Now reading: Aya: Love in Yop City š
Now reading: Aya: Love in Yop City š
Our community held an appreciation evening for our architects and Durham Central Park Cohousing, whose members mentored us through the journey.
During the planning, someone suggested having a slideshow play in kiosk mode on the TV in the multipurpose room while the party went on in the adjacent Common Dining Room.
And of course, all heads turned to me since Iām the de facto publicity guy who drafts the BCC blog and the (now quarterly) newsletter.
When given this task about a month and a half before, I of course procrastinated. Well, not all the time; I was quite busy at the $DAYJOB and with other BCC and personal assignments that creating this show was not priority. I also trusted my inner guidance to let me know what to do and when I needed to do it.
But one still needs to make decisions early on, donāt one? They help to give one a place to start and to set up some useful constraints. Starting with the end in mind, I decided on the following:
An iMovie video slideshow that lasted almost 40 minutes. All photos were watermarked with the imageās creation month and year. The video got good reviews from the folks who saw it, and it brought back some good memories. But it was way too long.
Did I say I started too late? I started too late.
We had two large stores of image files on our shared Google Drive: one set devoted to construction, one to community events. Fortunately, they were arranged in foldersāand sometimes sub-sub-foldersāby date. Google Drive is too slow to click and move through, so I tried downloading the folders via my browser, but there were inevitable hiccups with some corrupted files, internet burps, and whatnot.
Now I had lots of folders and subfolders of images. I did not want to have to traverse all those folders; instead, I wanted a single folder with all the pre-construction images, a single folder with all the construction images, and a single folder with all the post-construction images.
Now to process those images: sort them by name? By creation date? How to ensure Iām seeing all the files in the right order?
With a folder of images renamed, sorted, and formatted the way I wanted, all that was left was to ⦠sift.
Because I did not have a detailed outline in mind, and because I wanted to let the materials lead me to where they wanted to go, I felt the only thing to do was to sift through all those images to make a first cut.
So for about an hour or so every day, I sorted through about 3,800 image files. Most were quickly consigned to the Trash.
I totaled the numbers of files I had. If each image lasted 4 seconds on screen, then 4 times the number of files and divided by 60 would tell me how many minutes the show would last. That first cut got me to about 60 minutes, so I knew I had lots more cutting to do.
As I sifted through the files again, I hit on the idea of calling the video āTimelines.ā I decided to keep the construction images and event images separate, but staying with the pre-construction and post-construction eras. So there would be smaller timelines playing within the larger timeline narrative. I also decided to stop the show after our celebratory gala in May, after the move-ins had finished and we were ready to enjoy our accomplishment.
During that second round of culling, I created new subfolders for the images and began investigating how to present them. After looking at PowerPoint and other kiosk/slideshow programs, the simplest and most powerful tool to use was iMovie.
I consulted a MacMost video course on iMovie Iād bought a while back to educate myself for another project. Gary very helpfully had several videos dealing with my specific use case, and he refreshed my memory on applying transitions, titles, and other niceties. Using iMovie also let me easily drop in some MP4 and MOV drone videos captured during some of our events and during construction.
We were now at, oh, a day before the event? I reported that Iād have a really good first draft, and figured Iād have most of Saturday to get it mostly good.
Renaming the files as I had done meant that, as I dropped in batches of files, they sorted into the sequence I wanted. Adding the drone videos was also dead easy. And iMovie let me know how long the video was, so I could do more drastic cutting as needed. I had iMovie render low quality videos I used to review what would be the final product.
The MacBook Proās M1 processor made very short work of the video creation; on my old iMac, it would have taken maybe 90 minutes. I was so happy I got the Pro.
The video wound up at about 40 minutes, still about 20 minutes too long. I did some cutting and moving chunks around, but did not have a better creative idea to support such a drastic cut. Had I arrived at this point a week earlier, a better idea would have appeared.
Finished reading Early Autumn š
I spent most of the pandemic reading comics. For whatever reasons, my mind and mood preferred the comics medium during those years. They held my short and distracted attention span in a way “real” books did not.
I figured I’d return to reading fiction whenever it was time for me to do so. A biography of Arnold Bennett got me back to reading long-form prose via Kindle. Then I rummaged through my Kindle Oasis to re-read some fiction, as I have found that re-reading helps stoke the reading habit. And I found just the medicine I needed.
It was through a review in Steve Donoghue’s column on the old Open Letters Monthly site that I heard about the “The Old Man” stories by William Preston. As Donoghue explains, the stories are a homage to the pulp-age hero Doc Savage, whose reprinted adventures I read in junior high school. I was deep into comics and the pulps at that age, and even read Philip Jose Farmerās Doc Savage: An Apocalyptic Life, a fictional biography of a fictional character, although I had no idea what āapocalypticā meant. Iāve not read any Doc Savage books since then, but that character is deep inside my readerly DNA.
The āOld Manā is Prestonās Doc Savage figure, although he is not officially named in the stories. Preston’s deviceāused throughout the seriesāis to tell the story through a character close to or on the periphery of The Old Man. The reader is never privy to the Old Manās thoughts; instead, the narrator observes the Old Man and describes his actions. The evocation of past times, and of a shadowy otherworld whose events affect our world, suffuse the stories like smoke.
Prestonās prose is as steady, measured, and even-handed as his protagonists. This deliberate pace affects the action in the stories to the point where the pulse never quickens with thrills, as I think he intends them to. What the prose lacks in action, it more than offsets by evoking darker, layered, richer flavors of regret, melancholy, wonder, and mystery. These stories stand up to multiple re-readings.
Preston also takes a leaf from the revisionist superhero comics of the last 20 years by bringing this pulp-era action figure into a world toppled over by 9/11. How would such a shadowy figure of myth operate in a world of constant surveillance where anyone can be locked up as a potential threat? It opens new themes for exploration in the stories, and Preston tackles them head-on.
Preston has so far written four intertwined stories (heās been writing the fifthāand he says finalāstory for years) and he recommends they be read in the order they were published:
The Old Man stories are available as cheap cheap cheap ebooks on Preston’s Amazon Authors page.
Preston’s writing was done in the odd corners of his working day as a high-school English teacher. His personal blog had great notes and mini-reviews of the books and stories he was reading, but he has not updated it since 2017.
I had a long and happy partnership with Launchbar on my iMac. But when I started using my MacBook Pro more intensively recently, and found that Spotlight wasn’t doing everything I wanted, I found that Launchbar has been languishing with hardly any updates, to the consternation of its fans who love its look and operation.
So I turned to Alfred and am really enjoying it. The community and forum are active (unlike Launchbar’s), there are many great tutorials and Youtube videos on setting it up and using its workflows, and I am very much enjoying playing with it. Which is the main thing.
In searching the web for tips and clues on how others organize their digital files, I ran across this video from Caitlin’s Corner: DIGITAL DECLUTTER | organizing my files, email & hard drives - YouTube.
For whatever reason, watching her dig through her piles of old digital files lit a fire under me to do the same. Her method is a bit Marie Kando: open every file, even if only briefly, consider it, then keep or delete.
I think what inspired me (beyond simple procrastination on my latest project) was her commitment to the job. Her video time-jumps from the morning, when she starts, to late at night when she finally stops looking through at least one of her hard drives. I could see myself doing the same thing. The idea of letting go of this digital baggage, and finally making the decisions I have been putting off, also inspired me.
I started last night with my Google Drive files, of which I did not have many. I’m now viewing GDrive as a temporary holding area for files in progress or for collaboration. I decided that my MacBook Pro and Dropbox would be the FInal Source of Truth for all my files. So the GDrive files I kept are now sitting in my Downloads folder, which I will get to cleaning out … soon.
The worldās first known author is widely considered to be Enheduanna, a woman who lived in the 23rd century BCE in ancient Mesopotamia (approximately 2285 ā 2250 BCE). Enheduanna is a remarkable figure: an ancient ātriple threatā, she was a princess and a priestess as well as a writer and poet.
Source: Hidden women of history: Enheduanna, princess, priestess and the world’s first known author
I learned this fact from today’s poem on Poetry Daily: “forget thee (excerpt)” by Ian Dreiblatt.
Firefox remains my browser of choice on my MacBook mainly because of Library Extension, which does not work in Safari. With this extension, I can go to a book page on Amazon or Audible and see whether the book is available either physically or digitally via the Durham NC public libraryĀ
Both ebooks and audiobooks are available via my library credentials from the libraryās own site, Overdrive/Libby (via the Libby app), and Hoopladigital (via the Hoopla app). Checking out an ebook from the library itself delivers it to my Kindle Oasis or Kindle app.
One of the great bonuses of Overdrive/Libby is its access to magazines; Liz loves reading The New Yorker this way on her iPad mini.
Hoopla delivers not only ebooks, but audiobooks, music, and a limited selection of movies/TV series.Ā What continues to astonish me with Hoopla is its deep selection of comics and graphic novels; before buying a graphic novel from Amazon/Comixology, I check Hoopla first and am usually pleasantly surprised. Its comics reader is not as good as Comixologyās, but itās decent.
Iām an Audible guy, and have been since the late ā90s; itās mostly reliable and offers lots of stuff. Iāve used Appleās Books app now and then, but did not care for the experience. I have an app on my iPhone called Bound Audiobook Player that is useful for playing audiobook files Iāve ripped or created from other sources. And Iāve written before about using Audiobook Builder for ābindingā separate MP3 files into consolidated audiobook files.
I have a Kindle Oasis that I am finding myself using less and less. I appreciate that its lighting is probably better on my eyes than the iPadās, and that it offers only reading with no other app or online distractions, but it feels increasingly clunky to use.
On my iPad, I configure the Kindle app so that I can scroll through a book like a web page (when that is supported) rather than tapping on the side of the screen to advance to the next page. I like to read with my glasses off in the evening, so I can make the font size quite large on the display while still displaying a lot of text.
This article led me to seriously consider reading Kindle books on my iPhone. And itās actually a pretty good experience, once Iāve adjusted the font and scrolling. I find myself now opening the Kindle rather than a browser when I am fiddling with the phone.
I rarely use Appleās Books app for anything beyond PDFs, though I have bought a few items from its store that were not available via Amazon. I always forget about the Books app. The ability to organize and manage my collection is limited, though the Kindleās is really not that much better.
Lately, for āclassicā books, Iāve been using the Serial Reader app and am loving it without really knowing why. It delivers chunks of a book daily that can be read in 10-15 minutes; sipping a book rather than gulping it, as it were. I paid for the app so I could load an EPUB book from Gutenberg, and it handled the ebook flawlessly. Right now, Iām reading a book of Wodehouse short stories.
One problem with so many apps and devices is: read the same book on multiple devices? Read different books on different devices? What type of reading works best with each device? How many books can I read at a time without overwhelming myself? Iām still working that out.
Comixology remains my favorite comics reader, despite how Amazon has wrenched its UI into a confusing mess to match the Kindle appās equally frustrating UI. The Comixology reader can only read comics purchased or borrowed from Comixology. Many pixels have been spilled on how Amazon has ruined the Comixology web and digital experience, and the criticism is justified; attempting to discover new work on Amazonās Comixology sub-site is next to impossible; still, the Comixology app’s comics-reading engine is the best and easiest to use.
Again, check out Hooplaās deep catalog of comics, including many recent releases. Donāt buy from Comixology if you can borrow from Hoopla.
I check the Humble Bundle site once a month for its book bundles; the bundles are priced so that portions of what you pay go to both charity and the publisher. Most of the book bundles typically deal with programming or gaming, though they sometimes have fiction themes or instructional themes (how-to-write books during NaNoWriMo, for example). They also usually have at least one comics bundle. For a relatively small price, you can sometimes get a couple of dozen (or more) comics/graphic novels in a themed bundle. Some of the themed collections Iāve bought include a Keiron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie Showcase, Ed Brubakerās Image Comics work (his incredible Criminal series), and titles from One Press and Top Shelf; these bundles helped me catch up on lots of titles I had missed.
The Humble Bundle comics can be downloaded in multiple formats (PDF, CBZ, CBR) though that isnāt consistent; occasionally only one or two formats are offered. I prefer to read these on my iPad. There are many many comics readers out there; Iāve used Chunky Comics Reader for so long on my iPad that I canāt get used to other readers. Chunky is still available and works great, but the last update was 2 years ago, so itās probably abandonware, alas. A good second choice to try is the Panels comic reader, which is being actively developed.
Iāve tried both the Marvel and DC comics readers; Marvelās reader is better, but neither are all that great. The main advantage of these services is getting access to nearly the complete catalog offered by each publisher (new issues are delayed by six months, typically). Both services offer monthly and yearly subscriptions; I like paying for one on a monthly basis till I finish reading through whatever is interesting to me, then stopping that subscription and moving to the other.Ā
Until I wrote this post, I had no idea how convoluted my reading life had become! But itās not that hard in practice, I think. I use my iPad for most reading: comics, Kindle app, and Serial Reader. On my iPhone, I also have Serial Reader (it syncs progress across all devices, or at least is supposed to), and Kindle (for light non-fiction that is skimmed more than read).Ā
And yes, I have a chair and lamp reserved for reading good old-fashioned papery codex books. Books are a proven technology that never go out of style.Ā
Merge All Windows ā Get this Extension for š¦ Firefox (en-US)
This is one of those extensions I use often. Can’t believe this functionality is not in the native Firefox.
An unusual project: compile, sift, and present several years of photos taken over the course of our cohousing adventure, and then present it as a chronological slideshow at a gala appreciation event for our mentors and architects/designers
This project coincides with me learning Alfred, reinstalling Hazel, and searching for ways to do this in as fun and easy a way as possible, without going overboard.
Other threads coinciding with this project: a revived interest in Johnny Decimal, mainly as inspiration for me to revamp and simplify my folder/file/project management on my MacBook, some coaching and reading on just relaxing and not killing myself to get stuff done, and exploring anew apps and services available on and for macOS.
I must say, pottering about on my MacBook is as relaxing to me as working in the garden is for real people.
North Carolina Cideries Are Seeing a Gentle New Craft Cider Renaissance - INDY Week
I’ve never been able to stand the smell and taste of beer, so I could never see the appeal of it to people. Ciders, though, are really fun. I heard cider described as the alcoholic beverage for people who like soda pop, and that’s not far wrong for me. Berry and citrus ciders are my favorites. I currentlly have two crowlers in the fridge from Bull City Ciderworks: Upcide Down (pineapple cider) and Early Bird (a blend of BCC’s cranberry and ginger ciders).
Is there a German word for being surrounded by stacks of once-feted, now forgotten novels piled in a deeply haunted basement wondering, āWhat if this is where my book ends up?ā
Three years of German in high school didnāt offer an ample enough vocabulary. Thankfully, English has a word for this: sadness.
Source: What Working at a Used Bookstore Taught Me About Literary Rejection ā¹ Literary Hub
Lovely, lovely illustrations: Maira Kalmanās Illustrations of Women Holding Things ā¹ Literary Hub
Currently reading: The Complete Works: The Journal of a Disappointed Man; A Last Diary; Enjoying Life and other literary remains by W.N.P. Barbellion š
Currently reading: Early Autumn - A Story of a Lady (Read & Co. Classics Edition) by Louis Bromfield š
Zine Machine Fest, Durham NC, 2022-10-16
One of my favorite happy-making, smile-on-my-face-the-whole-time events of the year.
Arnold Bennett: Lost Icon by Patrick Donovan. š An excellent biography of the phenomenally famous and successful British author of the 1910s-20s who is little-known and littler-read today.Ā For a man who tried always to live and behave sensibly, his relationships with the two women in his life showed the limits of his self-satisfied rationality. Still, it was a remarkably busy and industrious life, with his journalism and āpocket philosophiesā (such as How to Live on 24 Hours a Day) jostling alongside his fiction and plays. Virginia Woolf bears some of the blame for the eclipse of his reputation, though some responsibility is borne by time and shifting tastes. I remember reading his play The Title and one of his novels, and the mustiness of the atmosphere and archness of the prose turned me off. I should go back and try the novels on which his reputation rest, like The Old Wives Tale and The Card.
Bennettās friend Frank Swinnerton wrote his own remembrance of Bennett and was a novelist in his own right. I downloaded Nocturne š from Gutenberg (and loaded it into Serial Readerāah, technology) and skimmed through it rather quickly. An interesting idea, to tell the story of two sisters, both loving and antagonistic, in a single night, with some moments of actual drama and interest. But so much telling. I started to see how parts of the story could work as a play but the dialog was so stilted, the narrative voice so ever-present, and the storytelling itself so stiff (not to mention that I didnāt trust Swinnertonās psychological portraits of the sisters) that I found this short novel to be pretty forgettable.
In the comics world, I binge-read Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North and Erica Henderson (my favorite artist of the series). So light, clever, funny, and fast; they really brought the joy of reading comics back for me. I also loved that they included the letters pages from the original comics, featuring cosplay photos from readers young and younger. The community that grew up around this positive andāyes, why notāwholesome comic was a delight to read. I felt both satisfaction and sadness when the run reached its end.
I also binge-read Garth Ennisās The Boys š after hearing about the Amazon show; I really cannot recommend it. It’s a brutal satire of superheroes that is itself really ugly, violent, with only two characters I really cared about; their love story is actually quite warm and tender but, jeez, you do have to wade hip-deep in blood and guts to get to it. Like all these sagas, it’s melodramatic so I kept reading to see what happened next (I also never learned to just quit reading a book Iām not enjoying). But based on my description, you can kind of guess what happens next every time.
Also read Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles š, which I guess was a story of its time. Brilliant and bold in so many ways, because Morrison. Morrison is brilliant butāand I will take the blame hereāfew of his stories have stuck with me.
I also read Chip Zdarsky’s run on Howard the Duck, another funny book with heart, though dug in more to the characterās past and not as light-hearted as Squirrel Girl. I like Zdarsky. He has a sense of humor but he also writes good action/superhero stuff; Iām currently following his Batman run.
Kelly Sue DeConnick’s “Wonder Woman: Historia” is deep-dish, gorgeous artwork, very dense, very myth-laden storytelling on the birth of the Amazons. I hope she’s able to continue the series.
I’m trying out the DC Comics app on my iPad and have been rereading Greg Rucka and JH Williams’ Batwoman run, which Williams eventually took over later as both writer and artist. The story is good, as melodramatic and soap operatic as these things are, but Williams’ layouts are jaw-dropping. It’s worth checking out the physical books from the library to really take in all the detail and the strange way he breaks the panels down, as if he dropped each page from a high window and then reassembled the shards into a new whole.
Of interest to postcard fans:Ā The mystery of the 'same sky' postcards
Notes from a lecture given by Walter Derby Bannard at UNC-CH on November 14, 1984
At a Tom Stoppard Q&A session at Duke University, a professor noted that Stoppard has said he can’t resist “fiddling” with a play when it’s being revived or restaged. The prof asked what constitutes “fiddling” and how much of it did he do?
Stoppard replied, “How much fiddling I do depends on how much of Rome is burning at the time.”
-from rescued notes made in the 1990s
Japanese Advice for the Elderly Aging Hints from Hinohara Shigeaki Born 1911 in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan (translated and adapted from Tanoyaku, Vol 38, June, 2007)
voluntold – Directed by others to do work that needs doing but that no one else wants to do and without compensation
I was voluntold that I would be writing the company newsletter.
sadmin_ – The overhead, administrative work (either office or household) that needs to be done but that you don’t want to do; the administrivia work that you’re sad to have to perform.
When we got back from the trip, we had to do the sadmin of unpacking, washing clothes, and going to the grocery store.
Part of my Friday afternoon sadmin is writing the weekly report to my boss.
King of Country? Queen of Soul? Empress of the Danzonete? Honorific nicknames in popular music - Wikipedia
āItās fantastically exciting to discover something thatās been lost all this time, but I do think it is also worth simultaneously holding the thought that actually, the only reason these fragments have survived is because at some point, someone thought the manuscripts in which they appeared were not valuable as anything other than waste. Thereās a sort of lovely tension in that, I think.ā
Source: Fragment of lost 12th-century epic poem found in another bookās binding | Books | The Guardian
Note: One of the interesting curiosities of history is that most paper has survived by accident. And for all the benefits that digitizing old manuscripts has brought us, there’s no substitute for good old-fashioned hands-on examination of the artifact.