This title is actually twice removed from its original source – I’m borrowing it from a recent mailing list message from Jason Calacanis titled “We Live in Public (the end of empathy)“. The essay happened to come out around the same time as super-blogger Michael Arrington’s post about being spit on at a conference and both pieces raise a lot of questions about our electronic interactions. update 2009-07-15 – Arrington was not a good example to use, considering recent events: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/in-our-inbox-hundreds-of-confidential-twitter-documents/

Calacanis gives the problem a name: Internet Asperger’s Syndrome.  My own experiences have been nowhere near as dark or damaging. However,  I have found that the new online life that we lead is an emotional rollercoaster of extreme highs and extreme lows. Jess and I are very involved in the community site that we run and putting ourselves in front of tens of thousands of people every day has had a huge impact on our real world life.

One part of Calacanis’ essay that struck me was his video game analogy. “Screen names and avatars shift from representing people to representing characters in a video game”.  He takes it somewhere else and I’d like to just borrow that one sentence. We see this happen all of the time. Our awareness of this game is why Someone is wrong on the Internet is funny. Personally, it’s a tough realization. Our feeling about companies that are faceless and inhuman has really shaped how we run our site, but in the end, maybe we’re just avatars and names and we aren’t really human at all?

Today’s mountain of social networks are certainly not a new thing – online behavior that differs from real world behavior can be traced back to Usenet, BBSes and earlier still. …and then you can continue back through other forms of communication. Still – it seem like something new is happening. Companies in every industry are rushing to having a social online presence where they can talk to their customers and their customers talk to each other.  Is there a way to prevent it from turning into a big game full of characters and not people? I have no idea what our online lives will be like in 5 years but it’s probably safe to say that we’ll never stop looking back at “simpler times”.

edit – 30 minutes later: Melissa’s comment reminds me that small business owners around the world are struggling with this. Most small businesses have personal relationships with their customers (and most customers expect this personal treatment) but it’s not quite the same when all of your interactions are online instead of in person…

I haven’t got an ending to speak of. This is just a bunch of half-thoughts that I wanted to share. Pretend that we had a beer together at a bar – that’s when I deliver most of my half (or quarter) thoughts.

Oh – I do have an ending! This Valentine’s Day weekend, Jess, Mary-Heather and I are going to meet a bunch of Ravelers at The Knitting Nest in Austin. Meeting Ravelry users in person is one of my very favorite things about doing this for a living. Sometimes they are shy, sometimes we are shy, sometimes meetups are a little chaotic, but we love it. It is really energizing to talk to people about how what we are doing has been a positive thing in their lives.

And for luck – a third ending that is a lyric from a Regina Spektor song. “People are just people like you…Maybe you should kiss someone nice, Or lick a rock, Or both.”

We had many nice meals while we were away and a few of them really stood out. I thought that I’d write them down – you never know when you may find yourself in San Diego. Also – I know that some of you are Comic-Con people.

Caveats: We’re from Boston, not San Diego. If you aren’t sure if you trust our taste in restaurants – consider these suggestions and check out the Yelp reviews for other people’s thoughts.

Cafe Chloe

French. Jess and I are huge fans of traditional(-ish) French and we really loved Cafe Chloe. It is a cute and cozy place with a nicely put together menu and friendly staff. The food was excellent. I forget the name of my entree but it was basically a pork three ways with pork belly, loin, and sausage. I’m a sucker for a well executed three ways. (Doh. I meant… I’ll order a “whatever three ways” pretty much every time. Thanks for noticing, Jess.) Dessert was a delicious bread pudding with pistachios. We were on the fence about dessert until our waitress told us that it was made with the morning’s croissants. Mmm. cafechloe.com | Yelp link

La Puerta

Mexican. Our search for great tacos led us to La Puerta. Jess and I ended up here on Inaugration day and we had a nice time hanging out and watching the parade. We ate an assortment of their street tacos – they were all great but the achiote pork was the most memorable. Many margaritas were consumed. All excellent. I’m usually a margarita purist and I just want good tequila, lime juice, good orange liquor, and ice. For some reason I tried out a frozen margarita/sangria blend they called “purple haze”. …and a then had second one. Yum. Try it. taco619.com | Yelp link

Neighborbood

American. A small upscale beer and burger bar. Neighborhood had a really nice set of beers on tap, a nice wine list, and a menu full of interesting burgers. If you are feeling like a good beer and a good burger, look no further. Really good. neighborhoodsd.com | Yelp link

beer in San Diego

Drink local beer! Warning: I’m still on a Belgian kick.

Belgians from Lost Abbey / Port Brewing – Great. I had the Inferno (Belgian) and the Red Barn (Saison) and I loved them both. It looks like pretty much everything that they brew is a winner: beeradvocate link

Ales and IPAs from Stone – If you like strong ale and IPAs, you can’t really miss with Stone. You can get it in Boston so I didn’t drink that much of it.

? from Green Flash – I wasn’t excited about whatever it was that I tried but it looks like BeerAdvocate readers are pretty happy with their brews. Check them out.

Red Trolley from Karl Strauss – not bad. I’d definitely choose this over non-local options. Easy to drink, great if IPAs aren’t your thing and you want a regular amber since IPAs seem to be everywhere in SD.

For the last 2 years, I’ve worked on Ravelry for 70-80+ hours a week. At first, everything was being built and we were trying to fit as much work as we could into each day. Later, as the site grew, I found that I was spending less time on coding features and bug fixes and more time working on scaling to support more users, administrative stuff, finance, keeping up with the Ravelry-related forums, and moderating-type work. Adding to the site in a visible way makes me feel like I am accomplishing something (more than the other stuff) and for over year I have been doing the majority of my coding at night when I get home.

This situation is mostly my fault. With Jess and Mary-Heather working hard at their jobs, Erica working part time on customer service, a part time book-keeper, and hundreds (thousands?) of amazing volunteers on Ravelry that are willing to help, I think that we have enough people to run this thing. I’ve become used to burning up my day and thinking “ah well, I’ll start my *real* work after dinner”. I need to be more conscious about how I use my time, I need to avoid being sidetracked, and I need to not worry if things come up and the work that I’d like to do has to wait until tomorrow.

When Jess and I return from our mini-vacation this weekend I’m going to try to go back to a normal life. Ravelry may never be a 9 to 5 job that I can turn off at nights and on weekends and that is okay. I just need to take some of those hours back and use them for the rest of my life. It might take me a while to get the hang of it – sadly I can’t ever remember what I used to do with free time to myself. I close the computer and just sit there, sort of paralyzed. I’ve got a few ideas – mostly unused Christmas and birthday gifts from the past few years. I’ve got a banjo, an electric guitar and accordion – two of which I don’t know how to play at all. I’ve got a pile of books and I used to love reading. I’ve got a Wii Fit that couldn’t hurt, considering that I’ve been sitting at a computer for 2 years. It has been a long time since I’ve really enjoyed music and scouted for concerts the way that I used to.

Friends and family: if you feel like I’ve been in a fog and not quite there, I’m really sorry. I’m fixing that. I’ve realized that it is okay to slow down (thanks Jess, for helping me figure all of this out).

• Ravelry – I’m on Ravelry a lot, since it is my job and all. I can usually be found in the “For the Love of Ravelry” board where all of the meta chatter goes.
• Unraveled – I post to the Ravelry blog a couple times a month. Hopefully some of it is interesting to non-Ravelers
• Code Monkey Island – yep. More Ravelry. This is my tech blog. I’m still not sure who my audience is but this is where my software and architecture related thoughts end up.
• del.icio.us/casey – my bookmark pile increases daily.
• Jess’ Flickr stream – our life in pictures.
• twitter.com/caseyf, but not really. I send inane tweets out fairly regularly for no particular reason.
• upcoming.org – for expressing my interest in shows and other events

Things that have fallen by the wayside: 43 Things, this blog, cameraphone posting, Amazon wish list (my unread book pile is too large), Last.fm.

Check out the complete film list.
Sadly, Ravelry ate my life and I didn’t have time to put together a little site like I did last year,
so you’ll have to Google and IMDB and YouTube on your own…

Sometimes the description is all you need to make your decision. For example: “Blood Car:
When the price of gasoline becomes too steep, mild-mannered vegan Archie Andrews discovers a gory replacement for petrol.”
…or maybe “Song Sung Blue
Captures the unexpected victories and tragedies beset upon Milwaukee’s favorite Neil Diamond and Patsy Cline tribute band, ‘Lightning and Thunder’.”

It is FAR too cold for Vespa riding.

Jess, you were right. Thanks for being a good sport and not punching me in the back much.

We’ll try again in May.

• unraveled – I post about Ravelry.com related stuff a few times a month
• code monkey island – a newish blog where I dump my computery thoughts. Hopefully of interest to the geeky crowd.

..and I’ll continue to write here. I’ll will be nice to keep the work and technical stuff on those other blogs.

(Don’t ask about Cafe Press – 1. I’m an ornery bastard, 2. we preferred to support a small printing business, 3. we were particular about our merchandise and 4. they charge a lot)
Next time I’ll look into the Shopify + Shipwire combo.

We’ve been working on Ravelry full time since June-ish and many folks from the press have asked us what our biggest challenges, obstacles, mistakes etc were.
We didn’t have a good answer until now. Seriously, this shirt thing was ridiculous.

Oh – and for Bostonites – here is a little something that I learned. Did you know that there is a 24 hour post office at South Station?
They even let us back up to the loading dock on the rare nights that we arrived before 8 PM.

I hope that the new place is cool – “35,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art live music facility” sounds kinda ominous to me – I won’t hold my breath.

See you all at the Middle East and the Paradise.

Whoa – I was checking out the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim site ’cause David Banner has a cartoon about Mississippi
and it looks like there is a Drinky Crow show? Nice!

Random enough for you? Gotta break the silence somehow.

Gogol Bodello has a new album – it’s fun and energetic as expected. Side One Dummy has
a stupid flash player with 2 free tracks.
Edit: If you are in DC, Philly, NYC, Detroit, Chicago – GO TO THE SHOW. It’s fun.

Tim Armstrong has a new album out. It’s pretty good. here is a track. There are more at Epitaph.

There is a new one from Tiger Army. Try listening to Afterworld. More info at HellCat.

Hell, I might as well admit that I was looking forward to Reggae Gold 2007. That’s out too. Don’t laugh.

What are you listening to this summer?

The first point was all I really wanted to say. The rest is fluff because you can’t write a one line blog post.

http://www.ravelry.com/tour/peek

Enjoy!

Oh my god. How did this happen?

(Man, I *really* couldn’t find a nice picture on Flickr! I did find my favorite corner – zooom! I wish my scooter went faster)

I hope that August never comes.

Ravelry’s current front page includes a sneak peek and an invitation request form.
Also, Rachel from licketyknit wrote up cool post and included a coupla screenshots.

I *really* want to write a proper post about all of this but there is SO MUCH that I want to say.

]]> http://www.nerdle.com/blog/computing/ravelry/feed/ 6 http://www.nerdle.com/blog/computing/tubesareclogged/ http://www.nerdle.com/blog/computing/tubesareclogged/#comments Fri, 20 Apr 2007 07:14:00 +0000 casey http://www.nerdle.com/blog/computing/tubesareclogged.html Hey all Comcast customers in the Northeast – it’s not just you:
something is not quite right.
Flickr is among the afflicted.

This photo of my grandparent’s home was taken this morning. My grandparents are safe and dry but the first floor of their house did not fare so well.
Grampy’s workshop is downstairs and I was very saddened to hear that the last few antique radios from his once grand collection are now underwater.
Sigh. Damn you, nature.

1. Does anybody know of a good/cheap scooter or motorcycle mechanic in the Boston area? I have a Vespa ET2 that
   needs a little attention. My engine is sounding less zoom-zoom and more putt-putt these days.
2. It’s almost springtime here in New England, which means that it is time for me to be working in the yard.
   I’d like to turn the patchy mossy lawn that is behind my house into a real backyard and I want to do it quickly. I have no idea where to begin but I have a plan anyway.
   I figure that I can rototill the whole thing and slap down some sod which may or may not actually survive. Does anybody have experience with greenery?
   Am I asking for a headache?
3. I’ve been so busy with my Secret Project that I haven’t had the time to dig for new music. What are you guys listening to lately?
   Send me album names and last.fm usernames!
4. Does anyone know of any sites where I can get cool stickers? I don’t see anything new and interesting at places that I’ve used in the past
   (Interpunk, Diesel Sweeties and Dark Horse).
   I’ve fucked up my Macbook’s palm rest and I want to cover it up….

• Everything I needed to Learn About Comics I Learned from Arnold Drake – Part 1
• Everything I needed to Learn About Comics I Learned from Arnold Drake – Part 2
• Everything I needed to Learn About Comics I Learned from Arnold Drake – Part 3
• Everything I needed to Learn About Comics I Learned from Arnold Drake – Part 4