Ben Taylor

Go on, you know you want to read my resume. Let me know what you think.

I don't know a lot about Scribd yet, but what I've read so far sounds interesting. Scribd wants to become a free, public repository of documents, written by anyone for anyone. People have already uploaded a large and diverse collection, including a children's Christmas story from 1947, New York City's greenhouse gas emissions inventory for 2007, a calculus textbook, Cory Doctorow's novels (why am I not surprised?), an introduction to subatomic particles, a guide to grading undergraduate exams, and a cheat sheet for bash shell scripting. Will these links be good in another 5 years? Is there material here of dubious legality? I don't know; I have a lot of questions, but today my skepticism has decided to shake hands with my optimism. I appreciate such cacophonous experiments in online public goods, helping us to disentangle our information from immediate commercial value. But I fear that Scribd's good health may only last as long as its obscurity.

(Responding to my friend Kelly, who wrote: I firmly believe that kindness is the most crucial thing that isn't getting enough coverage or appreciation in this world. People see news about corporate evil, violent crimes, bizarre conspiracies, etc., etc., but we seldom hear about people who are actually carrying out the golden rule in their daily lives.)

I wish to gently disagree with you. It occurs to me that kindness, or by extension virtue, will always tend to appear unremarkable, whether the medium is journalism or art. To the degree a society does sustain itself we can expect its members to approve of most of its events. Somebody somewhere is refilling a supermarket cooler with milk jugs, carefully and promptly. A child completes her math homework, though the last two problems troubled her. A librarian has patiently directed a stranger again to the correct stacks for the books they need. Good things must happen all the time, or else society collapses.

I think you've expressed in a general way the urgency we must feel after any exceptionally good event. Appreciation certainly has its place in our societies. This is an ordinary, common-place observation, because daily we hope for appreciation by others and we desire to share our admirations. Since good events happen all the time, the acts of kindness we notice must represent exceptional ones. A friend is there to talk every time you need to talk, or has a good excuse otherwise. A friend gives you lunch on a traumatic day. A friend entertains you with a classic movie and popcorn when you're down and out and have few options to do anything. It would feel wrong not to acknowledge such things when they happen to us.

You're free to argue that we could acknowledge kindness to a greater degree, but the project of communicating the wonderful things we do for each other already flounders on supernumeracy. In other words, we can easily find faults in our social system, but selecting its best features leads us to greater disagreement.

So it seems unremarkable to me that bad news predominates our widest forms of communication (911 and the Emergency Broadcast System come to mind), just as good news does in our most intimate encounters. So rather than kindness missing coverage, I imagine it's humanity. I want to describe it as our universal mystery of being, or our collective consternation. We have a bad tendency to shorten the mess up by limiting who we consider human, or else limiting what human is. And we don't share enough examples of different people being human, which I think you'd agree would include many instances of other humans being kind.

So for about fifteen minutes I was seriously considering switching to Blogger. I think it was mainly a self-aggrandizement impulse. I've associated Blogger with the heavy hitters, and since I could now create a Blogger blog for free, I could now step on the stage of the serious writers of the Internet. "Oh, I am so ready for the big time!" For my first post I would rationalize the move, to explain why I was disappointed with LiveJournal. "I wasn't excited with its surfeit of social rigging", I was going to say (having double-checked the definition of 'surfeit'), but I tripped myself up when I returned to LJ for some illustrative examples. I clicked on my 'Friends' link, and in thirty seconds I knew I'd been a dork.

My friends have been writing about themselves on LiveJournal! One new friend is looking ahead to the Singapore Writers Festival. My pal Kelly can't wait for the holidays to be over. Peri downtown is still dangerous at her keyboard. Sue in Toronto has a new job! And Adam in the UK is still finding good anime to watch, which is always a very good thing

So long story short, I came up with a new topic for a blog post. All's well that ends well, right?

Oh, and as for the title of this post: once I put down some money for a full account, I already know the name I want to give this journal.

Or maybe it's just that I feel lonely. While I had that computer training situation last winter, I felt pretty good about myself and met a lot of people each day. When I left I intended to start volunteering again at the VOC, begin my T'ai Chi classes again, and drive into the city every Saturday for Jayce's lunch meets, to evade this depression hit. Maybe that could've worked if I'd started promptly. Certainly while I'm by myself its easier to dwell on self-criticism.

In the past I socialized a lot online, so it's plausible to expect I could make it happen again through blogging, but it's difficult to write not knowing who I'm writing for. Nobody may find it, but its not safe to consider this a private journal. Assuming its public I also would like this to gain the qualities which make a blog worth reading: concise, regular updates and interesting material. Perhaps I shouldn't worry too much yet about "interesting material"; my friendly readers will probably be satisfied to read about me or what I'm finding interesting. Concision and regularity are liable to be my greatest adversaries.

I began today by watching some new anime fansubs. Negima looks like a brainless, fun romantic comedy series. Lucky Star is just insane, particularly the Lucky Channel segment with super idol Minoru Shirashi. Claymore may turn out to be an interesting horror series, but if not it's got a hot tsundere protagonist. Unfortunately, Gurren Lagann made me aware that I'd lost AAS soft subtitle support in Mplayer (why hasn't Gentoo folded that in yet?), but I'm eager to see what Studio Gainax is up to this year. There's some brouhaha on the grapevine about episode 4 and 2ch. I can't wait.

My room has become distressingly disorderly; I might feel better about myself if I can sort it out today. There's so much shit I need to take care of, but this most of all.

It's been over seven months since I last posted to this blog. So much has happened, I can't summarize it. Not all at once. But I want to reach out to all my friends who may find this blog, particularly now that I have something important I want to relate. I'd like to try updating this place on a regular schedule too.

I'm almost satisfied with the presentation here now. Black on white, with a little color (green!), without the wads of stale ornamentation I've observed on so many blogs. Then cool Verdana, with some extra line-spacing to let my type breathe. Aahhh...

Still, I wish I could set my own title. Though I'd learned to set the title on the browser's titlebar, I couldn't discover how to change the heading within the page, and I won't take one without the other. Unfortunately, it appears that cannot be set without a paid account. With the S1 style system, the LASTN_PAGE variable providing the title property cannot be overriden, and I couldn't discover a S2 layout which provided a customizable title. But perhaps I'm overlooking something?

I go into the computer lab again today. Yesterday morning I taught my regular student Cal some more algebra, and I taught basic computer skills to another vet in the afternoon. Now it's time to see what the new day brings.

I care about my writing. I choose words deliberately, and avoid needless expression. But knowing what would genuinely interest readers is often difficult, particularly in this context. What's interesting about my day, my interests, or my problems?

Perhaps that question is an appropriate focus for my blog. LJ provides for comments, so contribute feedback, please. A hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand ask for this: the typical human drive for contact. What is so interesting about my question? The answer seems to lie in the context.

I care about computers. I've known how to program for two decades now, and I've used the Internet for 16 years. The genial abstractions of computer science fascinate me; I'd like to return to college eventually to do graduate work. At present I teach at a computer lab & diagnosis PC's for local vets.

I care about games; both electronic and non. I watch anime, read manga, and appreciate other elements of Japanese culture such as soba noodles and Zen Buddhism. (My old alias, MacGuges, is reference to a favorite manga.)

I worry about the war and my country. I grew up here in America & can remember the warm feelings of pride I'd have on Flag Day. Yeah, I was born into the place founded on rational humanitarian principles! It saddens me what vengeance & duplicity has been done for "9/11", and I continue to donate to the Red Cross.

I enjoy conversation & fair argument; it's valuable to me to keep up my rhetorical chops. I value doubt over faith. Beliefs will happen, but confusion precedes discovery. We ought to make the most of such opportunities.

Hail Eris!

I felt I ought to socialize more, so: this. Welcome. I've had a homepage, but I haven't tended it, and I've become curious about LJ-ish webhosted features. I'll experience this for myself now.