27 December 2005: Penultimate

Monday the 19th was the final night of the Paratheatrical Research Experiments in Compassion lab. The lab's rechristening as Experiments in Compassion is official now - Sherpa saw it in the previous entry and liked it. You can read his notes on the lab at http://www.paratheatrical.com/clownwords.html.

So what happened to my own notes on the lab? And my notes on all the other interesting events of these past few months? I didn't write them, and I've come to the conclusion that the primary reason for this is that although I frequently felt inspired to write about them, I was strongly uninspired by the format and user interface in which I would have done that writing.

The user interface has been the bigger problem. I've found Dreamweaver to be a convenient tool for general site design, but it's not convenient, efficient, or enjoyable as a tool for regular journaling. In the interest of following the Golden Rule, I'll refrain from explaining why, since in social situations I regard software as the third-most-boring conversation topic in the universe, after sports and motorcyles.

When I get home from an aikido class, a paratheatrical lab session, an interesting day at school, or just about anything else worth writing about, I like to kick back and read my email and the various blogs and other sites I read regularly. And while I do that, I answer email and occasionally post comments to blogs and online discussion groups. Think of something to say, click a button, type what I want to say into a text box, click another button, and it's done. Easy and fun. Looking back at how many emails I've answered at length and how many mini-essays I've posted in the comments sections of other people's blogs, I've been realizing that the problem is not that I don't have time to write journal entries, it's that I prefer to spend that time writing in more enjoyable interfaces.

I’ve been thinking for a few months that the solution is to switch over to some of that newfangled blogging software that kids today use, where I’d just log into a convenient web-based interface, type into a text box, click a button, and the entry would be done. Plus, all the archiving and indexing and such would be taken care of automatically.

Several weeks ago I helped Lila install and configure WordPress blogging software on her site, and when I saw how well-put-together the user interface was, and how good the whole thing looked and how well it worked, I got a serious case of interface envy and decided that once the semester was over I’d start looking into getting some blogging software of my own.

Switching over to blog format is also a way to solve my other problem with Monkey Days: the format of the pages isn’t quite right for me anymore. In fact, the whole thing somehow isn’t quite right for me anymore. These past few months have been a time of intense transition for me, and there’s more intense transition to come in the next few months. I’m moving into a new phase of my life, and it feels like the medium in which I make my notes on that life needs to change accordingly. My aikido technique has evolved more rapidly in the past couple of months than ever before to accomodate recent developments in my work; it feels like all my major vehicles of expression need to evolve in equivalent ways.

Once one installs WordPress blogging software, one downloads a “theme”: a set of files that plug into the blog and determine the appearance of its pages – basically, a predesigned “look” for the blog that determines everything about how the content is presented. WordPress is Open Source, so there are literally hundreds of WordPress themes available online for free downloading and usage.

When I helped Lila install her blogging software, it took us about an hour and a half to find a theme that suited her. When I installed mine, it took me two days of searching to determine that there did not exist, anywhere, a theme that remotely suited my aesthetic needs. And a bit of poking around under the hood (yay, Open Source!) revealed that customizing any theme as thoroughly as my aesthetic needs demanded would require a level of technical know-how with XHTML and CSS that was far beyond my scope (that’s what I get for walking away in disgust when my geek friends talk about software at parties).

It took me another two days to determine that none of the other downloadable Open Source blogging software out there met my needs either – indeed none of it came close to meeting my needs as well as WordPress did. So I went back to WordPress, downloaded the least-unsuitable theme, went into hardcore geek mode, and spent another two days completely overhauling the theme until it looked and functioned exactly how I wanted it to, teaching myself the necessary XHTML and CSS as I went along.

Yeah, I can do that. I’m an Aspie; I’m my father’s son; I have an IQ approximately equal to my weight in pounds and the ability to get obsessively entangled in a project and go for days at a time with almost no food or sleep. Genetically, I’m perfect computer geek material. I’m useless with most technology, from motor vehicles to Linux, but that’s because my personal choices, the yearnings of my soul, and the machinations of God have turned my attention elsewhere, not because my mind is inherently unsuited to such things. Quite the contrary. But I tend to forget that for months or years at a time, and it’s always a bit surreal to do something like this that reminds me of my untapped geek potential – it’s like stepping for a few hours or days into a nearby alternate reality and tasting an alternate, much more financially prosperous, much less graceful and joyous life that could have been mine if things had gone just a little bit differently. (Not that techie geeks can’t lead graceful and joyous lives – I know there are some who do – just that it wouldn’t have been as graceful and joyous a path for me.)

Anyhow, the point of all this rambling is that this is the penultimate entry of Monkey Days.

I love the word penultimate.

I have one final entry to write, to fulfill a promise that I made to my readers back when I first started Monkey Days three and a half years ago, and then in early January I’ll archive the whole thing and begin my new journal, Further Research, using that newfangled WordPress blogging software that provides an easy and fun interface, automatic archiving and searching both by month and by topic, reader comment functionality, and circles and arrows attached to each entry explaining what each one is so it can be used as evidence against me.

I have readers now who are too young to remember the origin of that last reference.

Yes, the complete Monkey Days archive will remain up on this site. I continue to get email on a regular basis from people who have found some entry or another, or the thing as a whole, to be of interest or value in some way or another.

When Further Research begins, there’ll be a link to it on the main Monkey Days index page at http://www.nickykaa.com/Days.html, where you usually check for new Monkey Days entries, so just keep on checking there as usual.

I’ve been trying to get this entry finished for a week. For the first few days, I was continually interrupted by the various other projects that I’m trying to get done before my classes at CIIS begin on January 6th (my classes don’t begin until the 6th, but my studies begin today: I’ve already received an impressive list of essays and such that I’m supposed to have read by the first class). My other projects, in turn, were continually interrupted by my desperate need to hibernate and sit around in my bathrobe doing nothing all day in order to integrate the last few sessions of the Experiments in Compassion lab.

And then I had to accompany Dragon Lady to Dallas, to spend Christmas with her adoptive parents and sister. We left before dawn on Friday, about four hours after I returned home from a very nice Winter Solstice party/ritual at Sherpa and Syrinx’s house. We got back yesterday night.

I dislike flying (at least with mechanical assistance of the sort presently available), and Dallas is a good bit closer to Hell than I prefer to venture these days, but Dragon Lady’s adoptive parents and sister are wonderful people, and the trip did provide me with the opportunity to finish one of my projects: proofreading the latest draft of the first third or so of Rhiannon’s currently-in-progress third novel (a sequel of sorts to her first one, The Fool’s Tale – if out of some perversity of character or sheer ill-fortune you have not yet read The Fool’s Tale, now is the perfect time to correct this appalling gap in your life; it’s perfect Winter reading). Reading more of Rhiannon’s writing is always a delight, though when reading a book by someone that good at building suspense, it’s somewhat less than delightful to get two-fifths of the way through and have it suddenly end with an “Under Construction” sign.

I would also have had time to finish this entry on that trip, except that I didn’t have access either to Dreamweaver or to the parts of the entry I’d already written. That’s another advantage that my switch to blogging software will bring: I’ll be able to post entries from anywhere where I have access to an Internet connection and a web browser.

Speaking of web browsers, when I said that I got the WordPress theme I customized for Further Research to do what I wanted it to do, it would have been more accurate to say that I got it to do what I wanted it to do except when it’s being viewed on Internet Explorer.

On some versions of IE, it’s just slightly off (it appears on the left side of the browser window, instead of in the middle of it as it does in other browsers), but in some it looks really awful (the left margin is at the left side of the browser window, and the right margin at the right, with the header graphic centered at the top, when the whole thing is actually meant to be of a fixed width, such that the text area – including the right-hand sidebar – is the same width as the header graphic... you’ll see what I mean when it’s up and running).

I thought about putting more work into it, posting to various forums looking for suggestions from experienced blog designers on how to accommodate the quirks of various versions of IE... but then I decided not to. When I work on the Aiki Arts website, I have to put up with that shit, because it hurts my business if that site doesn’t look good to the general public, and far too big a chunk of the general public still uses IE.

But I have no need whatsoever for this site to appeal to the general public, or to anyone. That’s the whole point of a personal site: I get to do what I like with it. Some people will like it, some won’t. The people who like it tend to be my kind of people and I’m glad to provide them with something they like; the people who don’t like it need not concern me.

So I’m not going to bother making Further Research (or anything else I might put on this site in the future) IE-friendly. Because if you’re the kind of person who would enjoy a site like this, then you’re excellent enough that it’s about time you stopped compromising your soul by using IE.

See, like it or not, your choice of browser is a political and moral choice. Server logs allow anyone with a website to see how many of their visitors use which browser. Every time you use IE, you provide Microsoft with more support for their claim that they control such a huge share of the software market that no one can afford not to play the software game their way – and thus with more weight to throw around in their attempts to crush the Open Source movement. Every time you use any Open Source browser, on the other hand, you help to shift the balance in favor of the Open Source movement.

And this isn’t one of those cases where you make some sort of compromise on quality or convenience for the sake of Doing the Right Thing, the way I do by refusing to order books from Amazon.com, despite their good selection and good prices, because of their massive contributions to Republican candidates in the 2004 elections. In this case, the morally inferior choice is also the inferior product. If IE were as good as the better Open Source browsers on the market, I wouldn’t have had occasion to write this, because IE would read the code I wrote for my blogging software just as well as all the other browsers are able to read it. But Microsoft’s code just isn’t as good as good Open Source code, and their software doesn’t work as well as good Open Source software.

Oh, and good Open Source browsers can be downloaded and installed for free. Firefox is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems; for Mac users I also recommend the browser I use, Camino.

Okay, enough ranting. If I don’t wrap up this entry soon, yet another day will go by without my posting it.

But first, one brief note from the Experiments in Compassion lab that I wanted to make sure I did write down somewhere. Attending lab with some minor physical ailments, I hit upon the idea of sourcing this polarity: What Needs Healing on one side, and The Source of Healing on the other. The results were so extraordinary that I chose to work with the same polarity again in one of the following week’s sessions, and I’ll likely work with it again in the future. Add this one to the Bag of Very Useful Tricks (which is growing quite large, but is still dwarfed by the Bag of Not Nearly So Useful Tricks, the Bag of Tricks That Never Help a Bit, and the Bag of Mind-Bogglingly Stupid Tricks That Make Things Far Worse Than You’d Ever Imagined and Are Almost Impossible to Get Back Into the Bag).

Okay, enough, enough, enough.

I have promises to keep.