"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

International Solidarity Through Software Development

A practical example.

Right now in Hungary, there's serious civil unrest because of a bad economy and a president who admitted lying about it. Who cares, right?

Well, as I'm working on this site (and getting my job done for a client) I had to ask a Drupal security question, so of course I had to ask chx, the undisputed heavyweight champion on such issues.

He's Hungarian, and in and around answering my question he mentioned how glad he is to get away from mounted police beating the shit out of people and off to Antwerp for the Drupal conference (where, incidentally, my business partner Zack will be, along with some other friends).

Global projects shrink the globe.

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Coming Back

Coming back nice and slow. Not sure how I feel about this new design yet.

I've got to work out the exact package here, and then I've got to get to work on the Rebel Unicorn supersystem, basically a clever multisite Drupal installation that will let me give my friends their own blogs (their own URLs even) so we can all be part of the same system, include one-another's content, etc. Should be fun.

Life is good in general. I'm single, starting a new company, working a fair amount, starting to get a feel for life in the 21st Century. More on all this soon.

Into The Mystic

I've been sort of sleepwalking through life lately, my soul sort of elsewhere. I'm feeling my energy down at a low ebb, little interest in trying to make good connections with people, little interest in trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

In practical terms everything is great. I've been having a wonderful summer seeing lots of friends and living a kind of life I find deeply appealing. I've been carrying on a somewhat successful trans-continental romance. I've found my way back into free agency on the work front. All this is good, and yet it's also somehow not enough -- perhaps I'm not enough: insufficiently present, decisive, focused, etc.

There's no easy explanation for any of this. I'll think sometimes it's the pabst or the hash or all the rich food, and then I'll live clean and feel about the same only maybe a little more bored. I do know that exercise helps, and that I've felt this way before, and that this too shall pass, and so I'm not really worried... just trying to explain where I am.

It feels difficult to maintain a conscience in this modern world, to reconcile this with ambition. I want my sparky vigor back, my sense of what's true. I'm tired of getting old.

So the site is going dark for a bit. This'll be the last wordpress post. In addition to not writing anything here, I'll also not be reading any of my usual political blogs or any news online. It's a bad habit of mine. Being informed is great, but there's a kind of compulsiveness to my informational multitasking. I've been practicing this today and I can feel the moments where I think "hmmm, maybe I'll check Atrios" and I can feel the energy that can be re-channeled there.

It's fun to feel like I'm a part of this big online politlcal conversation, and it's an important conversation that's really happening, but the truth is that at this point I'm mostly spectating, and I think there might be better uses of my time. So media-wise I'll probably be out there with the rest of you, catching up via NPR and scanning the headlines at the grocery store.

I'm also going to be back in NYC for Aug 22-29, staying with the transatlantic romance. Should be interesting and certainly will be fun.

Look for something new in early September, maybe some video hits before then if the spirit moves me.

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Gyaaaaaaar!

I'm heading back down to Westhaven today.

Tomorrow I'm going to take my website offline and stop reading the news for a couple of weeks. It's an experiment in dicipline. The site archive will stay around, but the frontpage will become something really blank and simple, and if I truly feel the need to post something it will have to be in video form.

These are the rules.

Also, I'm probably going to have a thinger to sign up for a mailing list. The point of this will be for people who want to know when I go back "on the air" with whatever comes out next. I hope all my regular readers will sign up.

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