Month: January 2005

First Ghost Rider Takes Manhattan

O glorious filesharing networks

I am a good law abiding citizen and would never patronize thee

but if I did so

and found a huge ‘rar’ archive full of REM B-Sides

including ones I heard back in the Days of Vinyl and never thought I’d hear again,

like “Ghost Rider, Motorcycle Hero,” and Syd Barrett’s “Dark Globe,”

as well as ones new to me like “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and covers of Leonard Cohen’s “First We Take Manhattan,” and Richard Thompson’s “Wall of Death,”

I would say, “O Filesharing Networks, to thee I am truly grateful, for letting me roll about in musical nostalgia like a pig in manure.

The Alpha Geek Productivity Movement

43 Folders: Patching your personal suck

By now, everybody knows that I swiped the basic idea for 43 Folders from my pal, hero, and personal muse, Danny O’Brien. His work on the original Life Hacks presentation was centered around research into why some people, especially those overachieving alpha geeks, seem to get so much more accomplished over the same 24 hours we mortals start with each day. Some of them, like Rael, just seem preternaturally organized and focused. Others, like Cory, are blessed with an ungodly gift for effective multi-tasking.

I have a weakness for “self-help” or “life improvement” concepts. I am a bit of a tech nerd. I like to accomplish things. But somehow I can’t get into this whole “Alpha Geek Productivity Quest” thing that is going on at 43 Folders and being talked about at the coolest techie geek conventions and on the coolest techie geek blogs and so on.

It’s this “productivity” thing. The worship of sheer output, stuff done per day, per hour, per minute. How much code can you spew? How many cool blog posts can you emit? How many books can you inhale? How much information can you choke down, begin to digest, and regurgitate to the rest of the world? Crank it UP, boys! Come on! More more more!

Who wants to be like that? Who wants to think like that? “Productivity” is a quality that a manager measures with respect to an employee, considered as an abstract unit of business, not as a human being. Why should you apply that measure to yourself?

“Alpha Geeks.” Gosh, I seem to remember when “geek” was something that meant you were an outcast, the opposite of the “alpha” at the head of the pack — an omega, a pariah. I guess that meaning has been turned inside out — for a while you could earn a lot of money doing things that “geeks” had done, and that means that now if you’re not cool enough, capable enough, “productive” enough, you don’t even get to call yourself a “geek.” Only the cool kids, who have their shit together, who are “productive,” get to be “geeks” now. If you don’t employ the Seven Habits of Geekily Effective Nerds, you’re sub-geekual. You’re just a loser, not a geek. Geeks are cool.

I dunno. I do own two Moleskine notebooks, which apparently is one of the fetish items of this movement, so maybe I shouldn’t be talking. Could be sour grapes, too — I can’t seem to get my shit together for any extended period of time in life; I’m usually holding it all together with spit an’ bailin’ wire, house usually a mess, my boss saying “I told you to look for those files on that server, didn’t I?” Start projects and don’t finish them, yadda yadda. I’m not “productive.” I’m not an “alpha geek.”

But you know, I don’t think I’d be a whit happier if I were more “productive.” Squeezing the last bit of efficiency out of yourself isn’t what life is about. There’s a lot to be said for inefficiency, redundancy, even sloppiness. I get by, and I’m pretty happy with how I get by.

So I’m sure I’ll see more about this craze in my blog reading — and heck, I put “43 folders” in my RSS reader, cause who knows, might be something cool there — but mostly I look at the whole thing and shake my head, and think, “what has “geek” come to mean anymore?

UPDATE: Oh, I almost forgot. “Life Hacks”? Computer metaphor for human life. Man as machine. Niiiice dehumanization there. No thank you.

UPDATE 2: I’m really hostile to elitism lately. That’s a big part of this. I’m hostile to the worship of sacred metrics which make some people better than others and imply that we’d be better off if everyone were like, or at least deferred to, those people that the metric favors. Whether that metric is “being a millionaire by age 30” or “having a really clean house” or “being a great programmer” or “being an alpha geek.”

CONTINUITY NOTE: This post is part 2 in my ongoing series where I channel the spirit of Snappy the Clam, but snapping at tech weens in general rather than bloggers in particular. Stay tuned for more!

FINAL DISCLAIMER: I haven’t dug into the Alpha Geek Productivity Movement deeply enough to criticize it intelligently, this is just a subjective reaction to first impressions. But it’s a strong enough reaction that I don’t think I’m gonna be jumping on this bandwagon.

He’s Always Sketching

Jeffrey Rowland I didn’t instantly recognize, but I should have. I could see the spiritual kinship between him and his avatar in Overcompensating. He had also set out some books and the like, and drawing gear, and as he chatted with people he sketched in their books, or in his sketchbook. That’s something I recognized almost immediately. Rowland sketches. All the time. Or at least, all the time he was there. He was personable and conversational and clearly enjoyed talking with his fans, but while he did so his pen was always working.

— websnark

I’ve kept my new year’s resolution to draw at least one page — one page of anything at all, even random scribbles all over it — per day. Often it’s been in bed just before I go to sleep, quick scribble something out and then hit the hay. But I’ve always done it. So far I feel considerably freed up with respect to art. I can see how the logical endpoint of this would be something like what Burns reports of Rowland.

The “replace at least one glass of pop per day with a glass of water” thing is going well too.

BBC NEWS | Americas | US ‘should not rule out torture’

BBC NEWS | Americas | US ‘should not rule out torture’

The former head of the US Department of Homeland Security has said torture may be used in certain cases in order to prevent a major loss of life.

And how many lives has the Bush administration’s torture-friendly stance cost already? How many will it cost us? Violence leads to more violence; torture is violence of the darkest kind — calculated violence against a helpless victim. Nonviolence also spreads. Insisting on higher standards and taking a higher path allows one’s enemies the luxury of taking a higher path themselves. Reserving the right to use the worst means when you judge that the end deserves them suggests to your foes that no qualms should constrain them when they judge the end is important enough.

That’s exactly the calculation that Osama bin Laden made — yes, the people in Manhattan were themselves innocent, but this goal was so very important that they had to be sacrificed. The end justified the means.