Category » media
July14
helvetimail
I love gmail. I loved it even before they offered themes. When they started offering themes, I loved it even more. Still, I never got really excited about any of them. I picked the minimalist one and called it good.
My sister was visiting last weekend, and while she was using her gmail account I saw that hers was more minimal STILL. It was lovely. I was EXCITED about it. And I was jealous she found it first.
It’s called Helvetimail. It’s a userscript that works with your browser to change the look of your gmail. I love it. To death.
I even donated some money to the dude who keeps it up, because you know what? I appreciate that people work hard to provide good design for free. All you have to do is NOT charge me, and I will pay you. Ha.
July06
the book you don’t read won’t help
I have my head in books lately. Right now I’m reading “The Abstinence Teacher” by Tom Perotta. It’s making me squirm (in a good way).
I was going through an old blog I kept from 2002-2005 and found a post about listening to “The Professor and the Madman” by Simon Winchester on CD while on a road trip.
I think I had my head in books then, too.
I found it interesting, so I’ll just repost it here. [Warning: this is from the "I type only in lowercase" era. You have my permission to be annoyed.]
last week i rented an audio book called ‘the professor and the madman’, by simon winchester, to listen to while driving down to grand rapids.
usually, as is the case with most people, i think (i hope!), i listen to about 20 minutes of whatever audio book it is i happened to choose before my mind starts to wander and an unspecified amount of time passes before i realize that i am NOT listening and i have no idea what’s going on in this book. remarkably, this didn’t happen during ‘the professor and the madman’, in fact, i listened attentively to the whole thing.
as a result, i have become completely obsessed with the making of the oxford english dictionary, lexicography, and the fact that, according to mr. winchester, lexicography seems to attract some very odd people.
it is important to note, i think, that i once lived just down the road on walton st. from the oxford university press, in oxford, UK, where the dictionary was printed. and, also, that james murray, the first editor, lived with his wife and 11 children on banbury road, which was also not far from where i lived in oxford. ok, i’m bragging, but i can’t help it.
here are a few facts that i find FASCINATING about the making of the OED and i would be VERY surprised if you, too, didn’t find these things interesting:
1.0) the OED is unique in that it doesn’t only list words that are correct, or only in use. the OED lists EVERY WORD EVER USED in the english language.
2.0) in order to accomplish the weighty task of listing every word ever used, the editors decided that everything ever WRITTEN needed to be read. they enlisted the help of thousands of volunteers….asking them to read anything and write down words they found interesting, with a quotation using that specific word and send it in to the ‘scriptorium’ in oxford. j.r.r. tolkien was a contributor, if that impresses all you hobbit-lovers out there.
3.0) it took 70 years to complete the first edition of the OED. sadly, james murray, the OED’s editor, wasn’t alive to see it completed. james wrote many of the definitions himself, trying to complete 33 words per day. it took them five years to go from a-ant. when it was finished in 1928, the work contained over 400,000 words and phrases in ten volumes.
sure. i’m a nerd. but god, it’s good stuff.
Have you read anything lately that blew your mind?
June27
my baby – she wrote me a letter
The book I’m reading, it’s called Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett, is a memoir of a friendship. In it, she includes letters. Letters written between two friends who are writers. As you can imagine, these letters are BEAUTIFULLY written.
I love letters. I used to write letters. Getting a letter in the mail is just….a very specific kind of awesome.
So I have decided that I’m going to write actual letters to a few friends. Friends I don’t see or talk to all that often so I can just sit down and write about daily life.
News flash: this isn’t actually easy.
I sat down to write a letter to my friend, Martinique. I got out STATIONERY. From, like, 1991. A good pen. I decided to go balls-out and write in cursive because well, I like to overdo things. The next thing you know, I’m writing all kinds of shit that doesn’t make sense. I’m contradicting myself. I’m getting all philosophical AS I WRITE without really thinking it through.
There’s no backspace. There’s no cut and paste. No command-x. When I start writing, I actually have to commit to an idea. Commit? There’s no “commit” in email writing. I never knew how heavily I rely on the shortcuts a computer allows.
But I love it. I love that my letter makes no sense and tries too hard. I love that it’s in really out-of-practice cursive. I think she’ll really love getting it.
You should try it – just see what you end up writing. I promise it’ll end up vastly different than the last email you wrote.
June27
blogs – please stop annoying me
I used to love to read blogs.
I love to sneak into stranger’s lives (lives both different from my own and very similar) as a way of escape. It’s sort of like reading a memoir as it’s being written. You get to fall for the characters a little harder because they’re real people. You get invested in their stories. You see their vulnerabilities and you root for them. Sometimes they inspire you and sometimes they make you laugh.
I mentioned this in a previous post; that I worry about this blog being too general and maybe a little too wobbly for the current blogging climate. But you know what? I think that’s because I think the current blogging climate sucks a fat one.
Mommy blogs used to be FUN to read. A lot of them were self-deprecating and funny and we could all laugh together about how motherhood so often feels like fumbling around in the dark.
Some still are. But many of them have become preachy and represent some of the worst ways that moms relate to one another. Judgmental, condescending, and BORING.
Lifestyle/design blogs are semi-interesting in a really pedestrian way. They’re handy when you’re killing time, but it doesn’t feel like a great use of time because how many throw pillows does one really need? I almost always feel as though I’ve wasted time when I’ve spent 20 minutes looking at lifestyle/design blogs.
Some of the most popular blogs feel exclusionary. These bloggers write about their relationships with each other and about social media conferences they attend. They hint around about big changes in their lives without really telling the stories. The end result is sort of alienating. Good stories make the reader feel included.
So, I’m thinking of purging my blog roll. I read maybe 1 our of every 10 new posts, so I’m just going to delete the ones I don’t read.
Do you have any suggestions? Good, personal, “I’m-a-real-person/not-a-perfect-parent/not-trying-to-be-a-celebrity-blogger/I-care-about-more-than-throw-pillows” blogs?
Please?
March19
teux deux
I have been using Teux Deux as my online to-do list. Isn’t it slick?
When I started this get rid of half project, I realized I was going to have to go as paperless as possible. Paper all over the place BLOWS, as I’m sure you know. Thing is – I am a list maker. I had millions of lists around on post-its.
There are some amazing options out there like The Hit List, Things and Omnifocus but they cost money and are a little too sophisticated for what I needed. I THOUGHT I needed all kinds of shit, but then I realized I am an idiot. This is about simplifying. If I have so many effing things to do that I can’t fit them on a simple to-do list then I’m doing it wrong.
The problem was with my life, not with the task manager. I needed to simplify the things that go ON the list. If I did that, any simple to-do list would do the job.
And of course, since I’m a snob, I had to have something nice to look at.
