While everyone else was at OSCON, I worked. And tried not to melt (I still have no hot weather tolerance, surprising no one). At work we’re wrapping up an intense 2-week sprint, and about to launch into the next one. Head down, work work work feels pretty good right now. I’m behind on email again but it’s so mundane that’s hardly worth noting. Yesterday was spent reading Feed, which I recommend if your summer reading list needs a zombie thriller.
I also picked up Being Digital, after seeing it mentioned in passing. In 1995, when Nicholas Negroponte wrote this book, I was a high school student who accessed the internet through a dial-up connection to the library gopher system, using a Macintosh Classic. 2400 baud. Text-only too (I wouldn’t have regular access to internet with pictures or graphical browsing for another two years). So it’s interesting to see how many of his comments are still relevant, given that the technology has advanced, but the issues around people using the internet to shlep bits remain completely familiar.
I suspect work work work is the background to think think think. Filling my conscious thoughts with a set of activities while ideas churn underneath. Reading and watching things to load more ideas into the crush. When the weather cools, I hope it will explode into a cascade of insights, project pieces, the shape of what I’m doing next.
I forgot to post yesterday because I was mostly offline, part of a lovely 4-day birthday weekend. Also, we were busy assembling a new couch.
Things this week:
The PDC’s second survey is online for you to take. This one includes questions about the specific kinds of resources tech community groups, events, side projects and startups need. If you participate in anything of the sort, please take a few minutes to fill it out.
Tonight is the first ever CivicApps Awards night. I think there’s still time to RSVP if you’d like to attend.
WhereCampPDX planning is underway, and we’re meeting Thursday evenings to work on the event details and talk about our projects. If you’re a geo-geek in town for OSCON, you’re more than welcome to drop by. Produce Row, where we meet, is a short walk from the convention center.
Hot weather. The end of the world cup. Watching endless episodes of X Files on Netflix while knitting socks (just starting the heel on sock 2 now). Lucas and I celebrating our seventh (7!) anniversary with dinner at Nostrana and a bottle of my favorite pinot (a previous year’s version). A Timbers win against Miami on Saturday night. The first WhereCampPDX planning meeting for the year. Working through SICP with my coworkers.
I’m still hermiting. Lots of staying in and reading and working on things. I’m trying to motivate myself to spend more time writing—I have an idea for a story that would be fun to write, but I haven’t managed to get started yet. Still thinking. I have a bunch of project ideas like that right now.
I finished Anathem at the start of the weekend and immediately started on How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, which is a fun guide to quantum physics (a major topic in Anathem). I’m a few chapters in and learning all sorts of weird things that happen when you try to observe quantum processes. Also, yesterday I picked up Americana, which I ditched 3/4 of the way in last year, and finished it. Not sure if it was worth it, since the end of the book is kind of a mess.
I’ve been catching up on knitting too. I finished the first sock from a pair I started last year. I’m not entirely happy with the toe, but if I tinker and get something I like better on sock 2, I’ll redo it. Otherwise, not a big deal—it’s going to be hidden in my shoe when I wear these.
My birthday’s in just under two weeks. Somehow turning 30 last year seems less startling than being a year into my 30s now. It feels sort of random that this should matter, but there I am.
It’s sunny outside. And 70 degrees. Shocking. Now if we can just keep things exactly like this till September, I’ll be thrilled.
I have to admit, though, despite the weather being nice I haven’t been outside so much, because I’m having a anti-social streak and all I want to do is watch movies or read. I’m also woefully behind on email. Just letting you know, nothing personal. At some point I will get over my angst/mental exhaustion/full-time World Cup habit and catch up on all the people-stuff.
Work-wise I’m switching between 2-3 projects in any given week. I’m glad we’re busy, but it definitely forces me to stay organized. I had a great experience on Friday, though. I had a task that had a set of technical pieces that looked like they were going to be time-consuming and messy, but I kept researching and trying things until I found the simple solution. I love when that works out.
Not work stuff:
We signed up for Netflix so we could try the streaming content on the Wii option, and it’s awesome. I think Lucas and I watched a movie/show almost every single night last week. My personal obsession involves the stockpile of X-Files episodes they have available. I wasn’t a regular viewer, so a bunch of these are new to me, and it’s really interesting seeing how well it’s held up over time.
I also started reading Anathem. I think I was avoiding it for fear the setting was going to be kinda wanky (even though I really like Stephenson’s work) but so far it’s holding up well, the invented words aren’t interfering with the fun, and at a third of the way through I feel like I’m in the middle of Lord of the Rings without knowing what the Epic Task for our protagonist will be (I do have a guess).
I did go out to watch USA/Ghana on Saturday. Tanker Bar was a good pick. Alas, the US did not win.
What else? Summer weather means summer cooking, so we’ve had potato salad, homemade crackers, cherry pie, and hopefully coleslaw later today with the cabbage Lucas picked up at last week’s Eastbank farmers market. I’m starting to feel really confident about making dressings and cold salads. I did a bunch last summer during the heat wave, and it’s getting to where I just check a recipe for ideas, not because I’m worried about a disgusting mess if I don’t.
Enough rambling. It’s lunchtime (cheese and homemade crackers and potato salad!) and Brazil is currently beating Chile 3-0.
It’s Monday again, somehow. I woke up briefly, early this morning, to wonder what day of the week it was. Another Sunday? No such luck.
It feels like I’m in a review and re-thinking phase right now, after a very project-oriented spring. I’ve been making lists: roles I play, behaviors I want to model, things I’d like to be doing right now. The Summer Fieldbook has a page at the start of the week for planning—I wasn’t sure how I’d use it, but this week’s is a mix of “talk to so-and-so about project X” and “remember to make pesto from the basil you bought at the farmer’s market”.
Taking time to rest and reflect feels hard, like it’s not “real work”. I know this is silly, that it’s a productive activity, but I resist it, so I’m practicing patience and awareness. Letting myself wait and see.
Monday is usually when I do my weekly recap, but after having the end of my weekend trip prolonged a day after our flight was canceled, I’m not really feeling up for it. The short version is: we went to Vegas for Lucas’s niece’s graduation (his family lives there), spent the weekend hanging around, and expected to be home last night, only to have our flight canceled after a couple hours of delays. I learned a bunch of useful stuff, like: when the situation at the gate is a disaster, call the 1-800 number and get them to rebook you instead. Also, sooner or later you’ll be glad you always pack an extra shirt and underwear.
At least Las Vegas is not a difficult town to find accommodations in, and we had a nice dinner, and my brother the fabulous cat sitter was able to handle the change of plans, and now we’re home again. But tired.
I had a great time at Open Source Bridge this year. Lots of interesting sessions, and good conversations. I loved having the hacker lounge right in the center of things. I didn’t spend that much time on either Twitter or IRC during the week, because there was no need: I could just go find people in the lounge and talk to them there.
Here’s the slides from The Fine Line Between Creepy and Fun. I’d like to keep adding to this, and continue to present it elsewhere. I’m also still thinking about how to turn it into some sort of comic book that covers both the slide material and what I talked about.
One new thing for me at this conference: I left my laptop at home and did everything from the iPad. Presenting on the iPad works pretty well. I don’t know how it compares to the desktop version of Keynote, but I was able to do basically everything I needed. I would’ve stuck with Google Docs, but annoyingly the mobile version is missing a ton of features, and the iPad VGA adapter requires the app to have video output enabled. On the whole, the iPad was a great conference tool. The big tradeoff is between the reduced weight and not being able to code or dig into the CivicApps data sets, and the limitations of some things (etherpad, pivotal tracker, google docs) in the Safari mobile browser. I was pretty tired at the end of the week, though, and would’ve been doing even worse if I’d been lugging the laptop around the whole time, so I think it was worth it.
In addition to the talk above, I moderated a panel on user groups, featuring six local group leaders. While I have a few slides from this, they mostly introduce who was talking, so I think an audio transcript would be a more useful document to share. I’m going to see about arranging that when we get the conference audio recordings.
The Civic Engagement meetup happened as planned. I have notes from Addie that I’m in the process of turning into a blog post. I thought the discussion was really interesting, and gave me a much better picture of the PDC’s abilities and interests.
I also helped run an unconference session titled “NSFW” which was decidedly not safe for work. Between Twitter posts and Addie’s comments you can get a pretty good idea of how that went. I had two goals: to pick up some of the things I didn’t talk about in my creepy/fun talk (the talk stuck to situations where your own actions and data are exposed, but what about experiences involving what other people post or share?), and to demonstrate that you can have NSFW things at a tech event without making all the women want to flee the room. I could write a ton about why I think what we did stayed fun, so maybe I will come back to this.
What else? Well, Creepy Bear had a good time at the Thursday startup crawl.
I haven’t been keeping up with the daily comics very well this past week. Between an allergy attack and too much to get done, my enthusiasm for drawing seems to be off hiding somewhere. At this point I think I’m going to pour what creative energy I have left into graphics for the presentation. (Fun and Creepy each have their own mascots.)
It’s only a week and a day until the start of Open Source Bridge. Memorial Day weekend is this weekend. My Summer Fieldbook is ready. Am I?
