Cross the streams

I was recently reminded that one area of life can easily feed into another, if you let it. As Egon once said in Ghostbusters, it's time to cross the streams.

Writing a document involves several different tasks: organizing and gathering the information, writing, rewriting, producing the text, making notes, etc. But a word processor can only help with the production of the text. It won't help you collect all of your research so it is in one place, it won't help you format the document, it won't help you re-organize the document as you rewrite it.

At work, I have been using integrated development environments for coding projects, where everything one needs to get the work done is collected in one place. The idea is that you can devote the maximum amount of effort to getting work done instead of switching between windows, trying to find that note you had somewhere, or re-finding that research material you put... somewhere.

So why not apply the efficiency from the programming world to the writing one? Brilliant.

I think I'm leaning toward this creative writing software program for that part of my life. More about finding one for work later.

Word choice

All my life, word choice has mattered to me. I would get confused by imprecise directions, poorly explained ideas or rules, etc. I appreciate the precise language of the law and philosophy which others regard as picky hair-splitting. I adore the well crafted phrase, the muscular verb, the witty Twitter tweet.

There are the words and phrases that are cheese graters on my ears because of the emptiness or the evil intent:
going forward
in order to
the impact of
nonbeliever, nonreligious
sexist and racist epithets

Some folks are mightily upset by profanity, which is taken to be either unspeakably rude, mean-spirited, inarticulate or showing lack of character. A lot of it is scatological, and anything referring to the human body is considered off limits by some. This is a front, as I challenge anyone to be offended by my wife's use of the phrase "bladder of steel" to describe Micro Trackball's limited bathroom-going. Or George W. Bush's nickname for his advisor Karl Rove: "Turd Blossom." May have been a lousy President, but he has some word choice chops.

I find it odd that a shorthand reference to a penis is not objected to and is casually used or has multiple meanings (dork, cock, dong, scumbag, has balls, etc.) while any reference to a vagina (including the word 'vagina') is treated with an awed horror akin to yelling "Voldemort" in the middle of Hogwarts. It is the Organ that Shall Not be Named. People may cringe when someone says you 'throw like a girl,' but call anyone a 'pussy' and there's likely to be a fight. And of course the non-slang, scientific term 'clitoris' makes people pass right the fuck out.

As you can guess, profanity doesn't bother me. When a little kid wearing a backpack angrily calls Hancock an 'asshole' at the beginning of the movie 'Hancock' it nailed my funny bone hard. Why? There is brutal honesty in that, and there's no better way to convey how low public opinion of Hancock has fallen at that point in the story. And I bet that kid loved filming that scene. Profanity is just another toolbox of words that, when used in the right amounts, can do something nothing else can. Some people can be offended by any and everything, so tread carefully.

What about politically correct speech? My rule here is that if a group wants to be called "Native Americans" and object to other labels or monikers, then we should respect that. And they can change their minds whenever they want and we should go with that. After all, if I introduce myself as Trackball, I don't want to be called "Brainless." And if people change their names when they get married, it's stupid and rude to refer to them by their previous names.

So watch your word choice.

The revolution will not be printed

As a professional nonfiction producer, voracious consumer and amateur fiction producer of written communication, I can sense a shift coming in how we communicate with words. Some of this is driven by the death of print journalism (h/t Warren Ellis) as newspapers and magazines and short fiction markets shrink and die. Some of this is prompted by the rise of e-books and DRM-free pdfs given away or sold by authors. Some of this is pushed by online only journalism sites (Engadget, Politico, TMZ come to mind).

Some of this is spurred by how professional written products seem to be more potently condensed than they used to be. I suspect that news articles of the future may look something like this:

End of Hero Films?

• Aquaman Reboot Tanks
• Underwater love scene gets laughs
• Studios turn to lucrative Thai action pics

I'm not sure if I am bothered by this to some extent. In a faster-moving society like ours, we are getting better at time management. The above bullet blurbie thing will suit most people out there who really don't want to know what Aquaman Resurfaces' director thinks about his bomb.

Long-form journalism, nonfiction and fiction are not going anywhere, so don't worry, all of you long-form producers. People still want that kind of writing, but the delivery channels are probably in a phase transition. No one knows how it will shake out, but the journey to that point will probably be pretty interesting.

The truth about Jar Jar Binks

The Phantom Menace came out a decade ago and there are plenty of geeks my age who are still pissed about the very existence of Jar Jar Binks. Yes, the Jamaican-accented clumsy Gungan, who bumbles, fumbles and ultimately is Palpatine's stooge.

The ironic thing is, my 6 year old son considers Jar Jar harmless comic relief. That good ole Jar Jar, talking funny like Yoda, but not serious, even about himself. He's good for a few gags. His appeal to kids is obvious and Lucas' point to some extent. Almost any Cartoon Network series has a buffoon character somewhere and why? Because he makes the other characters and the audience feel more competent. And 30-something geeks who had hoped to relive their childhoods at a Star Wars movie need to get a grip. You dug the Ewoks and Jawas, right? At least the Gungans managed to build beautiful cities, rather than treehouses and rolling lunch boxes.

The truth is that JJ Binks moves the plot along and is visually interesting. It's funny that he is an outcast among his own people. He gives the Queen the idea for allying with the Gungans by showing how even goofy morons can be of aid sometimes, like when they are taken seriously. And he manages to help defeat the droid army at the end of Phantom.

But he is not the most annoying and useless character in the Star Wars movies. No, that honor belongs to... you guessed it... C-3PO. Yes, I loved him too as a character, but he was completely useless and a gaping plot hole. Why didn't Artoo have a vocalizer? Rockets in his legs, holographic projector, computer interface and a blue shocky thing, but can't vocalize Basic? If Artoo could speak, there would be no need for Threepio. A protocol droid? Built by Anakin? Why didn't Anakin build Artoo? Artoo, like the Jawas and Ewoks, appealed to kids. Threepio appealed to no one.

And he's a prissy worrywart English butler, as Lucas intended. Not a cool English butler, like Batman's Alfred Pennyworth. Did you notice that everyone in Star Wars with an English accent is an Imperial? Except Threepio. Maybe if Threepio turned out to be an Imperial spy and went HAL on the Millenium Falcon and Han Solo, that would have justified his existence. Maybe if there was some reason he had to store the Death Star plans. But no, he's just an idiot slowing everyone else down.

There were only three good moments with Threepio: when he was shot to pieces in Cloud City, when Jabba backhanded him, and when Salacious Crumb pulled his photoreceptor (eye) out. The outraged/scared/worried Threepio gag got old by, uh, let's see, the Sand People attack on Luke in New Hope. When he advises Luke and Ben to leave him behind, they should have looked at each other, shrugged, and pitched his goldbricking ass down another sand dune. Hell, Luke tried to give him away in Jedi (you knew he wasn't really giving away Artoo because he had Luke's lightsaber), and I don't recall Leia mentioning him in her holographic message. Shit, even Artoo seemed surprised to see Threepio again on Jabba's sail barge, and you know he was thinking, "What the hell is wrong with Jabba? The old Jabba would have melted down this pain in ass to make a doorknob or something. Can't trust anyone any more."

Finally, the Clone Wars cartoon series recently had an episode "Bombad Jedi" that paired C-3PO with Jar Jar. And guess what, C-3PO is a nattering moron, and Jar Jar, by comparison, looks like an action hero.

Scrubbing the toilet bowl of the soul

If I were prone to dispensing folksy wisdom, I would say "I reckon a man who scrubs his own toilet has no choice but to be honest with himself." Or to put it in Shakespearean terms: To thine own bowl scrub true, for as the flush follows the brush, thoust canst be false to oneself.

It's hard to believe that you are farther up the ladder than anyone else. It shows that your willing to do the dirty work like anyone else. It is also a good anecdote for a swollen ego, lying to yourself, believing your infallibility or any other kinds of folly.

Not that this happens to me a lot. But this can be an acquired personality flaw among college-educated white collar workers who have never worked in a blue collar job and may believe they have never actually touched a toilet (ya know, the foot flushers).

If you really want a heavy dose of modesty, take apart the toilet seat that a 5 year old boy has tortured with a thorough and repeated urine soak and clean each part. Of course, urine is a natural disinfectant, and sailors used to clean their clothes in it (back in the wooden ship days when no one smelled good). Anyway, you could say I was real humble yesterday.

Why haven't I posted for the last month?

Is it because I have been busy with both work and writing and, ya know, life? Yes.

Is it because the increasing number of people I'm following on Twitter, like Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, Brent Spiner, John Hodgman, Levar Burton, Leo Laporte, etc., has made that a bigger time suck? Yes, but an excellent return on investment for geek knowledge.

Is it because I have been fixing various tax payment problems that may preclude me from being confirmed as President Obama's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Cursor Moving Devices at the nascent Department of Geek Affairs? No comment.

Is it because some discretionary time has been chewed up by Micro Trackball's Super Smash Bros. Brawl obsession? Yes.

Is it because I have been getting ready for two Feb./March birthdays which require much research and planning? Yes.

Is it because of the economic downturn? No, but if you want to use that excuse, go for it. It's very much in vogue right now to 'tighten your belt' and make other people miserable because you want to fit in with people who really have it bad.

Is it because January is a boring, miserable, full of extra laundry, piece of shit month? Yes.

Is it because I have been putting together an application for Clarion 2009 in sunny San Diego this summer? Sadly, no.

The truth about geek groupies

I'd love to be a real geek, but I just lack certain chops. Some of you may think that I am all geek, but that is probably more a testament to your lack of geekiness than any reflection on me. I tag along with real geeks, and my ungeekiness is demonstrated by how much I learn from them.

• Like the funny cool geek chops of BadGods, xkcd, and of course Penny Arcade. I can't be funny like that. In the food chain of humor, geeks make those less geeky than them laugh, and those less geeky people can make even lesser geeky people laugh, and so on.
• Like hearing ten minute blow-by-blows of decades old D&D battles, understanding exactly what they are talking about, but never having gone that far with role-playing games. My almost geekiness leaves me with lame The Chris Farley Show-esque responses and weak-ass tales of playing the Ghostbusters or Star Wars RPGs.
• Like finding incredibly pithy funny tweets that manage to include cool D&D references to modern subjects, but not be able to produce my own.
  
• Like fearing that the Comic Book Store guy may try talking comic to me when I'm buying the kids comics, which will force me to divulge that I have almost enough comics/superhero knowledge to be completely stupid about any of it.
• Like going to a Ren Fest, sci-fi con or ComiCon and realizing that some people have put way more effort into it than I could ever scrounge up.
• Like following real geeks on Twitter and the internutz and finding out about the latest geek tech, geek memes and snarky geek asides.
• Like knowing real geeks who clue me into comics by Patton Oswalt and awesomest gadgets like Apple's MacBook Wheel.
  

There are certain classes of geek, and the list below indicates I don't rank above a level 1 wannabe in any of them:
Physical sciences geek: I never took physics, chemistry was a nightmare and if there is an opposite to mechanical or engineering ability, it's me. I married into this category, but that doesn't count. What's an integral?
Programming geek: I only really program in SAS. No Perl, Python, much less C languages or anything else. Trying to learn C# doesn't count yet. I don't sudo anything in Linux either.
Gadget geek: I'm too cheap.
Sci-fi/fantasy lit geek: My eclectic tastes and no fantasy desire leaves me wanting. More about this later.
Sci-fi movie/TV geek: I can do okay here sometimes (I saw the Star Wars Christmas Special), except have never seen Dr. Who, Stargate SG: Cthulhu, Babylon 5 or Lost. So, uh, no.
Mechanical geek: I can barely operate a Swiss Army knife. No homemade pumpkin guns, no self-built gaming rigs or PS3 supercomputers.
Gaming geek: so many games, too little time. And first person shooters are not my thing. See Penny Arcade above for the real deal.
Lego Geek: have never been to Brickfair in DC and my building skills can't produce something like this.

Maybe all geeks feel inadequate compared to one another. Maybe, as Qui-Gon put it, "there's always a bigger geek." The truth is that I am a geek groupie. So if you are a real geek, thanks for letting me tag along and bask in your reflected glow of geekiness. As a geek, you probably haven't received that kind of attention before. Enjoy it. I'm not going anywhere.

The truth about commercialism, gluttony and peace on Earth

The truth is that it is all good. If some aspect of it makes you happy, go with it. By the same token, can we enjoy this happy time of year without bemoaning aspects of it that don't seem sufficiently pure?

Commercialism is cool: who doesn't like getting new things they have wanted? In our house, it's like everyone has a second birthday on Christmas. People in my house put off getting things they want for months leading up to Christmas, so getting the items is quite the thrill. But at least no one goes around complaining that others are not being commercial enough.

Gluttony is glorious. Being post-food myself, this doesn't matter much to me. Actually this is one area where no one really objects that much. I guess, given my food rants in the past, I would be the one to say something like 'hey, does an obese country really need this?' but since Christmas isn't only about food, it's not that big a deal. There are people who do complain that others are not gluttonizing enough, and they need to chill.

Peace is positive. Just let go the whole 'this is only about my religion alone'. Christians attempting to own Christmas are being silly because underneath their claims is the historical fact that their guy was born in spring or summer. Every faith and culture has a winter holiday, and if they didn't, they made sure to get themselves one. Come one, come all.

In the immortal words of Sheryl Crow, if it makes you happy, it can't be that bad. So live it up, because January and February are coming, and they blow chunks.

Trackball heaven: is this the Lair's future?

See the 7 Logitech trackballs! See the 8 screens (4 suspended) in the front-viewing-area-thingie?

The next step for the Lair 1.0 is to fill that big empty expanse on the desk. Oh, come on, don't act surprised. Did you think that I would never want to play any games in the Lair? I would want it to look like a slightly less insane and majorly less cluttered version of this.

I'm not saying I would ever construct something like this, but check out this from a Yahoo! Games article on a guy who plays 36 World of Warcraft characters at the same time on 11 computers. It's called multiboxing, because he has a separate account for each one. That's one way to have a grand time without any friends!

But let's focus on the hardware here, people, okay? Here's another look:


(Any insinuation or accusation that this computing gear orgy is shown here in part to make anything I want to do seem minor by comparison is spurious, scurrilous and preposterous.)

The truth about me and football fandom

Beginning in 1984, I swung from mild apathy toward pro football to rabid interest. I watched the San Francisco 49ers offense glide through the season in such a groove that I was shell-shocked. Joe Montana was so cool, in the zone, and he spread the ball around everywhere. The offense's timing and execution was brilliant: I had never seen a group of people act so closely in concert. And the D was tough, led by the hard-hitting Ronnie Lott.

I began to pay attention to all the exciting football going on during that era: the epic Giants-49ers duels, Bo Jackson, LT, run and shoot, the hapless Oilers and Bills and Patriots. But a perfectly thrown pass, a Barry Sanders juke or a Ronnie Lott hit are things of beauty. I played Tecmo Bowl, Tecmo Super Bowl and Tecmo Super Bowl III (Special Edition) and knew every roster. I played Front Page Sports Football Pro, made my own playbook, built my own league based on historical NFL teams (Rochester Jeffersons, anyone?), etc.

Lately, the fan-focused fantasy football has really ruined much of my interest. The sport is no longer about teams and group psychology, it's about players' individual performances. Most of the fans now root only for the running back on one team and the wide receiver on the other because of their league. Do they care which team wins so long as their guys rack up the points? Yes, fanta-football allows the fans to participate more, in a Vegas sense, but it tackles the idea of it being a team sport.

Free agency has killed football too. Players are not together long enough to learn the playbook and play together. The constant shuffling of players due to injuries, which are way too common, and free agency means that there are no more offensive or defensive philosophies. One season a team has an aggressive D, the next they are on their heels because their explosive linebacker is on IR. Coaches have become just a front office tool seemingly along for the ride, but no longer in control of much.

This has brought parity to the NFL, but also a lot of boredom. Yes, you may not know who will win any given game, but who cares? A lot of games look like the quality of NFL Europe. And there are no dominant teams. Most cycle between mediocre and abysmal, with little reason for the change. Other teams go on a run for one season, and then stink up the place the next. Going from 6-10 to 10-6 to 6-10? Come on, it's random chance. The Super Bowl winners seem to be drawn randomly any more.

Maybe it is me. I just don't have the desire to sit through 3 hours of a game. At 58:00 into a close Monday Night Game, I turned it off. Just wasn't worth the effort. Either way, I'm done with pro football. I'll spread my very low attention to sports more evenly among them.

But, I have to admit, playing the old Tecmo Super Bowl on the web (see link above) was fun. My 1991 49ers beat the 1991 Bills 36-28 (yeah, the controls were hard to get the hang of).

Macllenium Falconbook

The truth is, I don't know what to make of Apple anymore.

The MacBook's hard drive died midway of this past week. I was angry, frustrated and ready to chuck the thing and go get a cheapie netbook. There have been a number of other problems with this computer in the past. But it is only 2.5 yrs old. The chipping plastic topcase I could live with, but a dead MacBroke is no good.

Worst, I lost about two weeks worth of work on the novel. Yes, it was backed up, but I generally back up once a month or so. Oh, and I should mention that those were two really good weeks. I had finished going through the novel completely and was revisiting sections I flagged for needing more work. It was starting to feel like the end stage of a draft where I feel like all I can do is mess it up. Also, I had a bunch of 'stickies', notes to myself on lots of stuff, that are now gone forever.

I took the MacBroke to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store. Got there 1/2 hour earlier than my appointed time, but they took me early. (It was three days after HDD death that I could get the reservation: I don't know what this says about the volume of problems and repairs going on with Apple products.) They diagnosed that the HDD was D-E-D dead, which meant the files were lost. But because there was a run of bad drives a while back, this was a beyond warranty freebie for me.

When they tested the new drive, the hardware test failed on a temperature sensor, no doubt a leftover problem from the heat fan death problem from last year. That, and the topcase, will be repaired for free when I take it back in. But they got the computer back to me on the same day.

I have to say that I was floored. I figured that I would be out $50-100 on a new drive and another $100 for labor or whatever. But the Apple service was excellent, especially in fixing problems where they could have shrugged off culpability like any other corporation or tried to squeeze me for some more money. ("Mark, your flux capacitor also looks like it might go. That will be another $300.")

It has cost me nothing to have this computer fixed yet. $0. Beyond the original price, all I've spent is about $80 to quadruple the RAM. It may very well be a lemon that needs a Wookie to bang on it with a hydrospanner once in a while, but it has it where it counts: the technical support.

I write to you today on the MacBook, while it is in between stops at the Genius Bar. So far, so good. It flies once again, but every time I pull the hyperdrive lever, my heart jumps into my throat.

Oh, and the new MacBooks? Totally awesome. The glass trackpad with NO buttons is pure genius. If they put one into the MacBook Air 2.0, whenever that comes around, I would be hard-pressed to ignore it as a possible successor to the whitest hunk of junk in the galaxy.

Applesauce Bar stands at 55% apple awesomeness, 45% watery hype.

Out-parented by a 9 year old

I don't usually talk about the smaller Trackballs, but you'll see there's no harm done in this post.

My son was in the tub, washing his hair, while I worked with his older sister on fractions, divisions and decimals outside the bathroom. He started crying and yelling. I checked on him and he said that he got shampoo in his eyes.

So I told him to lay back in the water and get the shampoo off his head and out of his eyes. I gave him a washcloth to clean off his face. He just kept crying.

In rushes his sister, who takes the washcloth, tells him it's okay, soothes him, and starts cleaning his face. This 9 year old girl went completely into mom mode.

I stood there, useless.

And yes, she calmed him down, got the shampoo off his face and hair. I doubt she even noticed what she was doing. I stood there in awe. Kudos to Mini Trackball.

The truth about the word 'oral'.

I was recently reminded at work about how we regularly misuse the word 'oral'. In this case, it was a job description that mentioned giving 'oral presentations' and 'written and oral' something or others.

Now, I will admit that using the word oral or orally to refer to something spoken is completely allowed by dictionaries and common usage. It's just that I think it's time to change that.

When people hear the word 'oral' or orally, they think of two things, and neither has to do with verbal or spoken communication. They have to do with a person's mouth. The first, which I'm sure jumped into your brain the second you read this post's title is, well, I'll get to that in a second. The second thing you thought of is health care related to the mouth. Oral hygiene, oral care, Orajel, take this medication orally, etc. It's a nice clinical description for the mouth, and it covers the teeth, tongue, gums, etc. It doesn't refer to the voice box, which actually produces the words. You can measure body temperature with a thermometer orally or anally. Come to think of it, the word 'oral' is a nice compliment to 'anal'. The intake and the exhaust portals, if you will.

Which leads me back to the first thing you thought of regarding the word oral: oral sex. Come on, admit it. Not that there's anything wrong with thinking of oral sex first. It's not even your fault; the only time the word 'oral' gets used in the media anymore is to try to politely describe this act in as clinical a term as possible. Like crime reports, or newspaper articles, etc. Whenever one hears or reads the word 'oral' these days, one is fully expecting to hear it followed by 'sex.'

That's why it makes no sense to refer to spoken or verbal communication as oral. Oral belongs to health and sex now. It just does. So lets make a clean break. After all, we don't refer to written communication as 'manual' even though it has to be performed with the hands, one way or another. The hands are the means, the writing is the medium, and for communication, the medium matters. By the same token, referring to communication as something coming out of one's mouth is irrelevant; the mouth is just the means. The medium is the voice, the audio transmission: spoken or verbal. And verbal is never used in connection with clinical health (again, oral) or sexual contexts (it's called phone sex or pillow talk).

Verbal communication, not oral. Spread the word. Verbally, and in writing.

Update on the math journey in public school

Last school year, I kept track of how many days math was missed in Minnie Trackball's 3rd grade. After a few weeks at the start of the year, she managed to have it nearly every day, until the end of school. Then it kind of just petered out.

Fourth grade has stepped things up in terms of homework and subject matter. Minnie has moved up a level in math and will be skipping 4th grade math for the most part. We are real proud of her and she's really excited. So far, the obligatory two weeks of no math, to do assessments and such, is over. Math class assignments and homework have started to flow.

The math changes are part of a trend we've noticed when it comes to school. As the academics increase, there is a sorting out that happens. The kids who put in the effort seem to be pulling ahead; the parents who were so bent on having a gifted kindergartner are becoming more realistic about what their kids can do, especially if they fall a bit behind. Grades and standardized test scores make things pretty clear. Sweat equity seems to be a growing factor in success at school. And that can only be a good sign.

Lair 1.0 Pics

For your viewing pleasure:

The desk and chair: (the shiny stuff is vapor-lock that holds the insulation in and moisture out; the house was built that way and it is not a cool sci-fi effect that I put up)



The embryonic theater area and library (ignore the luggage shelf and storage container 'walls'):



Lair security courtesy of Star Trek and Star Wars models (an Incom T-65 X-Wing below):


The Pirate Lego sound stage:

The town is under attack:


By pirates at sea:


Apparently at night or a late, cloudy evening (sigh).

ISO modern supernatural baddies

The humanized supernatural is a huge thing right now. Fantasy romances featuring vampires, werewolves, the undead, etc. are a big hit. Most of the focus is on vampires. The Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer features a teenage girl who falls for a vampire and it's sitting atop the Amazon best seller list. There are tons of other fiction genres that have leapt into supernatural angles to spice up old plots. Now HBO has a new series, True Blood, which is a Southern Gothic vamp soap opera.

As a result, vampires just don't seem that scary anymore. They are emotionally vulnerable, thoroughly humanized, even enviable. They have issues, personalities and goals. These angles are entertaining, but it reduces them in a way. In fact, all the supernatural monsters seem trite, played out, overused. Maybe we have humanized too much, or maybe the world has changed in a way that they no longer have a grip on us. We've turned them into another class of superheroes, really. Which may be cool, but it's not scary.

These types of things used to be scary, viscerally scary. The very thought of some supernatural monster would drive a spike of fear into your heart. They were tied to the old Joseph Campbell archetypes and represented threats to the very fabric of human society:

• Vampires subvert morality, especially for women, and they are death incarnate.
  
• Werewolves represent losing control, and the threat of spreading that loss of control.
• Zombies represent a loss of personality, a loss of self that can't be stopped and is highly contagious. As rotting corpses, they also represent disease and death.
  
• Witches are strong confident women with power over men, threatening the patriarchy.
• Ghosts are the past come back to haunt the guilty
  

I think we need a new set of supernatural baddies that can actually scare us. I don't know what those baddies would be, but they should be things or beings that scare the crap out of us just by their very existence. In the next post I'm going to throw some ideas out about what those things might be.

That's just how I scroll

You can surf your usual rounds of sites until your eyes bleed or your hand breaks off at the wrist from all the clicky-clicky. Staying on top of one's interest areas, keeping in touch with people, following the news and can seem endless and overwhelming. I can't stand to be uninformed, but am lazy enough to want the informing process to be fast and efficient. I suspect you do too. There is a better way.

I realize that I have arrived late to many innovations in this area, but am probably ahead of the curve for this blog's less geeky readers, so here we go. People sometimes express amazement that I know so much, but it's simply because I try to quickly find information. So I will detail how I do this and hopefully give you ideas on how to better manage your own info flows.

iGoogle: At the base of all this is The Google. I have a gmail account, this blog and a couple of other things from Google. It is all tied together by my iGoogle page: a web page custom designed to dump all the information I want, how I want it, in one place. iGoogle allows you to set up tabbed pages where you can house different types of information. And there's always a Google search box there if you need it. Check out the tech tab from my iGoogle page below:


The Home tab has my three main web communication tools: gmail inbox, Twitter and Google Reader. I rarely interact with these three programs outside of this home tab. I've made the tab my home page, so whenever I fire up The Firefox, I see email, twitter and new blog posts all on one screen, along with weather, calendar, Google docs and a few other things. There's a theme of background photos that I set to put a pic of Hawaii that matches the time of day. The Tech tab has a Matrix background: yes, each tab has a pic that matches the theme.

Google Reader is a program that avoids the endless clicking among all the blogs you want to follow to see if any has a new post. You 'subscribe' to the blogs you want to by searching for them. The reader will show you all of the unread posts from any of those blogs, and will let you read them right there in the Reader.

RSS feeds: Tired of clicking from the New York Times, to your hometown rag, to Weather.com, and then back to NYT to check for breaking news? You can add gadgets that have feeds from all over the web on one tab. The screenshot above shows that I have both Gizmodo and Engadget RSS feeds on my Tech tab. While at most you get a handful of headlines, you can click on the title bar and go directly to the website if you want in a separate window.

There's many other ways to create webpages that house your customized nozzle on the firehose of web content. I'm just showing you how I scroll. Your mileage may vary.

Passing the Bechdel Test

Charles Stross, sci-fi writer extraordinaire, references a test for misogyny in movies, courtesy of a comic strip by Alison Bechdel (who credits someone named Liz Wallace). The test is:

1) there are at least two female characters
2) who talk to each other about
3) something other than men.

Charlie applied this test to his own fiction and found that some of it passed, and some of it didn't. He has sworn to pay more attention to how female characters are portrayed, even at the expense of possibly turning his work into movies.

Since I have much less fiction to test than Charlie (and that is the closest this fanboy will ever come to comparing himself with Mr. Stross), this was much easier to check. Crashpoint Cascade, the novel in progress, passes. There are at least two scenes off the top of my head that meet the test, and ironically, none of the women in the first scene are in the second. I made a point of having as many female characters in the novel as male, in part because the story has some utopian elements, including more gender equity, but more importantly, because those characters just are female, just like some are angry, some are happy, some are evil and some are good.

Making the right choices subconsciously or unintentionally

Back when I was younger, I felt like I could go into any of a number of different careers. My guidelines in choosing a career were simple: I didn't pay much attention to earnings potential, industry growth, portability, advancement or even scheduling. I was all about what interested me, what I excelled at.

In retrospect, I really lucked out. At one point, I seriously toyed with pursuing journalism. I was the editor of my high school newspaper and even did Journalism Explorers and got to hang out at the local paper's newsroom. Journalism was always a low paid, badly scheduled career. I chose not to go that route because I got more interested in public policy. Twelve years later, the journalism field is collapsing as its business plan falls apart. Media organizations are hemorraging money and journalists have been laid off in droves. Plus, the pay and hours still suck. Good choice on me.

I also toyed with joining the legal profession. Even did Law Explorers in high school, got to hang with real attorneys and judges and excelled at a mock trial. Took constitutional law in college and liked it. But it just didn't excite me, the pre-laws in college were irritating and as Tom Hanks once put it, being a lawyer means having homework all the time. Plus the hours suck, the hourly pay can be pretty bad, but it is highly portable. Fair choice on me.

I went into public policy expecting low to moderate pay, no portability and lousy hours. Most policy jobs involve horrible hours in exchange for doing really important (or seemingly important) work. The burnout rate is pretty high. The pay turned out to be higher (especially on an hourly scale) than I expected, the portability is nearly nonexistent and the hours are manageable in some spots, like the spot I'm in. The burnout potential is there, but it's mostly because of the hours and work that turns out not to be important. I've avoided that for the most part. Good choice on me.

The funny thing about career choices is how some of your mildly held preferences bubble up and become more important over time. I was willing to trade off money for decent hours, and substance over appearance. I have the Gen X trait of wanting work/life balance.

Having a good amount of work experience now, to me there are few office jobs with crazy hours that seem remotely worth the tradeoff. Much of the time, the culture of 24/7 work is a perpetual fire drill done mostly for appearances' sake. Humans are not very productive beyond eight hours, other than in looking busy. Over time, it's that kind of work culture that increasingly I have found ridiculous.

This has so far kept me from toying with politics, software development and entertainment because of the lousy hours and work/life imbalance. But it's not a big deal, because those fire drill cultures drive me nuts. I like having down time each night, to vary my mental frequencies and recharge in one area while focusing on another. Good choice on me.

Digging to the truth

So I'm still in a rewrite of Crashpoint Cascade. And I'm plowing through this scene, feeling itchy because it's not right. It's not immediate enough, it's like a rough draft that I hadn't noticed is a rough draft.

It's a scene around a picnic table, with a number of characters, some of them minor. One of them is trying to convince the rest to stick with him through a political crisis. So a few characters just pop up out of nowhere who were at the table the whole time but I just had not focused on them. And they start talking, pulling the scene in other directions.

Before I know it, the scene is going off the rails. I've got some new characters raising issues that don't fit, I don't know why they're saying things, where they're going with various positions and statements. Chaos. but some of it is interesting, and a little voice says not to throw those tidbits away.

And then I move a paragraph that had made the whole narrative disjunctive. And pieces start to fall into place. Motives appear, things start to make sense. I realize that the true scene was there all along, lurking somewhere in my subconcious. It needed to be pried out slowly and carefully. There's a process to make this happen. I must keep doing it and not rushing to get so many pages done per day.