Of course, no matter how difficult life can seem when trying live fully, efficiently, and as wisely as possible, real life goes on.

A friend of mine just emailed me with a dilemma which, I admit, creates quite a conundrum.

Well, friend, aside from the fact that the mere act of starting a relationship with a g/f causes severe hit damage to your loser geek stats, this might actually be a good sign.

By speaking in psuedoL33t, your g/f is exhibiting a strong competence in the mental disciplines of manipulating phonemes and ontological symbols. According to Microsoft, "the leetspeek community encourages new forms and awards individual creativity, resulting in a dynamic written language that eludes conformity or consistency." Wikipedia traces this sort of behaviour to that of the protagonists in William Golding's Lord of the Flies.

So long as she does use non-alphanumeric characters interchangeably in her passwords, she should be fine. By improvising from the standard riffs of l33t, she may be using her m4d sk1llz0rz to create a middle ground -- an Island-- between normals and geeks, an artistic space of expression and life just for the two of you. This is especially encouraging if she is not herself of a geeky nature. As a hopelessly-single geek myself, I suggest you find that space and go there. Right now. Before it's too late.

Update: Wow. Microsoft pulled down their page on leetspeak yesterday. Was it in response to my post? There's even still a link to it at the bottom of their "Security at Home: Child Safety Online" main page. But The Wayback Machine doesn't forget. In response, I have changed the link to point to the archive held by The Wayback Machine

I am now adjusting to life out of college. There is no massive schedule. I now can't predict what the next day will bring, and I now have to choose my tasks. Time is now more easily wasted.

I feel as if I've been eating fairy cake.

I'm also struggling with old/new environments. Small migrains from my family's woodstove has reduced me to almost-stupor many times over the last two months-- clear thought has often just been out of arm's reach as I stare at the computer and, frustrated, try to do something, while my family tries not be frustrated that I'm spending so much time using my laptop yet accomplish so little. At least I understand now.

Of course, February/March has always been my least productive time. I can't remember the last time I spent this period at anything above the minimum level of productivity.

I have to make some choices, find some goals to focus on, for which to settle into a discipline. Now I can. For the last two months, I've been checking off many less-than-exciting must-do items. I could do it for another month, to be honest. But at last I can chart my primary efforts.

It's just frustrating to have to discard or overhaul so many of the mental disciplines I carefully honed over the last 3.5 years.

Ah well. Heigh ho.

From EnergyStar, a US Government project "to protect the environment through energy efficiency."

(update: On Sept 1, 2006, we changed our bulbs. Will you?)

Two bits of quite useful blogging advice recently surfaced. First, Derek Powazek notes:

If you love to write, and you like the web, and you think blogging would be fun and cool, go for it. If something inspires you, if you have a great idea, then create! Be respectful to your readers, but don't become the slave of the audience.

Do you think that bloggers are always wasting time on mundane details about life? Mark Bernstein describes why writing about your cheese sandwich can be good. His post is a great essay on craft. Read it.

Here originally resided a reply to a long rant I posted here this morning, but before I received feedback, decided that I haven't thought through the questions enough yet to merit a post. So I have withdrawn both the original post and the commentary.

I posted a long rant here this morning, but before I received feedback, decided that I haven't thought through the questions enough yet to merit a post. So I have withdrawn it.

I will arise and sleep now, for always night and day
They hear my keyboard tapping with low sounds behind the door
When they stand on a Segway, or on the pavements gray
They hear it in the iBook's core.

A dear friend gave me a suggestion yesterday.

"You need to trade your shotgun for a rifle."

He noted that were I his son, he wouldn't be quite so mild with me on this point.

People are looking on me with concern because I can't seem to get my act together. The word used yesterday, was, I believe, "vertiginous." It was not intended to be positive.

Update: The inimitable Nate4D noted:

This may seem odd, but Nate4D is privy to information I cannot yet reveal: that Zombies Do Indeed Matter.

A few weeks ago, I posted an edited transcript of a conversation I had with University of Southampton researcher Clare Hooper. The following is the second half of our conversation.

To this, I added the following question, based on my previous conversation with Clare: How can/should tools effect how we write texts that are bigger than we can mentally hold in RAM at a single time?

Oooh

Cool Stuff

This relates to issues of language and thought as well - how much does the language spoken influence the thoughts and approach of its speakers?

It's a long time since I've thought about that, but it's a fascinating area --which, sadly, has only bee touched on lightly in my studies

Sapir-Whorf

Btw, the story about eskimos having lots of names for 'white' is not true, but it illustrates the principle.

Yes, indeed. Languages and cultures and the links therein are fascinating... And the tools we use. Hmmmm. *ponder*

It depends how you mean 'tools', I suppose.

for example, it might have been more difficult to use dreamweaver to plan the sculpture -- this is a rather crude example.

I suspect we all go through a process of learning an overall approach - say, with programming, a liking for UML against some other visualisation method.

Tools certainly have different strengths and weaknesses - you only have to look at the heated debates about which OS is better, and how best to write web pages, and so on. That's evidence enough.

Another example might be the interface I'm building in Tinderbox for authoring StorySpinner documents-- how I enable people to interact with the StorySpinner authoring tool can have a profound impact on the sort of stories they write

But how does one grant the flexibility and power that people might want? (Or more, not that an individual might want, but that the group of end users between them need!)

Remember how I was struck by how the card system could be used in multiple ways that diverge widely from how you have written your stories?

Mm, yes! How many tools end up being used in a different way to that first envisioned?

When I make the authoring system, I can describe the system in a larger sense of capability, or or I can just describe it in ways that you originally planned. Ultimately, my understanding of your system will influence future authors.

Of course, this whole area is so deeply subjective that getting an overall view is near to impossible...

Gibson, in Neuromancer, says, 'The Street finds its uses for things,' which was Jill's argument in 'Feral Hypertext'

but constraints can be good too. During eNarrative, either David Kolb or George Landow compared my sculpture to the sonnet and noted how formal constraits seem to limit creativity, but they often encourage us to work harder and be more creative because they free us from wasting too much time on form.

Yes, that's true.

I imagine that a StorySpinner story would be easier for people to write in Tinderbox than just handing someone an empty tinderbox file and saying, 'Write something.'

Yes! The power of the blank page --or empty screen-- to terrify.

:-)

I think everyone knows that.

So maybe we need to make tools which are open-ended but which let us make constrained forms in which people may write.

Yes, perhaps so.

Like university.

Hmm?

which provides the comfort of boundaries which are farther out than previously in life room to roam, but safety in some constraints

Ahh, yes. I see what you mean! It's to do with balancing power and safety, isn't it?

That's one way to look at it, Yes.

Hmmm. But how to effectively do so, that's the biggie. :-)

I think that some loose forms could help. Give people a powerful tool, and then show them some stock ways that it can be used. That's why Mark started the Tinderbox File Exchange.

Yeah, that looks like a really useful place! Is it well used?

I know people who use it . Sometimes, people email me and ask for my Tinderbox file that I use on my blog

This sort of thing has been a large part of how I learned Tinderbox, to be honest. I started via the Grey Flannel Weblog template

Mmhm

Once you know the area inside the fence well, then you feel comfortable stepping around the fence

Yes, that makes perfect sense!

which is why you want a very open-ended tool, so it's not a prison.

That makes sense too! ... Eh, I hate to break this off, but I fear I have a lot of things to get done in the next day-and-a-half I probably ought to make a move...

Thanks for talking. This has been *good*

Agreed :-)

and there's one further related question to take with you as you leave...

Mmmmm?

Should the authoring tool be the same as the reading tool?

How d'ya mean?

With the medium of print, writers use pens and typewriters. With technology, I could write something in Tinderbox and send it to you to read in StorySpinner. With StorySpinner, even if you write the story in SQL, the authoring tool and the reading tool are different.

Should this be? When should this be? How should this be? What flavour of chocolate ice cream should I eat?

Hee! All very important questions :-)

these are the tough questions of the universe :-)

I wonder what method was used with the other card-like tools. I may look into that .

Look at The Witch's Yarn, and Hamlet, and...'Suit'.

And meanwhile, had better dash!

Dash!

Take care; do chat another time.

Not sure I hold a platonic view of art, but I appropriate it in this comment on how I think we ought to act toward other people's art.

I never thought I would ever want to play a drinking game. Not even the State of the Union address enticed me. Not even the point at which George Bush winked at the people who had lost a son in Iraq.

This afternoon, I overheard a business discussion and finally understood why people play these games. If I had a single drop of a low-alcoholic beer every time I heard buzzwords like, "saturate," "Microsoft .Net," "integrate", and "visual," I would have been drunk in less than five minutes.

People play these games because experience which confirms the weird steretypes is hilarious. But these things can also be depressing. During events like this, people feel like they need alcohol to handle the hangover of reality.

Until recently, the Elizabethtown College library was usually vacant of any activity--just how I liked it. I could wander the stacks in silence, pondering and reading whatever random works caught my fancy. I had been making this practice a regular habit for years, even before I became a formal student at the college.

Now, the library is full of students who sit in the chairs, scribble in their notebooks, and type on their computers. The same has happened with the main concourse student area, the Brossman Commons.

When I joined Elizabethtown college, a laptop was still somewhat unusual among students. I would connect mine to one of the ubiquitous network ports and try to ignore the ogling people. Now, it's just another machine.

What happened?

Wireless Internet. This year, the college installed WIFI hotspots in the Brossman Commons and library. Both areas now see much more traffic; more homework is also done in these areas.

I don't think that wireless has encouraged more study. Rather, I think it has allowed people to roam more while remaining connected to the 'net, and by implication, their friends. For this reason, quiet places can now be more difficult to find.

WIFI has allowed the library and the Brossman Commons to fill the purpose planned by their designers. Both were clearly designed to be places of convergence, where people could meet and exchange ideas. In the past few months, these spaces seem to have reached that potential. It's amazing how such an un-physical thing can so deeply interact with a space and the people that use it.

Do architects think of these things? Sure they do, but do they really think about these things? When designing a multi-million dollar structure, it seems only reasonable to hire a sociologist or two to provide helpful advice.

You can only plan for technology so far. The library fails in one point. Its tables are perfectly designed for the technology of the time it was built -- the late 80s. They could hardly foresee the impact of portable computing. So they did what seemed best: They designed desks and chairs which were perfectly ergonomic for paper technology.

These same tables and chairs are a primary cause behind my Repetetive Stress Injury; They're terrible for people who need to type.

Such is the flow of life, I suppose. We do our best to plan, but we can't predict everything perfectly.

After three years, you still can't sneak up on me unawares. No matter how focused I am at the moment, it will never work.

Dick Strawser, a local composer, has just posted what I think clinches a question that has been recurring on this blog over the last few weeks. He writes:

Before I get back into it the question, I would like to mention that Dr. Dick's Blog is an awesome discussion of the world of music. His is one of my absolute favorite blogs. Where else would you read about Mozart's Skull?

So, the following is a recap of the positch before Strawser took the field. The original question, from Mark Bernstein, was:

A reply was attempted by myself and Clare Hooper in an AIM conversation. The key statement, made by Miss Hooper, is:

Then, this weekend, during discussions about narrative and truth:

What, then, is my conclusion? It has three parts.

• Software tools for creativity must allow for fuzzy planning. Tools should let us begin with a vague sense of what we want without becoming locked in. For this reason, everything from structure to content should be as open-ended as possible (this relates to the other half of the conversation Clare and I had).
• Software tools should help us let ideas emerge and give us the means to carry out any structural changes without becoming locked in. We should be able to easily experiment with different ideas without losing what we had before.
• Good software should give you a good idea of your immediate (existing and potential) context while keeping you aware of where you are in the overall structure. You should be able to quickly move from the big picture to detail items, and back. If possible, the transition from big picture to detail should be gradated.

Robert Esland brought up the Creation/Evolution debate of the late 19th century in a recent post.

I was trying to understand the shift in discourse that occurred at that time. I think this is what has happened:

When asserting an idea, we are much more willing to speak of accuracy and precision than truth. We usually only speak of truth when we're trying to discover wrongdoing.

Instead of encouraging frank honesty about our limitations, these new ideas about things that are correct have allowed us to perpetrate a lot more falsehood than we're willing to admit. We still strongly assert suspect conclusions; only now, they're wrapped in more equivocation.

Note: I like many parts of the focus on accuracy and precision. One benefit is our ability to separate the descriptive from the prescriptive, which seems to have been quite a muddle for people of earlier times.

This evening, on a whim, I decided to try my hand at drawing for the first time in about 7 years. I'm surprised by how much better an artist I am, after 7 years of no drawing at all.

The last 4 years of studying literature and dallying about, looking at art and design have made me a much better creative person. I know the basic theory behind many techniques, even if I don't have the practiced technical skill possessed by others.

Here's the facade I drew. Not great, not even proportional, but I'm surprised by how nice it does look.

This image, drawn by someone who never took an art class in college, is a great testament to the benefits of a liberal arts education. When I decided to formally study literature, it was under the impression that the works would seep into me in mysterious ways which would help me as an individual and as a writer. This has been the case. But I didn't expect the arts and humanities education to seep in the same way.

Additionaly: If I hadn't consistently insisted on making time available to step back and consider the wider world outside of my immediate tasks and environment, I would never have been able to accomplish things like this. Creative management of Quasi-Slack^(tm) is an important part of my life.

eLast Wednesday, I asked readers of this blog the following question:

You Responded!

Robert Esland says:

A very good answer to the first question of whether nonfiction is necessarily more true than fiction. The reader is strong in the answer to this question, because it is the reader who perceives truth.

Note, however, that while Genesis purports to be truth, Darwin didn't claim the same sort of truth. In the introduction to The Descent of Man, Darwin notes that he has a strong feeling that a lot of what he writes is in fact true, but he hopes that people find the problems, identify them, and correct any errors. The shift from creationism to a belief in evolutionary origins of man isn't just a switch from one truth to another; it shifts one's idea of given, absolute truth to one based on progressive, discovered knowledge. Of course, you could just argue that this is a change of sources, from the concept of an infallible deity to the idea of fallible man.

Another note: I would be careful about classifying nonfiction books as fiction if you disagree with them. If we do this, then the question I originally asked becomes pointless. Fiction becomes all those things which are wrong, and nonfiction perhaps becomes all those things which are right. It then becomes inappropriate to ask whether truth is to be found in fiction. Just as family and friends can be false, and enemies good-hearted, instances of the nonfiction and fiction genres can convey varying levels of different sorts of truth and falsity.

What sorts? Read on...

Hannah Eagleson says:

(note: after digging around online, I found that the C.S. Lewis excerpt quoted by Hannah is to be found in Lewis's book, Surprised by Joy. Not an unsurprising title for a book in which to find that passage, I suppose.)

Good point. This, of course, leads us to ask the question of "what is truth?" I'm not going to go down that road today. Sorry, Pontius.

Rather, I'm going to end with three comments:

• I think that the effect described by Hannah is the effect of narrative in general, whether nonfiction or fiction. This "Pharmakon" is enhanced in narrative, spoken or unspoken. We just live in a time where it's assumed that "story" means "fiction."
• Dylan Kinnett and I once had a conversation about a similar topic. He noted that nonfiction is a far greater organizational challenge, because one is limited to details that can be discovered. One has to find the story within the research. In fiction writing, according to Dylan, one has more freedom to shape the narrative.
• Hannah Eagleson once remarked to me that her best fiction writing occurs when she herself doesn't know the story until it has been fully written. For her, the effect of writing is similar to the reader effect described by C. S. Lewis.
  
  This interests me. I don't think the distinction neatly falls across fiction/nonfiction genre lines, but it's interesting to note that some writers seek their stories within, and others find them in the world around them.

I have been told by proponents of the merits of fiction that when one writes fiction, one can write more truely than one can with nonfiction. Is this the case? What sort of truth is written when you do that?

Email me, and I'll post your comments: jnm@rubberpaw.com

You Responded! Read the responses here: Truth Revisited.