Posts filed under 'General'
A few years ago, I was perusing a photography magazine with a feature on how to take beautiful photographs of not-so-beautiful people. In the course of the article, a university study was quoted as demonstrating that people with completely symmetrical and slightly rounded faces were consistently chosen by participants as being the most attractive. Therefore, the article went on to say, we should photograph the subject in such a way that non-symmetrical elements are understated, and vary the angle and lighting such that the face appears more round.
Now, I’m not handsome by any stretch of the imagination, nor fashionable in the slightest. I seem to follow the Indiana Jones school of fashion sense, but much to the chagrin of my significant other, I bear no ressemblance at all to Harrison Ford. After reading the article, then staring at myself in the mirror, I was suddenly struck by the lack of symmetry and roundness in my face. I had never noticed it before, at least in the context of beauty (or my lack thereof). I then began to pay more attention to the features of the more aesthetically attractive people around me, noting that the article had some basis in truth.
But, I thought, is beauty a thing so shallow that following a few simple rules will allow one to calculate it?
I had always wondered what I found so alluring about bonsai trees. For a while, I was under the impression that here was a tree, in miniature, upon a table within a house, shaped not solely by nature but also by human intervention. Now, however, I think I understand better why bonsais, and most Japanese and Eastern art, appeal to me on a more fundamental level. It’s not about beauty in perfection, as proposed by the ancient Greeks, but rather in imperfection, especially that cultivated by nature. (And that includes ourselves.)
The Western World falls prey to the notion of living up to an impossible standard, wherein we strive to be gods and goddesses in our appearance, mannerisms, work and speech. No wonder we stress so much about how we look and conduct ourselves. Failing to achieve this impossibility serves to dash our egos, shake our esteem, and even colour the way in which we perceive others. It is a self-contained, self-perpetuating system that can drive us to despair, if we let it.
As usual, many people –far wiser than I– in the Eastern World have long ago seen the folly in this. The Japanese term is wabi-sabi (not to be confused with wasabi), and this idea descends from the teachings of early Zen masters. The three most important precepts:
All things are impermanent.
All things are imperfect.
All things are incomplete.
It’s not about spackling on the perfect face in the morning, or properly enunciating each syllable with the voice of an orator and the forethought of a strategist. Nor is it about outlaying each second to its proper task, or standing tall above the crowd, lest its mundane ways sully your air. It is the acceptance of humility, nature, and simple pleasures. It is the joy in a young child’s irregular smile, missing a tooth, or a refreshing sip of ice water on a sultry summer night.
Nothing lasts forever, nothing will ever be perfect, and nothing will ever be finished. I need to remember this.
There is something about spending time in the forest that makes me think of such things. Sitting on a fallen tree and stroking a faithful dog, listening to the swallows and watching the shadows dance across the ferns and moss, I feel like there is no difference between my self and my surroundings. The peace can be inhaled from the pure breeze and one’s stress melted away like snow in the warm sun. At times like that, it’s easy to find beauty in all the life around me… symmetrical or not.
July 20th, 2005
If you can read this, please note that there may be some wonkiness with DNS (and therefore finding this site) over the next few days while my registration is being transferred.
Thanks for your patience.
June 16th, 2005
Just working around the clock….
On the plus side, I think I finally found my Holy Grail of personal content management, the new version of DEVONthink (Mac OS X only, I’m afraid). It hasn’t impressed me as an ideal solution in the past, but the last few iterations are amazing. It’s been quite an enabling little beast for my job at hand, allowing me to sift through thousands of pages of text (plain, RTF, HTML and PDF), find related entries, track my sources, manage all related media, and write various documents without bother or fuss. Its capabilities are constantly surprising me. Stay tuned for a write-up….
April 29th, 2005
Just wanted to let you kind folks know that updates around here will be pretty sporadic for the next few weeks. I’m under the gun to finish up a contract, and after 16 hours work a day, I’m too exhausted to take a swing through the monkey house. Once that work is off my plate, however, I’ll have plenty of time to jump back into the blog and DIY Planner (which still has a version 2.0 slated for late this month, so stay tuned).
March 3rd, 2005
Finally back from the road again. This was my last time for a very long while, as the contract requiring me to give train in the various corners of the province ends on Monday. I’m a little sad in a way, since I do like to travel, but it’s nice to be home and not have to worry about things like how low my gas tank was reading, locating the people who were supposed to be unlocking facilities for me, and trying to find decent places to eat.
Okay, I’ll admit it: I am a very big fan of nachos. Nachos done right, that is. Crisp homestyle corn tortilla chips, lots of aged cheddar and monterey jack cheese, cumin-spiced meat, piles of fresh tomatoes, japepenos, green peppers and onions, and then there’s the homemade hot salsa and just-whipped sour cream on the side. My mouth waters just thinking about it.
But… my time on the road has taught me a very important rule of thumb. The population density is inversely proportational to the likelihood that:
- The torilla chips are stale, no-name Doritos coated with salt and MSG-laden “flavour dust”;
- The “cheese” is a watered-down Cheez Whiz knock-off that glows in the dark and smells vaguely like my Jeep’s transmission;
- The veggies (if there are any) are the remains of a salad that someone couldn’t finish last week;
- The salsa has the flavour, consistency and spice of two-year-old ketchup (but not the good Heinz stuff); and
- The meat (if there is any) is only slightly softer than road gravel, but with less taste.
Such is my insomnia that I spent a full night staring at the ceiling and trying to create a mathematical equation to describe the above rule, complete with multipliers based upon the longitudinal and latitudinal distance from the Texas-Mexican border. I actually did get some numbers down, but the light of day –and a very cold shower– made it seem rather… uh… silly. However, at the time it seemed quite an important theorem I had stumbled across, and I wondered why nobody else had yet discovered it.
February 27th, 2005
It seems as though I’ve managed to fix the feeds, the issues with bookmarks to parts of the former site, and some minor problems with stylesheets. My comments need some better CSS, but that’s the only thing left. From here on in, if you notice anything awry or buggy with this site, would you be so kind as to leave a comment or send me an email? (Email address, as always, is located at the base of the menu on the right.) I haven’t had any spare time recently for testing (or writing, for that matter), so I’m sure there are a few bits not working as they should.
February 23rd, 2005
Working on it. It appears that the new WordPress does not like to use “index.php” in the feed name any more, which had been used in my last version. Therefore, the URLs for the feeds have changed. I’m trying to do some Apache rewrite rules to allow all the former index.php subscribers to still keep reading, but this is a little out of my territory.
In the meantime, please pop over to a million monkeys typing and resubscribe to the feeds. Sorry about that. One of the hazards of upgrading, I guess.
February 21st, 2005
I think everything is working now. There are still a few “niggly bits” causing minor issues, and I seem to be sent blank comments for moderation several times an hour (I’m guessing that these have already been killed by SpamKarma?), but it appears to have been a successful upgrade, overall.
As for WordPress 1.5, I have to say I’m loving it so far. More thoughts on this great blogging product later.
February 21st, 2005
Finally have a few minutes to upgrade my WordPress installation from 1.2.x to 1.5. I’m following the excellent upgrade instructions but I am running into a few difficulties, mainly arising from some plugins and my heavy customisation. I’ll post again when the upgrade is complete; till then, please be patient if you run across any weirdness.
February 20th, 2005
If you look closely at the above picture, you’ll actually see something that resembles trees and a telephone pole. This was a typical scene looking out over the hood of my Jeep for about eight hours today as I drove from the Burin Peninsula, where I had been giving some training, back to my home in Gander. It was one of the worst snowstorms I’ve ever been caught in. Most of the time, I just had to crawl along, aiming towards the “whitest” part of things, and hope that I was still on the pavement and not heading blindly towards a curve or a steep ditch.
Normally, I like long driving trips because they give me time to think, reflect, plan and relax. But this occasion, I could only peer out into the whiteness for signs of nearing the edge of the road, trying not to lose control of the vehicle, and not get too shocked when I’d suddenly plow into any of the unseen 2-foot-high drifts that periodically mark places where the wind squalls whip snow up over the road from the barrens. Almost no roads were plowed, and of the eight hours, there was only about fifteen minutes when I passed through communities: the rest was essentially just wilderness with the occasional cabin or gas station.
I got back an hour ago, and my muscles are still knotted with the built-up tension of concentrating so hard for so long, preparing for the worst at any moment.
February 13th, 2005
Just took a glance at my webserver statistics. My, how times change. Before I released the DIY Planner package, the operating system stats were roughly 60% MacOS, 30% Windows, and 10% Linux. Now, it’s roughly 83% Windows, 8% MacOS, 8% Linux, and a few BSD and OS/2 boxes for spare change. (Oh, dear… I wonder how long I can go without offending the majority of my readers. 
) Meanwhile, the average daily hit has gone up from roughly 500 a day to just under 10,000.
One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the whole “technology early adopter” audience for the site, if Firefox is any indication. The Mozilla family usage is three times that of Internet Explorer, and that’s not even counting all the spambots that generally disguise themselves as IE.
And to the lone wolf running command-line Lynx on the unfortunately-named “BoogerOS”, I salute you!
February 2nd, 2005
Sorry for the dearth of posting as of late. Having a hard time thinking, especially in the off-hours when I normally write in this blog.
During a recent weekend excursion into St. John’s (our province’s captital) to deliver workshops, I appear to have picked up one of the worst colds I’ve ever had. You probably know the type: all you want to do is lie down, but when you do, the urge to choke, cough and sneeze jolts you back upright. Meanwhile, all your senses function as if you were immersed in aspic, and your brain is mired in thick pea soup. You want to cry out, “pity me, pity me!” but your throat is too swollen to do anything except constrict in pain at every involuntary and unexpected bark. Every joint creaks, every muscle is stiff, and your body is slow, bloated, heavy and barely responsive. Your focus is gone, your motivation kaput, your stress amplified, and your attention… what was I saying?
I seem to remember wanting to make a point, but it appears to have slipped my mind….
Yes, must keep a to-do list in front of my face. Must assume long-term memory doesn’t work. Must avoid letting my mind wander. Must have more medication….
January 20th, 2005
I came back from a very short vacation, and found nearly 400 comment spams waiting for me. This is in spite of using blacklists and denying a few key spambots. The number of hits on this site has quadrupled in the past few weeks, and apparently so has my spam.
Time to take another tack. Perhaps the much-lauded Spam Karma from Dr. Dave is worth a shot?
Update : Installed and implemented without a hitch. If anyone posts a legitimate comment and it doesn’t get through, please drop me a line via email so I can fix things.
January 1st, 2005
I’ll be back in a few days. In the meantime, anyone following along the DIY Planner material can always find the latest (minute-by-minute) version of the accompanying instruction file here, complete with typos, mistakes, open HTML tags and whatever boo-boos I feel like committing the moment I hit Ctrl-X Ctrl-S.
There’s a fair amount of formatting fixes and new writing there, including a bunch of Frequently Asked Questions, “Essential Links” and pointers to other templates. If you know of any I’m missing that you’d like to recommend, shoot ‘em my way and I’ll try to include them in the v 1.0 file. (I’m douglasjohnston [at] gmail [dot] c-o-m.)
December 15th, 2004
In response to a high volume of email (well, 2 of them, anyway) questioning the commerciality of the templates, specifically the “am I going to eventually charge you or sue you” potentialities, I’ve decided to announce that the DIY Planner is now going to be offered under the terms of a Creative Commons license. Basically, what it means that you are free to use and distribute the templates however you wish, as long as it is not for commercial gain. For the latter, you must have my permission. See the link for details. I would ask, however, that if you wish to pass this package on to someone else, you give them a link to my site so that they may download the latest version.
While I’m at it, I’ve decided that the Creative Commons license will apply to the rest of the material on this weblog as well (at least the material that I’ve produced). I’ve always advocated the license, and now it’s time to practice what I preach.
Update: This CC license for the weblog is only intended to cover material written by me for the weblog, and does not include anything outside of the weblog, such as the Gallery, or the words of others. Just wanted to make that clear.
December 13th, 2004
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