Blog

Winter

Snow! I like snow. Nearly a foot all told over the weekend makes me happy. We had several four foot icicles hanging off the pergola over our deck, which I broke off and stuck spike-strip style into the snow. Google says its 3 outside right now, and my dashboard widget says -1. I can never really tell once its this cold – I can never really feel it either. Anything below 20 is all the same to me, and I rarely zip up my jacket for anything other than wind. It isn’t cold enough for spit to bounce, so I don’t really care. I’m looking forward to that though.

I forgot how bright winter nights are. This weekend after the snow storms, I was caught off guard by how bright it was at four in the morning. The snow, reflecting up to the clouds, reflecting back down, and so forth. Even on a cloudless night, like tonight, it is brighter than I expect it to be. Winter nights also always manage to look better. I don’t know if they’re actually clearer or not, but winter nights always seem to do something special to stars. I can’t help but wonder if that’s just us regretting that we can’t look at them for as long as we would like to because of the weather. In the summer, we could stay out all night and comfortably stare at the stars. Winter nights are harder to appreciate, and we might just value them more for that. Or maybe it’s just the contrast between the sky and the snow – what do I know.

Good news, everyone!

I’ve stopped caring about anything. I think it’s best described by how a friend summed up Schopenhaur‘s philosophy: he did a lot of thinking, and eventually decided that we can’t really know anything and should just listen to music. Probably a bit oversimplified, but it’s about where I’m at.

In one of the books I’m reading, I had a sudden flash of insight that I shouldn’t be reading this trying to figure out how to serve my projects, but to make all projects better, easier, whatever. Instead of writing a great piece of music, make a new instrument, or a new theory. Something that other people can take and run with.

It is really the idea behind open source, and the Creative Commons, and even the very internet. Now I just have to remember it.

jQuery

So I’m beginning to mess around with the jQuery javascript library. It has taken me a while, but I finally have free time. This thing can do everything. I have a feeling my blog is going to become a lot prettier. I have a little test on the site right now that you can see – its just a simple stylesheet switcher. It is incredible how easy it was to implement. If you want to play with it, look at the bottom part of the sidebar for the ‘Style’ menu, and you can toggle between the default, and a zenburn-like design I’ve been playing with. It is mostly just a proof of concept for me, and I don’t intend to leave it there forever. I think eventually I’ll have it set up to change automatically depending on the time of day (really white webpages are brutal in a dark room).

What I’ve learned in Sociology

Finally done with classes this semester. This semester had by far the best classes I’ve taken. One was Sociology of Gender, which I have to admit I had never spent much time thinking about. It quickly became my favourite class of the semester, and I’m glad I took it. But I think I learned something from my classmates that I hadn’t expected to learn.

Apparently I was not raised like everyone else. I’m not sure how much I can take from this class at face value, but if I believe what they say, I was raised by hippies. I’m not sure if everyone else in the class just answers how they think they should, or if they’re sincere. We’ve certainly been trained to give the “right” answer. This class often talks about gender roles in the household, eg: women cook, men do manual labor, women take care of children, men make the money, etc. That wasn’t the case in my family.

Tasks were shared between my mother and father. If I was sick at school, and someone needed to take me home, the parent with fewer obligations came to get me, it was not automatically the mother (an example used several times in class with much assent from other students). My dad cooked a lot, and when he didn’t, he would do dishes. Apparently this is not normal.

I’m not claiming that there were no gendered activities in my house growing up. My dad would mow the lawn, chop wood, and build things. My mom would cook larger holiday meals, sew Halloween costumes and so on. But these were not steadfast rules, and I remember stacking cords of wood with both my parents, and helping both prepare Christmas dinner (ok, I probably didn’t help).

I dunno, maybe I’m taking extreme examples that were used in class to prove a point too literally, or maybe I have an ultra-heteronormative sociology class. Either way, I think more than anything else I learned how ‘progressive’ my household was/is. Weird.

More Super Awesome Ideas

I made a post a long while ago with things I’d like to see made. While I’m still waiting for cellphone away messages, I learned about Freenet, which is essentially the second idea I described. I’ve been meaning to play around with it, but I haven’t really had the time. Still, good to know it exists.

New ideas!

These are very mobile-computing based. Netbooks have gained popularity as of late, and I’m a little confused as to why. They’re alright, but for all they do you’re better off carrying a decent smart phone around (I’ve been eyeing Nokia’s N85). I think there are considerable advantages to this approach, and with a few addons, a smart phone could outperform netbooks.

The first is a very simple idea, which would make smart phones more usable for mobile computing. Imagine a small keyboard, with an empty slot where the calc pad usually is. Plug your phone into that slot, and you now have a large keyboard to use to type things (like actual documents, not SMSs). Since keyboards require very little actual space, underneath the keys can be a small bank of batteries that will charge the phone while it is plugged in. Since this battery bank is larger than the phone, I would imagine this setup would have an incredibly long battery life (days of activity, weeks of standby) before you had to recharge it all. It would also be easy to throw a couple ports on this, just to make the package complete. Most smart phones support video out in some capacity, so building that into this device would make hooking up to a monitor or TV easier. And a USB port of two for that misc gadget that needs charging or whatnot. There you go – everything a netbook does and more. Slip your phone back in your pocket when you don’t need all that crap.

Next is a sort of toned down version of that last idea, just to achieve full keyboard functionality. Anywhere with a computer, you can usually find a USB keyboard (I never see PS2 anymore). A small bluetooth dongle that would attach to the USB cord of a keyboard, and allow it to interface with your phone would be pretty slick. Just pop it on, sync it with your phone, and you’ve got a full-size input device. And all you have to carry around is something smaller than a thumbdrive.

I would buy either of these things if they were made. Someone please make them.

My thumb hurts

I wrote so much this weekend. It’s my fault, but still, it sucks. I had to just about fill a marble notebook with little reflections on 60 short stories we read this semester. They were good stories, but we were supposed to be writing these as we read them…and I didn’t. So over the course of this weekend I wrote nearly 10k words. And now my thumb really hurts.

Sidenote, I don’t use either of my thumbs to type. Thank god.

Blogs on the move

I’ve been reading a lot of travel blogs, which were pretty interesting over the summer, and then started to taper off as the weather got colder. Suddenly, a lot of these bloggers are doing things again, and it is very worth reading.

721 Sandwiches is about to head down to Key West (for the second time).

freedomvan and A Year in a Car For No Apparent Reason are both in Hawaii (after being on the mainland living in vehicles for a while).

And I AM NOT AFRAID OF WINTER just hitched her way from NC to Portland.

I dunno why I used blog names over real names, but I’m not changing it.
Anyway, keep an eye on those – good reads abound.

Communitas

On Thursday a lot of my classes didn’t really have too much to do, and several let us out early. So I found myself with some time to waste before my next class. Usually, I’d nap, but it wasn’t really enough time to enjoy a nap, and I didn’t really feel like it. I dropped by the office of the professor of my next class – he had mentioned something on Tuesday that had sparked my interest. He told us about Peter Goldmark (the guy who invented the LP) and a project he attempted later in his life. He started something called the New Rural Society, with the intent of replacing cities with small rural communities connected by new technologies. I had googled it and not found much (I did find more later), so I asked him if there was anything else he could tell me about it.

The project was started in the late 60s, and launched in the early 70s, but didn’t have much support. The idea was to have rural communities connected by telecommunication, using technology that was available at that time in new ways. Businesses and government agencies could have employees working remotely across the country, in smaller, sustainable towns. There were two test sites that had any real development: somewhere in Montana (my professor didn’t remember where exactly) and Windham County, CT. He actually worked with Fairfield University on a lot of this project, and there are records of the New Rural Society on file there.

He also told me a story of a project someone created in the 60s down in Appalachia concerning libraries. Libraries are usually large centralized structures that improve depending on the size of the community they belong to. Appalachia was very poor and sparse, and could not support decent libraries in each community, but it had an incredible infrastructure of train tracks because of the mining industry. So someone made a library on a railcar, and moved it from community to community, harnessing the power of all of the small communities combined to make a decent, mobile, library. He also made an interesting sidenote, “…and they wonder why people watch TV instead of reading books. TV comes to them!”

Before I left he gave me a book, called Communitas, which seems to be right in the vein of what we were talking about. I’ve only been able to read the introduction so far, but it seems to be questioning the fundamental problems with urban society (instead of thinking about how to improve transportation for commuters, thinking about why people need to commute).

These are all things I’m going to be posting a lot more about.

Everybody PANIC!

So, I know the other day I bookmarked the smiley face that appeared in the sky on Monday, but it appears there is more to this story. The three were originally in the shape of a happy face, visible to the Eastern Hemisphere (from “Bangkok to Kenya”). Then, as it moved over Europe, it changed into a star and crescent, and finally, a frowny face over the USA.

It’s a shame more people aren’t freaking out about this. Let’s start it.

Co-op College

Ok, maybe that isn’t a good description of this idea. When googling “coop college” I found that most people take this to mean some sort of internship with a corporation, where students can learn the ropes of the “real world.” That is not what I mean.

I was talking to Ned recntly about colleges, and he remarked about what incredibly odd places they are. People pay and go there to learn (and do other things). There is no real economic model, and they only work with an outside support system.

The thing is, they don’t need to be that way. Imagine a college commune, or something of the sort. Tuition is free, and there is a sustainable economic model. Everyone works, everyone learns.

I’m imagining Freshman doing a majority of unskilled labor – keeping things running on a day to day basis. Each year above freshman could teach (or help teach) the year below.

I like this idea a lot, since it fits so snug with my previous commune ideas. I’m going to keep this stewing.