Posts – page 73 of 74

So many events, images, sounds, and smells hit our minds every day, but not all of it sticks. We don’t remember much of it, yet there is so much that we do.

Events that seemed insignificant at the time stay with us for our whole lives. Moment we promise ourselves to cherish grow foggy. Random episodes in our lives replay themselves in our heads, triggered by sounds, smells, or nothing at all.

There does not seem to be any set of rules that determines what you will remember and what you will forget. There is a science behind it, I suppose, but that is not what I am interested in exploring in too much depth. However, to be fair I offer the following.

I’ve made some radical changes to my blog template, and I think I’ve just about configured it the way I want. That’s kind of a scary thing. I mean, once I have the template figured out, the only blogging activity I’ll be able to participate in is actually writing.

So far I’ve successfully avoided the actual work and thinking that this hobby and project will require. However, I’m ready for the change. I think it will be much more fun to write, create, and market my creation than it was just to pick out the template and fiddle with the colors and configurations.

My wife and I made a pretty cute kid. I just have to figure out how we’re gonna get a return on our investment.

— Favrd.

Writing in specifics

Idée Labs

TweetPsych

TweetPsych uses two linguistic analysis algorithms (RID and LIWC) to build a psychological profile of a person based on the content of their tweets. The service analyzes your last 1000 tweets and works best on users who have posted more than 1000 updates. It also works best on accounts that are operated by a single user and use Twitter in a conversational manner, rather than simply a content distribution platform. For more information read the blog post or follow the creator Dan Zarrella

Federer between the legs shot at US Open

family portrait

Boy with a tiger. I’m not sure I could get that close. The tiger looks hungary

Sesame Street Channels Mad Men

Home Sweet Home

I need to find some white furniture for my son to color on when he gets a little older. (or I might get out the crayons myself…

Favrd.

Star Wars: Uncut

I’m so excited for this project to get finished. Such fond memories of this movie. I can’t wait for the internet to flub it up…

I plan to integrate this into my main blog and use it for a platform for sharing fun and inspiring things I find on the Internet.

It’s not the job of the writer to rehash old ideas, and consolidate them into broad general statements, as much as it is to uncover new ideas through the general and collective knowledge that is already present in the world. Now finding that new knowledge, within the collective knowledge, is a skill that is not natural to the thought process. It takes a conscious uncovering in order to develop and nurture the traits before one can effectively find those new ideas even if they’re in plain sight.

Yesterday, I ended the battle over the remaining money my family owes the hospital for my son’s birth. After an insurance review that went nowhere and several months of waiting and nerve racking phone calls, it’s finally over. And I won.

It ended with the hospital settling and discounting the balance we owed by 45 percent. This is a tremendous financial relief, as well as a major ego win for me.

It felt wonderful to confidently ask for a discount and get it.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I am preparing for a 5k race. I use the word preparing loosely. I have only run three times in the past several weeks. However, I have been gradually ramping up my time and intensity with each successive attempt. On my first outing, I ran 15 minutes, on the second 18, and last night I went a full 20.

The race is on October 8th so I think I’ll still be able to fit in a few more runs and work my way up to 30 minutes. I think I should be able to finish the race in that amount of time, even at the slower pace at which I train. Hopefully, with the adrenalin the competition stirs up, my ego (which will do anything to beat out my slower co-workers), and the training I’ve completed, I’ll be able to make a good showing at the race.

I made it to work by 6:32 a.m. Not to the office, but to the laptop to begin writing. I’ve been trying for a few weeks now to wake up earlier in the mornings to no avail. It seems like every week night, I’m able to set my alarm for 6 a.m. with no problem, but when it comes to morning I’ll hit the snooze button repeatedly until 7 a.m., which is last call for getting up and getting ready for work.

This may not seem like any great accomplishment, but for, me, a new dad, whose decided to become a writer, it is a real milestone because it creates for me a new 30 minute block of time in the day. I’ve been developing more goals for myself in the last several weeks, more things I want to do and accomplish on a daily basis. However, to even start working on those goals, I needed to create some more time in the day, so this was a major step forward.

I’m trying to reduce and simplify my inputs. I spent a lot of time the other day unsubscribing to feeds in my Google Reader. I’m trying to get more focused. I also took steps to reduce the number of bookmarks in my browser and programs in my system tray. This is all in the interest of making technology a less noticeable part of my life. Don’t misunderstand. I love it and am not sure that I could live without it. However, technology is a tool and should be treated as such. If I can comfortably move it to the background and not give it as prominent of a place in my daily life, I’ll be able to free my mind to engage in other pursuits: really think and not just browse, which is what I have realized that I do with a lot of what I read on the web when I’m “computering.”

My personal goal is to make it more about the writing–the words and the language–and less about the technology and the medium.

Technology brings many gifts to life. But it also bring many new burdens. The next step forward will be learning how to best integrate the modern marvels of technology, but to not let it get in the way. My question is how to let technology work in the background, to be able to benefit from it fully, appreciate it, but not have to think about it or let it get in the way.

One step is to figure out exactly how much technology is needed to complete a particular task. It is easy to upgrade to the latest version of a super sophisticated word processor, only to get so caught up in the new and improved features that you forget what the program was intended for in the first place.