But if you talk with people that love running, they’ll say, “Yeah! You just pop out for a quick run.” And if you ask them about the steps involved, they’ll say, “There’s just one. You just run.”–Derek Sivers on the Tim Ferriss Podcast
I love this example Derek uses to explain how humans tend to think of simple vs. complicated the same way they think of easy vs. hard.
People who hate running can list off all the steps of running and why each one is a huge pain. People who love running think nothing could be simpler.
Renewed interest in reading is a recent success in my attempt to be a less horrible person. It would shock many of my friends to learn just how few books I’ve actually read. Dune is one of the several books that come up in conversation as, “how have you not read that yet?” along with 4 out of 7 Harry Potters and anything at all by Issac Asimov.
Credit goes to my friend Ash (with an assist from Simon) for getting me to startup Dune late last year. It had been on my reading list since December 2014, 2015 was the 50th anniversary year of the book’s publication, and I needed more science fiction in my brain. Clearly the book needed reading.
Another element of ‘real life’ that made this book so wonderful was that it also coincided with my deep dive into the world of Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition. Reading a lot about world building, storytelling, and resolving characters’ flaws, desires, and choices was a perfect pairing with a book that does all those things so well.
Herbert tells a story of espionage and intrigue in a way that let’s the reader feel like they understand everything at play, but still holds enough back that the big surprises within the plot leave little ones for the reader who thought all had been understood. Dramatic irony at its best.
The characters are all somewhat of a caricature, and I think that’s why part of me loved it along with the D&D research. There’s a guideline in D&D called ‘the rule of cool‘ — if your player wants to do something that’s a stretch of reality, still let them do it for the sense of adventure. It’s suspension of disbelief that makes the heroes of legend so great. Dune crafts a larger story arc so real it lets the people involved be larger tropes than suspension of disbelief would normally allow.
In the final moments of Dune, the Emperor accuses Paul Atreides of assuming overconfidently that he can do whatever he wants because of his Fremen-earned power on Arrakis. Paul then basically does whatever he wants, impervious to any attack or error. Sounds like the boss battle in every JRPG or D&D campaign ever, except he’s not even a scrappy underdog who’s barely leveled up enough to win. He’s an overpowered, all-time-and-space-seeing übermensch who goes berserk if you mention his dad. It’s a little weird if you think about it too much.
But all that seems normal in the epic scope you spent 600 pages reading before you get to that. You’re too excited to care if its a little inflated. Does Muad’dib kill the bad guy or what?! Will everyone break into giant space war?! Is there a elaborate ruse waiting behind the final door? What do the sand worms taste like?!
It’s a very good book and worth every minute spent on it. I took my time mostly because I spent too long trying to read the paperback copy when I wasn’t holding the baby when I should’ve been reading it on a Kindle while holding the baby. I switched to the latter method after a couple months and finished the last half of the book in a week.
Dune on Kindle with avid reader cat, Bagheera
Funny enough, I just so happened to come across a Dune spoiler while I was reading the book. It was in a video a guest contributor posted on Wil Wheaton’s blog. You don’t really need spoiler alerts for movies that are 20 years old based on books that are 50 years old, but I had no idea people were going to ride the damn sand worms.
Oops. Spoiler alert.
Lastly, I really want to play in an RPG based on Dune. There’s technology, but no computers or internet. There are still swords and shields but they’re used beside lazer guns and rocket launchers. The DM would have to explain psychdelic hallucinations just as much as any combat encounter. So great. So if you can recommend somewhere where this exists, please let me know.
At last week’s WordPress Louisville meetup, I got the ball rolling on discussion for a WordCamp Louisville 2016. It got more interest than I would’ve guessed, and had several people all express a willingness to help. But no one seemed too interested in being a lead organizer. So I decided I’d wrangle that job, since a lot of people were there and willing to help.
Since then, I’ve worked with WordCamp Central to become the lead organizer of an upcoming WordCamp Louisville. There’s nothing official to announce other than we’re now in pre-planning and it’s my fault if we don’t get beyond that.
There’s been some continued planning in the #WordPress channel of the louisville.io slack team, and we’ve decided to meet in-person next week on Thursday, March 24th at 6pm to start planning stuff we need to figure out early on. These include venues (and backups,) potential sponsors, and divvying up some of the jobs that need to be handled in these next few months. If you love WordPress and want to help, let me know and I’d love to have you join us.
If you’d like to volunteer at, or even just attend, the WordCamp later this year please let me know that too. These early planning meetings would not be necessary for you, but I’ll surely be contacting you closer to the event.
On Saturday, March 5th, I’ll be volunteering at the Happiness Bar for WordCamp Dayton. Tickets to the event are already sold out, but if you happen to be going I’ll see you there.
Since I don’t leave the house much anymore with the new baby needing attention, I’m especially looking forward to getting out and talking WordPress at these upcoming events.
Cleaning never meant much to me. I’ve gotten better at it since living with Ber, because she really appreciates it and that’s enough reason for me to do anything. Mostly I do what she would say is ‘straightening up, not cleaning’ which is more putting things into their proper place and less spraying cleansers or sanitizing surfaces. But when it’s time to clean I’ve stopped trying to get out of doing my fair share. Only took me 25 years to learn that lesson. Sorry, Mom.
Ever since baby has come along, having a clean house is one of the few things that can make us feel like life is still moving along. Yeah, the baby is still screaming and we’ve eaten nothing in the last 18 hours but dammit that kitchen counter smells like lemon! We’re still the ones in charge here.
Today Ber’s mom brought us breakfast and helped a lot with the baby. Doing my part for the day, I hard-core vacuumed all the floors. Moving furniture around and using all the attachments available, I was cleaning out corners and nooks that haven’t been touched in months. And it felt amazing. Knowing that every room had a clean floor left me calm and refreshed.
Maybe this why some people obsess over having a clean house. It’s like a drug that reminds you that you’re capable of being an adult if you try. Ask your doctor or pharmacist about Vacuumisol; mileage may vary.
I’m aware of the idea of a bad hair day. People talk about them as something commonplace and often unavoidable. But I don’t recall ever having a bad hair day. Similarly, people get bad haircuts. I’m reminded of the Cory Matthews’ Haircut Cycle of Shame on Boy Meets World. But I don’t remember ever having a bad haircut. And there were years when I cut my own hair!
This is not to say that I’m blessed with magical, perfect hair. Rather, it’s something to which I’m blinded. How my hair is looking or how well my haircut was done isn’t something I think about, much less mention to others. Certainly there have been days my hair looked horrible and my haircut was poor, but I was blind to it. For me it may as well have been a great hair day.
Knowing that how we think doesn’t have to match the reality of the thing can be a blessing. It brings me joy not to think about the goodness of my hair that day. Ignorance is bliss.What else could I ignore to be happier? I’ll take that deal most every time.
Automattic has an abnormally high density of non-QWERTY typists. Matt types Dvorak and pretty vocally supports everyone taking the time to learn a layout that will help us be efficient and ergonomic. Not everyone sees increases in speed, but its very common to see reduction in wrist pain after switching away from QWERTY.
As part of the new year resolution phase, a lot of Automatticians decided to finally make the jump to either Dvorak or Colemak. Since I’m on paternity leave, I thought I might take the same leap. In 2014, I briefly attempted a switch to Dvorak but with some frequent needs for fast typing it wasn’t very successful. While the baby doesn’t let me have long periods of concentration for any serious projects, 20 minutes of typing practice here and there, along with a cold turkey approach, was something I could accomodate.
Colemak, I Choose You
My previous failure with Dvorak was the biggest reason I chose to try out Colemak this time. Learning the following facts helped seal the deal:
Only 17 keys change from QWERTY to Colemak (33 change with Dvorak)
Many of the ones that don’t move are low-frequency keys you’d have a harder time practicing anyway
Punctuation largely stays the same, so it doesn’t really require practice
Z, X, C, V all stay the same making it easy to not change my shortcuts for undo, cut, copy, and paste.
My Macbook already had the Colemak keyboard layout pre-installed, which I had no idea was the case.
LearnColemak.com
My first steps were using Chuck Smith’s Learn Colemak in 9 Days lessons. They’re not anything too crazy, just a prompt followed by a plain HTML textarea for you to type in.
The biggest downside to these is that there’s not much by way of stats or validation as you go. If your browser has spellcheck running, that’s what you’ve got. It’d be easy to make a mistake and never know it. The upside is that they’re free, simple to use, and get the job done. I completed the lessons in five days instead of the proposed nine and got good enough to stop switching back to QWERTY.
I sent a message of thanks to Chuck and he replied saying how fun it was to receive so many brief messages from new Colemak typists. I guess I wasn’t the first to email him while still typing uncomfortably slow.
Typing Club
Once I felt comfortable touch-typing in Colemak, I started using the lessons at Typing Club. Right now everything there is QWERTY-focused, but you can turn off all the aids and just use it as typing prompts. I really liked how you got little mini updates on words while you typed in addition to the final stats at the end. I liked their design enough that I went back and did all the QWERTY lessons too, just keeping it in Colemak. Things like “jfjf fjfj dkdk kdkd jkjk fdfd” are simple in QWERTY but really challenging in another layout, so I think that was actually time well spent.
Beyond
Once I completed the prompts at Typing Club, I found myself regularly typing upwards of 45 words per minute with occasional moments of true speed. I was now an average typer who happens to use Colemak, which is not a bad start. However, since I’m used to typing several thousands words a day for work at an average of over 70 wpm, this was nowhere near the end.
Since then I’ve had daily bouts of typing practice, mostly using news articles and blog posts as prompts. Combining my reading desires with my need to practice just seemed efficient. Most recently, I’ve started trying to catch up on the lore of the Magic: The Gathering universe. Those stories are simple fiction that don’t require much consideration, so they make for good prompts. I can focus on the typing and I’ll assuredly still catch the plot.
The last hurtle is really thinking-and-typing more often instead of typing out words I’m reading. While I can now type out a prompt upwards of 50wpm, thinking about my own words and typing is always much slower. I’ve got several blog post drafts going, so hopefully that will provide me enough practice to rejoin the elite typists’ speed.
Alex "Gus" Gustafson 