It’s 2009, and one again it’s that arbitrarily pick time and date the western world uses as a soft reset for life. I’ll be frank, 2008 was a breakeven year for me. The first 1/2 of the year royally sucked. The second 1/2 was trying to get back on track, and was actually pretty good. But what track? Well, I don’t know, and I think (for a change) I don’t care.

So, in simpler news, my resolutions. I’m sharing, so I can’t fudge it later, and so there is a record out there in the wild of what crazy ambitions I have for ‘09. I’m cracking them out into ‘resolutions’ or vauge stuff, or behavior changes and ‘goals’ of concrete and one time stuff.

Resolutions:

• Write a post for IndustrialSomething or TheHacktory 3x a week. 100 words min
• Climb or otherwise get physical at least 2x every week, no exceptions
• Spend one night out on the town every week. It did well in late ‘08.
• Write/Draw/Sketch/Brainstorm more (I didn’t do much in ‘08)
• Maintain some relationships. Reconnect to folks I miss
• Track my time and $.

Goals:

• Memorize 10 more poems
• A big change, shake things up. I feel stagnent.
• Refresh and learn some more maths
• Become a true craftsman of code, rather than just a builder.
• Learn to type at 70wmp and less than 1% error rate
• Find/Build an local pseudo-family. I’ve been to lonely in ‘08
• Learn a lot about fab, and setup to do it (3d printing, CNC, lazzzor cutting
• Learn to use design tools, and learn the basics of design
• Read 75 Books

I think that is about it. It’s a lot, but hell. I get a lot done.

Phew. I just finished setting up and executing a Hackerspaces.org call-in.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to someone at HackME about what TheHacktory is doing, and how we can get hackerspaces working together. We agreed to call each other on Nov 30th (today) to catch up and talk about what our spaces were doing. In a stroke of genius, we decided to invite other hacker spaces, expected that either HacDC or NYC Resistor would want to get in our our call. It was a matters of hours before Nick Farr had told everyone he could get his hands on about it, and then Astria setup a page for it on Hackerspaces.org, and we made it an official hackerspaces.org event.

Despite all of that, when the call time came I was still expecting 10-12 people from 3-6 spaces. Instead we had 35 different calls into the party line, with a max of 26 people on the call at one time. We had 16! (that is 16*wh00t* not 16-factorial) hackerspaces give a 5 minute intro and update about their space. That is 80 minutes of hackers ranting about what they love, and what they make. It was seriously impressive. It was intense, and awesome, and I can’t wait to have the next one at the end of December.

There was a good article in Equire on Jason Rohrer, who make avant-garde micro-games.

I downloaded and played Passage, and still don’t know what to think of it. I can see some of the appeal, and I’m all about the 8-Bit style, which can concentrate on play, and not eye-candy. The game Cultivation (about community garden fights) might be more my style.

But honestly, I wouldn’t have gotten the larger life lesson out of any of them. Which may be right. Maybe the life lessons we get from games, or from interaction from the world in general, isn’t always obvious to our overdeveloped fore-brains.

There was a lot of street parties late into the night on Nov. 4th. A friend of a friend put together a video of what happened in Philadelphia that night. It’s a pretty cool video, and it’s really a showing of the Philly that I know and love.

Unfortunately I was in Seattle, so I missed the election parties in the street here.

Fortunately, I was in Seattle, so I got to catch some election parties in bars there.

On the heels of Obama’s election as the next president of the United States of America, I think it’s time to post something I’ve talked about, but haven’t written about much. The New American Dream. The United States has shifted from Agrarian to Industrial to Post-Industrial society with amazing speed. Despite this’The American Dream’ has not changed much, and I think this highlights two mistakes.

First, They talk about one dream, and it is not. There are a million different dreams, and I’ve cut them up into 6-8 families of simliar dream, but I’m sure there are more. American is, and has aways been, and I hope will always be, a melting pot of different ideas and ideals, morals. We are a country of hyphenated people (Italian-America, African-American) and for most of us our country is where we foster our identity, but not the entirety of it.

Secondly, the single dream they talk about is the dream of the 35+ crowd. The dream of a generation that (hopefully) has reached that dream, or had found something else. I think when we talk of the American Dream should be the dream of the 18-24 year old. Most folks I know in that age don’t want an SUV a suburban driveway and a TV inside. Most of them want an apartment in the city, and an active life, and good people to share it with.

I was going to talk about my own American Dream, but I’m past my own age restriction, so I’ll skip it. Instead I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader. Go hunt down an 18 -25 year old, corner them (coffee and good food make a great trap). Ask them what their dream is, and how they want to live their life. Because that, my friend, is what our great country is going to become.

First off, CURSE YOU WordPress 2.6.something for not handling HTML tags in your titles!

This year is my year of the Fat. It’s been going on for a while so I’m going to call it as June to June, and stick to that. So, you dear read (all 3) may be asking what is this year of fat? Are you going to put on a ton of weigh? Nope. I mean I’m going to live well for a bit. It would just be a year of ‘plenty’ but hell, I’ve had plenty, and this is more than that. This is fat.

I’ve lived mean-and-lean for a number of years, and a number of reasons. I’ve always lived on about 50-70% of my salary (not counting emergencies and school loan payments) And I’ve been very happy packing lunches, living on bad neighborhoods, and eating (really good food) out of peanut butter jars as containers. I actually like living that way. I grew up that way, and I got through some good (and bad) times like that.

But, for various reasons, June was the start of me spending money. Actual “hey, I want that internet thing, I’ll just buy it now” spending money. I got a good (private,large) apartment in a decent neighborhood. I bought some useless but nifty crap. I even got an iPhone, the big half-useful next-gen toy of the year. And for the first time, I was (and am) not socking away all extra pennies for the next adventure/project/education.

It is still a little weird, and for the first time I can see how and why a lot of Americans are up to their eyeballs in debt. It’s addictive, easy, and one-click simple to blow cash when you aren’t OCD or paranoid about it.

I’m still biking to work, and I’m still eating raw carrots and apples for (most) lunches. I haven’t hired a maid (yet?) or a man-servent (if you want to apply, leave me a comment). So I haven’t totally lost it. But then again, I did setup a on-a-whim vacation to Seattle a few weeks back, so maybe I have. Either way, up until today I’ve had problems justifying this change in behavior to myself.

But now, with everything going on, my way forward is clear. I’m going to write this whole thing off as a moral decision to help the economy recover. And even try to maybe write it off on my taxes as a civic good (for tax reasons). I am not living it up for my own good, no sir/madam. I am living it up this year for the good of America! That is my story, I’m sticking to it.

Now, I’m all for the theory that 90% of all people that get a statute or day in their honor are some kind of asshole. But you Chris, you take the cake. I won’t really put any blame on you for the people that followed in your footsteps, but man, you really deserve a kick in the pants (and/or to the head). I can even forget the misnomer about discovering the new world, but your own behavior damns you.

So, I can image, on that second trip, that you were a little mad about finding out what happenedFuerte de la Navidad , but come on man. Enslavement? “Collect gold or we cut off your hands?” Genocide level behavior, and for what? God, Country, and filthy lucre (10% of all revenues from the new land). Journal Entries like”"From here one might send, in the name of the Holy Trinity, as many slaves as could be sold…” really, man. That is crazy.

I’m amazed with all of that you have your own day, and that you were considered for sainthood. Especially the part about denying indigenous people conversion to Christianity (so you can still sell them as slaves). So, as someone who believes as truth and facts, today is a holiday for me. A holiday to bare the truth about old frauds, and encourage people to look at the past with critical eyes, and avoid history worship.

So, it’s that time of year again, the Day of Atonement. I ask myself, what is an atheist American of Irish descent do on Yom Kippur? I got sick, spent all day in bed thinking about what I did wrong this year. Not as good as fasting, but not a bad way to reflect on the year gone by.

Growing up Christian, Good Friday really falls short for me. It’s a holiday about what someone else did (Jesus and getting killed) to make things better, and it seems to be a pretty passive. I’d rather have a holiday the encourages everyone to do what they can to set things right. That is to say, to encourage everyone to reconcile with other people, and recognize their own ability to do wrong, and ask to have it made right. Not just wait for a god (any god) to do it for them.

Plus, having a whole country car-free for a day and pedestrians and bikes rule, is pretty awesome.

As long as I’m on the topic if bad Sci-Fi, there is a pretty decent story over at futurismic.com about high school, reputation, and the high politics of getting class president. It’s not great literature, but it reminds me of some of the things that went on in my own high school.

In general, I agree with XKCD 483, which I assume is related to Anathem. Neil Stephenson doesn’t write very good books, but he does an impressive job on the paragraph and sentence level. And he has some damm good dialog. Like:

“Probably the kind of adventure that ends in mass burial.”
That quited her down a little bit. But after a while she said: “Do you need transportation? Tools? Stuff?”
“Our opponent is an alien spaceship packed with atomic bombs” I said “We have a protractor”
“Great, I’ll go home and see fi I can scrounge up a ruler and a piece of string”

God bless you Mr. Stephenson! I just hope this one has a real ending.