Studies in Semicolons

"The fact is, nobody knows what art is or why people make it. This is blatantly disturbing. Some say..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:07:30 -0700

“

The fact is, nobody knows what art is or why people make it. This is blatantly disturbing. Some say the function of art is to generate conversation—an unpleasant thought. I’m not sure we want to put art in the same category as skin disease and Carl Winslow: things to talk about on the internet.

This is why so many of us have a bad time at galleries: we try to make art Interesting when we should just let it be weird. Art should never be Interesting. Wikipedia is Interesting. Nightmares are Interesting. But to feign Interest in other people’s art is just smug. Don’t be so fond and fatherly about it. If you’re going to take a familial stance toward art, you can’t do better than the little brother, approaching the gallery with the mindset of an awestruck ankle-biter.

The real reason to go to an art gallery is to witness a small number of people elaborate publicly on their own confused striving, beyond explanation or accountability or compromise. You don’t see that just anywhere. In a gallery, one finds all the raw elements of fear and desire, the most dim and keening shapes, smiling strangely from the backyards of awareness and submitted painfully for general inspection. This is not what you might find at, say, Boston Pizza.

”

- Stupid for Art, Mark Mann

The Parable of the Carpenter

Thu, 09 May 2013 22:27:25 -0700

Imagine a carpenter. The carpenter is someone who works with wood to put food on his table. So, the carpenter owns a hammer. It’s probably a very nice hammer. It’s built to be comfortable after thousands of swings a day, and it’s built with the power the carpenter needs to do serious work. It’s likely also an expensive hammer. It’s definitely more expensive than your hammer, and it may be more expensive than your entire tool box. The carpenter understands the value of something he works with every day, and that’s why he spends so much money on the hammer. But he also understands that value is a double-edged sword: he’s committing to the product he knows, that is reliable. He knows he’ll only invest in a new hammer if it brings something dramatically more useful to his work. And he knows no matter what the hammer company does, he’ll always at least have this hammer, as long as he can still swing the handle.

Now imagine you tell the carpenter about Adobe’s Creative Cloud. Remember to duck when he swings the hammer at you.

"So you have not changed the default iPhone e-mail signature line of “Sent from my iPhone”. (Neither..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:18:18 -0700

“So you have not changed the default iPhone e-mail signature line of “Sent from my iPhone”. (Neither have I). Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are just going with the default. You, and me, are really proclaiming something totally different. What we are really saying is: “I’m the kind of person that is available to work all the time, wherever, whenever.””

- ‘Sent from My iPhone’ - Joshua Kim

A Valentine to nvALT

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 20:19:26 -0700

Many pixels have been spilt over Notational Velocity and nvALT, the twin siblings of editing , organizing and searching a giant directory of text files. For sure, all the reasons for using plain text are really important: versatility, size and permanence. I wanted to add something I haven’t seen talked about though, a mode of thinking that nvALT has brought to my life that has, in many ways, dramatically changed how I deal with the ideas swirling around in my head.

See, like every text nerd, I have a system. My notes are probably longer than most (separated by headings I can navigate in FoldingText if need be), and I use Merlin Mann’s system for naming, often aided by some TextExpander snippets, but because of size and quick searching in nvALT, none of that is really important. If something’s on my mind, I write it down. If something’s on my mind, I write it down.

If something’s on my mind, I write it down.

Oftentimes, that starts on paper, and that’ll get put into nvALT when I get home. Sometimes, that means pressing F16 on my Apple USB Keyboard, making nvALT pop up and type into the box. When I’m good at it, each file has a proper name I can go back and look to later, maybe with some tags that make searching easier and good dating. But, again, that doesn’t matter. Because:

If something’s on my mind, I write it down.

What’s in my nvALT folder? Class notes, book notes, recipes, articles and poems I like, my todo lists, brainstorms for the future, journals from the past. What can be in there? Literally anything I need to stick somewhere to remember or recall later. If I don’t have a system for it yet, if I don’t name it correctly, search means it doesn’t really matter - I’ll find it again when I need it.

I now have a 34.6 MB folder on my hard drive that contains, in essence, the contents of my life’s work and the essence of my memory. When I’m unsure of myself, when I don’t know what to do next, when I’m in some kind of existential funk, I pop open the window, and I start writing.

However unsafe the world feels, at that moment, those files are a reminder (not to get too pretentious) of my existence. They’re a reminder that I’ve had good ideas before, and will have them again. They’re a reminder that beauty exists in the world, that other people have written down for me to digest. They’re a reminder that, when I don’t know quite what to do, I can always do the dishes. And, more than any cliche or saying, they’re a reminder that every new project or idea or day can start with a blank window and a blinking cursor.

Dumb is better: Kicking the smart phone addiction | Deseret News

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:15:00 -0700

Dumb is better: Kicking the smart phone addiction | Deseret News:

minimalmac:

A roundup of examples of people opting-out of smartphones (including my prediction about this very thing).

A good summary of bloggers going after the goal, including Stephen Hackett’s aborted attempt to go without an iPhone.

Oddly, there’s a certain social acceptability to being buried in your phone in public places that you lose when you no longer have it. Not looking at a phone (say, just looking around) reads the same way as staring to some people.

For the record, my current everyday carry is: a 4th generation iPod Touch, the smallest dumb phone I can find (sometimes, only when I need a phone) and an analog notebook. Though I guess that puts me in this “movement” towards analog, I feel a little silly labeling myself the Luddite. I still have an insanely powerful pocket computer connected to a global communications network, it just can’t get to that network through satellites in space.

All Good Things...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:57:50 -0700

Journal publisher Elsevier has purchased Mendeley, a software program I’ve used roughly every day I’ve been in graduate school and which I rely on to keep track of the endless complexities required in tracking my PDFs. The Internet academia is lamenting that a company once committed to open access appears to have sold out to one of that movement’s most prominent enemies. At this moment, I’m moved less by ideology and more by pragmatism: I invested time and energy into a cross-platform, open source app with the hopes it would be around long enough to justify that work; that future now seems in jeopardy.

While you may not use Mendeley, this story probably rings true to you, about a piece of software or a service that you came to rely on and love, one that got bought by a much bigger company with a contrary mission that make you think twice before you clicked on that icon again. On the one hand, we’re grateful that developers can make a living, and that developers who do good work can be supported. On the other, it feels like a violation of the trust and the support provided whenever you let an application hold a considerable amount of your original work.

And yet, it seems inevitable. I keep plain text files, and my own e-mail address, and cross-platform file formats for my calendar and images and music and video, but there will always be that small part of my life that feels locked in. I thought this was one part I could take for granted. I was wrong.

Creativity & The Intellectual Life in 'On Taking Pictures'

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 14:05:06 -0700

In pursuit of a new creative hobby, I’ve been picking up photography in earnest (you can go to my Flickr page and see my accidentally out-of-focus work) and, like anything else I’m into, I’ve picked up a podcast to teach me more. On Taking Pictures is hosted by Jeffery Saddoris, the curator of a photography blog, and Bill Wadman, a professional portrait photographer: their rapport is great and they’ve got lots of good knowledge about equipment I can’t afford. But, whether you take pictures or not, I think you should listen to the show for the way Wadman and Saddoris talk about the creative life.

These guys are honest. Relentlessly honest. They’re honest about their successes, their failures, their partners, their doubts, their aspirations and their limitations. As they regularly describe, they spend good portions of the show talking about “why you take pictures,” which is metaphorically related, of course, to why one creates anything. The academics in the audience will notice some clear parallels: Imposter Syndrome, the (at times spurious) relationship between depression and creativity, the relentless focus on new perspectives and challenges, on freshness.

OTP isn’t just about taking pictures well, though it is. Secretly, it’s a podcast about how to do anything well. Start with an episode like Jump in the River, The Schrodinger Moment, or Ability to Recognize … Maybe.

"Nobody cares what kind of smartphone you believe in. It’s not a religion. It’s not your local sports..."

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 23:44:00 -0700

“Nobody cares what kind of smartphone you believe in. It’s not a religion. It’s not your local sports team even. Stop being a soldier. You are not a soldier. You are just wrong. Shut up. You there, with the blog, in the comments, in the pages of the newspaper or the magazine or on Twitter or Facebook. Whatever your opinion is, as soon as you employ it in partisan fashion, it’s deeply and profoundly wrong. Just by sharing it, you are wrong. And nobody cares. Except for the people who do. And they are wrong too. Myself included. “But, but, but,” I hear you stammering like some sort of horrible person who has mistaken a code base for a system of moral beliefs, “the screen is too big and not big enough.” No. You’re wrong. It’s just right. It’s just right for whoever is holding it, unless it’s not, in which case they’ll decide that it is wrong on their own and get a different one. And then they’ll be right, while you’ll still be wrong.”

- Mat Honan, Please Stop Fighting About Your Smartphone

Why RSS Still Still Matters

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:34:15 -0700

Five months ago, I wrote this about why Google Reader was one of my killer apps. Reports of the app’s death today were … expected, but still hit me hard. Google Reader has been, for years, my window to the world - a complex, data-rich, available-everywhere window. And, as I wrote in that post, it seems to be being replaced by not just different apps, but different attitudes about how information should be consumed.

So I’ll probably switch to NetNewsWire, and do much of what I’ve always done. I’ll keep my GMail and my Google Calendar because two-factor authorization is still the best security for that data I can think of. But I’m ready to switch when I have to. And I’ve been reminded that everything comes to an end.

The Facebook Biography Style Date (Dear Blank)

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 07:31:04 -0700

The Facebook Biography Style Date (Dear Blank):

A new episode of our podcast comes out today, and I hope you’ll give this one a listen. Here, I go on a rant about first dates and taking risk, but it’s generally a conversation about one’s level of engagement with the world, so other implications abound.

Listen, send comments, help us start a conversation.

"If you give half a damn about which multi-billion-dollar corporation “wins” a totally made-up..."

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 20:43:44 -0800

“If you give half a damn about which multi-billion-dollar corporation “wins” a totally made-up contest, then you need to drop acid and spend some time in an ashram.”

- Andy Ihnatko, on why your phone choice should be what’s right for you and not what’s right for them

While doing work today, I stumbled across this rather odd...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 16:48:32 -0800

While doing work today, I stumbled across this rather odd artifact of copy protection in academic journal PDFs. Seems that “Plane 16” refers to protected unicode characters, used by journal PDFs to prevent copy-pasting. The document I’m working from has these scattered about the text: seem they removed copy protection, but not that well. Not debilitating, but yet another small reason why academic tech can get frustrating at times.

Also: I’m pretty sure our friend here is my Spirit Animal.

"I would meet you upon this honestly. I that was near your heart was removed therefrom To lose beauty..."

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:56:00 -0800

“I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use it for your closer contact?”

- TS Eliot, Gerontion

Sergey Brin: Smartphones are 'emasculating'

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 14:24:40 -0800

Sergey Brin: Smartphones are 'emasculating':

This quote, and the story which surrounds it, are quickly becoming a joke. And they should. This was, without question, a ridiculous thing for anyone who expects to be taken seriously in public to say.

It’s hardly the first time, though, that a “big conversation” about technology has been a lot less about the user wants to do and a lot more about what the user is trying to project. Smartphones don’t do anything to you. They don’t emasculate you, or demonstrate your savvy, or show your willingness to care about what you use, or any of it. They’re pieces of aluminum and glass. They don’t have personality: you do.

Wait and Hurry Up

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:32:00 -0800

Even if you’re not one who keeps up with college football - and I’m certainly not - it’s been hard to miss the story of Manti Te’o, the all star Notre Dame linebacker who was either the victim of or a participant in an elaborate hoax involving a fake girlfriend, her supposed tragic death and his willingness to continue playing football rather than attending her funeral. That such a choice, such a “sacrifice” made such a poignant story, that we expect Te’o to “impress us” so soon after it all fell apart, says a great deal about the culture of the world in which he lives, and a great deal about its contrasts with mine.

To hitch one’s future to football, as Te’o has, is to make an impactful choice. There are, after all, only so many years, only so many games. It seems ridiculous to suggest that Te’o’s future would be sunk by missing a game to go to his girlfriend’s funeral … but not so ridiculous under the terms of that culture. 12 college games a season, for four seasons, are all you have to make it into the NFL. 12 NFL games a season with (somewhere between) 4 and 12 years to make a career, make enough money to last you and (likely) several struggling members of your family for the rest of their lives. It’s a culture that glorifies, by design, that drive, that purposiveness, from a young age.

It’s hard not to contrast those messages with the ones of my upbringing. I’m 24 and, for as long as I can remember, I’ve been told about all the time I’ll have left, all the opportunities I have now to explore and get to know the world, the luxuries of youth and the wastefulness of spending too much time right now sweating what I should be. If I had listened to those voices more than I actually did, of course, I wouldn’t be in graduate school. But even here, there’s a sense I shouldn’t be too hasty, shouldn’t be so certain, shouldn’t jump into life and permanence and commitment until I know all of who I am.

We come from very different places, Te’o and I. And, while I suspect he’ll make more money his first year in the NFL than I’ll make over the course of my career, I’ve had a lot more permission and ability up to this point to make mistakes. I certainly have a lot less people with vested personal and financial interest in manufacturing for me a hero’s story. There must be some happy medium between those two extremes, between the philosophy of my world that tells me that life begins at 30, and the philosophy of Te’o’s that has already suggested to him that his will end at 30. Neither one of us, at this stage, is allowed to live in a space where our feelings can be considered fully real. And, in that sense, neither one of us is really all that free.

UPDATE: Related, Why Developing Serious Relationships in Your 20s Matters by Elisabeth Spiers

"Once, I was so good at forming opinions that I could whore them for small cash rewards."

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 15:14:56 -0800

“Once, I was so good at forming opinions that I could whore them for small cash rewards.”

- Robin Ince writes for the Observer on the death of evidence at the hands of opinion and punditry. Killer piece.

'Art Imitates Life Imitates Art,' Remarks Man Trapped In Art Museum

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 12:44:04 -0800

'Art Imitates Life Imitates Art,' Remarks Man Trapped In Art Museum

The Pain Point

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 21:09:00 -0800

Vardy and Schecter - the Mikes behind Mikes on Mics - have a great episode of their podcast up this week with Matt Alexander, recorded live at the nerdgasmic Woodstock that (I’ve heard) was The OmniFocus Setup 2013. Matt pushes back - and hard - on playing too much with your tools. The high points, from all three of them: don’t get so addicted to a tool that you’ll be helpless if it breaks, don’t spend more time making the tool than making your thing, and don’t feel the need to adopt something new and shiny unless it solves a problem that’s causing you actual pain.

These ideas perfectly capture why I do all my todos in Taskpaper instead of Omnifocus: the file is simple and portable, I’ve got no qualms about just typing into it and organizing it later, and I’ve never actually been pushed to adopt an app with more features. The best part: my backup solution if it breaks, if my Mac breaks, if the grid goes down due to zombie attack: pen and paper. It’s the same reason this post got typed right in nvALT: I didn’t need the organization that comes from anything else.

Still, while we’re adjusting our sense of what’s important: in the grand scheme of things, being addicted to productivity apps is, like, the least bad thing you can be addicted to. So don’t sweat it too much.

Polina Kroik on the disappearance of “deep thinking” from the academy: I realize...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 22:20:33 -0800

Polina Kroik on the disappearance of “deep thinking” from the academy:

I realize that different people enter the academy for different reasons: some love to teach; others might prefer collaborative projects to individual essays; another group welcomes the use of technology in the humanities. I respect all these modes of intellectual work and have enjoyed taking part in them. Yet as I explore alternatives to the mythical tenure-track job—where, so I’d been told, some of the time is dedicated to research and thinking—I find no true alternatives. Apart from (some) graduate programs, there is no institutional framework that supports sustained, independent thinking, thinking that is tied neither to economic nor political considerations.

This phenomenon is as bad, if not worse, in the social sciences. And it’s troubling.

"If the bar was real how could you raise it? If the envelope was there how could you stretch it? If..."

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:23:46 -0800

“

If the bar was real how could you raise it?

If the envelope was there how could you stretch it?

If there was a limit, how did you push pass it?

Perhaps, the fact that you were able to raise, push, or stretch is proof that these things were not there in the first place?

”

- Patrick Rhone