PFunked

Wardrobe Simplification

I'm always looking for areas to make simple, efficient.

Today's topic: Wardrobe.

This is especially relevant because I'm moving next month (to a different nearby apartment), and there's no use moving clothes I don't like.

In my particular situation, I can dress casually to work (jeans and button-down shirt) but I need at least some more formal clothes if visiting a client.

Also, I'm a dude, so I'm looking for advice about male wardrobe. But I welcome suggestions from the ladies (tips you'd give your male friends).

1. Which articles of clothing you own are the most essential and flexible? Especially often-overlooked items?

2. If you were forced to own only two outfits, that would be automagically cleaned at the end of each day, which two outfits would you choose?

3. Any pointers on wardrobe habits? Do you buy a second identical item if you love it? Do you replace items regularly or just when they're falling apart? Do you limit the number of a particular item you own?

Glued to the New Tube

Writing is our most respected and emphasized form of self expression. Observe: we spend grades K-12 and the first year of college learning how to read and write in the language we've used since we were toddlers. In contrast, Public Speaking usually accounts for a single semester of college (even though it wasn't long ago when Storytelling was our primary method of expression).

The Internet allows anyone to be a writer, and that writing to be instantly read all over the world. Exhibit A: random Cajun boy writing. This may mean that understanding how to write and read are essential for surviving this information age. Glance at any forum, though, and you'll see people are terrible writers; that sarcasm is hard to decipher; that people would rather incite than comprehend; that no one bothers with spell check.

Enter YouTube. Half of it is videos of people lip-syncing to Pokemon, granted. But you have plenty of entertaining amateur vloggers who are hilarious, insightful, and plain talented. Some of these kids have far more charisma than A-list actors.

Cams are affordable. Digital video editing is intuitive. And I want in. Therein lies the problem: I have 14+ years of schooling in writing techniques, but not five minutes on video techniques. And why not? Video is just as valid a method of expression as writing, and it's accessible with today's tech.

Letters were replaced by telephones, which will be replaced by video cellphones. Maybe once we're all primarily expressing ourselves through video, schools will begin to teach a Video Presentation class instead of an English/Writing class. Maybe written language itself will become antiquated and quaint, the way handwritten letters are today.

Scratch Pad

An Online Scratch Pad written in only 50 lines of code. If any of you want a private scratch pad, let me know and I can set you up with one.

[--update--]

I've gone nuts with the idea. Over lunch I designed three new uses for the basic premise above. One is a simple featureless tumblelog, one is a simple content management system, and one is a CMS tailored for my articles on Digital Artisan. Each of those three will only require three files - one handling display, one handling post editing, and an .htaccess file to handle author authentication and pretty URLs. Each will use a very similar database table to the scratch pad.

I wish I could take the rest of the day off to go home and code these up.

Tao Book 6

A manager was about to be fired, but a programmer who worked for him invented a new program that became popular and sold well. As a result, the manager retained his job.

The manager tried to give the programmer a bonus, but the programmer refused it, saying, ``I wrote the program because I thought it was an interesting concept, and thus I expect no reward.''

The manager upon hearing this remarked, ``This programmer, though he holds a position of small esteem, understands well the proper duty of an employee. Let us promote him to the exalted position of management consultant!''

But when told this, the programmer once more refused, saying, ``I exist so that I can program. If I were promoted, I would do nothing but waste everyone's time. Can I go now? I have a program that I'm working on."

- The Tao of Programming, Book 6

I had a chat with Aaron E today about career goals. I figured out some mid-term future plans, and I have a new short-term set of goals.

I'm interested in taking on light side projects. I'm looking for leads. I probably have to avoid power industry projects because of my Non-Compete.

I'm open to paying referral bounties for projects. I'm not a sales person so I could use an Agent. It would take a long time before I could trust someone though.

Who is Number 1?

Mac vs PC (forgive the deep link, original article here).

Side note: Novell, what the hell are you doing with Microsoft? We don't trust it one bit.