Everyday Systems
OK, I am formally committing myself to drinking the
Everyday Systems Kool-Aid, which specifically consists of
The No-S Diet,
Urban Ranger, and of course
shovelglove.
I am acutely aware of how boring it is to listen to people babble on about exercise programs and diets. So in order to spare my readers (both of you), I'll make comments about how this is going on my daily log page on the Everyday Systems forum rather than here. The one exception to the "virtual representation of my mind" rule, since this stuff is on my mind quite a bit these days. But oh well.
temperature extremes
It's nearly 100 degrees in Portland today. Yow, it's hot. But funny, I don't hate hot days now nearly as much as I did several years ago when I was lazy and didn't sweat or exercise much. But regardless, I'm working today, so I'm not actually complaining about sitting inside an air-conditioned building. For once.
But temperature extremes certainly affect how busy it is. When it's extremely cold in the winter we get very busy, simply because cars don't cope well with such cold. The same is true in the summer; when it's really hot like today we get a lot of calls.
Back to the phones...
Sledgehammer hacks
I do, of course, mean
hack in the geek sense of the word, which means something like "a clever, thoughtful solution to a problem." In this case, the problem is, how to get good exercise without having to deal with joining a gym. My readers will know that I've been babbling about
Shovelglove for a while. Shovelglove is now officially the best workout -- esp. in the upper body -- that I've ever experienced. From the main shovelglove site:
Take a sledgehammer and wrap an old sweater around it. This is your "shovelglove." Every week day morning, set a timer for 14 minutes. Use the shovelglove to perform shoveling, butter churning, and wood chopping motions until the timer goes off. Stop. Rest on weekends and holidays.
This insight is in itself a supreme hack. It is the very picture of what I would call "elegant simplicity." It just works, and in the few months I've been doing it I have noticed some serious results.
The first hack has to do with the weight of the sledgehammer. My local hardware chaing carries 8, 10, and 16 pound sledgehammers. The 8 was too light, the 16 was too heavy, and the 10 was just slightly lighter than ideal. I think I would have preferred a 12- or 13-pounder, but alas, they simply weren't available. So I went with a 10 pounder.
The first week was amazingly strenuous. This is hard work! My muscles ached -- good ache -- for several days after I started. And my strength increase has been palpable; I've been lifting weights off and on for about 4 or 5 years, and my strength has increased noticeably since I began "shugging." I picked up my dumbells for the first time in months the other day to get a bench-pressing motion, and I was able to lift twice the number of sets, with about 30% more weight, than I was able to do in the past.
But the problem is, now the 10 pounder almost seems too light. Don't get me wrong, it's still a good workout, but I find myself itching for more weight. So I thought of just picking up a 2nd sledgehammer, this one at 16-pounds. The problem is, the only 16 pounders they have at the shop come with fiberglass handles. Now fiberglass may actually be superior to wood (lighter, absorbs vibration, etc), but that just rubs me the wrong way. I want wood.
So I thought of another idea. Why not get adjustable ankle weights, and attach them to the sledge? So I went out yesterday and got 10 lb ankle weights, which are actually 2 - 5lb ankleweights. For now, I just rigged them directly onto the sledge with duct tape (no sweater on this shovelglove), but in the interest of removability and upgradeability I'm going to replace the duct tape with some heavy-duty straps to hold the ankleweights on, yet still provide accessibility to change the weights if I choose.
My first workout with the hacked sledgehammer (10 lb sledge + 5 pounds of ankle weight, ie, 15 pound sledge) was last night, and man. It was tough, in a good way. My arms feel today like they did when I first started shugging with the 10 pound sledgehammer. This rocks.
I decided to get 2 separate 5 lb ankleweights rather than one 10 lb one; this way I can have 3 different weights at the ready and can adjust the total weight fairly quickly and painlessly.
In case there was any doubt...
about the utterly illusory nature of "property ownership," check this out:
the Supreme Court has ruled that local governments can seize "private" property whenever they wish.
As I've said for many years, you don't "own" "your" property. If you don't believe me, try not paying your property taxes for a few years and see what happens.
Ownership is an illusion; it is arbitrary, conditional, and abstract. Intellectual property doubly so.
TiddlyWiki
Now this is cool. It's
TiddlyWiki, which is "a reusable non-linear personal web notebook." It's hard to describe, as the front page of the TiddlyWiki site is itself a TiddlyWiki. The idea is you have a single HTML file, laden with all kinds of javascript, that allows you to make notes from within the browser itself, storing everything you type into that single HTML file. Useful for jotting down ideas, for later re-arrengement into something more coherent. Each entry is like a notecard. Or something.
It's hard to describe, you just have to try using it. You can start with an empty TiddlyWiki file and just go from there. Or, there is a TiddlyWikiTutorial that explains how to Do Stuff in TiddlyWiki.
Very cool.....
Issue 10 is out
Available for your downloading PDF goodness now at
The Commoner.
a good day
I had a good day today. I went over to a friends house and did yardwork. We cut down a few trees, and a big branch that was hanging over a place where we wanted to stack firewood so it wouldn't get wet. So now there is much more space around the firepit. There's gonna be a Shindig(tm) there in early August, so we're kinda getting ready for that.
Had a great meal, and came home to find that my wife had a beautiful evening herself with another dear friend.
Got to see the big, fat full moon rise tonight, before the sun had gone down. Still 2 days away (ish) from being full...
Lessig becoming less US-centric?
In my
Virtual Enclosures piece, I argued that Lawrence Lessig's conception of the Intellectual Property problem was too US-centric:
Lessig's conception of the problem is too narrow, and therefore that his pessimism may be misplaced. Perhaps the single most important fact about the Virtual Enclosures is that from a global perspective, cyberspace and the virtual commons are currently accessible to only a tiny minority. Lessig's lament may indeed describe the current situation in the United States. However, the virtual commons is undergoing a process of internationalization. These countries, many of which are poor, have experience resisting enclosure, structural adjustment, and other aggressive tactics of capital.
Well, I'm finally getting back to the Lessig article linked a couple posts below. In it, he writes about his experience in Brazil at the World Social Forum, where
Gilberto Gil, the Brazilian minister of culture, was addressing the audience:
For a bit, I was terrified a riot would break out. There was no room to move. We were physically squeezed on all sides. I tried to imagine Donald Rumsfeld in the same situation. One or two police stood at the back, just in case. But the crowd was peaceful, just jubilant.
Just as Gil started to speak, however, a handful of masked protesters appeared out of nowhere and positioned themselves right up front, brandishing posters. They were attacking the government. They were attacking Gil. They were supporters of pirate radio. They wanted a third layer of freedom--free radio spectrum, in addition to free software and free culture--and the government had resisted them. It was hypocrisy, they screamed. I was sure it would turn ugly--until Gil did something unimaginable in U.S. political culture. He stopped, and he engaged them. He argued with them. He listened to their arguments. A deputy joined Gil in the argument. They paused to listen to the protesters argue back. They then responded again, and Gil slowly whittled the opposition down. Midway through all this, a kid wearing a white T-shirt stood up just in front of us. Emblazoned on the back was the slogan "This is what democracy looks like." Eventually the crowd rose in Gil's support. They wanted more music. The protestors yielded. Gil was asked to sing some songs.
By the end of his performance, the crowd was in a euphoria. Imagine a mix between RFK and John Lennon, and you have a sense of this man's power and charisma. As we left, the crowd left with us--mobbing Gil. Teenage girls wanted him to sign their backs. Men and women gave him anything they had to sign. He was grabbed again and again. If people disagreed with him, he would stop and engage them. He argued, but always with respect.
We were finally pushed onto a golf cart and then into a government car, so he could escape. But even here, when someone knocked on Gil's window, he rolled it down and continued arguing. He yelled out his final words as his driver (a man with less patience than Gil) sped away. When the window was closed, and after a moment of silence, I tried to explain to Gil just how extraordinary that scene appeared to American eyes. I said that I could never imagine the equivalent in the United States, with anyone actually in power.
"Yes, I know," he said, smiling. America, he explained, has "important" people. "Here, we are just citizens."
These "citizens" are building something. We won't notice it until it is big enough to see from America. But if it gets that big, nothing will stop it. Just as the free-software movement has built an economy of free software, the Brazilians--and others around the world--will have built an economy of free culture, competing with, perhaps displacing, but no doubt changing the proprietary culture that finds itself dominant now.
Funny how as Lessig's view of the problem gets international, his outlook becomes less pessimistic. For a view of what the global political climate could be like, I probably wouldn't look in the US either.
catching up, and not giving away my power
Lots going on since I got back online the other day. First off, I finished the latest issue of
The Commoner, which is a volunteer typesetting gig I picked up a while back. This issue should have been done weeks ago, so on some level I feel bad about that. Though this particular issue is about twice as long as I was expecting when I took the gig; it's actually a book-length manuscript, about 240 pages. The Commoner does very good work, looking at modern issues theoretically, through the lens of commons vs. enclosures. Very necessary stuff. When the issue actually gets online, I'll post a link here.
Secondly, I've really been appreciating the hell out of my friends lately. I've been in a space of gratitude for these people for a long time; it's just been intensified recently as they have been at my side through the ups and downs of the past couple of months. It would have been easy for me to slide into a deep sea of misery, doing nothing but whining about how unfair the universe is and giving away my power, wallowing in a long, continuous fit of self-deprecating and self-imposed perdition. But that's sooooo unattractive and nauseating. I'm glad these people have helped me to remain focused, and to know that despite the sadness in and around me lately, I'm still incredibly lucky. Love can be difficult. But even at its worst, it remains a grand thing, a thing that confirms for me that we are powerful beings indeed. The question, after all, is not will we have challenges in our lives, but rather, how will we respond to these challenges.
The Freakwitch gig went well the other night. I'd never been to the Asylum before, though over the past few weeks I'd been told that they seem to have a hard time promoting their shows. These rumors were confirmed when only about 30 people turned out for the Mike Keneally band. What a shame. But, the people there seemed to enjoy our set, which is good. We played fairly well, I thought, even if it was only a 30 minute acoustic set.
There is a new version of Ubuntu Linux out -- actually it's been out for 2 months now. I want to upgrade my laptop to this new version, as I've managed to utterly break java in my current installation, which is the previous version of Ubuntu. I also want to upgrade my old desktop machine, which hasn't really been actively sysadmined for almost a year. Sheesh.
All for now, I have a busy day ahead (chores, go to the gym, then Freakwitchery tonight).
oh yeah...
...I'm back online as of noon today. Finally.
The People Own Ideas
The People Own Ideas! is the new article by
Lawrence Lessig. Reading it now.
what the bleep is this?
OK, I finally saw
What the Bleep Do We Know, a really nice movie in the quantum-physics-meets-mysticism genre. I enjoyed it immensely. I was surfing a bit around this movie, and found the following quote from one of the physicists interviewed in the film,
Dr. Fred Alan Wolf:
Every moment of my life is spiritual practice. I don't distinguish between anything I do as being different from spiritual practice. Spiritual practice to me does not necessarily mean you go off to a church, a temple, a mosque, or a corner of your room and meditate. Spiritual practice means being aware of yourself in every moment of your life. For me, life is a continual meditation.
Right on. I've been talking to friends lately about how ritual isn't as important to me as it was years ago when I was first getting into paganism. This quote sums that attitude up nicely.
The main point of the film is that we create our reality. This is no news to any pagan; as a good friend of mine says, he wants to design a bumper sticker that says "now that science has proven that magic works, I'd like an apology." And living this way is a moment-to-moment exercise, not just when in meditation, or in ritual, or in circle.
'Nuff said. But what the fuck do I know?
Pink Floyd, Live 8 and the globalized neoliberal economy
I've been reading about the new
Live 8 concert being organized by Bob Geldof, 20 years after the Live Aid phenomenon. Apart from the news that
Pink Floyd is reuniting for the show, there are several political phenomena surrounding the event that interest me. The first is, in the above link, people are finding it ironic that an event to help Africa has only 2 black performers on the bill.
But deeper than that is the shift in focus in terms of the source of the poverty over the past 2 decades. Geldof is getting into the IMF/WB/G8 scene -- which is to say the antiglobalization scene -- with the upcoming G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland being very much in the foreground of his mind. He knows that much of African poverty -- and indeed much of the poverty of the world -- can be traced to these policies. This is a marked shift from the previous "help those poor Africans know it's Christmas" paradigm. It is clear how the global economic climate has shifted over the past 20 years with neoliberalism, structural adjustment, and the increased emphasis of corporate profit over people since the Reagan/Thatcher years. It's good to see a solid understanding of these issues in the mainstream.
weather instability and lack of connectivity
The weather has been crazy the past few days. Lots of thunderstorms, which are rare in Maine. Both yesterday and today were hot days with some serious sudden temperature drops. Today it was in the 90s, and it dropped to 59 within a few minutes. It was also humid, and all that humidity turned to fog with the cooler temperatures.
Yesterday I was driving to my studio in the rain with the windows cracked, and in the space of like 200 feet the temperature dropped dramatically; I had to roll the windows up to avoid the cold, and my outside mirrors fogged over instantly. Very cool.
I saw The Day After Tomorrow a few weeks ago, which of course deals with sudden weather anomalies, to a much more catastrophic effect than what I saw here. But it got me thinking.
And global warming -- where the net effect is an overall rise in temperatures, with local anomalies and irregularities -- is a myth. Yeah. Right.
I still don't have net access at home. Bleah, hiss, pfftth! I went to a coffeeshop with wifi yesterday to try to at least download my mail and to say hello to some people on chat, but I couldn't even get all my mail. This really sucks.
At work, we are seriously shorthanded; they've hired more people but they don't start training until Monday. Which means it's been busy with calls in queue all day long. This makes my job much less fun. Not that it's normally fun by any stretch. More accurate to say it makes my job much less tolerable.
All for now. Don't feel like writing much else.
Oh yeah. Freakwitch has a gig on Wednesday. Come see us at the Asylum at 7pm.
A View from the Hill
We are now official residents of
Munjoy Hill. I don't have net connection at home yet; they aren't scheduled to come out until the 15th of the month. They are very busy; apparently this is the time of year when all the summer residents return to Maine and want their cable reactivated. So that kinda sucks. We've obviously been busy with the move, so I haven't had a chance to take my laptop to a coffeeshop to get online.
The move went well. We moved on Tuesday. Tuesday morning it was raining. By 1pm, when we started the move, it had stopped. And it's gotten progressively nicer ever since, culminating in today's stunning 85-degree sunny day. And of course I'm inside working. Bleah. But it's clear that the weather thought a change of scenery was in order for us.
My mood seems to have improved along with the weather. There are a few reasons for this, I think; one is physical; I've done more physical work this week than I have in a long time. And I'm just coming out of 2 illnesses, so this is like the perfect shock to the system to get my body back in gear. I still have some lingering chest congestion, but I feel better today than I have in weeks, now that the soreness from the move is dissipating a bit.
We had so much help on Tuesday, we got everything moved well before dark. Thanks to everyone who helped! We couldn't have done it without all of you...
Wednesday was spent unpacking. We pulled our stuff back out of storage and into our new apartment, so there was plenty to do. There were of course boxes everywhere; we had to move boxes out of the way in order to make room for things like beds.
The first night, Edgar (my daughter's dog) was freaking out utterly. Finally, when we cleared space for the bed and made it up, he jumped on the bed, and collapsed with an expression that read, "Thank GOD there are beds here!!!!!" It was funny.
We got the bathroom and the kitchen set up first, followed by our daughter's room, and lastly our room, which is also the main room of the place. The bookshelves were a huge part of it; for the first time in many years I have adequate shelf space for all of my books. This is essential to feeling like home; it gives me a link to my intellectual history, something I've very much missed over the past several years.
The shelves were made of pine 1x10s, and are each 4 feet wide and 6.5 feet high. Both of them together occupy an entire wall of the apartment, floor to ceiling. Nice. I'm very happy with how they turned out. Those of you who helped carry all the heavy boxes of books will now know why when you come to visit.
I got to walk to work today for the first time in months. This was fantastic. I didn't walk hardly at all while on the beach, at least in part because there were no specific destinations within walking distance. So it's nice to have a reason to walk again. Nietzsche was on to something when he said "only thoughts reached when walking have any value" or words to that effect.
I really love Portland. I'm glad to be back. Hopefully I'll be online again soon.
