About a year ago, Jen opened her own artisinal food business. I ordered a pot of damson butter from her posthaste, because I knew that something made by someone who loves food so much and writes so well could not possibly be bad. When it arrived (along with an impeccable sheet of relevant scientific/technical copy that I should have saved as an example for my students), it went straight into the pantry. I’m the only jam-eater in my house, and I was already working my way through a jar of muscadine jelly and a pot of fig jam. It’s taken me awhile to finish those off.

Today is rainy and dark, perfect for biscuits. And it was finally time to open a new pot of something sweet and preserved. This damson butter is magic — deep and complex, perfectly textured. Jen is an absolute master. I wish this could be an advertisement for Bakerina Kitchens, but the enterprise is shuttered. (With good reason: the profit margins were slender and the Bakerina is plotting to go to law school.) She’ll be brilliant at it, but I hope she eventually finds a way to return to her weekend chefery and food blogging. My day has been improved by it, and so will every other day that this pot of damson butter makes an appearance. (Thankfully, I eat preserves slowly. That means quite a few days for quite awhile to come.)

Posted at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"Therefore, it stands to reason that without the MP, there would be no PC’s due to the size and price of bulky super commuters. "

"Both companies made exiting strides in the software arena."

"The wiki-way gave birth to many other projects with the most notably noted being Wikipedia."

Posted at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Since early January, I’ve been working on getting the dissertation going. This is the first time I’ve launched a project of this scope, and the way the process has impacted my life has been curious. I expected that I would need to talk my way through it, that I would need a lot of tangible support, and so I set things up accordingly. In late January, I gave a talk on my topic to a graduate seminar, and the discussion that came out of that was very helpful. I met with one member of my exams group several times, and that was energizing. I kept going to weekly dinners with C., and meeting E. and B. for lunch occasionally.

The thing was, I was writing until I started talking. I hardly wrote at all when I was most social. Then I noticed myself unconsciously withdrawing from a lot of contact and using various excuses to do so. C and I haven’t been able to get out schedules to sync, E took a new job 30 miles away, and B has been dealing with family tasks. I checked out of writing group for the time being. I’ve been scarcer around the department, which The Powers That Be are fine with. (As far as they’re concerned, a very visible dissertator is probably not doing much dissertating.) Once I had withdrawn from those things, I started writing again, and I wrote more and more. As I’ve finally finished the first full draft of the prospectus (28 pages, longer than it should be), I haven’t even been inclined to blog or flickr. Haven’t answered most non-business email, and have been sadly lax about calling my parents. I hang out with Mister Husband, but even then the introvert switch flips a little quicker than it normally would.

It's turned out that I needed to sit in a room by myself and wait for things to form. It's an active sort of waiting, but still waiting. I think it’s being in a position to notice the things that normally happen on the back burner of my brain and bring them more to the front. It’s writing things down before they can get away. Some people in my life have understood, but more have been offended by my lack of availability. I’m not sure exactly how to deal with this. I miss people and don’t want to upset them, but I’m also very interested in this other Thing, which really has to get done.

I wonder if this is what starting big projects will become for me. I wonder if this is how it works for other people. I wonder if after this thing gets underway I can start going out into the world again, or if hermitizing is a part of the whole process.

Only one way to find out, I guess.

Posted at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Best of Technology Writing 2006
Media Ecology 101: An Introductory Reading List

Posted at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Day 4 of being sick on the couch has been wildly improved by the arrival of socks in the mail. There’s a reason G* is my BFF!!!omg!4evah&evah!!!111!

*BFF G is not to be confused with Compatriot G. I gotta come up with better pseudonyms.

Posted at 7:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been watching twitter blow up over the past couple of months. Some smart things are being written about it already. And I just got my first email from someone who wonders why I'm not already twittering.

I’m the sort of person who doesn’t leave my cell phone on because I don’t want to be easily reachable. (Well, that’s slightly less true since we jettisoned the land line.) I never remember to sign on to IM, even though I understand the value of presence, and I can’t bring myself to make sign-on automatic. So it follows that no, I don’t want to provide the world with multiple soundbites about my life each day. I really can’t imagine what I would say.

This stance bothers me a bit, because it seems strange for someone who hasn’t minded blogging the past four years of her life and who dumps almost all of her photos into flickr. But in those spaces, it feels less like the world looking over my shoulder and more like a book that I’m making.

The only time I can see myself using it is when I’m traveling and don’t have the time to regularly blog. I was intrigued by the way Maggie Mason used it (and flickr) to keep the masses updated during her labor. The idea of twitter fiction has a lot of possibilities, and no doubt people will find business applications for it. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops in the next few months.

Posted at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

1. Ah, Spring Break!
2. Make to-do list on Saturday. Include some large things that absolutely must get done this week.
3. Remark upon the fact that I haven't been sick in about a year and have avoided falling prey to this flu season.

As you might imagine, I’m starting my third day of couch rest today. Coughing, sniffling, sneezing, blech. Ain't nothing getting done.

Posted at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hand-coding a tiny bit of the text for the diss prospectus sample analysis.

Posted at 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I’ve decided I’m updating things around the domain come hell or high water. So the pages will undoubtedly get uglier before they get prettier.

Posted at 10:13 AM | Permalink

There's a little dip in the M section of my writing playlist that never fails to make me smile:

Have You Ever Seen the Rain? (Minutemen)
Big Fat Momma (Mississippi Fred McDowell)
I'm a Believer (The Monkees)
Up On the Sun (Meat Puppets)
Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo (The Mormon Tabernacle Choir)
Dark Green Car (Mummydogs)

shortly followed by another in the P-R section:

Gloryhallastoopid (Parliament)
Summer Cannibals (Patti Smith)
Mary Anne With the Shaky Hand (Petra Hayden)
Wave of Mutilation (Pixies)
50 ft Queenie (PJ Harvey)
Peaches (Presidents of the United States of America)
Ain't that Fine (Ray Charles)
Sympathy for the Devil (Rolling Stones)

Posted at 7:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Very bright and sunny here. Morning phone call from my dad. Wonderful e-cards in the inbox. Maybe go out and run around a little later.

Getting ready to teach. After I finish lecturing, we'll analyze the Rick Santorum episode of The Daily Show and eat cupcakes.

Dinner in, since Mister Husband is making his Famous Spicy Beef.

So far, then, 31 is low-key, quite pleasant, and doesn't necessarily feel the need to complete all its sentences.

Posted at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

In the last 24 hours, I found out that

• Two blog-aquaintances are having a baby.
• One of my oldest, favoritest blog-friends is having a baby.
• Someone whose site I've read for forever and have become quite fond of is getting married.

Also, my birthday is tomorrow. I liked 30 so much that I considered just turning 30 again (Part II: Electric Bugaloo!). But I think instead I'm going with Drinking Age + 10.

Posted at 3:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I love Minnesota winters, but I've always said that along about the end of February, things inevitably begin to resemble scenes from The Shining. You and the rest of the masses shovel yourselves out and head to Target in the evening and the fluorescents are flickering and everyone is manning their cart in a very controlled manner, just barely reining it in. Any minute the knife music is going to start playing and the blood will flow down the paper goods aisle. But all the cutting would be totally polite and passive-aggressive, because that's Minnesota Nice*.

Evidently I’m not the only one who thinks this way.

*Which is not all that different from Southern Politeness, really.

Posted at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The polar bears at the Como Park Zoo are very happy these days, what with 22 inches of snow on the ground and all. I made a time-lapse set of this one doing backflips and dives in his swimming pool.

Posted at 6:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

An Australian woman who was caught smuggling over 50 live tropical fish out of Singapore in her skirt has been sentenced. Customs officers at Melbourne Airport caught the woman after they heard flapping sounds coming from beneath her skirt. Underneath the skirt they found a purpose-built apron containing 15 water-filled fish bags and a total of 51 tropical freshwater fish. The fish included the undescribed Queen arabesque peckoltia, several botiine loaches, including Botia kubotai, and a $30,000 arowana.

I really don't think I would be brave enough to smuggle an arowana anywhere near delicate parts of my person. (Not that I smuggle anything anyway.) Several stores around town carry them, and I'm told most specimens are sold to the Asian community since they're considered lucky. They are much more sea-monster-ish than most fish. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night for fear of an arowana trying my bedroom door.

Arowanas, also known as aruanas or arawanas are freshwater bony fish of the family Osteoglossidae, sometimes known as "bony tongues." ... The name 'bony tongues' is derived from a toothed bone on the floor of the mouth, the 'tongue', equipped with teeth that bite against teeth on the roof of the mouth. ... Arowanas have been rumored to capture prey as large as low flying bats and small birds. All species are large, and the arapaima is a contender for the world's largest freshwater fish title. Arowana typically grow around 3 to 4 feet and around 48", but this is only accountable in captivity.

Posted at 1:14 PM | Permalink

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL – The University of Minnesota is canceling all classes and evening activities effective at 2:30 p.m. today, Provost Thomas Sullivan announced today. “In light of current conditions and the forecast for severely worsening weather, this is an appropriate measure at this time,” said Sullivan. “The mid-afternoon closing of metro area schools, colleges and universities and other institutions made it even clearer that this is the right thing to do.”

UMN closed down for snow? This has never happened in the three years we've been here. The end must be near.

Posted at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

These are books I've been reading about old media precedents to new media forms. The Smith & Marx anthology on technological determinism isn’t explicitly about this sort of thing, but I figure determinism factors into this particular interest of mine. I've also ordered Lisa Gitelman's new book, Always Already New. Is there anything else I should be looking at?

(Of course, there's history of the book and new media theory and orality/literacy and digital texts and on and on. I've got a lot of that stuff around here. What I'm looking for right now are materials that deal specifically with old media precedents.)

Posted at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)