Reciprocation

July 28, 2010


I don’t believe in reciprocation for reciprocation’s sake.

If you follow me on Twitter or Flickr, I won’t follow back. Unless I want to. Likewise, I fully understand that, if I follow someone I admire on Twitter, I shouldn’t expect them to reciprocate – especially if they have no idea who I am.

Yeah. We went to school together. But it doesn’t mean I am required to answer your Facebook request.

I’m sorry to have to say this out loud, but I thought the idea of reciprocation was clear: if what you are giving to me is worth repaying, I will repay it. Otherwise, please do not assume I have enough time in my life to follow, link and friend every person I’ve ever come in contact with.

Do you guys remember when blogrolls were a big deal? There were two ways of making it onto someone’s blogroll.

  1. Write or curate a blog that’s worth reading.
  2. Add the blogroll’s site to YOUR blogroll, then hint that, since YOU have blogrolled THEM, THEY should reciprocate.

Number two? That’s a passive aggressive form of assumed reciprocation, and it used to run rampant. Even little ol’ Black Marks on Wood Pulp fell victim to the constant haranguing of blogroll link collectors.

Then, there’s the “I’ll follow you if you follow me” form of assumed reciprocation (let’s call it what it really is: RANSOM) that forces a disingenuous and false sense of shared admiration. And, it puts the recipient in an awkward spot.

These things occur without regard to my preferences on recommendations or relationships. I simply may not have time to offer correspondence. Or, I may be impossibly strict on who I offer praise and recommendation. But now I’ve been pigeonholed. I can ignore and be labeled as a jerk. Or I can accept and undermine my principles.

I don’t like that.

So, if you want to go ahead and recommend me, or follow me, or offer me some kind of praise, or make my life better, you need to go ahead and do it.

Just, please, don’t expect anything in return.

Tags: Annoyances, Friends, Technology |

4 Comments

A few reasons our wedding would never have made the “Weddings and Celebrations” section of the Sunday New York Times.

July 25, 2010


Go ahead. We dare you to find an ordinary wedding in the NYT Weddings section. Every single one of them has something extraordinary about it.

I guess that’s the idea. But it sure serves up an unrealistic view of the populace as a whole.

Tags: Journalism, Vilhauer |

2 Comments

Stalling

July 21, 2010


SIERRA (In bed): *crying*
COREY: What’s wrong, Sierra?
SIERRA: THERE WAS A BUG … IN MY BED … there’s no bug.
…
SIERRA: There’s no bug. But … But I have four bug bites.
…
SIERRA: Daddy, I have four bug bites.
COREY: I know, Sierra.
SIERRA: I have four bug bites.
…
SIERRA: Daddy, I am a kitty.

Tags: Sierra |

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Persistence

July 21, 2010


SIERRA (pointing at picture in Ladybug Girl): Mommy, what is her?
KERRIE: She.
SIERRA: Mommy, what is she?
KERRIE: She’s wearing a dress.
SIERRA (pointing at same picture): What is SHE?
KERRIE: She’s wearing a dress.
SIERRA (unsatisfied): What is SHE?!
KERRIE: She’s wearing a dress. Like a princess.
SIERRA: WHAT IS SHE?
KERRIE: SHE’S LIKE A 70s MODEL.
..
SIERRA: Oh.
…
SIERRA (pointing at the next picture): Mommy, what is she?

Tags: Books, Sierra |

4 Comments

Neil Young, “Cortez the Killer” – 10.22.78

July 17, 2010


Two days before I was born, Neil Young and Crazy Horse played the Cow Palace in California.

It was a great concert. It became an even better concert video: Rust Never Sleeps.

What a killer.

Tags: Music, Random YouTube |

2 Comments

A walk to the library

July 16, 2010


From where I work, it’s only a quick two block walk to the library.

So today, with my head swimming in tests, my mind frozen from the air conditioning, I got up and walked there.

No premeditation. No purpose. With just a hunch, I stepped into the heat, turned right, and kept walking.

For the past year or so, I’ve completely fallen away from reading books; the stack beside my bed grew, stagnated, and is in danger of being killed off. I barely read at all, actually – outside of the Sunday New York Times, a handful of work-related books, a blog article or two, there’s nothing. My mind has been consumed with learning new skills and adapting to a second child and spending time with my family.

Reading has taken a back seat.

So, this walk? It quickly became a big deal.

Our library is cool and new and stocked with great books and at once I was reminded of why I was always attracted to it. You see, this is where I was supposed to be. On these shelves. Writing books and stories, looking to make it big; my words sheltering others from boredom, my thoughts absorbed by strangers. I started this blog to practice becoming a better writer. I volunteered for magazines – writing about reading, no less! – and weaseled my way into a writing job at an ad agency. I read fiction and non-fiction and short stories and massive tomes like it was a religion – both because I enjoyed it and because, as they say, better readers make better writers.

And then, I kind of stopped.

I still write. But I no longer read.

Instead, I found two things I enjoyed a lot more, and I’ve jumped into them with full abandon: being a dad, and working in Web.

But they don’t have to be exclusive.

The potential made me dizzy. Or maybe it was the heat. Whatever. All I know is that I walked into the library, wandered around for a few minutes, grabbed Syncopated: An Anthology of Nonfiction Picto-Essays and Steinbeck’s The Red Pony and made a promise to myself.

To stop making excuses. And to head back to my roots. Because while my path veered from becoming a writer, there’s no reason it ever should have stopped me from becoming a reader.

Tags: Books, Career, Family, Literature, What I've Been Reading, Writing |

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Autocomplete and a loss of confidence

July 14, 2010


While dorking out and reading Morville & Callender’s Search Patterns, I came across this sentence:

“A few years ago, results were the only reply. Our goal was a subsecond response. Now, with autocomplete and autosuggest, the results may precede the query.”

From Search Patterns - Peter Morville & Jeffery Callender

This is space-aged, mind reading insanity, if you ask me. AWESOME insanity, but insanity all the same.

Think about it. Through the power of logarithms and the invention of autocomplete, computers – unthinking, non-human computers, completely dependent upon input entered by real humans who can think and reason and instinctively make cross-subject associations – are giving us suggestions as to what we might want BEFORE WE EVEN FINISH telling them what we might want.

I’m not going to go into the technology behind logarithmic search results and prediction, because I’m certainly not smart enough to understand it and, let’s face it, we’re so used to this kind of thing that we’re surprised it doesn’t happen more.

I’m just saying we should stand back a few steps and realized what we’ve created: an alternate form of memory that remembers things we often can’t remember on our own. We depend on things like search and autocomplete and autosuggest to fill in the spaces between our mind’s memories and the concepts we are aware of but can’t find time to memorize.

And this dependence upon autocomplete may be leading to a lack of confidence when applying memory to non-autocomplete sectors. Like, you know, MOST OF REGULAR LIFE.

We use autocomplete and autosuggest to get “sort of close” to our targets, accepting that Google will bridge the gap. We no longer need to spell things correctly. (Another auto – “auto spellcheck” – is guilty here.) And when we’re forced to find answers without autocomplete, we find ourselves slowing down. There’s no confidence in our answer. We’re lost without a back-up.

There’s no answer to this problem, either. Autocomplete and autosuggest are saviors in an era of overstimulated information feeds. Our minds are simply too occupied to remember everything, and – thankfully – we don’t have to anymore.

Thankfully. And cautiously.

We don’t really know what we’re forgetting until we’re given a chance to forget it all over again.

Tags: Technology |

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