The first glimpse at our new house and my first vlog, all rolled into one. I promise this will not devolve into another semi-pornographic web cam unless I acquire a set of Brad Pitt abs.
Good idea? Bad idea? Sign of the Armageddon?
Archives for July 2010
Blackouts
Today I woke up at six.
Yesterday and the day before I woke up at six. On Saturday it was close to seven. Friday, six fifteen.
Do you sense a trend?
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In our old house sleep was a black box.
I remember the conversation we had when we first moved in. Three bedrooms, and only the front and back ones were big enough to hold E’s queen-sized bed.
“Well, the front is bigger – more room around the bed, and for beaureaus and things. But it’s at the front of the house – streelights, cars passing, people talking, kids playing – it will all be in the bedroom with us.”
We wound up in the back. Smaller, cozier, and immune to all that street noise. Except, the backyard world of our home had its own noise – yapping dogs and yellow security lights, always on watch.
We adapted. I slept some nights with headphones, or earplugs. Our curtains were blackouts, thick and inpenetrable. Eventually E bought me a sunrise clock complete with chirping birds, so I could still wake up with some semblance of morning in my life – even in the black box.
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People joked that I would be freaked out by the quiet at our new house. They weren’t wrong. Everything is silent at night (save for crickets), with everyone tucked into their discrete living rooms hundreds of feet from our door.
Sometimes I feel sheepish even playing guitar, before Elise reminds me that they could easily be doing that (or louder!) in their own homes. Such as is the silent expanse of our street.
Our bedroom is in the front of the house. No earplugs. Yes, blackout curtains, but not drawn carefully across every inch of every window from frame to frame. It’s just out of habit – to make sure no moonlight falls across my body as I drift to sleep.
The difference is the morning. Still quiet. Still no traffic. Yet in place of the sunrise clock I have … sunrise.
It turns out, I’m a morning person. For five years I had fooled myself, because my tiny electric sun was no replacement for an entire world of delicately spun light.
Tomorrow I will probably wake up at six.
Monday Morning Remainders
A collection of some of the links that have captured my attention in the last few weeks:
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Breaking yesterday, The Guardian reports an unprecedented leak of US military documents on the war in Afghanistan – 92,201 internal records from January 2004 and December 2009 exposing “hundreds of abuses.” You can see for yourself on WikiLeaks.org.
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ReadWriteWeb goes behind the scenes of the recent viral Old Spice videos. You can force something to go viral but, as the article shows, you can certainly plan to make your content sticky (see also: Tipping Point).
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This is actually from two months ago, but it continues to capture my attention: Caitlin Moran may have penned my new favorite piece of rock journalism, “Come Party with Lady Gaga,” in The Guardian.
(My old fav was a Courtney Love article in RS where she gives herself accupuncture, but my Google-Fu is failing me at the moment. Speaking of Ms. Love, ExploreMusic conducts a multi-part interview with a sharp-tongued Courtney, who sounds more coherent than she has in years.)
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(Man, I guess I need to subscribe to The Guardian, eh?)
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I delight in seeing @SmallBizLady Melinda Emerson speak – her mission in life is to make sure no small business ever fails again. I’ve never visited her blog before, but it dispenses great advice like How to Turn a Hobby Into a Small Business and 7 Questions Hobbyists Should Consider When Starting a Small Business. Something to consider if you’ve contemplated turning your fun into freelance.
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Tynt is a small piece of script that helps you track who is copying and pasting text from your blog.
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IP addresses are 340 days from running dry, because governing protocal IPv4’s four billion unique IPs are about to run dry. We’ll be rationing IPs unless the entire industry adopts IPv6, and that includes both ISPs and hardware/software manufacturers. A great quote about IPV4:
It seemed to be a reasonable attempt at providing enough addresses, bearing in mind that at that point personal computers didn’t really exist. The idea that mobile phones might want an IP address hadn’t occurred to anybody because mobile phones hadn’t been invented [and] the idea that airconditioners and refrigerators might want them was utterly ludicrous.
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A disturbing collection of images from the BP spill zone – more photos like these need to find their way to the public to keep the outrage and support alive. (this and the IPv4 article via @valerieeev)
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Audobon Magazine goes behind the scenes to explain how many nature photos are staged. (via @themartorana)
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The elephant in the middle of the Glee club is a glance at the hidden copyright issues behind the fiction of Glee. The article goes a bit over-the-top – plenty of college acappella groups do mashups with few legal reprecussions. (via @Level3Media)
What I Tweeted, 2010-07-26 Edition
My tweets of the last week:
What I Tweeted, 2010-07-19 Edition
My tweets of the last week:
get elevated
I wrote that last post on the El.
For those of you not acquainted with Philadelphia, we have exactly two and a half brands of subway. One travels north to south. One travels east to west. One spends half its distance traveling from the center of the city to the west, and then emerges from the ground.
(I always laugh when people find the Philly subway system confusing. They’re named unambiguously and barely make a turn. Paris – now that’s confusing.)
The “El” is short for the Market Frankford Elevated Line, the east to west subway named thus because it runs along Market Street & Frankford Avenues and because after it exits the central part of its route in either direction it runs along elevated tracks. Creaky, red iron, elevated tracks that tower overhead, dripping rain that smacks as it hits your scalp.
Nothing in the world skeeves me out like the El. In fact, for several years at the old house I boycotted it entirely. However, it’s a reality of traveling to and from the new house.
The grime of it is paralyzing. The navy blue floor is encrusted with untold months of flotsam at every crack and corner. The blue seats are not plastic but a sponge-like blue fuzz that seems engineered to attract and retain dirt.
Then there are the people – the degenerate, tactless people. I have heard of and witnessed people doing things on the El that you would never witness elsewhere in public – let alone on public transit. Vandalism. Performance art. Investigations of personal hygiene. Sex acts.
The charming combination of environmental grossness and personal grossness is enhanced by the claustrophobic layout of each car. To a New Yorker – accustomed to their wide, hard-plastic benches and center-of-aisle poles – it probably seems like an amusement park ride.
A tiny, disgusting amusement park ride.
Whenever I ride a carefully tuck my limbs into my body like an Olympic diver, trying to avoid contact with something or something that will give me syphilis or leprosy.
Carefully tucked into myself, I pull out my laptop, and log in remotely to work for 29 blocks of elevation, before shutting down and doing my best to hold my breath and stay absolutely still for 10 blocks of subway.
The first thing I do every day in the office is wash my hands.