Akatombo Web Log
Monday, November 28, 2005
Input Overload
I’ve come to the conclusion recently that I take in too much stuff. Through RSS, podcasts, television news, video games, Internet surfing, and the constant feeling of need to research more information on whatever it is I’m currently working on; I’ve been leaving myself with way too little time to think and create for myself. Since I’ll be working on something very soon that will require me to be as creative and “all there” as possible, I need to wean myself down from this daily onslaught. I’ve decided to go this week without tv (not a problem), a maximum of a half hour of rss feed browsing per day, podcasts when I’m riding my bike (one earbud in, one ear clear) to the office and back, no video games except on weekends (this is pretty standard for me lately anyway), and no more than 3 minutes away from my project for research at a time unless it is something I need to find out, and not just something I want to know. How do you keep your media consumption down? Do you find that it helps you to output more or better?
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Trying my hand at Applescript
Well, I technically already missed a day since it is 2A.M. as I sit down to write this, but I think we’ll count it. I have to get into bed soon so I’ll be brief. I decided today to try my hand at writing some Applescript for the first time. I set to work on what I thought should be a simple Applescript to select a random entry from my unread messages smart subscription in NetNewsWire. The plan was to get the headline count of the selected subscription, generate a random number between 1 and the count (n), and then select headline n from the subscription. I could not for the life of me figure out how to select a headline in the NetNewsWire gui via Applescript. I scoured the web for NetNewsWire Applescripts but could not find a single script that was selecting headlines, so maybe it is impossible, but it seems like something a person would fairly commonly want to accomplish. I suspect that it is possible, and that it is just my complete lack of knowledge of Applescript that is hindering me. Anybody out there know how to do this?
Akatombo Media is off for Thanksgiving from tomorrow (today actually) through the weekend so I most likely won’t be writing here either as I’m trying my best to stay away from computers on my days off. Technology is a horribly addicting thing, and I need to try to have a life outside of my laptop screen.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Back in the Saddle Again (hopefully for real this time)
It has been entirely too long since I’ve written anything here, or anywhere really. A combination of being extraordinarily busy all the time (I guess if it is a constant situation it isn’t really extraordinary is it?) and just not having inspiration to write anything that I thought visitors to the site would find interesting conspired to leave the site static. I’ve decided enough is enough. Until I start writing, I won’t be able to come up with anything to write about, so I’m making a commitment to try my best to write something on here daily, interesting or not. There is a quote from Van Gogh, which I believe came out of a letter to his brother that I find very appropriate to the situation:
Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don’t know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, You can’t do a thing. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerises some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of ‘you can’t’ once and for all.
--via Wikiquote
Let’s just hope that this doesn’t mean I’m going to cut off my ear and mail it to a prostitute that I’m enamored with or something, the first problem is how would I choose? I’ve got some interesting stuff coming up for Akatombo Media, and I’ll likely be giving little hints to what I’ve got coming up as it develops. Anyway, I doubt anyone is still reading this after the lengthy dry spell, but I’ll try to write daily anyway, and maybe I can win some readers back. Finally, a minor stylistic change, I’m not going to write
Friday, April 22, 2005
Server to be down briefly
Our servers will be down briefly this evening, in an effort to reduce the chance of potential future downtime.
UPDATE: This has been postponed and will happen sometime in the next couple of days.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Server Downtime
Just a quick announcement. Our server was down for a few days due to the, apparently somewhat rare, power supply to our server going bad. We had all of the data backed up, but didn’t have a backup machine waiting in the wings to quickly swap to for circumstances like this. We are remedying this as we speak, and hope to never have to write a post like this one again. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
For a much briefer period our e-mail was not being delivered, so if you sent us an e-mail and it got returned, please send it again.