Month: June 2002

gaining insight by blogging

/CSS/ – a guide for the unglued

and I got a lovely smack upside the head from the css-discuss list: a link to the wrong way to use CSS – ouch! but I think I’m doing a little better with this design now. I’m still not totally happy with the way it overlaps at smaller sizes, but I don’t have any better ideas (yet).

nav goes across the top, fixed for browsers that do that sort of thing – streamline it down. dump the jewelry stuff, again. maybe dump some of the sassi stuff too, tho I love the manifesto. sidebar with random haiku & earrings – plus links – goes to the bottom, linearly – can’t decide if I still wanted it at the left or moved to the right. maybe some new colors, too.

oh, and SomaFM‘s “Drone Zone” is good for stimulating the brain. try it out….

he suggests, gently, that I might get more use out of time meditating than time blogging. this is quite likely true, these days, since mostly I write quick rehashes of recent events and post the odd link or two. I’m often wary about writing too deeply of my own life…I’ve been burnt, once or twice, by public personal writing, even in this very medium. moreover, there’s something troubling about writing something so fleeting as an internal state or ephiphany in a form that will never entirely disappear from the public eye. (god bless Google) unlike, by contrast, the box of journals in the downstairs coat closet – I only need to experience the joys, tortures and embarrassment of previous years if I really want to, and no one else sees them unless/until I’m ready.

maybe I’m drawn to this painfully public medium (the weblog) because I am such a secretive person all the rest of the time. maybe I’m drawn to writing because I’m fascinated by secrets, because I’m uncomfortable revealing myself fully…after all, as a writer you are who you say you are. As a fantasy or sci-fi writer, you even get the call on what the whole world looks like. but I don’t make things up in here, nor in my journal.

not to say that I don’t not say things or prevaricate or try to put the best face on it…more so here than in my paper journal, in which I allow out all sorts of hurt, anger, whining and the like…but I don’t lie.

now I’m not sure where I was going with that thought. which is probably why meditating would be a good idea.

I’ve been extremely high strung the last week or so – tired, edgy, irritable, too many balls in the air. except that it’s nowhere near so extreme, not really. as Kat said, “people buy houses every day, Elaine.” and I have this job that I actually care about and I enjoy what I do and I’m living with (married to!) someone I adore who is smart and perceptive and caring. (yes, there’s the cats, too.)

this is the step where I become a grown-up, for real now. it’s not the job(s) or getting married or buying a car or getting my driver’s license. a house. a place where I could live for the rest of my life, if I really wanted to. an incredibly huge financial obligation that I can’t fuck up. and there’s something else, that I can’t quite articulate.

there’s a bunch of other things, of course…how I feel about my family and how I feel about Chad’s family…the prospect of commuting and losing some of the looseness of home being around the corner and down the street…my intense dread of moving…a future of home improvement and gardening tasks, and wondering if I have the competence to tackle them.

that’s the crux of it, really. competence and confidence. on good days, I have both in spades. I was a teacher’s pet, after all. but on bad days, I start wondering if it’s even worth it to attempt tying my shoelaces. and I want so much to be competent, to be good at things, to know and understand what’s going on. he’s right: I hate being wrong, and I’ll hide or even lie to avoid showing ignorance or incompetence. (I think another relationship elsewhere in my life finally clicked into place. I can be more chill now.)

so the obverse of my reassurances to myself that everything’s okay: I procrastinate, especially if it involves calling someone on the phone. I tune people out and drift along on my internal storytelling. I’m not writing, and I don’t know when (or even if!) I’m going to start again. I hate making doctor’s appointments, and I often wonder if it’s all in my head. (esp. the likely progression of RSI.) I have my grandfather’s prediliction for telling the same goddamn story over and over again. I forget things that I’m supposed to do.

and the important addendum: none of this means that I’m an awful person, just flawed, like everybody else. the wish for perfection is achingly strong, but I think it’s a fool’s goal. there’s always better. but perfect, no.

damn. I just remembered that I wanted to register for that programming class. am I still going to take it? I’m not sure. I want to, though.

again, Netscape 4 is five years old today. that is all.

not my memories of Doolittle, but still….

The Programmer’s Stone – web book about the art of programming.

on anonymity, identity and integrity – my only comment being that I have “known” and respected this individual as stavrosthewonderchicken for about a year now, including a couple of interesting sidebar emails.

oh, and Kiln People, by David Brin, is definitely worth reading. one of those books, like Childhood’s End or Lilith’s Brood, that makes my brain slosh around a little.

I tried out the snapGallery script (see the last link below) – and yeah, it does exactly what I want. you have to get your pictures set up first, and I’m not entirely happy with the way it handles the CSS, but other than that….

Saturday’s trip northward, in pictures

I might see if I can figure out the scripting just enough to make it link to an external stylesheet, and maybe to make the html a little more structurally meaningful. but that’s just geeky fun. 🙂

Illuminating RF lighting: links to articles (including one by Steve Stroh) about over use of Wi-Fi/802.llb band, including a potentially major problem with something called RF lighting. only skimmed so far.

typographica

the WaSP prepares for relaunch

digital jewelry – lovely (decoder rings!), but can I make jewelry with this tech embedded?

mortgage insurance alert – must learn more about this.

waferbaby – check out the cards!

web hosts: hostsave, cyberpixels

A Rift Among Bloggers – YAWA.

The End is Nigh – didn’t Bruce Sterling write about this in a novel?

Hands of the Hills jewelry/beading supplies

2 tinkerers find cheaper way to broadband?

afterDinner for Writers – found thru this interview – looks to be very, very cool.

and there’s that gallery tool I’ve been trying to remember where the hell I found it.

I went out with my index card with a hole poked in it, but couldn’t tell if the odd-shaped shadow was just my poor job of making a circle or the actual eclipse. likewise, the light was/is odd, but only a little more than would be normal on a high-overcast early evening like this one. 🙁

someday I’ll catch a real solar eclipse. (I still remember standing in Greyson’s apartment on Broadway, looking out the “balcony” at a lunar eclipse. so weirdly beautiful.)

I missed the MeFi gathering.

I caught this lovely shot, but my feet are paying for it:

still, between a really long walk, and a good conversation on the bus, my brain is a lot better now.

some quotes on which to comment:

[…]it has to be acknowledged that Lick wasn’t much of a manager in the conventional sense. […] “[he] gave all the applicants [for a secretary] the Miller Analogies Test and hired the one with the highest score. We had a string of brilliant young women who lasted about three months before resigning in violent boredom.”

[this is according to Alan Perlisk, founder of one of the first undergraduate programming courses] Programming was for everyone, he insisted, not just the science and engineering majors. It was a fundamental intellectual skill, like mathematics or English composition. […] Lick couldn’t have agreed more: programming, like mathematics (or psychology), was one of those disciplines that could simultaneously yield both practical applications and profound insights[….]

[this describes Bob Taylor’s management style at PARC] And to achieve that goal [a system of information technology, the electronic office], Taylor knew, he somehow had to get all these maverick geniuses moving in the same direction, without forcing everyone to move in lockstep. […] in short, he had to set things up so they would freely follow their own instincts – and end up organizing themselves.

more thoughts to follow on these points.