I will be starting up a new project over at http://ctmiller.net early this winter. Please head over and subscribe if you’d like to know more when the time comes.

I bring you my final podcast episode, a discussion with my good friend J.C. Hutchins. It’s about a lot of things, but mostly, it’s about change.

Thanks, everyone.

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http://python.mirocommunity.org/category/pyohio-2010

I’d like to thank the staff of this year’s conference for all their hard work, and thank the speakers for donating their time and talents toward the community’s betterment.

And yes, we’ve recorded our podcast’s review of the conference and it will be up this weekend.

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Yes. Yes I am.

The above is a picture of my wife for some publicity shots for her new website.  She’s been playing out around town with both Jim Gill and Uzuzi of late. We’ll be ready to show off her new site and her full performance calendar in a few days.

Now, if you’ll excuse me…I’ll be in my bunk.

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The usual band of miscreants…taken in 1989 or 1990 by my friend James (not in the picture).

I’m the guy on the left.

Good Lord. Where did these kids go?

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Keep these around. You’ll be surprised how they apply on a daily basis.

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don’t hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

[Source: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum.  See his web site at http://www.robertfulghum.com/ ]

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You can never have too many squirrels. Or was that lizards? Maybe I’m thinking of giant syringes. I forget.

Anyway, if you like squirrels and/or lizards and/or giant syringes you should check out the latest The Secret Lair comic.

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Coding is one of those things that can be terribly interesting to a very specific portion of the population, and to everyone else, it is arcane knowledge either from On High or from The Pits of Hell, depending on the listeners’ outlook¹. Early in our marriage my wife learned the fine art of smiling and nodding encouragingly especially when she had no idea what I was talking about. It was impossible for me to really share what I was doing because the set of people who could appreciate it and the set of people I spend time with has little or no intersection.

I like to share my joys with people. Ask anyone who has had to suffer through my skimming thru an iPod while I play music for them², or who has come by after a trip to the book- or game store.  I like to to share the shiny stuff I find, and like a small child, I hope that they like it as much as I do.

This has been one of the reasons what I’ve pulled away from writing code during non-work hours: I want to focus on creating things which can be shared. It might be working up some ice cream with the new ice cream maker we received as a housewarming gift. It might be brewing beer or cooking a meal for my family. It might be gaming with friends…sharing time with likeminded folks can be the best sharing of all.  Code does not do this for me. Even podcasting does not do this for me. Social networking is a pale substitute³…I prefer the physical world to the Internet any day of the week.

What is it in life that brings you the most satisfaction?  Is it something you like to share, or do you keep it to your self?

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1. Even my own outlook varies from day to day.
2. An exercise my wife has come to call Chris’s Top 40, and not in a good way
3. Social Networks are to Real World Interaction what Tofu Cheese is to Sharp Cheddar.

This past weekend, my brother brought over a box of old toys that migrated from my parents’ house to my other brother’s house and now to his.  We  unpacked the box and there was a great deal of Ooohing and Ahhhing from my kids who had never seen anything quite like the toys we were unpacking.

The biggest hit was the Star Wars Death Star playset, which, despite needing to be cleaned and having a few pieces missing, was still in pretty good shape. My brother generously allowed us to keep it along with a number of action figures and the next day my kids could not get enough of playing with it. It’s been nearly a week and it’s still in the living room; they are still enjoying it.

The Death Star set has no electronics. Nothing beeps, talks, or fires at you. Everything is manual. No batteries needed.  All my kids had was the setting (The Death Star) and the characters (the Action Figures¹). They played there for hours.

This was a reminder of two things to me:

• They really did make things differently when we were kids. True, this is because the tech was not there for certain things, but the quality and durability of the action figures and the playset surprised me, especially when compared to today’s Start Wars figures. The modern ones feel cheap and insubstantial. These…well…they’ve lasted through my and my brothers’ childhoods, and now my kids have them.
• It’s a great thing to listen to children as they use their imagination. Give it a try sometime. It’s a wake-up call.

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1. No. They are NOT dolls. They are Action Figures

And, that greatest of midwestern traditions, the Garage Sale.  We’re finally rid of all our old stuff. Thanks go out to James and Heather, who were our erstwhile and exhausted partners in the little venture.

Happy Monday, people. Let’s be careful out there.

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This is the view from my new backyard this morning.  A deer and her two does, grazing on the weeds at the back of the yard. While it means gardening will be a challenge, it was still an enchanting sight this morning as I drank my coffee on the back porch.

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Unquiet Desperation is going to be shifting focus in the month of July. I’ve been using this as a personal blog for years, but I find that I want to take the time to explore new things here, and split some of my other interests off into other areas.

Unquiet Desperation: The Blog

I’ve said that I want to write essays, and my goal for this site will be to host those essays. The areas I want to cover here are:

1. Exploring living a simpler life in a rapidly-changing technological society
2. Using creative disciplines and ingenuity to make sense of and enhance the world around us
3. Examining the creative process in relationship and as a reaction to the pressures of daily life
4. Touching on the care of the soul via aesthetic experience

Unquiet Desperation: The Podcast

The renewed focus of the podcast will keep the exploratory tone of past incarnations, while veering sharply away from the well-worn geekly tropes.  I envision it as monthly exploration of a single topic, via essay, interview, music, or whatever else suits. The first episode of the new podcast will drop in late July.¹

Geeky Topics Live In The Secret Lair

The Secret Lair is a perfect outlet for  discussions about the entertainment, geekdom, and other topics I like to tackle. They belong there, not here.

Internet Memes, Video, Short Posts, Etc are Trinkets

Sure, I like to pass things along as much as the next guy. Those items will move to my Tumblr, Trinkets in a Coffee Can.

Programming Discussion

I consider this part of my personal creative life. Essays on programming will live here, as will topics in other creative disciplines, like writing or brewing.

* * *

Along with all of this, I’m working with Mick Bradley on a new look and feel for the site, and I’m looking forward to unveiling that once we’re done.

I will be restructuring categories and such over the new month, so if you see weirdness in the feed, please excuse it. It should only be temporary.

I want to thank everyone whose feedback and friendship have inspired and enabled me to gather this focus, especially Kris Johnson, Thomas Gideon, Mur Lafferty, J.C. Hutchins, David Moore, Jay Lynn, John Cmar, Natalie Metzger, Mick Bradley, and, my ever-patient wife, Cathy.

See you all when I return from my vacation. Try not to wreck the place while I’m gone.

-Chris

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1. This will include the contributions of all the folks who have sent me audio already.

• In Episode 0036 of The Secret Lair, we discuss Iron Man 2, Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, and a few other assorted bits and pieces.
• In Episode 004 of From Python Import Podcast we learn why Dave hates Decorators, and discuss whether the Standard Library is the place where code goes to die. Additionally, Mike Pirnat joins us for a revelation about the Zen of Python.

Note: Apologies for the sound quality on both of these shows. My studio equipment is packed for the move, so we had to us my Zoom H4.

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Behold the wonder.

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Three thoughts:

• This has to be a mistake. Ray’s hardly a troublemaker. He doesn’t do spam. He follows the rules.
• Twitter really needs to have a better way of notifying people when they are suspended, just so they can appeal.
• Twitter, as a private company, can do whatever they want. Unlike Scoble, I don’t think they OWE us anything. but boy, it would be nice to have some recourse in cases like this.

I’ll be curious to see how this is resolved. Good luck, Ray.

UPDATE: He was back online as of 4:09pm EDT.

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Possible titles include Dave Hates Decorators or The Standard Library: Graveyard of Code.

Look for it to drop this weekend.

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At the end of the day, you’re either motivated to work on Progressing Forward or you’re not.  In a comment on the last article, Jared Axelrod put it this way:

Seriously, though, one of the most encouraging words I’ve ever heard is the phrase “If you really want to do something, nothing can stop you; if you don’t want to do something, anything can stop you.” Which has had an effect on me. Now, whenever I feel something pulling my attention away from the project at hand, I say “No, I really want to do this,” and I snap back to what I was doing. Or, it’s clear that what I am doing isn’t something I really want to do, and then I am content to let it fall by the wayside.

He makes three excellent points:

1. Know what you want to do.
2. Do it.
3. If you get distracted by something else, see point #1.

I think that Jared’s comment strikes at the core of the problem. Progressing Forward requires Motivation.  The word means progression, coming from the Latin movere,  ”to move.”

So how do we move ourselves? It’s too easy to say we are motivated by something interests us; an interesting project is one thing, but it needs to go deeper than that.

Motivation is born of Aspiration, which is born of Fascination.

You can find something interesting, then pass it by. It will not hold you.  Something that fascinates you, that hooks into your psyche and will not let go…now that’s the stuff from which great things are created. You aspire to do something with the fascination, and that is the motivation to work. While it is possible to work on a project that does not fascinate you in some way, keeping the motivation will be more difficult¹.

A Fascination is a tricky thing: they come in all sizes and shapes. some might be good for a single song, shortstory or painting. Others grow to become something epic. Most fall somewhere in between. All of them resonate. All of them have an authenticity to them that cannot be faked.

What subjects fascinate you?  Have you worked them into a project?  If you’ve worked on a fascinating vs. non-fascinating project, how did the two compare, and what did you learn from them?

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1. Money, of course, can help with this…we’re all fascinated with the possibilities of having extra cash on hand.Freelance work, anyone?

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• We bought a house.
• It’s in Medina, OH, which is about forty-five minutes from where we currently live.
• There is no job change for me involved.
• My wife is taking a faculty position at the Music Settlement, where she will be teaching fiddle.
• The kids are very excited.
• The parents are also very excited.
• We got it for an excellent price.
• It’s in a wonderful neighborhood where the kids can walk to school.
• Lots of mature trees.
• I have a shed I will be transforming into an office.
• We take possession on June 30th.
• We move in on July 2.

I will post pictures as I’m able.

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Why, Ken, I’m glad you asked.

My Summer Reading List for 2010

• Ilium by Dan Simmons: For years people have been telling me that I need to read Dan Simmons’ work. I’ve been told this because my friends know The Canterbury Tales is a favorite of mine, and Simmons’ Hyperion uses a similar storytelling style which I’d likely find interesting. However…I decided to skip Hyperion for now, mostly because I think I want to read it this winter, when I have time to sit and absorb the nuances of the text. Illium struck me as the sort of story I’d love to digest while on vacation: a modern Ph.D. finds himself reenacting the Trojan War on Mars, and takes steps to remedy the situation. That’s summer reading gold, baby.
• 1776 by David McCullough: McCullough’s style has always been accessible, and the fact that he starts the book talking about the situation in Britain after the battles of Lexiginton, Concord, and Bunker/Breed’s Hill caught my attention. It’s a sad state that, in the tale of the American Revolution that is taught in these United States, Britain is just The Villain; we never hear what the situation was over there. Once my attention was caught, I knew I had to see how the author retells the tale.
• Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance: My friend Dave Lockwood gave me this book just before we moved back to Cleveland from Los Angeles, and I’ve been meaning to read it since I put my hands on it. I’ve purposefully left it out while packing my library for the move, and I hope to get to it over vacation.
• The Nights Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton: The trilogy is made up of the novels The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God. I’ve heard nothing but good things about Hamilton’s work, and I found a gorgeous version of the trilogy at Barnes and Noble that I must possess. Once possessing, reading them seems to be the next logical step.
• The Hero with A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell: I’ve been listening to Campbell’s Mythology and the Individual lecture series, and I’ve found it to be stirring some of my creative juices. Stores are beginning to present themselves. Following this with Campbell’s seminal work on the monomyth is a slam dunk.
• The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon: Yet another one from the “You Gotta Read This” list, I borrowed this from my good friend James, and I really should read it before I’m forced to return it. I read the first chapter, and Chabon’s use of language is just glorious. I am able to lose myself in the style. I anticipate that I’ll finish this one in late August, just as the summer ends.

And now, to echo Ken: what are you reading this summer?

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I’ve taken the plunge and contracted the talented Mick Bradley to help me create a look and feel that I can be happy with. We’re just in the planning stages, but so far, I’m happy with where things are going. This new theme is just something I’m playing with. I’ve found that I have a deep and abiding disdain for most WordPress themes. I’m hoping we can come up with something a little different.

He’s recommended that I upgrade to WP 3.0, and I’ll probably do that once I back everything up.  Ahhh, the bleeding edge, how I view thee with suspicion and trepidation…

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