Keith Handy 1.999

Things need to be pretty on the inside too

I just realized one thing I hate about blogging here… it’s the Wordpress edit box. It doesn’t make me feel good. You get a fairly small window to type in (although I do realize I’m not on the latest version), and I’m staring at this uninspiring, mostly-white screen with blue trim of the exact hue of a night-light my grandparents had in their bathroom.

Sure, this is the “back end”, who cares, right? What matters is the theme that the reader sees, right?

Exactly WRONG.

We need high quality stimulus and high quality environments when we’re creating stuff. That means making things pretty not just on the outside, but on the inside too! I’ve been spoiled by the charcoal gray look of Tweetdeck, although I can’t exactly use that to blog. Anyway, these blogging environments should allow us to customize not just the pretty face on the outside, but also the back end where the blogger has to spend his time.

And this is not at all what I was going to write about just now.

Just like starting over, part 2

Is a web presence really about letting you into my head? I’m not so sure. I think if anything, the internet is about shared spaces — two or more people getting into “the same head”, without that head necessarily belonging to any one specific person.

In shared spaces like Facebook and Twitter, I have to constantly ride the brakes. I can talk about Keith stuff, but I have to limit that for the sake of social conventions. The social conventions here are to stay fairly “in the present”, stay fairly objective rather than subjective (facts over ideas), and run every topic through some kind of “will people understand this quickly?” test before posting. Some cheating is allowed, but to run wild with it is to risk alienating people.

Sometimes, though, I wonder if maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing? In the least offensive way I can put this, if someone out there isn’t interested in what I want to talk about, then shouldn’t they kind of move along and leave me to find other people who are?

You know what? The above three paragraphs, by themselves, can stand alone as a post. But I didn’t hit “publish” because I was waiting for a few more paragraphs to come to me, and now it’s been a couple of weeks. A flaw in the medium, or a flaw in the me?

Leonardo da Vinci would have coded in C++.

If I don’t post something now, I’ll never get back into the habit. Test one, test two. Hello!

I’m still here, still active, etc…

I didn’t mean to leave the Rick Wright obituary at the top of my blog for week after week after week, as if it Wright’s passing had eternally crushed my spirit. I’ve literally been so busy lately that it’s hard to find time to adequately cover the activities I have going on.

And that’s a good thing.

I do promise to get the long versions of my updates up here sometime soon. In the meantime, if you want the short versions.. I don’t have enough friends on Twitter (hint, hint). If you have an account, I’d love for you to head over there and start “following” me, and I’ll certainly “follow” you back.

More soon…

Less blogging, more doing.

That’s my excuse.

For now.

See all y’all as soon as the bug hits again!

How low tech can be cutting edge

Excuse my, uh, “calligraphy” for a moment.

Ow, ow, ow. *shakes wrists*

I just don’t have the endurance for that anymore.

Anyway, the point isn’t that I have any desire to do a handwritten blog, and I will likely never do that again. But think about how strange it is that we get sentimental for “low tech” or “old tech” things, how there’s always a “golden age” to look back to. But none of that old stuff ceases to exist, or even ceases to be available. If you really want to shoot a movie on 8mm film, you can, though it’ll be a little pricey to get the film and develop it. Not prohibitively, though, if you really want to. Key words there: really want to. The only thing we’re ever truly being sentimental for is the lack of an excuse to be lazy. The fact that we’ve paved all these shortcuts doesn’t mean the shortcut is the only — or best — way.

But what truly makes “low tech” interesting now, is that we’re in this higher tech environment. You can not only shoot 8mm film, if you really want — but you could, if you really want, shoot 8mm film of a person sitting in a Starbucks with a laptop computer, wearing a Trogdor t-shirt. Which you could never do when 8mm was actually a sensible way of preserving memories.

Today, we can run a Mellotron through Autotune. We can sample a cassette. All these things we can do, but just don’t think of doing, because we’ve convinced ourselves that all our old toys have been replaced with new toys. Guess what? All your toys are still there; they may have moved to a higher (more expensive) shelf that you’ll need to climb a little (or get mummy to help) in order to get them down, but they’re still there. You have a shitload of toys. Do you realize how much “play potential” you have afore ye now? Do that “relationship” math again. Five toys is ten potential combinations, six toys is fifteen… and that’s only counting pairs of toys.

Tip: do “relationship math” in your head:
Take the number of people in the room, and imagine that number on the left.
Subtract one, and put the new number on the right. (If 7 is on the left, 6 is on the right.)
Whichever number is even, cut it in half. (Cut that 6 down to a 3.)
Multiply the left number by the right number, and you’re done! (7 x 3 = 21 relationships.)

It’s like this: there you were, in 1980, or 1985 or whatever, saying, “okay, if only I had this and this and this”, and now you’re waking from a deep freeze, realizing, hey, I have this and this and this!! All you’ve lost track of is why you wanted it. Once you remember, you’re all set!

Anyway, there’s a reason I wrote all this. Ask me to elaborate later, and I will. Ask me not to elaborate later, and I will anyway, just to spite you.