Virtual Vitriol

Wow. My one-week experiment to pay better attention to things could scarcely have worked...

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 22:53:41 +0100

Wow. My one-week experiment to pay better attention to things could scarcely have worked better.

I have unsubscribed from nearly all of my RSS feeds (I now follow 14 feeds, down from about 60, some of which were high traffic). I spend a lot less time leaning on the “k” key to scan through and process anything I may want to see. (You know Reader supports vi-style keys, right?). Justifications for removal include:

I was once interested in this niche subject, but now I realise I have a full life with no room for it. (Z80 microcomputers, Creating Digital Music (ahem)).
This website is a continuous fount of stuff, I will never reach the end, and if I stopped watching it for a few days/weeks/month, I would not have missed anything (Any LOLcat style feed, Lifehacker). If I need a fix, I can visit the site.
This is a feed which has a vanishingly small amount of articles which I care about, which I could search for if I needed an answer (Lifehacker and its “Hive Fives” fit in this category).
This feed contains content which I regularly get links to the best bits of by other avenues, like Twitter, friends emailing me, or links from other popular sites in the same vein. (Hack-a-Day fits into this, though out of sentimentality, I have kept HAD, as well as MAKE).

With the exception of a few comics which I don’t want to miss any episodes of (Penny Arcade, XKCD), what is left is:

People I know personally, whom I want to take the time to read as their opinions are worth more than an anonymous Internet person. (Knittage, Stryker, The White Room).
People who consistently post sensible length, well thought out or engaging articles. (Paul Robert Lloyd, Mark Pilgrim, Buster Benson, Patrick Ng).

The same goes for Tumblr, though I do follow a few more “fount of stuff” type people on there, the design of the dashboard (it just scrolls buy, instead of amounting to a big “unread” count in Reader) means that I can quickly ignore things I’m not interested in as part of my daily processing. If I find I’m ignoring a particular person a lot, I unfollow them. I’ve reduced my following count on Tumblr by half, with no feeling of loss. I am not following “fuckyeah-” anything.

Twitter has a similar but expanded set of rules: I also unfollow people who appear to completely disregard the medium. If you just use Twitter to push updates to your site or blog, that’s not interesting. If you block post 5-6 tweets in a row, you’re a candidate. If you can’t fit your thoughts in 140 characters: start a blog. I’ve reduced the people I’m following on Twitter by about two thirds.

The results? As I alluded to above: fantastic.

When I’m away from my computer, especially at peek social-network-update time: 5PM GMT, I don’t get daunted by a high unread count on any sites. When I’m reading a post written by or pointed to by one of the people left I don’t feel the compulsion to “check in” on social networking like I used to. I think I previously, subconsciously, didn’t want to fall behind.

Completest that I am, falling behind means reading every single fucking thing until I am bang up-to-date.

I read better stuff. I send anything longer than about a two screen-fulls to Instapaper. I then read this on eReader/iPad/iPhone - away from the distractions of my computer. When I’m at my computer, I’m less distracted by social networking. Computer for work. Mobile device for play.

None of this is brain surgery, except… it is. It’s my attempt to reverse the rewiring that I wrote about before. So far, so good.

Photo

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 09:49:52 +0100

bestrooftalkever: (via kaylad33)

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:42:28 +0100

bestrooftalkever:

(via kaylad33)

Eric lay back in the bath, the no-longer-hot water lulling him into relaxation and, as it cooled,...

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0100

Eric lay back in the bath, the no-longer-hot water lulling him into relaxation and, as it cooled, mild discomfort and annoyance. He tried to lower himself into too shallow water and keep all parts of him warm, while the room grew darker.

Money on the heat, that wasn’t frivolous; he couldn’t keep doing this, he’d end up sick and that would be his experiment in austerity over. Either taken back in by family who would think he was crazy, or lapsing into self-hating and just buying his way out of his misery and into more debt.

The world just isn’t filled with- doesn’t have use for- people who take what they want seriously. You want the man off your back, but you pay for satellite-TV, eat preprocessed high-margin food and distract yourself from your woes, and solving them, with games, films, books. Singularity of purpose, that was just another word for madness in other people’s eyes.

He was going to get out from under.

Dylan on Spiders.

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:29:05 +0100

Dylan on Spiders.

I posted this to Flickr and then thought “I never actually...

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 22:15:01 +0100

I posted this to Flickr and then thought “I never actually post my own stuff to my blog, just other people’s Creative Commons photos and reblogs”. So, I’m posting it.

I’m quite impressed with the video capabilities of the 5G and I thought I’d try and make a tripod-ish mount for it. This is attempt number three. Cardboard is well out; this one uses that rubber mat stuff that you use to stop things slipping off your dashboard.

As I can’t drive, and my handle bars are too small, I use it on a table. Sometimes, I use it on my iPod. Some kind of double pitchfork design might work better and I’ll be less scared of crushing it or scratching the glass.

Focus, concentration and listening to good advice.

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 22:56:06 +0100

— “Career Advice” by quinn.anya

Advice is seldom welcome, and those who need it the most, like it the least.

— Lord Chesterfield, British Statesman, Diplomat and Wit, 1694-1773

It’s not an uncommon theme for me; I’m constantly complaining and linking to articles about excessive multitasking and at the same time I juggle a half-dozen or more tasks, and I almost consider it a point of pride that I have an ear out for other people’s problems- ready to help out if I know a quick answer to someone’s issue.

It’s at odds with what I want. I would prefer deep thought over shallow, single-tasking over multitasking and concentration over distraction.

At least, I say I do.

As I was reading The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains, I had to constantly stop myself scrolling past where I was reading, skipping sentences and paragraphs entirely and being distracted by my thoughts and the blog entry I was going to write instead of digesting the article properly. Yes. I had started to word this in my head before I’d even finished reading the original. tl;dr.

A little bit of me is worried, scared even, that my value as a techie is based on this shallowness, something I am really quite good at. (IMESHO). I might find that if I focus and set my mind to achieving a single goal or producing a very high quality solution to a problem that I’ll emerge the other side to find out my work is no longer relevant, or that someone more hyper-connected than me has found a quicker semi-canned 80/20 solution or even just that I look up from my work and find an insurmountable pile of other things waiting for me.

I think that “disconnect and concentrate more” is the new 5-a-day and 10,000 steps - everyone knows what’s good for them, but few people actually make room in their lives to pursue those things. Like the feeling when I give into the chocolate box (again), I am self aware enough to dislike myself for it, but not strong willed enough to stop.

It’s cool to see Open Source being used in big business....

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:27:08 +0100

It’s cool to see Open Source being used in big business. Gone are the days of seeing incongruous Netscape & Sun icons on Big Enterprise Sites.

Recent Reading

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 11:13:00 +0100

It’s Saturday morning, and I finally finished my Instapaper eReader export from last week:

CMMI For Dummies

A really good introduction into what the Capability Maturity Model Integrated is all about, and how to take a company from level 1 (effectively chaos) to through the levels of documenting process, then following, measuring and finally improving.

Shareable Futures and The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening

The announcement of a new series of positive futurism; it’s a pleasant return to 1960’s science fiction where we thought that the future would actually be better than today, not some Orwellian nightmare (though, there’s a definite oppressive government force in Doctorow’s story). Once again, Cory Doctorow has his agenda and sticks to it, no real surprise, but it’s written into a short, simple and fun story.

To Die of Having Lived

An article in the American Scholar with advice from a surgeon on how people should approach their deaths and those of their loved ones; of how once you enter the modern save-life-at-all-costs-and-don’t-get-sued medical system it’s very hard for a patient or the family to get their wishes taken notice of. Very good.

Can you Disappear in Surveillance Britain?

A Times article outlining David Bond’s minor mental freak-out, attempts to disappear and avoid capture, and how he captured it all for the More4 documentary “Erasing David” (which I have on PVR, but have not watched yet).

Two gentlemen being photographed trying not to look at a...

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 10:50:50 +0100

Two gentlemen being photographed trying not to look at a statue’s penis.

(from a New York Times article on Wikireader)

http://thisistheglamorous.com/post/654125604

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:47:36 +0100

http://thisistheglamorous.com/post/654125604:

When we got the food, people were complaining that the sauce was too spicy or the chicken wasn’t cooked the way they liked it. When one of the people in my group asked me how I liked my food, I responded, “It’s great. Someone bought me this food. I can’t ask for anything more.”

[…]

What I was eating was not the best tasting variation of this dish I’ve had but it’s not horrible. But someone took the time to make this for me and someone paid for it, so I’m going to enjoy it.

[…]

Whenever I hear people complain about things like movies, music, eating out, plays, television, how someone you barely know looked at you weird or whatever it really bothers me. You get to complain about these things because real life-or-death things aren’t bearing down on you. You don’t have to shoot your way to a well to get dirty, germ-infested water? Then guess what, life’s alright.

Nobody wants to see someone do poorly but it happens. So, celebrate the things you like and enjoy and share those things. (And keep your complaints to yourself.)

1000 x Yes.

This so completely sums up how I feel about complaints, particularly semi-anonymous Internet complaints, and particularly for things you didn’t pay for, like free Internet resources.

I find it very hard to be critical when I review things because I know how much effort goes into creating things, and in general I’m largely happy that something exists rather than not existing.

This feeling is inversely proportional to how many people were involved in the process, however. I think this links back to the monkeysphere idea - I find it hard to conceptualise some band of engineers at Avaya building our phone system, so I will rant vociferously about it. This isn’t fair, but it’s true.

Next time you post a snarky comment, try and consider what you would say if the author was standing right in front of you.

bestrooftalkever: (via theduty)

Thu, 27 May 2010 22:59:12 +0100

bestrooftalkever:

(via theduty)

" So this whole thing is your crusade against monkey overpopulation? I’ll have my monkey..."

Thu, 27 May 2010 21:58:45 +0100

“

So this whole thing is your crusade against monkey overpopulation? I’ll have my monkey castrated this very day!

”

- What is the Monkeysphere? | Cracked.com

Homebrew Rack Cabinet, German/IKEA Style

Sat, 22 May 2010 13:31:22 +0100

Homebrew Rack Cabinet, German/IKEA Style

thisistheglamorous: Peacock Alley in the Statler Hotel,...

Wed, 19 May 2010 19:50:24 +0100

thisistheglamorous:

Peacock Alley in the Statler Hotel, Detroit. (Andrew Moore)

ericnelson: Mel Bochner - Blah, Blah, Blah (2008)

Sat, 15 May 2010 21:06:38 +0100

ericnelson:

Mel Bochner - Blah, Blah, Blah (2008)

The most depressing CC file ever.

Wed, 12 May 2010 10:25:45 +0100

The most depressing CC file ever.

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 (by Mark Gray) My Dad...

Mon, 03 May 2010 12:28:23 +0100

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 (by Mark Gray)

My Dad would have loved this.

(via acontinuouslean)

"Baldwin has a tattoo on his left shoulder of the initials “HM” for Hannah Montana. He got the tattoo..."

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 08:05:24 +0100

“Baldwin has a tattoo on his left shoulder of the initials “HM” for Hannah Montana. He got the tattoo after making a pact with Miley Cyrus that he would be allowed to cameo on the show if he had the initials tattooed on him. He revealed the tattoo to Cyrus at a book signing in Nashville, on November 10, 2008. To date he has never appeared on the show. He has since gone on record as saying that he regrets getting the tattoo.”

- Wikipedia - Stephen Baldwin (via bestrooftalkever)

thisistheglamorous: futurabi

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:43:05 +0100

thisistheglamorous:

futurabi