tychoish, now without a net

With a title like the “Daily Grind,” I suspect you’re expecting a post about how I’m acclimating to my new 9-5 job. Wrong. I think this one is more about publishing schedules in new media, but, it’s probably a lot more connected than I want to think about.

I suppose first off, I should cop to the fact that I am totally guilty–when I know I’m going to be in crunch time–of writing entries in runs of six or so, and then posting them out one by one, so that the blog maintains a daily publication schedule, and I can put energy when it needs to go.

Second off, I should note that I’ve been listening to Jared Axelrod’s’s now daily (or almost compleatly daily, at least of ep ~60-70 where I am now) podcast “The Voice of Free Planet X.” I’ve been listening to VoFPX for a while, and I’ve always liked it (so if you don’t listen to it, you should it’s good stuff), but Jared’s said something interesting recently–by my frame–that I want to reflect upon.

Jared reported having some trouble keeping a weekly posting schedule, because it was something that you could put off if things got tight and still–more or less–keep your schedule. In contrast, you can’t really put off something that is supposed to happen daily more than a few hours or else you don’t meet the deadline. I’d also add that in a lot of cases as creators we say–at least to our selves–if it comes out weekly it has to represent a weeks worth of work, whereas if it comes out daily it represents–in most cases–proportionally less work, and just has to exist.

And the truth about writing, and creating–particularly on the internet–is that success is pretty random. Having a story, or a site, podcast, or a video that “works” and becomes popular is not the effect of some transcendental skill, and even a not incredibly strongly correlation to skill; but rather a function of the quantity of output. You got to keep putting things out, keep making things, and the more you make the more likely something is to really “make it.”

When blogs first started, everyone praised them because they made publishing online really easy. You wrote something and hit post. That was it. For the most part blogs (and other related media) succeed as we hit the post button more. And this corresponds to our reading style. It takes just as long to read a blog post with meticulously crafted prose as it does to read one that was written in the morning on half a cup of coffee. And the chances are, that posting frequently will lead to more success (where success equals audience size) because people will check regularly updated sites more often than sites that update less frequently.

As a result of this I’ve made the observation on a number of occasions, that while a firm and regular posting schedule will cement and stabilize a your audience/readership of plus or minus a few percent, you can’t “jump” levels simply by increasing volume of content generation.

So I guess there are a couple of threads to this argument the “schedules are good for audiences” and the “schedules are good for creation.” Having trounced the former sufficiently, lets move on to the later.

I think clearly we all work at different speeds, and we do different things, I think I do better with this kind of scheduling. It’s helped the blogging, for me, and projects like 365 Tomorrows, and Thing a Week, j.r. blackwell’s photos and so forth, all seem to be creative successes (and I suspect distribution-increasing successes as well.)

It’s just a hair brained idea at the moment, but I think it might be fun to start a project like this for the fiction writing that I’m not doing at the moment. A daily routine would have the effect of a) getting things out there. b) inspiring an increase in productivity, and writerly practice. Also, I think I’m likely as busy at the moment as I’m likely to be at any time in the next couple of years, and I think I feel like I’ve “got” the blogging rhythm down, and it’s time to add a new project. Just a thought, and I’m making no promises, that’s for sure. More musings in the future.

Onward and Upward!

permalink • • zero comments
tagged: academia • interwebs • journal • writing

I don’t have a good new post for tychoish today, it’s been eventful, and I seem to have about half a spare brain cell.

I did however manage to get posts up for a couple of guest blogging things:

• A post on Zimmermania, with a finished picture of a sweater that I worked on a while back (I’m behind on sweater posting, it’s true)…

• A post on the Feminist Science Fiction Blog about “the singularity” and possible theoretical interactions with feminist ideas. It’s sort of rambling, but a good start.

I’ll be back plenty soon enough, you just wait and see.

permalink • • zero comments
tagged: interwebs • knitting • the queer

So I’m off in a few to go visit with my grandmother who has recent had a knee replacement. (Indeed this means that the blog has been down one reader for a few weeks–rehab centers not having wifi and all–and likely will for another week and some change.) While there is high speed internet (how do you think said grandmother reads the blog,) my posting time might be a little bit sparse.¹

My goal is to post the first bread crumb of the latvian dreaming tonight.

I did want to share a couple of links that I’ve been collecting over the past few days and weeks.

• sockpr0n’s schacht matchless - This blog posting has some useful info on “hybrid” double drive setup, where you can do double drive with two separate bands rather than one band. This means you can have a finer degree of control over tension like you would with a break band, except with the evenness of double drive. Rock. On.
• y knit - I started listening to this as I was spinning with my mother this morning before getting ready to go. It’s great. Perfect length, great guys (hi mike!), nice insight. I’m generally pretty nonplussed towards the Stitch and Bitch stuff (the “consumer feminism” wigs me out, as does the hipster stuff.) but hearing Debbie Stoller talk makes me like her more, even if the aura isn’t something I”m into. I suspect I’m the last person to be getting into this (I’m generally 3 months behind on getting into new podcasts, at least), but if you’re not listening to this one, work on it.
• Tea Gadget - I got an email from the marketing department of this company, that makes this portable loose leaf tea brewing thing. I think the website might be an interesting place to start a semiotic study of advertising, and the contraption looks interesting. I’m not sure if it’s right for me, but you might be different. I think getting this email either means that I’ve arrived, or I’m officially passed my prime.

Anyway. Looks like that’s all the news that’s fit to sing.

Brownie points to the first person to figure that one out. That isn’t family.

Onward and Upward!

permalink • • one comment
tagged: Announcements • interwebs • knitting

So I’ve been working on, well g-d only knows what today, but apparently it didn’t involve blogging. I have gotten things done, and I’m probably half to 3/4s of the way done with my document for my class on sunday, and making progress on my sweater.

These are good things.

I haven’t talked much about it here, but I suspect that most of you are aware that I twitter. That is that I post things to my twitter page throughout my day. Links, thoughts, notifications of new blog entries (ok, that’s automatic, but still). It’s a great deal of fun, once you get into it, and I heartily recommend it!

Anyway, one of the things that I’ve been doing of late, is when a lyric of a song strikes my ear/fancy, I’ll post a snippet of it on twitter. Usually I don’t go for the most recongizeable lyric, like I’ve posted bits of “The Times they are A-Changing” that aren’t “come gather around children” or “the times they are a-changing,” and other such.

And it’s sort of cool when people twitter back the name of the song or the next lyric, or something, it’s sort of like a sing along.

Recently I’ve been twittering parts of the 69 Love Songs collection by “The Magnetic Fields,” which I think is full of great little lyrics like “Papa was a rodeo, mama was a rock and roll band,” and “Like the Moon needs poetry, you need me” and “Not for all the tea in China \ Not if I could sing like a bird \ Not for all North Carolina.” And it’s so delightful that an obviously quirky band like The Magnetic Fields is so well known that people can generate the next lines and what not from memory.

I’ve put the iPod back onto random, so who knows what’s going to stick in the next few days but I’d like to continue to do this kind of thing, and it would be great to have little sing-a-longs with you too.

permalink • • zero comments
tagged: interwebs • meme

So I promised another tea review, and given that I’ve had about half of the box so far, I think it’s fair that I start.

After I posted my last review, a few people–mostly relatives–made a great deal of fun of me for such a geeky focus on a cup of tea. And having said that, I took the opportunity to look a little more thoroughly at the tea blogging community.

Wow, there was a fully developed niche that I have no exposure to. I’ve been on this “internet thing” for so long that I still think of fully deployed niche blogs as being sort of “new,” which I think explains some of my awed response.

In any case, I’m not that much of a tea dweeb, most of the teas that I’m reviewing come in bag form, and I’m not experimenting to find the proper brewing nirvana for each tea variety, I’m just drinking the tea as I normally would and seeing how it goes.

The tea this time is Pickwick English Tea Blend. It’s a dutch tea, or at least the packaging is all dutch. The tea-bags are pretty big it seems, and there is no individual wrapping, though the bags all have strings and grip-tab things. This packaging is sort of annoying, it’s sort of “half way there,” and makes it difficult to use effectively.

The tea is pretty strong, I think this is a function of the bags being bigger: I get a really strong 16-18oz cup of tea from one bag, which is a function of bag size, I think. It almost always needs milk, but it’s not a harsh tea, despite it’s strength.

In term of flavor, it’s interesting deep, rich, which is delightful of course, but there’s a hint of something wooden or smokey–a little bitter behind the flavor, which is a good move. I think tea needs something back there to make it unique and to differentiate it from other teas.

If I weren’t looking to switch to loose leaf teas, for most of my day-to-day tea drinking, I’d probably get this one again in a heart beat. Since the packaging sucks, and I’m looking to use the loose stuff, maybe not so much. But if you really like strong dark tea, without any flavor crap this is really great stuff.

permalink • • zero comments
tagged: interwebs • tea

So I’m writing a book where many of the characters are basically CIA agents. Which has meant that I have needed to spend some time thinking more seriously about intelligence and counterintelligence operations.

Then, an event in my real life inspired the following realization/observation:

If you’re gathering intelligence and you discover something you don’t like, because you’re spying, you can’t really be upset when you unearth this information.

Scouts honor, or something.

permalink • • zero comments
tagged: interwebs • observations • writing