End-of-year cleaning: podcast subscriptions

It's the end of the calendar year so I'm upping my recurring donations to charities and artists. And suddenly... my hard drive is full? This seems ridiculous because I haven't done anything data-intensive in months.

A short investigation later...

A truly incredible 119G of memory stores unlistened-to podcasts. In a year of actively subscribing and donating to things, this 2020 garbage fire of using my attention and privilege to do better, it is time to unsubscribe from some stuff.

Podcasts from which I'm unsubscribing, sometimes hundreds of episodes behind:

• David Tennant Does a Podcast With...
  David Tennant interviews various guests and makes them say like two sentences and an anecdote for every separate fact he extracted from a whirlwind tour of their Wikipedia/IMDB page. This just never held my attention enough for me to listen to the episodes.
• Dissect
  This is a really fantastic music analysis podcast but it requires a lot of attention and the host's voice and production values just didn't ever push it to the top of my queue, so it has languished for several years. Alas, pruned! I'm still subscribed to three other music analysis podcasts so if some truly incredible song comes along I will hear about it, even in my digital monkish seclusion.
• Jordan, Jesse, GO!
  The original podcast. An extremely good way to feel not-lonely and not-isolated when in grad school abroad, but in the years since it has not held my attention. At one point the hosts themselves called out that they are a stereotype of "two white guys discussing their childhood video games with no particular agenda" and over time I've developed more varied and diverse podcast interests. (Sometimes their guests promoted the guests' podcasts, which I subscribed to and found more interesting.) And I guess I no longer feel America-sick, since I live back here now.
• Social Distance
  The pandemical podcast from The Atlantic. In March was comforting to have a daily podcast of people also worrying and sharing information, then they exhausted the low-hanging fruit of topics and became less interesting and less relevant, then I had enough mental space to do my own research and reading and I haven't listened in several months. (I still read some related columns but they are much faster to get through than the podcast.)
• This American Life
  I found other things more interesting and haven't listened --- there are more than 8G of these episodes alone. I have since heard some spot-on parodies of the tone and style that were so perfect that subsequent listening to the actual show is dimmed in comparison.

Several others are on my watchlist --- doing inventory reminded me of my interest in the podcasts, but I hadn't listened in a long time. If I don't listen to them by the end of December, I'm also going to unsubscribe and delete all those files.

This is what happens when I've already KonMari-ed my excess clothes, books, furniture, childhood memorabilia, shoes, electronics and cables, and piles of miscellaneous cruft. My documents are in organized folders, my photos are sorted, my finances are in order. If I were any more responsible it would ooze out my pores and be even more repellent than my already-achieved levels of disgusting competence. \end{humblebrag}

This post's theme word is autotelic (adj), "having purpose, motivation, or meaning of itself; not driven by external factors." Autotelic cleaning and organizing gets its own chapter in my autobiography, but blogging just gets an incomplete sentence fragment footnote... if I get around to it.

Stunningly efficacious

I have no particular, publicly-declarable goals to commemorate the incrementing of our calendar year, except that --- as always --- I want to hone myself into the startlingly effective, time-efficient, prosperous, merry, well-balanced person that other people (hopefully) think I already am.

I like circuitous sentences and superfluous verbiage, and I refuse to change either of those personal attributes in 2018. Come back and try again in 2019, haters.

Day 1 is marked by a high turnaround of holiday letters and emails, paying bills, updating all my yearly-in-January donations, and staring in awe at the truly prodigious list of half-written draft posts for this blog.

(Sorry about that.)

You, my diligent readers, whether my parents or my overcurious students or internet strangers looking to post advertisements as comments (don't, I delete them and it wastes everyone's time), will simply have to put up with me as I am, striving yet again, always, in a continual manner. I want to write more, and more cleverly, and because this platform is free and quick (except when stuck in draft limbo), it will likely be the recipient of this output.

Although frankly, a lot of it goes to /dev/null right now anyway, and that might be for the best.

My year-end phrase-stuck-in-my-head is "flamboyantly intelligent", which is a descriptor of the kind of people I'd like to surround myself with. Maybe there's a subreddit? I'm on a (mild) quest, in any case; if you find any such people, please send them my way. I am a diligent and snarky correspondent, and I have been told I am secretly kind and caring, but that was 2017 and I am looking to turn over a new leaf, so...


This post's theme word is palilalia (n), "a speech disorder characterized by involuntary repetition of words, phrases, or sentences." I am trying to remember the word for "having a phrase stuck in your head", but all I can come up with is palilalia, which is not-quite-it-but-close-enough-to-blot-it-from-recoverable-memory, plus: contains "lila" as a substring!

Book sold!

With the conversion of swap.com to a book reselling site ("valet service"?), I have defaulted back to selling my secondhand books on Amazon. This is not as great --- the books get exchanged into money, and some of the money is tithed away; I prefer books getting swapped into other books. Plus there is no "media mail" in this foreign country where I live, so shipping inevitably eats up my supposed profit.

That said, I do have a lot of books. Which I am trying to whittle down to my core library of essentials. I'm one surplus book closer to this goal. Huzzah much-neglected Project Simplify!

Suggestions for other ways to find new homes for my books are welcome.


This post's theme word is awumbuk, "the feeling of heaviness and sorrow you feel after your guests have departed." Selling or trading books leaves me no awumbuk aftertaste, although recycling or trashing them would.

Converting shirts into a rug

I am extremely averse to hoards, and with every move I become more resentful of my own possessions. They take up so much volume! And weight! The 100-things-challenge holds a certain horrifying fascination for me, although of course a properly-appointed kitchen (1) is necessary for life, and (2) contains more than 100 things.

This post documents another attempt to disgorge myself of excess possessions. In this instance, t-shirts.

Everyone, everywhere, including probably hermits, has some free t-shirts obtained by participation in a group activity. I had some in rather vibrant colors.
Reckoning that even t-shirts are useful for something, I used by new cutting mat and rotary cutter to render these shirts into a rather coarse "yarn."
Around the sleeves and neck, my cutting became more uneven and improvised, but I managed to unwind the entire shirt into yarn about an inch wide.

Then I watched about 20 minutes of how-to-crochet videos on YouTube. (Huzzah for the internet, and those who are strangely compelled to explain their skills to webcams!) With only a few adjustments and the biggest crochet hook I could find at Lettuce Knit, I embarked...
I tried a slightly complicated thing, because I enjoy challenges. Note the several strands of mock-yarn coming off my t-shirt-vortex. (I also chose a very forgiving circulish shape.)The completed spiral ingratiates itself to passing feet with its quaint homemade lumpiness and curiously soft spring. The colors work fine together, and I am five t-shirts the poorer and one little rug happier.


This post's theme word is grawlix, "a spiral-shaped graphic or string of typographical symbols used to indicate swearing in comic strips." The grawlix of expired t-shirts on the floor murmurs an ominous warning to those hiding in the rear of the closet.

December consumerism: no, thanks

We've all survived another year of Thanksgiving, black Friday, and cyber Monday. (I also received notification of cyber Wednesday, presumably for those too lazy to get around to internet shopping until two days later.) Now the Christmas* season is upon us, with its pervasive question:

What do I want for Christmas*?

I want world peace, and for humans to stop destroying the environment and each other. I want a solution to P=NP (with proof). I want three feet of snow.

What I don't want is more stuff. I have lots of stuff. I have all the material objects I need (food excepted -- I just keep eating it!). Probably, you have all the material objects that you need, too. You don't need anything more. Perhaps you want something more, or advertising has convinced you that you want something more. I don't want anything more; I don't want to have to carry it around and keep it clean and in good condition and worry about whether I'm using it too much or too little. Stuff is just a hassle. (See my other notes on Project Simplify.) This Christmas*, I want to avoid consumerism, reduce my wastefulness, go off the grid.

So please don't get me more stuff. If you want to get me a present, get me something that has meaning. I'd much rather have a nice letter from you than a DVD. I'd rather eat something you cook than play a video game. Let's go on a walk instead of buying each other silly cards! What I'm saying is partially that I'd rather have something that cost you time and brain cycles than something that cost you money. I'd prefer interpersonal value to monetary value.

And I also want to give such gifts. I'm working on that now.

So what do you want for Christmas*?



*or whatever you would rather read -- insert your own politically-correct or -preferred holiday [noun] here.


This post's theme comic is from A Softer World:

Project Simplify

It's been awhile, but Project Simplify continues. I have culled more clothes and shoes that have reached the end of their (enjoyable) lifetimes with me. I sold some books to the secondhand bookstore (only to have them replaced with birthday-present books on my shelves! how exciting! new books to read!).

Mostly, I find myself thinking, "Do I need this? It will just clutter my life" with respect to paper. I am inundated with paper, and so my strategy is this: if I need the original copy (receipts, health insurance costs) I file it away neatly. If I need a copy, then I scan it and recycle it: bits take up much less space than physical documents, and are more easily indexed, sorted, and searched! In the end, nearly all the paper I get handed is recycled, which makes me feel honest when I'm around my vegan-eco-hippie friends.

The one thing I can't seem to cull is electronics. I use a lot of them -- many computers and peripherals and gadgets and toys -- and don't want to throw away the less-frequently-used ones, lest they be the missing link in some sort of migraine-inducing file/signal-conversion protocol. (I plug the output of my DS into my laptop, and string the audio from that into my desktop so I can process it with some software there, but send the video through a series of cables to the monitor...)

I recently happened across Eleven Myths of Decluttering and agree heartily with this: "If you get rid of everything you don’t need, you may not need any fancy containers." Of course, a sort of reverse process is happening in my kitchen, where my collection of containers of spices has expanded from by basic post-graduate {salt, pepper, garlic} to a much more sophisticated set.


This post's theme words: avenaceous, "relating to or like oats" and spurtle, "a wooden stick for stirring porridge." Yay goopy, warm autumn breakfasts!

Pictures on Ubuntu, update

I've been playing around with Picasa. It's missing some features I really liked about iPhoto.

1. I can't import my albums from iPhoto. This fact is still incredibly irksome, and will continue to be so for as long as it persists.
   
2. I can't make folders of albums. This means that if I have more than 20 albums, they clutter up my sidebar and I have to scroll through the entire list to find the one I want.
3. There's no way to scroll through ALL the pictures in full-screen mode; photos are sorted by year, then month, then day. And full-screen mode will only allow for scrolling through a single day's pictures -- then to jump to the next day, I have to exit full-screen mode, pick the next day, and re-enter full-screen mode. Yuck.
4. Although Picasa is set to recognize .avi files, it doesn't.
   

The struggle continues. On the positive side, Picasa is not terribly slow. And lets me see my photos. That's nice. Standards lowering... lowering...


This post's theme word: moue, "pout or grimace."

Managing pictures on Ubuntu

I have amassed 30,000+ pictures since I got my first digital camera six years ago. For the past few years, I have been using iPhoto to organize these. (It is now very slow, since it tries to preload thumbnails of every picture on startup, or something similarly unreasonable.)

I like four features of iPhoto:

1. Photo files are stored in directories by YEAR/MONTH/DAY . This makes sense.
2. I can use albums to group together photos of the same event taken on different days.
3. If the camera date was set wrong, I can change the metadata on the photos.
4. My entire library is in iPhoto and organized in a way I understand.
   

I am trying to find a similar way to manage photos on Ubuntu. I have so far been unsuccessful. F-spot satisfies (1) but there doesn't seem to be a clean, working way to grab the albums from iPhoto. (Manually re-creating the albums for thirty thousand photos is not an option; I haven't found a hack that works yet, either.) Also, I can't figure out how to change the metadata with F-spot, or with any other Ubuntu software, for that matter.

I have heard good things about Picasa (Google's answer to organizing photos) but also bad things (it's slow; too many bells and whistles).

Suggestions? I've been making myself cozy on Ubuntu, but this is really irking me.

[Update, two hours later: I installed Picasa to try it out. After an XKCD-like series of events, something -- possible a hidden preference file? bug reports online are unclear -- is quite borked about my entire setup. Also, Google now gives me search returns in French and Portugese, but not English. Now everything I try fails, not just with Picasa but also basic OS functionality. Aaaiiieee! But there are no sharks. Yet.]

This post's theme word: nidicolous, "nesting."

Local goals

After my last meeting with my advisor, I have a goal:

Submit my thesis by December 15.

This is to allow enough time for it to be read, and for me to amend mistakes. It does not, however, allow a lot more time for me to wander about the topic, wildly flailing my mental tendrils as I absorb the problem from every angle. I have to be direct and effective, without reading every article ever written on the subject.

I have a lot of other things -- a veritable swarm -- hovering over me, emails to write, internships to apply for, articles to read, cleaning to do, posts to write (yes, I still have my GHC reflections bouncing around in my head), and miscellaneous tasks. (It would be nice to have food in the kitchen so I don't starve.) These things are all on pause while I cram in some more work before my weekly meeting with my advisor; as soon as I leave his office tomorrow, I'm going to go on a task-completing rampage.

My more local goal is to get back down to inbox zero, which I achieved over the summer and maintained up until two weeks ago. A more long-term goal is to pick up where I left off with Project Simplify.


This post's theme quote is from Siméon Poisson:

Life is good for only two things, discovering mathematics and teaching mathematics.

TGI... M/T/W?

I had a very exhausting weekend.

Saturday:

8-noon pack and move boxes of books, clothing, and some large furniture to new apartment (thanks to the heroic friends who turned up to help!); sprint to pool
noon-2 swim practice
2-5 more packing and moving, though slightly toned-down since by now I'm having trouble walking
5-8 go to Ikea, too tired to effectively find suitable windowshades
9 drop into bed already unconscious

Sunday:

8-3 unpack some things at new place, pack things at old place, move a little more; help roommate carry her boxes up the perilous fire escape into the apartment
3-5 another swim practice
6 drag myself to buy food, cook it, eat it, fall asleep

I was truly thankful for Monday to roll around, since it meant a reprieve from the gruelling swim practices. My new, noisier street has meant uneasy sleep (and strange dreams), and the first half of the week has flown by in a sore, tired daze. I wrote parts of this post on Sunday, intending to post it Monday, and you can see how that turned out. I need a break, but my bookshelf and several crates of books are lingering at my old place, and there's shopping to brace myself for this weekend.

Lots of projects and projectlets are moving forward; there's research and writing to do, games night #100 celebrations to plan, another teammate for the puzzle challenge to find, my parent's visit to anticipate, GHC (need to get cards, a finished résumé), my Canadian Thanksgiving trip, office hours and grading, ongoing knee therapy/care, and my birthday is Saturday. (Project Simplify update: I've sold two books online, posted several others, and assembled a pile of clothing to donate.) This is besides all the daily rituals and upkeep. I feel very busy. It will really help when I'm completely moved into the new apartment.


In the spirit of moving furniture, this post's theme word: antimacassar, "a small cloth placed over the backs or arms of chairs, or the head or cushions of a sofa, to prevent soiling of the permanent fabric."

A new year, a new project

Celebrations of the turnover from December to January ring a bit false. But today? Today is a new year that I can celebrate. It is the beginning of a new school year, which means something. Not just a changing of the calendar, but a new schedule, a new course to teach, new seminars to attend, new knowledge to absorb. The same thesis project to work on, but with new energy. Everything just seems new and shiny. The weather is perfect. The day of massive insect die-out (freeze, demonic mosquitoes!) is nigh.

Thus I begin a new project: Project Simplify.

Motivated by a sense of crowding generated by my own possessions, here begins a massive reduction of the things that I own, manage, and live with. They take up physical and mental space. I have to carry them, clean them, sort them, file them, index them, and keep track of where they are. Losing things drives me crazy, but I don't mind culling the herd. It will free up space, mental cycles, and time. (As an added bonus, my infrequent "what to wear?" deliberations will be made even scarcer.)

So my new year's resolution is to streamline everything. Clothing not worn in the past year (excluding, perhaps, special occasion clothing like formalwear and my corset/hoopskirt outfit) shall be sold or donated. Books I don't plan on rereading or using as reference material shall be sold or donated. Crates of old papers I'm saving as records shall be digitized, shredded and recycled. My goal is to be able to transport all of my living accoutrements, by myself, in a few trips. (Large pieces of furniture excepted.)

Abetting the completion of this project, today I am (once again) without internet at home. So posts here on the Lila Prime project will be dearer (only what my guilty conscience permits me to eke out here in my office), but Project Simplify shall benefit from that displaced time.

Today I went through a box of papers, and sold a book online. A good beginning.


This post's theme word: pleonexia, "excessive/insatiable covetousness."