a broken mold

So, if I right a bazillion good posts but nobody ever sees them, I’ve certainly wasted something, right? Maybe it did have it’s purposes, but I’ve realized that I really need to think about audience¹.

Who is my audience right now? My friends and family.
How will that audience change? Word of mouth.
Why will people talk? Because I’m writing good things for my audience (or will).

Sure, it’s not bad to write about stuff because you like it and nobody cares. It just doesn’t do that much (except maybe make you happy). I personally would like to have some other people reading what I write and caring about it.

So I must write for the audience I have. That’s the only way to change and grow our audience it seems to me.

Leeann has this in her sidebar and it made me feel a little sick.

That’s a helpless person murdered nearly all the time. Those who can support abortion knowing that suppress the truth they know at some level or another. It’s sick, okay? Sick.

So, technically, I wrote this post last night and right now I’m whizzing along the highway at 55 MPH, but that doesn’t really matter in the scope of the thing.

I don’t have much to say here, but what little there is, I present. DRM is not intrinsically evil but historically it has been harmful to the public. Of course, this is not to say that companies or individuals attempting to protect their intellectual property are wrong, only that DRM as a method of accomplishing this has been maddening (I got burned), often futile, and sometimes scary (i.e. Amazon yanking 1984 from Kindles). It’s tried but not true, if that’s the right turn of phrase. Companies have used it for a couple decades; it hasn’t worked.

Why I’m writing about this is because today is Day against DRM. So I thought I’d let you know some stuff about it. That is all from me; I leave you with the Free Software Foundation’s history of The Decade in DRM (click through to read more).

Since the late 1990s, a handful of media and technology companies has waged war against the public, imposing digital restrictions on the technology we use.. Here is Defective by Design’s look at some of the most significant events in the past 10 years fighting against DRM. If there are important moments missing (which there may be), please send them to us! Despite a number of victories over DRM in specific areas, DRM is far from dead. Whether companies will control and restrict us through our technology remains to be decided, and the battle is now.

This is a declamation I wrote for Rhetoric class. The assignment was to write a lyric poem. I wrote mine on sleep, basing it on my extensive personal experience. Without further ado, then:


Sleep is Enigmatic

Sleep, you are cold-blooded, merciless,
an executioner.
You softly slit my throat from ear to ear
into a smile across my neck,
and spill my warm blood onto Calvin or
The Classic Hundred Poems.
Sleep, you are persuasive and insinuating,
loosening my aching ribs.
The caffeine candle lighting up my skull
can only last so long before
it flickers down and
fizzles on the table.
You charm my drooping head
with dark advances,
soft, beguiling.
And at the last you sooth my eyeballs,
burning, frozen orbs.
Forgiving, gentle sleep.

This is a productivity tip.

When you want to get something done (even if you don’t actually want to do whatever it is), either do it or schedule a time to do it.

If what you want to get done comes to mind, nail it on the spot.

If you can’t do it then or think another time really would be better, schedule it. I recommend setting a reminder with Google Calendar or some other such reminder mechanism. When it’s time to do it, do it. If something else came up or partway through you find you don’t have enough time to finish, set another time. Stay on it. Don’t let the reminder sit. Do it or trash the reminder. Ignored reminders are useless.

Update: Just wanted to say, these aren’t like the tenets of blogging I live by or something like that, they’re just what I could think of upon sitting down to think about it.

I write because I have things to say. Probably I think these things are not immediately obvious or thought about by everyone. Or perhaps some things are merely simple reminders or a fresh view on something.

I write publicly to share. To share my thoughts, to provoke contemplation and discussion.¹

I write to practice. One can often become discouraged comparing themselves to those they admire (for me, famous bloggers who write well like John Gruber, Anil Dash, etc. Not that I’m particularly a fan of those two, but it’s a culture and medium I like). But of course, one only becomes better at an art by doing it, and so I am here.

I write because I think what I write is worth reading. I don’t write copy. I write content (or try). No content = no post (with minor exceptions). Even if I do just “come up” with posts instead of them coming to me.

Why a blog? It’s linear. It’s a story. It’s a continuous outlet. Unlike some other types of publications, there is one thing it’s not, though: predictably published, something I like. It may have a pace, a predictable rhythm of sorts, but not a schedule per se. It’s a bit more freeflow that way.

I write because I want people to read what I write. I want them to laugh or think or be sad. I want them to be affected. Isn’t that why everybody writes, to affect? Even if it’s a textbook, the idea is to change by adding knowledge and know-how. What are blog comments then? Responses. And (see the footnote), if I disable comments, people who really feel strongly about what I have written might take up the pen themselves. It’s about effect, or at least it should be, more than comments or page views. If it has no effect, what is its worth?

And thus I want some readers, because that means people who keep coming back to hear what I say, and thus can be affected. Therefore, I should be worth it. Like I said before, no content, no post.

I am pleased to announce that Anna Hurley and Caleb Blume have passed the one and a half month mark at abm and are now here (more) officially (in some way or manner). Congrats.

I suppose I should also be announcing this somewhat sheepishly since I forgot about it and realized it today, a few days late. But you didn’t know that. So forget you read this paragraph.