Archive for the ‘Ask Chris’ Category

Ask Chris: Where does the title of your blog come from?

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Max asked me yesterday where  the title of my blog comes from. He’s right, you can find the words “quiet desperation” in Pink Floyd’s Time:

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say

But I pulled it from the older source, Henry David Thoreau, in Walden:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

In Max’s words: “God… Thoreau’s writing is often like being punched in the brain.”

Yep. Sure is. I hope, one day, to have the wisdom not to do desperate things.

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The Seven Weird/Random Things Post

Monday, November 17th, 2008

Kris Johnson and Jason Penney have tagged me. I must obey.

  1. Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
  2. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
  3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs
  4. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Like Kris, I’m ignoring #4, as I dislike being a nag.  So…just the facts, ma’am:
  1. In the morning, I drink coffee without cream. In the evening, I have it with cream. 
  2. When I’m upset, I wash dishes and clean the kitchen.
  3. I’ve fought a long battle again sleep-eating. I’m not making this up. Instead of sleepwalking, I get out of bed and eat. I do not remember it in the morning, except for the sick feeling.
  4. I have burned my journals three times in my life.
  5. I never wanted to work in computers growing up. My original goal was to be a college professor, teaching Medieval Literature.
  6. I wish I had never seen the movie Event Horizon. Nothing has creeped me out more in my life.
  7. My favorite music for writing code is the soundtrack from Riven, given to me at my first technology job.
And now, we tag:

Ask Chris: How Did You Get to Mahalo?

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

A week ago, I asked for people to submit some topics that they’d like to hear me write about. Some of my comrades in the Cleveland Programming Wasteland chimed in, wanting to know how I wound up working for Mahalo.

In a word, podcasting.

No, really.

Desperation, Quiet to Unquiet

When the podcasting community started to form in late 2004/early 2005, I was working for a small development firm in Medina. While I enjoyed the work, I wanted to do something more creative in my off time, and because of that, I got into podcasting. My first contact was with Evo Terra, who at that time was the co-host of The Dragonpage. He mentioned his idea for serialized audiobooks delivered via RSS, and dubbed them Podiobooks. At the time, Podiobooks.com was a simple site with five books on the front page.
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