Category Archives: Pragmatism

I Can’t Say I Can’t, But I Could If…

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With the beginning of a new year, I plan on taking several realizations and things I discovered momentarily, last year, and try to make them permanent. The first is to stop saying, “I/it can’t…,” with the exception of when used in conjunction with, “… but I could if.” The second is, “third-person introspective.”

Some time in September or October, I had an epiphany of how harmful, “I can’t,” is; it allows for excuses to be provided so easily. It allows you to just shuck your responsibility, without fully thinking through the problem, or trying to find another way around the problem. My solution is to only allow myself to say the phrase, “I/It can’t X, but I/it could if x.” It is a simple method, that can be used recursively, to find the starting point, if you can’t do x, then substitute it for X and start again. Ultimately, I feel that it is a great way of breaking a problem down, and avoiding excuses.

Third-person introspective, now this idea is a little less approachable, but personally more fun. I allow myself to escape, and critique myself on all of the actions I make as though I had someone following me around, looking over my shoulder. I tried this for about a week, and while it’s odd at first, it has some pretty interesting results,  you self-inhibit as though you weren’t alone, even if you are. The one issue that I had with it is that you have to be able to maintain two-levels of consciousness simultaneously, which can be difficult, particularly when you’re tired. I assume once one becomes adjusted to it, the second consciousness could become controlled subconsciously.

I’m hoping that implementing both of these, along with my recent purging of  stuff that was weighing on my mind will help me be more active, and engaged in the now. I still have a couple more things to get out of there, but for the most part, I’ve put everything I want behind me, and I’m starting to truly move forward for the first time in two or three years. Hope your year is going to be as wonderful as mine.

Ordered Networking: 4munity/hIphS

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As I feel like it’s good to recognize your failures and look at what went wrong, here is the first of several posts on some of my failures. I’m posting these for two reasons, storing my failures and lessons, but also my ideas, however loosely bound they may be.

Date: December 2007 – September 15th, 2008

Core Ideas:

Limited number of relationships based on Dunbar’s Number(150); Segregation of various groups (e.g. Work, Family, etc.); Focus on forums for communication; Making an environment, extremely unfriendly to spammers.

From the notes:

Privatized Comments – Scalable conversations 1:1 – 1:100 conversation, allowance of publication by Owner [commenter]; Features: OpenID Profiles – Tweet Threads – Forums – API Integration – Collab Napkin Interface; Ordered Network – 150 Friends Max, (later laxed to 200) 149×150(22350) 2nd Order, 149x149x150(3.3million) 3rd Order;  Access: Friends – View Profile, comment, message; 2nd – View profile w/o comments, message; 3rd message; AJAX Threading – Personal Styles (Pre-Designed Offerings); Mobile entry coding: (P[post]/R[read]) GGTT [Group/ Thread Depth] For new thread posting location; AL Appends Last Message (within 15 minutes.)

Background:

I got really sick of Facebook, had already deleted 2 accounts, and barely using a 3rd, Myspace, and forums because of security and overall interaction present on those platforms. The information I saw was spammy or non-relavent to me. I was more interested in finding a way to maximize value of relationships, and communications.

It started off as just an interesting piece of forum software, and then evolved into using relationships to promote and control the relevance of the data, and collaboration. Unfortunately, I was utterly clueless about what I was doing, and went about using Java to build the interface, and text files for storing relationship data; I had no clue about true databases at this point. The whole database was a set of folders and text files, what could go wrong. Yep, not much else got done, except for a barely working version of the napkin, and it definetly wasn’t as functional as I would have liked.

Ultimately, I fell in love with Twitter, and decided to walk away from the project. Not before posting, a blog post detailing the basics fo the service, which I’ll post at the bottom. Overall, I was so disturbed I tossed most of the code out immediately, and have sense thrown most of the other pieces from here and there out as well, even the original logo, which I would have liked to added to this post.

Lessons:

Layout a solid plan, and pick your tools wisely.

Don’t try to do everything, too much, means it takes forever to get things done.

If you need help, ask for advice from people you trust.

If you lose interest before you’ve even completed the project stop throwing more time into it.

Sep 05, 2008

What is hIphS?

A lot of people that have found this place are probably wondering what is hIphs. So I’ll give you some back story on what it is and why it needs to be. hIphs is something that I am currently developing to remove the problems I have found with the Social networking area. It is here to confront spamming, promote relationships, and help people collaborate on projects. It is a support group, a conference for you team, it is a place to connect with your family, above all it is here for you to use. I see it as a social experiment at this stage as of some of the boundaries I have set to force all of the goals, layered networks, personal forums, and above all a 200 person limit for friends, family, and partners.

I feel that If you can force the limit constraint that it will promote relationships and (it has just begun to be implemented in lighter extent on digg and twitter) to reduce spam. I am also working on a napkin interface for collaborative work that would allow you to upload files to share during a conversation, along with and IM client and a whiteboard, all to open the web to truly interactive collaborative projects. It is also to my interest to at some point in the future to allow saving of this collaborative event and allow you to provide it to clients or share it in house. The one other aspect that I’m working on is to provide a threaded forum based twitter like threading that you only receive the threads of your friends and you can keep the thread going with someone who is mutually related to your friend, so long as your friend is the one who began the thread.

Why the name hIphs and why the odd capitalization?

This is actually one of the last names I came up with for the site as my favorites were already taken. The name is based on several levels: First, is the likeness of a closed social network to that of a bee hive, you and your friends are more productive when your dealing on a trust based system. Second, is what you get when you split the word apart “Hi Phs” which I came to symbolize as Hello Friends. Third, I feel that the site will be providing multiple ‘I’nternet ‘S’ervices in the future, thus, the emphasis on those to letters. That’s my description on what hIphS is and why I chose the names. Thank you for reading this if you somehow found it, at this

Hate & Resignation

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It is only out of ignorance that people are cruel, because they really don’t think it will come back. ~ Maya Angelou

This quote, is extremely fitting to this tale. Recently, I saw an indirect, independent action that could be seen as a return of karmic justice, not because I was particularly cruel, but because I was ignorant at a prior time. For many of Friendfeed’s more active English speakers, they may remember the racial slur topic, which cost the service some of it’s best intellectuals. Sadly, I must say that I was one of the “very few” people who kept stoking the fire, long past the point of which it should have been ash; I stoked that fire, and the results of the blaze is some people were singed, but a few were charred.

Do I have regrets for being involved? Absolutely.
Do I think I had reason for being involved? To a point, but I stepped far past what that was.
Was I cognizant of all the rammifications as I made my decisions? No, and I will admit many of those remarks were made in defense, though an unreightous defense, to what  I though were attacks to  my and others credibility.

One thing that I did not completely understand, though I thought I did, was the power of words. I bore that if they were used in good fun and jest, that they shouldn’t have such intensity, the ability to cause pain. Well all that changed last weekend, when I felt attacked directly, by words that I was likely not to see, but happened upon them anyways.

These words may not have been directed upon me, but they were forged from an intense hatred, and were likely set off by something I said haphazardly and in a way mocking my own ignorance. These words not only included that of hatred, but those of compassion, which seemed very cold and insincere when they were breached, and sarcastic thoughts of violence. I can now say that I was, or at least feel as though I was, on the recieving end of a racial hate crime, even if it was only words, from thousands of miles away.

I can also say that to say that you understand, to say that you have compassion, after supporting or standing up for any form of bigotry, even if it was only words spoke in jest, will be called into question. You should not fight when this question is raised, because you, too, are part of the problem. You will stand along side me; you will wait until that suffering returns, to show you its effects. We all need to remember that there is a line, but we must also realize that what lies on either side is the same.

Sadly, it is with this that I have also chosen to step away from friends, all of whom I’ve shared great moments with, and who will share great moments without me. I may stop to observe how they are doing, but my interaction, has caused quite huge losses, not just for myself, but for them as well. I feel now it is better for me to resign, as a member of FF, of course I still reserve a position to be involved with the argumenting about domo’s and the “fat kid.”

To Give Up A Dream

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After a week of no programming or coding of any sort, I’ve realized I’m no longer interested. This makes me a bit sad, and makes me question the past decade. The idea of being a programmer was my dream from a young age, and now I’m realizing it depresses me. Giving it up feels like a betrayal, but at the same time I feel as though a  weight is being lifted from me.

I can now focus on what I love, but I don’t know what that is. I’ve been through many phases and experiences over the last 5 years. In high-school, I focused on drafting(architectural & mechanical), engineering fundamentals, basic number theory, and economic theory. For my short period of college, I focused on philosophy, biology, and computer science. Since then, I’ve focused on systems, business, and customer service areas. Through out, I’ve done simple design work for friends.

My problem is I now get to choose where I want to go and I have rubbed such broad stokes of things that I enjoy that doing that is hard. Luckily, I have three things going for me, my age, knowing the areas I enjoy, and having a very simple set of needs.

To give up one dream, I am opening myself up to the many others that lie before me. I’m re-writing my life from this point, with a new perspective, and a new passion. This is a path less taken, I’m choosing to give up to move forward and find a happier medium, a happier me.

How To Overcome Crushing Blows

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The past few months have been like a riptide for me, every time I pop back above the surface I’m further out, and getting pushed right back under. I’ve lost friends, I’ve somehow managed to walk away from death, and I’ve lost my job. The thing is in life those things matter, but they happened in the past, they will effect how I act in the future, but I shouldn’t have to wait for these to occur to figure out I needed to change.
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