Month: November 2002

– poster from Mad Magazine (gulf war)
– emergence guy weblog
– bruce sterling weblog (must add to list this time!)
– lego pr0n (you have been warned!)

Elaine, your unconscious mind is driven most by Curiosity

This means you are full of questions about life, people, and the potential of your future. You spend more time than others envisioning the possibilities of your life things that others are too afraid to consider.

Your curiosity burns with an almost physical need to know and do more. It’s only through new experiences that you feel a greater understanding of yourself or the world which ultimately is the greatest way for you to feel satisfied.

It is possible that the underlying reason for your drive towards curiosity is a deeply rooted fear of boredom. That means that you are probably more susceptible than others to feel like you’re falling into a rut when life slows down into a comfortable routine.

You need to make sure you have stimulation in your life that makes you feel like you’re innovating or being exposed to the ideas and experiences that truly inspire you.

With such a strong orientation towards curiosity, you’re also prone to a rebellious quality that shows up when you feel you are just going through the motions, and are unable to really influence the world around you. But interestingly enough, your drive towards novel experiences also indicates an openness others don’t have, but wish they did.

Unconsciously, your curiosity presses you to learn more, experience more, and get the most out of life.

but first, a kitty update: Boingo went to the vet today, for neutering and to have his little foot checked out, and it’s all good.

– 101 things you can do in Mozilla – I had no idea.
– Patterns for Personal Web Sites – very reminiscent of the Pattern Language, which I loved, and a reminder that I need to get the rest of my site up.
– Masters of Science in Information Management – hmmmmmm…..
– Fandango lookup for The Two Towers in Seattle – because you can’t be too geeky. 🙂 (vacation time has already been put in for, because we had too much fun last year. must look up last year’s blog entry to see what I need to remember for next time…looked it up…ugh. that was not helpful! but an earlier entry – warning, 404’d link! – seems to indicate some notes that could be typed up, which means there may be something helpful in a paper journal. mmmmm…multimedia….)

I’m taking today off – we don’t get this particular holiday, but C didn’t have classes, so I took one of my personal days. walked downtown & wandered around for a while. very mellow, which is exactly what I needed. (after getting up early, because it was sunny for a little bit, and stacking some of the wood that C cut this weekend.)

this is one of my favorite streets in Olympia:

(hand and hat are Brent’s)

he seems to have done something to one of the claws on his back foot…I’m going to keep an eye on it, and maybe when Chad gets back there will be a call to the vet.

I’d forgotten what it’s like to have a kitten around – so much energy in such a small bundle.

aside from Dorothea’s short & amusing email, I also had some email from Jacob from my comments on his “15 minutes of fame” post…

I’m actually thinking about either switching to or adding Movable Type – my old host couldn’t support it, which was why I switched hosts. I like Blogger – it’s familiar, it’s simple – I even designed one of the default templates. I’d say that I have brand loyalty. but at the same time, I’m intrigued by the additional features of MT, and by the idea of hosting my own information. (on the other hand, given the flakiness of my various hosts and computers, maybe centralized storage is the way to go for me.)

I probably won’t give up Blogger, but I’d like to add MT as an adjunct – maybe start out with a special-purpose blog.

as for comments…I’m sort of inclined to Dorothea’s position, if maybe not so strongly. this blog did have a home-rolled commenting feature, a long time ago, but at the time nobody was really reading, or at least they weren’t talking back. (I had to give it up the last time I switched hosts.) I’m ambivalent, which maybe I’ll think about or explore in writing later.

(oh, and having the computer in the living room so I can blog from the couch is a beautiful, beautiful thing. I almost don’t want a laptop so bad anymore. okay, not really.)

I was gonna take a picture, but I can’t find my camera. 🙁

there is a new member of the family…one of our neighbor-friends found a kitten, and wasn’t going to be able to take it in, and wasn’t going to be able to take it to the shelter during open hours. so, the same way we ended up keeping Maddy, when Jennifer A. couldn’t take her to the pound, we now have little Bandit/Boingo (still haven’t entirely decided, and he may end up with some kind of ridiculously long name that gets shorted to both names, depending).

Maddy’s doing okay (right now they’re sleeping next to each other on the couch), but Sasha is not happy. nothing violent, just lots of hissing. of course, little Boingo just follows her around – he must think she’s cool or something. 🙂

– how to dance goth

which reminds me of something else from last night…talking about “how do you find good stuff?” (which was never really answered, btw) and Anita, in particular, was quite vocal about not wanting to link to stuff that had already been on MeFi, Boing Boing, etc. but I do, all the time…not because I care about popularity, but because I think of my blog(s) as my backup brain (I must have mentioned that here before), and I link things not only because I want my audience (hi, Kat, Kermit, Elizabeth, Dorothea? (near-instant feedback is a beautiful thing), and Jacob) to see them, but because I want to be able to find them again later.

actually, I’m thinking more & more about keywords & metadata as I blog, as I use it more & more to find things that I know I wrote about earlier.

um, no, I can’t transliterate these notes. but a few things stand out:

1) re: what is a weblog? I liked what Gael said, the concept of blogger as DJ. I don’t know who said it, but this line rang quite true: “that word flows around a lot of different content”.

2) strange, in a good way, to hear both panelists and audience members mention “big name” weblogs – Metafilter, Boing Boing. Gael sez: “Matt does a great job.” and (Glenn?) mentioned Scripting News as something that might account for a big bubble of traffic (right after mentioning getting slashdotted).

3) Chad’s big question: where do you see the future of blogging? (he mentioned education & politics) Glenn had really interesting things to say on this one (man, he’s a very smart and articulate guy!) – connecting the growth of blogging, potentially, to youth culture, to people who were college students at schools with wireless asking their employers, later – “why don’t you have wireless networking?” but conversely the issues of control (they’d already mentioned that guy who got fired from that newspaper in Texas) as a potential chilling effect. Glenn mentioned Cluetrain. (C muttered in my ear something about weblogs as an “agent of change”) Clark’s comment was something about a “decentralized network…obviously infinitely cool.” (that guy has a very sketchy vibe.)

4) somebody asked how success was measured in weblogs – mentioning the Nielsens, I think, in comparison. and when Glenn mentioned getting writing gigs, and Gael said she was happy if 10 people read and enjoyed her blog, the response from the questioner was “so it’s more of a hobbyist thing?” as if that were a problem, which prompted some sketchy responses all around about micropayments, paid aggregation, etc.

5) an interesting point from the moderator, who works at MSNBC, about their weblogs…essentially, he said that human voices in their site was a differentiator from the competition. hm.

6) unfortunately, the basics got glossed over at the beginning, and I think having Rebecca there would’ve really helped when a couple of very basic questions came up towards the end. I really wonder if they answered the questions to the questioner’s satisfaction.

afterwards, I got to meet Anita Rowland, whose name I have seen around for a while. (nice blog, too.) we went home pretty much right after, because it’s a hell of a drive, esp. with last night’s driving rain. but definitely worthwhile, and C enjoyed it as well, even tho blogging is more of my thing.

but this little tidbit from yesterday morning caught my eye. “we also need more not-strong male role models” – most of the time I find Dave’s gender politics eyebrow-raising at best, but it made me think about what I’ve been writing about Ulo, and where I’m getting to with the whole idea of the Gahn. (yes, that makes no sense, except maybe to one reader – hi, Kat! – but I wanted to remember it.)