disobey.com

For many many moons, I've been searching for a new movie shelving system for my extensive collection of horror movies (now exceeding 600 DVDs and tapes). My current scheme, using cheap-ass Wal-mart bookcases with movies stacked horizontally and not vertically (i.e. "spine up"), was simply becoming far too cumbersome from an organizational standpoint, and I needed something new, fast.

I finally felt I had found "the one" over at MediaCases.com (product #20922): it was wood not wireframe, perfectly sized for DVDs or tapes, affordable even with prohibitive shipping costs, and was large enough to not get filled within a few months. I ordered one (actually, a product not yet on their site, but very similar to #20922), received and built it last Friday, and came to a happy conclusion early Saturday. Thus, customer testimony:

Media Cases,

No one person should get as excited as I when I knew my new Media Cases movie shelves was coming on Friday, but a'twitter I was, counting down the minutes until I could get home and begin assembling. So anxious was I to see if it was the shelving system of my dreams, I forgot to have supper. I didn't notice until I was scarfing down breakfast the next morning.

Four hours into assembly, with my blistered baby-soft hands suffering from the insanity of screwing everything manually (power tools be damn'd!), I begin putting the pieces together one by one. This was my first happiness: the unit is easily disassembled, and thus, easily movable.

10 minutes later, the behemoth was placed into position, and I reeled: this certainly was shaping up to be the shelving scheme I had always wanted, and I started transitioning DVDs over: 81 DVDs per shelf, or roughly 720 DVD capacity, spine up. Excellent!

Yes, perfect shelving system it was, and I've plans to buy at least one more within a few months. This is excellent stuff, and I've very happy with it.

Granted, I don't expect more than two of my readers to need movie capacity of similar girth, but hey, I'm a happy customer, finally satisifed with my movie organization.

Good friend Aaron Swartz disagrees with my position on CSS Styles in RSS Content:

Inevitably, what a lot of people fail to remember is that just because we did things one way in the past, doesn't mean we need to do them that way in the future. Our computers are not bound to physical metaphors like our VCRs, newspapers, or traditional media. Allowing people to add an optional additional feature doesn't hurt things for anyone else, it just makes things better for those who want to take advantage of that option.

To which I respond:

Blog authors seem to request this feature far more than blog readers because it lets them brand their content (seemingly because their content doesn't have a "voice" of its own) - aggregator users seem to want only the content (as "turn it off!" was an oft-requested reply on Brent's page). Others would not benefit from its existence (as others suggested that they use NNWL as merely a notifier, not a reader).

Obviously, most blog authors are blog readers, but the request for said feature seems to more frequently come from a desire to style "my" content. As aggregators get more and more popular, and feed watchlists get larger and larger (50+), the cacophony of different styles will not readily indicate one blog any more than a simple, already supported, logo could.

He didn't believe my second paragraph though, firing back that possible confusion and dilution of styles "certainly doesn't seem to be true of websites and there are far more of those." Never willing to shut up, we eventually decided that we were approaching the problem from different types of aggregators in the first place:

Me: Those are autonomous windows in your browser, be they tabs or not. Taking fifty styling's based solely on title/description/author and smashing them all together on one "page" - you think they'd still stand out? I guess this comes down to what style of aggregator you like - a stylized three pane aggregator makes a fair bit of sense, since the extra click/movement to load an entitled site associates the style with it.

Him: Ah yeah. I don't think it makes much sense for one-page aggregators.

Funnily enough, Brent followups with "Since posting the other day about RSS and style sheets-making it so people could create a style sheet to use with their feeds-I've come to learn that people hate the idea. Fine by me!"

Always rehashing, always rehashing. Brent talks about CSS styling of RSS entries within NetNewsWire, due to one user's lament about the loss of visual innuendo:

But I like looking at blogs in the web browser, especially when they have a really appealing visual design. It's part of the whole package. When you separate the words from the design, all blogs start to muddy together. Without a face to associate with the words, the author's web design more-or-less becomes their identity. My brain says, "these words came from here" and in a real-life conversation, that "here" would be a face, but on the web, it's someone's stylesheet. It seems odd to strip that out by pulling it through an RSS aggregator.

My response:

Inevitably, what a lot of blog authors fail to remember is that RSS is about syndicating CONTENT, not about syndicating DESIGN. When my local newspaper reprints an Associate Press article, I don't see AP logos or AP's styling: it's in the style of the local newspaper. When Yahoo! runs a Reuters story on their site, they don't reproduce Reuters.com's style on their pages - they merely use the Reuters logo, which is already doable within RSS. Allowing authors to style their content is not improving RSS, it's degrading the very reason for it's existence: to syndicate content, not style.

No new entry in the "What To Do" saga, as I'm editing my latest book. More tomorrow, hopefully. Ooh, wait, I get my new bookcases tomorrow. Hmm. Maybe not. Sometime soon. Bugger. (Want to distract me? Hop onto irc.freenode.net and join #disobey).

Yeah, I know I didn't update yesterday. I'm suffering from a sinus infection (whole... right... side of face... paiiIInfulLL!), and I had to finish my monthly column for MacTech. Anyways, we're nearing the homestretch of projects on the Disobey site, so off we go (see also part one, two, and three):

• Anti-Press Ezine is the only zine currently (and regularly) published by Disobey, and there's only one reason for that: I'm just the publisher. It's actually created by a guy named "Anti-Press" down in Plattsburgh, New York, and was enjoyable enough to offer to my wider reader base and capabilities. This happened years ago, when I was still big into publishing my own stuff as zines (which, I think, no longer interests me). Regardless, there's no personal determination on priority or growth for this one. Nothing to see here folks.
• Chico's Groove is dead and buried and should stay that way. It arose out of my need to more adequately tell everyone all the craziness Disobey was doing, buying, and feeling - a topic DNN never really covered in the old days (when it was the "News" not "Nonsense"). My problem now is that I do too much stuff, and splitting them into different directions (a blog with RSS and a zine via email) just isn't conducive. My efforts should be focused on this fly-by-the-cuff blog, which was around long before the blogolution (did I just say "blogolution"? holy ass, someone shoot me). Granted, I enjoyed Chico's Groove (and yes, I have thought of doing an RSS-to-email version of DNN, but running it under "Chico's Groove" just insults the original style of the zine). Prune, then close, high priority.
• Devil Shat can't, and won't, ever die. The first product of Disobey, it actually started when everything was called "Evil Ey Games"... but after getting kicked off AOL for issue four, "Disobey" arose, priorities shifted, and Devil Shat was still there. Closing Devil Shat would be an end to an era and memories I never want to let go, so I'm saying it's a restore with medium priority. It won't be on a regular schedule, but more akin to microwaved rants on a erratic basis. (If Devil Shat was so great, why did it become a ghost town? Primarily, I grew older: from the ranty "the world is against me" teen to the muddled "what the hell am I again?", and back to "man, the world isn't against me, but it sure does make stupid mistakes".) It could stand to use a redesign (it's the same 1997 "grey on black ubercool" design it has ever been), as well as being powered by Movable Type (which I still haven't mapped out perfectly yet).
• Ghost Sites is still going strong and musty, but more as a critical and visual archive of history than the regular monthly sarcazine it used to be (the blinding light of preservation keeps those readily available too). Along with the huge screenshot collection, Steve Baldwin has been regularly added Web Elegies to each corpse, increasing its cultural permanence. No growth or priority for me, since Steve's the man with the master plan (eYyeyaaaah).

Up next: all the things I do that aren't linked from anywhere!

Great read. You and Your Research (Dr. Richard W. Hamming):

When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.

Moving on (part one and part two):

• Low Bandwidth, a site dedicated to the listing and cataloging of email zines, arrived at a time when there were only two other such listings (Todd Kuiper's E-zine Listings and the E-mail Ezine Emporium, circa 1998). In time, Low Bandwidth initiated "friendly takeovers" of both and its popularity grew, both for its quirkiness and "non-database" look. It was maintained entirely by hand, including the text archives, and that largely explains why I have a mailbox of 3000 "new zine" requests, with two new additions a week (every marketing wonk and their mother refers to Low Bandwidth as a good place to publicize). Roughly half are marketing related, a topic that Low Bandwidth denied blatantly and outright. I've attempted various dynamic designs, with two half-started iterations and one heavily tweaked appearance still sitting "In Progress".

  Sadly, I feel Low Bandwidth should be pruned. I have grandiose visions of XML backends, master subscription services ("why should I remember how to unsubscribe? I'll just uncheck this box at Low Bandwidth and it'll handle the rest!"), and a nice web-service with distributed ratings, automated archiving, etc. Unfortunately, it just doesn't excite me anymore - today, most email ezines don't give you the choice of HTML or text, and HTML versions are anything but low bandwidth (or reliably readable or archivable). Similarly, with the increasing encroachment of idiotic and overzealous spam filters, "the sky is falling!" cries of "email is dead!" (pffft), and the inescapable creep of email overload, I'm not sure how helpful a revised site would be. Definitely convince me if I'm wrong - I don't think it will take much, I just need to believe it'd be useful to people.

  Prune the life outta it, then close, medium priority.

• Gamegrene.com, like The Horror Section, arose out of the desire to make my hobbies my work. Or, more exactly, to give me time to hobby whilst working. I wasn't playing enough games, and it made perfect sense that if I ran a site about gaming, then, well, hey, I'd have to play games, right? It appeared the same day as Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition which, in hindsight, proved quite ominous and foreboding. Thankfully, Gamegrene is now the most popular Disobey property. There are zillions of things I want to do with the site, including fixing the most craptacular URLs I've ever seen, building a better archive and author display, integrating Amazon and context-sensitive extras, adding relevant images, creating a better "Related Articles" system, and exploring the six new "users decide" features that could be next (a survey has already been created to see which should be focused on, but it has yet to be deployed). There's much to be done here, including some healthy creative outlets. Growth, high priority.
• AmphetaDesk, ah, AmphetaDesk. My first "meant for others" software and downloaded nearly 100,000 times, it's the scheming flatmate that introduced me intimately to the wiles and willies of Dave Winer. It holsd a special place in my heart and, as is typical of a large userbase, there's plenty more to do. Growth, high priority. (Note to self: if I say anything BUT high priority, I'll get a deluge of disgruntled email. Be sure to remove this sentence before publishing.)

Next week: Anti-Press Ezine, Chico's Groove, and Devil Shat.

Continuing, with an eye on personal growth, personal cruft, and personal enjoyment:

• Collected Works hasn't been updated in years, and there's a good reason: it just doesn't perk my interest anymore. What's worse, I'm one of the authors whose work has been purportedly collected, and there's easily about five hundred pieces that are missing. Thinking back, I believe the last time I actually read or wrote a piece of fiction was four years ago, so what right do I have to maintain a site of quirky fiction? I'd much rather bury the hatchet and start a new experiment with fresh blood (which I'll describe in a few days). I've set Collected Works to be pruned of any semblance of life (like the "updated" material and the column on the right side), and then closed with a notice stating as such.
• Detergent is the potpourri of my smelly site, and it has worked remarkably well as such. It has no design or webpages to maintain, no regular updates and no commitment to any semblance of quality. It is my dumping ground of pocket lint and related ephemera. Things I've been meaning to do (like add new movies, setup some mirrors of important content, program a QEL reader, reveal some of my random everyday perl code, upload some of my pre-Disobey work, etc.) is all low priority, but wonderfully entertaining. It is, however, not helping me grow as a human being, so it's status remains merely maintain.
• The Horror Section is one of those "make your hobbies your work". I'm a huge collector of everything, and a huge fan of horror. Nearing 650+ movies, I've recently invested in some shelving from a company who normally ships to video rental stores. The problem with the current Horror Section is it's merely downloads - no opinions, no humor, no knowledge, and not much for anyone BUT like-minded collectors. Four years ago, I felt it was the first Disobey.com site that had competitors: there are LOTS of horror fans, and I partially viewed this as an attempt to "beat 'em all" (namely the now-dead Cabinet of Dr. Casey, which sucked so much ass, but received so many accolades). At the time, it did: we had the largest download collection available, all anally cataloged. Still worse, is that I've 2 gigs worth of stuff on my drive, waiting to be indexed.

  After talking with my accountant, it seems that if I make an attempt to earn money (via Amazon Associates and similar gimmicks), I can claim new movie purchases as tax deductible. This is rabidly appealing, especially to someone whose collection grows by 30 movies a month. And, to further the original goals of "beat the competitors", my longtime friend and I will be re-releasing The Horror Section soon, but with added and regular reviews. Ah yes, the stereotypical movie review section. What better way to do more of the same, only with a disobedient flavor? Long-term goals have been discussed, and if becomes anything like Gamegrene, within the year, we'll be receiving free merchandise on a regular basis. Alluding to the allure, indeed. Priority high, growth.

Tomorrow: Low Bandwidth, Gamegrene.com, and AmphetaDesk.

Annoyingly, one of my todo items is to force myself to write for the Nonsense Network more often. It's not that I have nothing to say - there's always stuff jiggling in my Jell-o. I just haven't had the discipline to get it out on paper on a regular basis. So, I've added the following command to my crontab, to bug me at 6:45 every weeknight:

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to display dialog "Write for DNN!"'

It's not perfect, as I'd really like it to be a floating modal dialog so that it doesn't interfere with any work I'm doing at the moment, but I suck at Applescript, and I've not yet Google'd for the solution. If anyone has one, lemme know, eh?

UPDATE: Alright, from what I can tell (and this is all conjecture based), all Finder dialogs are modal by default. BUT, because we need to point to the Finder through a cron / osascript combination, that stops everything the Finder is currently focused on, and requires me to respond to the dialog before I can continue working (in the Finder). Not good. The logical step was to remove the need for "tell application 'Finder'", and all attempts in that direction, in conjuction with osascript, failed miserably.

The solution? I've got the following in an Applescript application (i.e., something you'd double-click on and it'd act like a normal program, which can be created via Script Edit > Save As > Application - be sure to have "Never Show Startup Screen" checked):

display dialog "Write for DNN!" buttons {"Fine, fine!"} with icon note

Now, instead of using osascript, I use the shell's open command, which causes the compiled Applescript application to become a new process in the Finder, with a modal dialog. This also has the side benefit of creating a new entry in my dock, giving me both auditory, textual, and visual reminders. Perfect.

I've many, many things on my plate, enough so that I spend more time thinking about doing something else than doing the task I've set out to do. Sure, I keep a todo list of everything, loosely based on Joel Spolsky's article Painless Software Schedules (using OmniOutliner instead of Excel), but that stresses priority over personal growth. That makes sense when you think of your tasks as shippable software, but I do far more than just software.

A few months ago, tantek.com wrote a cute little what to do with things to do, focusing on a new categorization that mapped how the tasks improved your own well-being:

This categorization popped into my head recently: grow, restore, maintain, prune, close, as yet another way to group things to do ... Some areas of your life you want to expand and grow. Others have been neglected, and you need to work on restoring them. Most things just need to be maintained ... Some of those things should probably be pruned away. And everyone I know has areas of their lives or unfinished projects that need to be closed off and put/parked away for good.

Funnily enough, re-evaluating everything I work on with the previous categorization has been on my own todo list since April. With my second O'Reilly book, Spidering Hacks (more info soon), nearly finished, I wanted to take the time to examine everything I do and want to do, give it a categorization, and see exactly where things stand. I've always boasted that I've my fingers in many pies, and this'll give you a chance to see them all.

Note that, roughly, I have about 20 hours a week to work on all my "extracurricular" projects - I do have a fulltime job I'm in love with, with no desire to ever leave. So, weekdays leaves me from 6pm to 11pm, or 5 hours x 5 days = 20 hours. We'll make that 15 hours to cover mindless wandering, food scavenging, and ass-wiping. Weekends, I tend to watch horror movies (which is, in fact, part of my regular project workout).

Lettuce begin with the front page of Disobey. I've also started a new OmniOutliner template, and I'll screenshot the thing when I'm all done. Not that you'd care, but you know, it'll make me feel like I accomplished something. Whoo!

• The Main Page Itself needs some work, since it hasn't been updated in years and years. In thinking about it, it needs to emphasize the fact that I write professionally now (monthly MacTech column, two books from O'Reilly, etc.), and how large Disobey.com really is (5000+ files, more than 200 megs worth of fun judo techniques, been around since 1997). Likewise, it needs valid CSS and a copyright statement that can grow without me. I've got to figure something out concerning the email subscription box too - I only publish a few things through email, some which are now "dead", some which are not publicly known. Finally, all projects I deem "dead" should be labeled as such, so people don't get their hopes up. I'll deem this project restore with mostly medium priorities.
• The About Section hasn't been updated in years either. Disobey gets so much press for so much of it's stuff that the Press Pit should be trashed and replaced with an off-hand remark about some of the more noticeable mentions. Likewise, there's no mention of dead projects I've been involved in like Viewer Discretion, The Annihilation Fountain, Netslaves, SDM, Zero, and so forth. I really need to add a FOAF file into here as morbus.foaf or some such. Growth restore, low priority.
• The Nonsense Network is what you're reading now and although I had recently fiddled with this, there's still some annoying time-consuming tasks. Some of the archives from '98 didn't really import correctly, and though I started many moons ago, more work is necessary for more pretty. Some of the CSS could be improved (most notably my lack of headers and dependence on tables), and I'd like to remove trackbacks and use comments instead. I wouldn't mind including some links to my writings, as well as finalizing my RSS merging techniques from Gamegrene, O'Reilly, and the revamped Horror Section. Add category archives and Amazon wishlist. Mostly low priorities, with a growth of maintain.

I'll stop the post for now so as not to write a novel, but I'll be back tomorrow with run-downs and thoughts for three or four more projects. I really feel like I need to do this in ever increasing detail, if not just to get a stronger handle on everything I do, but to improve and streamline the process somewhat.