andrew @andrewjbtw@digipres.club

Center for the Study of Things People Already Study but We Need to Look Like This Is New

I want to watch a movie like Hackers but I've seen Hackers so many times it can't be Hackers.

Last weekday of my gap between jobs. I have been surprisingly successful at just kind of relaxing, visiting my parents for a while and then just at home trying to make better use of space in my apartment, but I've been very not successful at reading and writing more.

Tech visionaries: Every innovation should be seen in terms of the first moon landing. Let's call them moonshots! Only limit is our imaginations!

Tech visionary #1: So, what's next for you?

Tech visionary #2: What about, uh, going to the moon again?

You just know some computer nerd is hoping for a Jupiter mission so they can use the phrase, "Io bound".

Anyway, while I've grown somewhat skeptical of open data activism over time, there's a regular meetup in San Jose that I should probably start going to now.

I think this is one of the hidden costs of the peculiar type of sprawl here in the south bay area. San Jose is by far the largest city, but so many people don't actually work there, or even spend most of their waking hours there during the week, and I'm sure it has negative effects on civic participation.

One thing I've been wondering is if what I really should do is spend more time on local activities. Previously, my commute and my flexible schedule made it easy for me to make excuses for not attending after-work meetings in the city where I actually live because it was so hard to get home in time. But my new commute, though longer in distance, gives me the option to take the train every day, which makes a huge difference.

I didn't post about it but over the past year I quietly prepared to change careers by letting some organizational memberships lapse, not submitting proposals to conferences, and limiting my commitment to collaborative working groups to a level where dropping out would have less impact. (Basically, I'm just on one SPN group, and trying to stick with it.)

But now that I'm staying in the field, I'm rethinking what kinds of activities I want to be involved in.

I don't start my new job until next week, but they've turned my accounts on and when I went to the library website to see if I have journal access now I saw a link to the "repository" and thought: "Oh no, that's going to be my responsibility now."

The switch from nearly invisible to highly visible work is going to be an adjustment.

I just modified a couple of bash scripts from my old job so I could start tracking my personal files with checksum information.

If someone keeps saying things that are racist but they say that if you really got to know them, then you'd understand that deep in their heart they're not racist at all, then at some point you should ask, why are they keeping their purported lack of racism such a closely guarded secret?

10x engineering https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TENEX_(operating_system)

Storage units definitely bank on vendor lock-in. Unique locks, regular rent hikes once you're there for a while, etc. I may end up shifting my books around on a regular basis if initial rates remain so much lower than continuing rates. It's only about 250 books, which is a pain to pack but not a $$$$ pain to pack.

The real labor cost is in the fact that I'm managing my inventory now so I have to update the tags every time I move a book.

I rented a small storage unit to use as personal offsite print book storage and the process of signing up made me way more aware of the risks involved than any cloud data storage sign up process I've ever gone through.

Professional archives work: "miscellaneous" is unacceptable.

Personal archives work: there will be at least one box that things get thrown into that won't get looked at again for years.

Trying to deal with my personal (literal) papers reminds me why I headed down the digital archives track.

In the future, sites won't ask you to turn off your adblocker, their eye trackers will tell you to look at the ads before you can scroll.

various-and-sundry.zip