Ben McKenzie

I bitch about technology a lot. But something that's awesome: DAAP.

Being a Linux user, I've been pretty safe from the whole iTunes thing, since running it under Wine is something that's just not worth the effort. Besides, I really don't want to spend money on DRM'd music. I don't like the fact of having something that locked down.

Then Amazon came along with their damn un-DRM'd MP3's. Now I'm cruising for old songs to get and listen to.

I cannot believe I live in a world where "millions of rows" is some sort of achievement for a spreadsheet program. (Excel 2007: 1,048,576 to be exact.)

If you need that many rows, it means your setup is broken, either software-wise, or organizationally.

No, I didn't smoke. I simply slacked off on my personal writing and productivity stuff this week.

I've been trying to cram so much in my days off that I finally took a deep breath and just chilled this weekend, courtesy of my Wii and Super Smash Brothers Brawl.

News from last week:

Food scientists say stop biofuels to fight world hunger

For the non-Twitter folk:

Shopping for bookbinding supplies in Seattle is like sloppy, drunken sex: it's satisfying in some way, but not a complete experience.

DAMN YOU redsouffle! DAMN YOU TO HELL! I SHALL SPREAD THE CURSE TO ALL!

http://magic.pen.fizzlebot.com/

There is some strange Zen feeling I get when reconciling my Palm checkbook register with my desktop software. It's a somewhat tedious process, since it requires using my double-entry bookkeeping kung-fu, and duplicates spring up when it comes to transfers.

However, there's a nice feeling I get when everything balances, even if it's in the red.

While Wikipedia seems to get all the press and buzz, the Nunaliit Cybercartographic Atlas Framework is pretty damn awesome as well.

So, recently, I've started writing in a journal-type thing in the mornings. When I first started doing it, the most I could get out of it was about half a page before my hand started cramping up.

I've been progressing up to three pages, which is usually when my hand craps out and I cut myself off. A few days ago, when doing it, I switched from print-style lettering to a more traditional, cursive style. Since switching over like that, I've found that my hand tenses up a lot less, and I'm able to write more.

I'm wondering why people got out of the habit of writing in longhand. Aside from being swishy, and something that only freaks like me do, it seems like a more comfortable alternative for people who write for any length of time.

Then again, it's not like most people write much anymore, except for quick notes and the like.

Just a few meandering thoughts that I had.

I have had four hours of sleep.

Also, I should not use power tools prior to having coffee.

[Unknown LJ tag]

There's this unfortunate idea in our society that being a "productive" member of society means being a spiritually-empty tool of the man. It means selling out and becoming The Man, a phrase that has absolutely no fucking meaning anymore.

Now, for anybody that knows me well, they know two things. The first, is that I'm about as organzied as a trailer park after a tornado. The second is that I'm a productivity geek. I read Lifehacker and 43 Folders. I post about my attempts at organizing. I'm constantly tweaking and fidgiting and rebuilding and working at it.

This belief that most people have, that time management is something for "other" people, for "tools of The Man", just plain pisses me off. Stop me if any of this seems familiar:

• Books: You have a few minutes before meeting up with someone, and there's a bookstore nearby. You walk in, and remember "that book, the one about the thing, by what's-his-name". And that's it. You vaguely remember what the book was about, and you'd recognize it when you saw it. Maybe if you searched for it at a kiosk? Something about "lunch?" Oh, there's a few thousand books that came up. Hrm. Well, I'll just browse the subject. I'll know it if I see it.
  
  Later that day, you look at your Amazon wishlist or see an ad for said book, and wonder how you could have totally forgotten.



• Movies: You're going out on a night on the town, and you figure you'll go see that totally awesome movie that someone mentioned awhile back. Unfortunately, the movie's local run is over, it's out of theatres, and because it's an independent flick it's not going to hit DVD for another six months. Oops.</i>
  
  
• Games: "That podcast talked about that really awesome game. I should totally pick it up. Oh, they don't have it. I should order it."
  
  "Who's the publisher?"
  
  "Um... something... uh, with an eye?"



• Everything Else: You'd really like to keep in touch with people, really. Your friend that just moved out of town, maybe you should fire them off an email, or even better, a letter. Huh. Haven't seen person A in awhile. Maybe I should give them a ring. Those shelves really need to be hanged up, I should get some hardware. What about the plant hangers?

These are the little things that slip by on a constant, regular basis. Some days, with some people, there might be half a dozen or so of these things that slip by, and at the end of the day, after missing out on the book, the chat over coffee with a friend, the plant hangers that you could have picked up when you were at the store but spaced out on because you were focused on lightbulbs, and the letter you needed to mail, it's easy to get this feeing of sheer incompetence about yourself.

Most people are being destroyed at the whim of the little shit that they're not able to get past it and into the bigger things they want to do. Like that political event you wanted to go to, but couldn't because you couldn't clear off your plate. Or the big conference that you put off registering for and taking time off for because at some point in time, it fell off the radar and you stopped thinking about it until now.

And here's the subtext I keep seeing over and over again from people: that time management, organizing, and thinking about projects and all that is for the soulless consumer that needs to "slow down, and, like, totally simplify their lives." Fuck. That. Noise. Fuck it with a goddamn rake. These are the same people that never get their shit together, seem to be constantly moving from one crisis to another, always have half a dozen or more unfinished projects lying around their house, and constantly complain that there's never enough time to do anything while watching television or listening to NPR and munching on organic potato chips. I am almost positive that we've met someone like this. (And if you're pointing a finger at me, go right ahead and point: I'm not going to deny that I've not done any of this, or that I'm not doing this right now in my life.)

Why does it piss me off? Because it seems to be something amongst the leftist rabble of the world: that all we really need to do is slow down and be ourselves, and stop letting The Man control us. Great. The solution is to just... what? I'm sure they've got some great ideas. Wonderful ideas. Big Ideas. Ideas that would Change The World As We Know It™. Ideas that will never be spoken because they never had the time to get together with other like-minded people and put them into motion. Plans and large-scale community projects that would have been earth-shattering, but languished because they simplified their lives to the point of not participating in what was going on around them.

The world is the way it is for no other reason than six billion people have decided that the world should work this way. You want to make the world a better fucking place? Get your shit together, get a bunch of other people that have their shit together, and fucking do something about it already.

Physics and math, bitches. It makes for a great parlor trick.

Man. I really want a RepRap. I have no use for one, but it's really damn neat.

Also, for those of you that don't know, Central Cinema has a Google Calendar, so you can keep an eye on all the movies they're showing. This is extremely awesome, since they have good food.

Although I can vouch from experience: food + Alien doesn't make for a good movie watching experience. Especially if it's pasta, right during the chest-bursting scene.

We can sit outside in the dark, musing on life, and send our thoughts across the world instantly, rather than the weeks or months it used to take.

We can take a picture, and instantly see how it looks, how well it is framed, and have hundreds of them at our fingertips with a single camera and storage card, rather than using spool upon spool of film.

In the past, 50 miles was an ocean between friends. Now, it's a mild inconvenience.

All this wonderful, beautiful technology, and it gets used for INVITING PEOPLE TO PLAY STUIPD, TIME-WASTING GAMES ON SOCIAL NETWORKS.

Gary Gygax dies at age 69.

Man. I'm so tempted to start a commemerative game of AD&D 2nd Edition now.

... but prereg for Towards Carfree Cities VIII is up and running.

And yes, I'll be trying to go to it.

Keep your hipster fixie and your tall bike.

All the cool kid are riding high wheelers.

http://archive.gamespy.com/comics/dorktower/archive.asp?nextform=viewcomic&id=1325

So very, very true.

I'm sitting here, wearing a "mostly harmless" t-shirt, coding a Python program that is for a numbers-heavy, cruncy scif-fi tabletop RPG (Traveller, for anyone interested).

My head imploded from the sheer geek factor.