The Import-from-POP function isn't (yet?) available in the Apps version of Gmail, so I used the Mail Redirect Thunderbird Add-on to push all my old mail to my new account. Message headers are maintained, so it looks just like the original To:, From:, Date:, etc., but GMail still lists the redirect-date in message lists. :(
Nor am I yet as in-sync as I'd like to be:
I couldn't merge my previous Gmail account, to which I've got other services tied, like Google Calendar, Analytics, Desktop, and Reader, (yikes!)
Yeah -- Reader too. I switched from my longtime feedreaders, NetNewsWire/NewsGator -- for the speedier (AJAXier) interface Google Reader provides. (Another desktop app bites the dust, in exchange for the browser/cloud.)
I hope this is a move in the right direction. Doing all I wanted, myself, wasn't feasible anymore. I'm keeping this site hosted on my machine, maintaining it as my (private/public) hub to the web. I hope Google continues to play nice with my data, and to mix and sort it in helpful ways, and that it's ultimately portable, should I (when I) choose to take my digits elsewhere.
data services: from ownership to facilitation
At the moment, proprietary data-sources own the space, [...] They're starting to license their data, selectively, and I think, over the next few years, we'll see them turning to increasingly fluid and commoditized services...
But, [...] perhaps the future -- perhaps the game-changer -- is to be the business or organization that throws all this model away; who says that the future is not in owning data, but in creating an ecosystem filled with data that's bubbled up from the people, in which you can offer new services that come from being the main facilitator of this new kind of web, and a new kind of relationship; a more collaborative relationship between company and consumer.
-- Tom Coates, Greater than the sum of its parts, speech at The Future of Web Apps Summit 2006 : audio, slides
leveraging the web in democratic politics
A crowd can become smart mainly because it is a collection of individuals, who're different, who have different knowledge, different resources, different viewpoints, and somehow a synergy emerges in what they do. Their different pieces complement each other, and something bigger becomes possible. It isn't that there's any great wisdom in averaging what a lot of people think. A vote by majority is pretty dumb. Lots of people applying their unique skills to working together - that can be really big.
-- Flemming Funch, The Dumbness of Crowds (Ming the Mechanic)
But most efforts at such teledemocracy so far, such as [...] www.vote.com, or even [...] www.moveon.org, are simply new versions of the public opinion poll. Billing themselves as the next phase in a truly populist and articulated body politic, the sites amount to little more than an opportunity for politicians to glean the gist of a few more uninformed, knee-jerk reactions to the issue of the day. Vote.com, as the name suggests, reduces representative democracy to just another marketing survey. Even if it is just the framework for a much more substantial future version, it is based on a fundamentally flawed vision of push-button politics.
-- Douglas Rushkoff, Open Source Democracy (txt / pdf)
Web Standards elevator pitch
A thick and slick one-liner for the Why? to designing with web standards:
The semantic value of your markup should align with the semantic value of your content.
-- Craig Cook, How to Grok Web Standards (A LIST Apart)