the adventure continues

today, twodots wanted to update.

twodots is a simple little game app i got turned on to from a starbucks free-app code. if you're not familiar, each week starbucks offers a free song or app from the itunes store. the method is a card with a code printed on the back that you can pick up in-store, or if you have the starbucks app, you can get the codes there. you go to itunes and redeem the code. one week, the free-app was twodots.

so i downloaded it and started playing, and it's cute enough. connect two or more dots in a line or square to score colours or sink anchors or put out fires or break ice. each level has a different layout, and the elements are added as you go along. when you pass major levels, you get access to postcards you can tweet out or whatever. like i said, it's cute enough.

after i'd played awhile, i ran out of levels. huh. that doesn't happen to me... i'm not generally what you'd call an early adopter. but this time i must have been because i played out of levels and had to wait for more.

they eventually updated and sent me more, and i played through them again, and then waited and played through. and, so on.

so this time i've been waiting a few days now, and today the update shows up. yay!

so i'm reading the "what's new" section in the app store updater, and it says that some levels have been "rebalanced". huh. what's that? so i tweet the app creators and i'm like, what's rebalanced, and the guy is like, we made certain levels less frustrating.

wait. what? you can DO that?

so these are levels that i've already completed, and now they've changed them, and not only changed them, made them less frustrating. well. maybe i would have liked to have been less frustrated. eh? ever think of that?

what happens now. i've already played those levels. so, i could play them again, maybe get a different score... but it's a different level now. it's changed. it's less frustrating. if i get a better score, do i get an asterisk to go with it?

how do i measure my performance if the ground rules are allowed to change?

well, it's just a game, so it's less about measuring performance and more about just having fun. presumably less frustrating is more fun. i get that.

lots of people haven't played through those levels, so this will be what they think those levels are. they will never know the levels that i played. who cares. it's not like we're competing against each other.

but still. my first reaction when learning they'd rebalanced some levels was a sort of confusion. or, maybe disorientation is a better word. i mean, those levels were already there. how can they change them now?

i mean, i get they aren't set in stone, but weren't they set at all? are you telling me, you can just go out there and change them??

it's not like when the monopoly board game changes, and you're all like - haha, this isn't the game we had when we were kids, haha. it's not the next generation of a board game. it's like, last week these levels were one thing and this week they are something different. that's not a generation - that's a coffee break!

now, three hours later, i've got it under my belt. i am more than fine with it, totally get it, and am psyched to replay the rebalanced levels. it's like having additional new levels. it's all good and understood.

but at first, it was an earth-shattering rug yanking. some people would say that makes me old, set in my ways, inflexible, unable to change. whatever. it's not about not being willing to change - it's simply about being aware of how things are and sensitive to the change.

it was definitely one of those days.

this morning, i can't get myself going, so i leave the house late which snowballs into a morass of traffic and anxiety. finally get to work, tuck my computer into the dock, prepare to begin a mighty round of spreadsheeting before my first appointment, aaaaand....

it balks, then chokes, then gets stubborn and starts outright fighting me. apps won't load, documents won't print, email won't send, spreadsheets won't open. is it full of molasses? DAMN.

reboot. no change. rereboot. no change. shut down, remove battery, count to five, reinstate battery, redock, boot up, and it tries to start a chkdsk. OH NO YOU DON'T YOU MOTHERFATHER! "to skip disk checking, press any key within 10 second(s)." 9... 8... 7... 6... ACK! STOP! STOP!

i am banging on the keyboard when i realize the computer doesn't even know it's docked, so i spring the lid and bang on the keys, not even worrying if i break the damn dock. chkdsk stops, crisis averted.

i try to get back in there and finish the spreadsheet and it's no where to be found. no where! NO. WHERE. the computer ate my spreadsheet! ACK!

ugh.

okay.

at some point yesterday, i had created a PDF, so i open THAT and start retyping the spreadsheet. type-type-type-alt+tab-read-read-alt+tab-type-type-alt+tab-read-alt+tab-type-type-type....

meanwhile, the clock is just ticking ticking ticking. who cares about the clock? oh, only the person who has a meeting at 8:30, 9:30, 10:30! ACK!

running out of time, i once again yank the computer off the dock and, hoping it can keep its act together, run to staff meeting and set up the computer to rudely as hell keep working on the spreadsheet while my colleagues blather on about their projects.

that's 8:30. 9:30 is reviewing new product plans in a room with no internet (damn stupid ancient basement meeting rooms!). 10:30 is a one-on-one to explain to a technologist some technology i need built, so i can't very well not fully participate there....

finally back in my office somewhere around 11, i plan to knock out the spreadsheet and a few emails then get in a run and eat lunch before my 1pm.

HAHAHAHA. WHO THE HELL AM I KIDDING. there's not enough time for all that, so as per usual, it's the workout i forgo, because nothing spells stress-relief quite like forgoing a workout. #not.

emails, spreadsheet, and off to the 1pm meeting all nice and prepared and maybe finally i can breathe...

nope. 1pm morphs from project updates to: let's spend 30 minutes asking ol' ace what's up with stuff that ain't even on the spreadsheet.

ahh-ha-ha-HA! the devil is laughing at me - dance! dance little human puppet! DANCE!

fortunately for my by-this-time tender psyche, i don't have time now to spend analyzing time i wasted earlier. nope. i have a 2:30!

the final meeting of the day is a slow slog through a dataset. this work is so tedious that half the group are chattering amongst themselves, half are glazedly unable to participate, half are arguing over minutia, and one guy is sitting there with his head in his hands. GREAT. we're finally finished at 4pm. i pack up my obstinate computer and unused workout gear and slouch pitifully to the car.

on the way home, i stop at target, where i purchase 19 pairs of socks to send my niece for her fifth birthday. because nothing says "cheer up, charley" quite like purchasing 19 pair of small, colourful socks. #truly.

pop to the pop to the pop pop pop

i like popcorn, but i don't like it every day. i like it with butter and salt, or with caramel. i don't really like the cheese kind. i'll eat microwave popcorn, but movie popcorn is better, unless it's old movie popcorn, all broken little pieces and shit. i mean, i like fresh popcorn. who doesn't? every friday, the cafe at work pops fresh popcorn and you can have some, free. i'll usually get some. it's good, but not great, which is weird because it's fresh. hmm. well, it's fresh popped... maybe it's not fresh kernels. the best popcorn is fresh-fresh. first, it's made from fresh kernels and second, you need to get it right out of the popper. fresh-fresh with butter and salt. or, alternately, caramel corn. fresh caramel corn is good, of course, but caramel is like shellac and when you pour it over the popcorn, the combination isn't exactly popcorn anymore. it's more like candy, and the shellac keeps the underlying corn in a freshesque state. like petrified food, caramel corn is forever preserved in delicious edibility.

under a bushel

we're watching this show about dick butkus and gayle sayers. they both were hall-of-fame football players. after football, dick went on to success in hollywood and gayle went on to success in business. they were highly successful followed by highly successful.

now, it's true that success builds on success. if these men hadn't been as successful in football, i doubt they'd have been as successful in their second careers. but what about their first success - how does that happen? why do some people rise above like that?

talent. hard work. obviously, it's got to be both. but above all, there has to be an exact match between talent and activity. you're talented and you choose the activity that you're talented in. sounds easy enough.

problem is, we end up choosing our path before discovering our talent.

sometimes we're tempted: glitz and glamor, money, power. sometimes it's just that we don't know what to do, so we do what our parents did or what our friends are doing. sometimes we don't have opportunity to choose. we're choosing ends over means, or not choosing at all - just following a default.

how do we get a better match for peoples' talents and their life-paths?

it's complicated. some people would rather make money than use their talents well. some people don't know what their talents are. some people have talents that they don't have the opportunity to use.

i don't know how to fix it for everyone, but i can work on fixing it for myself, and i suggest you do the same.

why falling back is better than springing forward

1. getting an hour back is better than giving one up. that's just simple logic. wouldn't we all rather get time back? it just feels better.

2. autumn is innately better than spring.

3. springing forward is depressing because when you spring forward, it's constantly later than you are used to. when you fall back, you sort of feel like it's 9am, and it's 8am. bonus! in the spring, you're kind of feeling like it's 9am, but it's 10am. awwww.

4. related to #3 - springing forward makes it more difficult to get my mental bearings. not only am i wrong about what time it is in sort of smallish ways like in #3, i have a greater tendency to completely lose track of time altogether.

5. morning light makes it easier to get up and get going. springing back happens just when the mornings are starting to really get light. yes, they eventually get light again, but i don't like my morning light stolen and tacked on at the end of the day. in the fall, the mornings are brightened with the time change.

6. evening light makes supper later and makes you have to work in the yard after work.

7. falling back doesn't take energy. you just fall... back... and land in a soft bed of feather pillows. springing forward is tiring.

8. so many people like spring and springing forward that it's just trite and boring.

9. more a commentary on the whole time changing thing that spring in particular... the sun is blinding when it is at a certain angle during my commute. this only happens four times per year... before & after springing forward, and before & after falling back. if the time wasn't changed, this whole sun-angle thing would only happen twice.

10. seriously. who wants to lose a whole hour??

books 2015

miss peregrine's home for peculiar children [ransom riggs]

bones of the lost [kathy reichs]

digital disruption [james mcquivey]

fyre [angie sage]

darke [angie sage]

bones are forever [kathy reichs]

bones never lie [kathy reichs]

learning to see: value stream mapping workbook

swamp bones [kathy reichs]

bones in her pocket [kathy reichs]

in praise of text

"Text is the most socially useful communication technology. It works well in 1:1, 1:N, and M:N modes. It can be indexed and searched efficiently, even by hand. It can be translated. It can be produced and consumed at variable speeds. It is asynchronous. It can be compared, diffed, clustered, corrected, summarized and filtered algorithmically. It permits multiparty editing. It permits branching conversations, lurking, annotation, quoting, reviewing, summarizing, structured responses, exegesis, even fan fic. The breadth, scale and depth of ways people use text is unmatched by anything."
~~jonathan libov

each weekday, i receive an email called "real future" by alexis madrigal. it used to be called "5 intriguing things", which is a more descriptive title and although i'd only received a couple week's worth of the daily emails when alexis took a new job and changed the name of the newsletter, i still suffer from wistful nostalgia every single day.

see, the newsletter contains... wait for it... 5 intriguing things! alexis scours the raw internet plus tips he receives by email, pulls out 5 intriguing stories, compiles them into a blog post which goes through one of those auto-feed things and becomes an email which zooms through the ether and lands in my email box.

so every day, five somethings different, interesting, short + sweet, each with a blurb and a link to the full article. it only takes a few moments to read the whole thing. the problem is when you see something you want to read more of. well, not problem exactly, but like, if you budgeted a minute to read the email, if you get tempted and follow a link, now you have blown your budget all to hell.

that's what happened to me on 2 march. the first link carried the blurb i copied in above. i read it and was immediately hooked because the concept of text has been rumbling around in my brain lately.

it's like this:

right up until 564 years ago, when ol' johannes gutenberg got his printing press all put together and operational, widespread literacy was not a thing. i'd venture to say, even narrowspread literacy was not a thing. without the written word, how did people communicate, you are wondering? well, they told stories, drew pictures, sang songs, lots of mime and hand signals, semaphores.

before literacy, words were sounds that conjured mental images, feelings, impressions, smells, sights. now we are literate with all our high-falutin letters symbolizing those sounds, forming plain words in our brain, words disconnected from images, words we never taste with our mouths.

the very act of becoming literate distances us from the words we are so hungry to consume.

but that's where we are. that's what we have. text. it's kind of depressing.

but then someone comes along and EXTOLS it. freaking sings the praises of meager, simple little text, little etched lines and dots, little slants and squiggles. it's socially useful! multi-modal! asynchronous! can be searched and indexed - even by hand! text can be corrected, branched, annotated, quoted, reviewed, summarized.

underlying all text is a power, and that power is in the structure, and that structure facilitates the universal acceptance of text.

THE BREADTH, SCALE, AND DEPTH OF WAYS PEOPLE USE TEXT IS UNMATCHED BY ANYTHING. WELL SAID MR LIBOV.







so, basically, i am thrilled. i click the link to read more.

http://whoo.ps/2015/02/23/futures-of-text

go ahead.

click it.

read more.

and then come back here and tell me what you think.