From this episode of this american life. Joss Whedon on stage performing a commentary on his commentary…
I love it. The meta is awesome.
// Yes, I’m catching up on my podcasts. A week old, but hopefully it’s new to some of you.
Tag Archives: meta
The Zone
The thing about being in the zone is that when you’re in the zone, you can’t be writing about being in the zone.
It’s similar situation with status messages. On Twitter proper, you are asked, “What’s Happening?” As soon as you start typing, you are no longer doing what you’re doing (which was the old question on Twitter), but tweeting instead.
In an effort to achieve as much efficiency as possible, I’ve tried time and time again to write a memoir while living it out, and that’s probably one of the largest roadblocks I’ve ran into.
This is why this post is probably going to be one of the last time I talk about the zone. I’m not here to write a top 10 list of how to stay in the zone, but instead to just bask in the zone myself.
Oh, and by the way, expect more short personal posts. If I can’t be myself on my own freaking blog, then I’ve got issues.
CHANGELOG: The Ads
The Moneys
Ads are back. This can only mean a good thing, because that means I’m making a conscientious effort to actually write something that’s of value.
I’m currently messing with three different sources for making a bit of money on the side with the blog:
- Google Adsense: One ad per single.php, for more focused targetting
- Amazon Affiliates: Omakase, for now. I may want to make the JKStore a big more accessible soon.
- Text-Link-Ads: Not sure how this works just yet.
Online Identity
Finally added more interaction with Twitter. Not sure if people were really wanting it, but I kinda wanted to do this for a long while.
I ended up just putting up links to Flickr and Twitter under /etc/ for now. I would like to lifestream like I did before, but I don’t know if that’ll actually be useful… or maybe a project I’m working on will obviate that anyway. And plus, I suck at this server admin stuff: I tried for a few minutes the lifestream wordpress plugin (which seems amazing), and I almost had a heart attack that the server was going to go down again.
Posting Schedule
I have this general feeling that I’m going to do more personal posts during the weekends, and more interesting and relevant posts during the weekday. I kinda want to make sure that I post something really beefy on Sunday night, kind of as a weekly deadline for something in-depth.
Don’t hold me to any of this. This is just me thinking out loud like I normally do. (And, as some will notice, I won’t be linking this on a tweet.)
Look/Feel
Back to the redness. Oh, how I’ve missed you.
Started adding new tabs to the navigation. Not sure exactly what’ll end up here.
Blah blah blah
I’m hungry. Working on the blog for 4 hours straight is pretty fun, but very draining.
Day 3: Regroup
After a normal sleep cycle, I returned to my computer to start cracking.
Of course, life threw its usual curveballs. After church, I had realized that my printer was being wonky. I also realized that NewEgg’s return policy on broken items sucks (you have to pay for shipping for sending it back), which makes me not want to order from them ever again unless it’s something like an.. xbox live 12+1 month card. (Which I didn’t get from them, because buy.com has it better. DO IT.) I’m probably continue to order from Amazon… I love everything about this company, from Prime down to its amazing return policy.
That took a while, then I had a couple hours of fun on the guitar as well as the 360. Eh, it was bound to happen.
Productivity
Then I buckled down. I realized all the physical needs of a human being, including sleeping and eating, really gets in the way of doing some productive work. I worked on and am still working on organizing all the web “properties” I have. I’m talking email addresses to AIM screen names to… you guessed it, domain names. Yesterday night, I did something I should have done a while back.
I finally bought joshk.im. Currently, I’m beta testing something called SweetCron, which is perfect for the purpose of that site. I have this strange feeling this might be a project I look forward to committing some changes to. Yes, even though it’s PHP… but it’s so well written! So pretty! I’ve never seen CodeIgniter code before, and it looks very very clean. I’m only used to seeing the insanity that is Symfony. It might just be that the guy who’s writing this thing, Yong Fook, is quite good. It was interesting to find out that SweetCron was going open source just as I found his blog a couple months ago. I really do hope for great things, if he’s reading this.
But alas, I may do something else with my newly acquired shiny domain name. I’m fresh out of ideas at this point, but I really wanted it to be a site for just that.
So What’s The Next Project?
I’m still figuring this out. I hope to have a list of my requirements for this project. Here’s a preliminary list:
- Must not depend on advertising as the main stream of revenue
- Basically comes down to freemiums or charge per use.
- Must use Rails (if I’m doing a web project)
- This is to learn Rails, btw… I’m not saying Rails is the end all for web projects.
- Must be doable by “myself”
- I’m sure I’ll be hitting up people left and right for help, but largely, it has to be my own.
- It could be a source of pride, but I need to make sure I can do something on my own.
- Must not neglect health of body and mind
- This is like… uber important. Must maintain some kind of healthy habits.
- Must blog daily progress reports, like this one
- Accountability: So people can call me out. Important thing is to stay truthful.
- You’re going to see lots of FAIL on this blog starting from… before this blog started to the day I die. I hope to see more WINs in the days to come, though.
- Maybe, possibly, someone else is trying to do something like I’m doing. Maybe by doing this, I can find someone else who’s trying to do it his or her own way.
Sidepoint: Blogging Schedule
So I’m looking back on February 2008′s posts, and it seems like I stopped blogging like a madman after I found Twitter. Then this blog turned into, for lack of a better phrase, a Twitter archive. But before then, when I actually contributed to the world with some meaningful posts on the web… ugh… 2.0 market and on life in general, I would have multiple posts in various stages of completion.
I’m back at that stage. I have screenshots and halfway finished posts all over the place. I may need to slow down a bit, but I feel so energized.
I want to have these daily blog entries about the status of the “project”, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be doing some other random updates along the way. I have a feeling something about Rock Band 2 is going to get posted. Effing Braid needs to get a good review also. So many lovely post ideas…
Completely Random
Man, what the heck did I do with all this time I’m using up for the blog? I really have no idea. Must have been watching and playing things… Hmm. If I could have tracked all that lost time… but really, what’s the point then? What’s the point of being meta with things that you can’t change if you’ve already changed and are looking back?
Ah, the meta-life post. [Creates a new draft] I’ve deleted and rewritten this post so many times, physically, electronically, and mentally. ARGH.
Blogging About Blogging: The Meta Post
Making every single move in life so grandiose is never a good thing. Dreams of fanfare rollouts and rockstar parties… I don’t know how my imagination took me so far that it crippled my down-to-earth desire to make something better. These are statements fraught with over-arching statements about my life. See how meta this all can become?
What This Time?
It’s been a while since I had a meta post. It where I try and think about what all of this is about. Of course, “all” in the past sentence, hopefully, will contain mostly about this blog itself, less this post will burst into a book I’ll never write.
The question that haunts my mind as I try to blog usually starts with a “Why?”. But let’s start with what.
What?: Topics Of Interest
There are a couple posts in the works… but I’m just seeing a trend in what I want to write about. I feel like my mind has a predisposition for these sort of things.
As the gamer in me comes out into full swing, my desire to post on it has grown. The medium and the business world of video games is an amazingly intricate one. Very slowly, I’m beginning to accept that gaming is much more than simply a facet of entertainment… it can be more powerful in some ways compared to traditional, and even, “new” media.
As the development speeds up (and winds down, for some) on my various projects, I’ve become interested in blogging about the process that’s going through my mind. I might as well start up a vlog to capture some of it.
As the business side of my mind develops steadily, I’m beginning to see just how hard and easy some of this stuff is. I want to track this mental development, also.
And as always, I’m retardedly pensive. I have a couple of posts in beta, talking about people and relationships again. Ugh.
But these are just topics. But then, what are the motives behind blogging it all?
Motive #1: The Desire To Write It ALL Down
This has to be one of the top reasons. There’s this huge desire in me to track it all. Eventually, computers will be able to capture all of a person’s sensory data; I just don’t know when that’ll happen. But when it does, the problem becomes filtering out the noise, and keeping all the great memories. If I ever need closure or need to win an argument over when happened where, I know I’ll be able to refer back to that day and time.
What I have to realize here is that while this serves a great purpose for me, it’s almost useless at times. There’s no way I’ll be able to sit down and consume all that information again at a later time… by that point, I’ll be generating even more data, and I won’t have time to go back to it all.
So it’s… this moderation business again. Which I fail at, constantly.
What happens with me is that I tend to become completely handicapped at the moment I realize I can’t track something involved with bettering myself. I need to keep a daily log of miles ran, feeds read, songs listened to… more or less, NUMBERS. Lots of data points. This is why I love going to Google Analytics from time to time.
Conclusion: This motive will never go away. It’s just understanding that a whole lot of people won’t care much about (unless I somehow become famous or the events I write about are worthy of attention) and a very few people will care a lot posts of this nature. More or less, the “Personal” category has been fulfilling this need… when I do post.
Motive #2: The Desire To Be Kept Accountable
When I make todo lists on this site, I do not because of motive #1, but also so that people can call me out. I’m hoping that guilt of not being able to meet my own standards of awesome will goad me into doing something.
It’s worked, on a couple occasions. I’d like to think that things that make it on the public todo list are quite doable… it’s when I can’t achieve those goals that things get mighty annoying.
Conclusion: I’m going to continue to do this. Whenever I can. It’s my blog, after all. Just like the Twitter Updates, I’m going to consider making this not a part of the feed. Because of motive #1, these goals have to be tracked somewhere… not just in a bug/feature tracker, but in a life tracker. Once again, thinking too big…
Motive #3: The Desire To Seem Awesome
Pride.
Writing about what I’ve bought or what I’ve done or this and that… I have to realize that everything I do will be tainted by this. Guilt will lurk in every action as soon as I give it a moment’s thought.
Conclusion: Stop thinking. Just write. I try to keep it as humble as possible, but it’s hard when I’m so awesome. Um. Right.
Okay, For Realz: The lists that I make in #2 has a tendency to shoot a little higher. When those goals aren’t met, I tend to not write about the failures all too much. Of course, I shouldn’t have to write on every single way I suck here, but when it makes sense… Man, I just need to learn some moderation.
Motive #4: The Desire To Monetize It ALL
While I may enjoy writing on completely random topics, the problem comes in when I want to monetize everything and anything I do. I have to learn to give this up. The desire to actually kill two birds (these birds being creating content and making income) is so suffocating that I’ve almost been led to post on certain topics over and over again.
Conclusion: Monetize elsewhere. Stop caring about being so freaking efficient. Just write what you write.. at least, write something of value. Be proud of what you do write, but don’t pander too much to money. Let the money come to you. Try to throw in a couple product placements, but that’s because I love Amazon so freaking much. And you can’t monetize 90% of this site anyway, seeing how it’s more or less “Personal”. So, stop.
And Just Because
Exactly.
I need to realize that while I have readers, I still have full control on what makes it up here. I need to reduce that awkwardness… that friction that saps away the desire to post. That way, something will stick. Something will make it.
Must. Keep. Going. I feel so much like a teenager when I write posts like this…
Let’s Do It Live
So many things to write on… so many new topics sitting in my TextMate project… Will they ever see the light of day? Will my forearms ever stop hurting again? Will Gadgetget ever get “started”?
It's So Easy But So Hard
In an effort to be ruthlessly efficient (in most areas that I deem important), the detail- and formula-oriented side of my mind makes me paralyzed. There are times when I can’t do the next thing on the list, even though the current task at hand is just seemingly impossible. Like freaking finishing this post.
Heck, I spent 20 minutes figuring out how to properly capitalize titles, and since it seems to be largely a style-issue, I’m at a loss. There is no formula here. I guess I am left to create my own.
And then there’s the over-analytical part of me. I must figure out the reasons as to why everything must matter to everything. It’s this holistic view on life that continues to bemuse bystanders who have come and gone. It also addles my mind, and additionally encourage the “meta” mentality that I have towards life.
So what’s the point of this post? Heh. I guess I do end up asking what the point is to a lot of things. I ignore the journey, even though I keep telling people that’s the most important part.
Yes, it’s late. And I’m trying to keep up the blogging. It’s been quite quiet here. That needs to stop.
Oh, and on a related “paralysis” note, they think I have Juvenile Arthritis. Awesome.
What’s On The Menu This Week?
Well, looks like I’ll be having another four day weekend, but this time, I won’t be moving too many boxes around. I’m still trying to figure out what the best way of tracking my ideas is going to be… paper seems likely, since my forearms are not liking me these days.
I also have a feeling I’m going to have a meeting in my head about where this blog is headed. There’s definitely going to be another “blog about blog” post.
Ah, goals. Some people have problems coming up with them. I seem to have a problem with keeping them off the list. I need to start being a bit more artistic. When’s a guitar, when I need it? Or drums. Delicious drums…