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What a day of coincidences…
This morning was my first time using Awaken – a little Mac application that wakes up your computer at a specified time, begins any playlist you chose from iTunes and gradually increases the volume over whatever time you set for it. So that went off at 4:30 this morning so that I would get up and get busy on the million and one things I needed to do this morning. And it actually worked! I actually got up!
THEN – we had an earthquake! And I was awake for the whole thing! Well, I was groggy. But I woke up very quickly after that. Know what I thought it was at first? I thought it was some incredible killer Midwestern wind that was going to finally blow over the cardboard house I live in. I’ve always thought that an earthquake would mean rattling and breaking and shattering sounds, but I didn’t get any of that. To be honest, I enjoyed it and was really hoping for some aftershocks. And did I do any of the things I woke up so early for in the first place? Of course not. I was on the phone and on chat like a silly high school girl. (Gosh, Napoleon…)
And today just happens to be the day of the GIS Workshop at GSLIS, which I signed up for a couple weeks ago. And you know the earthquake will be a big topic!
Is that cool or what?
Update 4/20/08: I just learned from Writer’s Almanac that the day of the Illinois 5.2 earthquake was the anniversary of a powerful 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. That one also happened early in the morning but I don’t think anyone slept through it. History is a small world.
I just finished watching The Sea Hawk, a 1940 Errol Flynn movie. 1940. Think about that year, everything that had just happened before 1940 and everything that was about to come after it. This was the closing speech of the movie, from Queen Elizabeth:
“And now my loyal subjects, a grave duty confronts us all: to prepare our nation for a war that none of us wants, least of all your queen. We have tried by all means in our power to avert this war. We have no quarrel with the people of Spain or with any other country, but when the ruthless ambitions of a man threaten to engulf the world, it becomes the solemn obligation of all free men to affirm that the earth belongs not to any one man, but to all men. And that freedom is the deed and title to the soil on which we exist. Firm in this faith, we shall now make ready to meet the great Armada that Philip sends against us.”
The parts that struck me the most were “a war that none of us wants” and “we have no quarrel with the people of Spain or with any other country”… Wow.
Looking at my blog today, I realized there was a theme going with my Google Reader shared items. As I write this, the five posts displayed in my blog’s sidebar are:
- Ladies and Gentlemen, The Conversation Has Left The Building
- The Next Generation Search Engine – Cluuz
- We need a Wikipedia for data
- Twitter is Like Sex
- Seven Tips for Making the Most of Your RSS Reader
All of these blog posts are information about getting, managing, directing information in order to get more information. I’m not really conveying that as well as I’d like… basically, I think they’re going around in circles. Have you ever seen a little kid spill a bunch of ice cubes, and every time he/she bends down to pick an ice cube up and put it back in the glass, another one falls out of the glass? And if they don’t realize what’s happening, they can get into a sort of hypnotic daze – dropping and picking up the same ice cubes over and over as they all melt.
Sometimes I see the internet as a playground full of little kids with ice cubes. It’s a weird conflict for me, as though I have two opposing personalities. One personality – we’ll call Thing One - only values things that are REAL and SENSORY and capable of demonstrating their value/effectiveness/quality by being touched, tasted, or seen without a monitor. The other personality – Thing Two – enjoys keeping up with blogs, building wikis, tweaking CSS code, mapping out a file structure, and so on. Sometimes Thing One gets fed up with Thing Two and wants to storm off in a huff of self-righteousness.
Thing Two picked out the blog posts I mentioned above because they seemed really interesting and beneficial to information science-y types of people… you know, like the people who get degrees in this stuff.
Thing One took one look at those posts and threw her hands in the air. “What’s the point?” she asked Thing Two. “It’s all nonsense, like American currency. None of this information about information actually goes back to anything real. There’s no physical original behind any of this. It’s all just words.” Thing Two smiles and shrugs. Thing Two knows that most of this Web 2.0 stuff is more about people and personality than what those people and personalities write, but she doesn’t know how to explain that to Thing One, who just left for a walk anyway.
With Spring coming on strong here in Illinois, Thing One is getting more and more restless. She suspects that Thing Two’s interests and activities will not really amount to much in the long run. A wiki/blog/website can be deleted and no one might be the wiser or better for it having ever existed. A tree can grow and grow and grow by itself, offer shade, offer fruit, and when it dies it becomes healthy compost for the next round of living things. This is Thing One’s outlook.
Thing Two – the more soft spoken of the two, by far – doesn’t think these things are going away any time soon and wants to find a balance between the invisible data world that she lives in and the physical, tangible world that Thing One inhabits. But she needs to find it soon or Thing One might run away and join a commune where they don’t even have electricity, much less silly things like these glorified paperweights known as “computers”…
Very cool website find of the day: EarthSky’s Meteor Guide for 2008
Unfortunately, there won’t be much to see for the upcoming Lyrids shower this month… BUT! In May, we’ll have wish-making opportunities galore with the Eta Aquarids! The question is – will I actually drag myself out of bed early enough to see them? Ah. Hm….
