Category Archives: Writing

Publishing platforms and cross-publishing

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I am currently publishing with WordPress. Entries are cross-posted to various other places, including LJ and DW. This addresses several basic desires I have for a publishing platform:

  1. That I can write using one consistent set of tools, and not have to keep three or four or more targets in mind when I’m writing;
  2. That all of my writing (and any images and so forth I might publish) is in one convenient central location for backups and storage;
  3. That I can publish things publicly, note things privately, or write to a group of friends and acquaintances without difficulty;
  4. and that I can fiddle endlessly with the fine details of implementation but that the general functionality just works and does what I want.

It’s also convenient that I can also use the publishing platform I get paid to work on, since it means that such fiddling around with fine details of implementation is, as I like it to be, both my hobby and my profession.

Happy New Year! Make some mistakes.

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I’m not the first person by a long shot to say that the “good enough” is the enemy of the “at all”. I’m probably not the last to get around to believing it, either. One of these days, I probably will remember it.

I’m a perfectionist. I hate doing things wrong, or doing things poorly. This is a common flaw among computer folk, at least, and it leads to some outstandingly bad code and design decisions – what “wrong” and “poorly” mean can get pretty myopic if you’re not careful, and you end up with a huge pile of rubbish built to handle every case that you can imagine but that frequently doesn’t handle any of them well. It’s been important for me to recognize what “good enough” means, and aim for that rather than some imperfect view of perfection.

But that has the same pitfalls! If “good enough” is the ideal, then there must be a “perfect” good enough, right? Finding exactly the right compromise solution is now just as important as finding exactly the right overall solution, and in some ways that’s even harder to decide on and simply do.

It’s important to do things wrong. It’s important to do things poorly. Doing things wrong and doing them poorly means you’re doing them at all.

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

–Neil Gaiman

iMania

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The Apple iPad, like many apple products before it, has polarized people. Some people love it, some people hate it. Some people will use it everywhere, some people honestly can’t imagine a single use.

As with many products before, I fall somewhere in the middle.

On the plus side: It looks like a beautiful piece of hardware; every report I have read says that using it is a dream come true to any fan of the various iTouches. Fast, integrated, smooth, and with beautiful user interface decisions; top of the line hardware and (more polish on) groundbreaking software combine to make an unbelievable platform, and one which the vast majority of people will find satisfies their needs and exceeds all their expectations.

On the minus side: Apple has made, and will continue to make, an intentionally crippled and limited device in the name of a better overall user experience. While I wholeheartedly agree with their goals – make it accessible to the common man! – it is simply not what I, as a power user who is otherwise well in the target market, need in many respects.

Any number of minor concessions would solve this problem for me – and these are the same issues I have with any “trusted computing” sort of platform. It is not my best interests that Apple is trying to protect here, either as a developer or as an individual user. It is theirs, and it is not in their best interests to allow me to, for instance, decide whose software I actually trust.

No, I’m not trying to run Linux on the thing. It runs a perfectly acceptable *NIX operating system already, and in fact has a fantastic GUI (for almost every purpose) and software installation procedure (for almost every case) already. I just want to run my instant messenger and Pages. Even just the ability to background one application (with – yes, I realize this – the appropriate time and attention put in to making the experience smooth and complete) would make a huge difference in the overall usability.

I’d really like to run Processing on it. It’s just such a perfect platform for art-programming, and there’s nothing else quite like Processing for that.

But that’s all. I don’t want a pony.