Category Archives: weekly report

Recent activities: Reading. Too much phone tag with the vet. Scanning Polaroids. Writing snippets of notes and narrative. Admiring my shiny new Fall Fieldbook. Scheming ways to convince people to vote for my SXSW panel.

I’m having the back-to-school-like desire to soak up information and synthesize it into new things. This has been good for clearing out my non-fiction queue. A recurring theme seems to be truth and presentation: On Photography talks about the photographer always imposing a point of view, the inherent manipulation of photographic images; The Gang Who Wouldn’t Write Straight discusses New Journalism, the 1960s & ’70s, and how semi-fictional narrative can sometimes be truer than a straight list of facts; New Liberal Arts revisits storytelling, media literacy, and the manufacturing of one’s image.

This seems like a good place to be, in the last weeks of summer.

Mondays are for updates, but right now I don’t really want to because it’s been a hot weekend (even though right now I’m abusing the air conditioning) and one of our cats is sick with a so far undetermined ailment.

But—I’m pretty sure I did do things this past week. Like finish the Fall Fieldbook and upload it to Lulu to have my copy printed. And attend an Open Source Bridge meeting to talk about rejoining the core team in a (new, smaller) role. And go to a WhereCampPDX planning meeting. And two picnics, one with meteors and one with a puppy. So those parts are alright.

How about some cute animals?

I am noticing that the harder I work during the week, the less I want to do on the weekend. Lucas went to Bremerton to watch the Timbers U-23 team play in the Western Conference finals, and I stayed home and sat around, thought about stuff, watched more X Files, read a little, and cleaned the bathroom. Oh, and a little cooking: berry jam and zucchini muffins and roasted vegetables.

If you’ve been following the whole City of Portland / economic development / software industry thing, there’s a meeting on Tuesday you may want to attend. The next round of discussion with the PDC is happening at 4:30pm at their offices. Full details are on Calagator. I’ve been talking to various people about the community space issue, and how we want to address it, and it feels like this is starting to gel into something we can make happen, so that’s one big issue I hope to discuss tomorrow.

Other things I’m thinking about: the Urban Sketching Symposium, which I didn’t attend but watched through the blogs; maybe taking a graphic design class in the fall; making videos with puppets and toy dinosaurs; what I want to read next; writing SF stories about Google.

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.

And now, I’m back to work.

Things from the past week:

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.

Yay for holiday weekends.

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 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.