Unquiet Desperation

To be awake is to be alive.

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Before Vacation, A Few Notes About The Future

I’m about to take a vacation to Kure Beach, North Carolina for a little rest, relaxation, and time with the family. Before I go, I wanted to let you know about some changes that will be coming soon to this, my precious little blog.

Unquiet Desperation is going to be shifting focus in the month of July. I’ve been using this as a personal blog for years, but I find that I want to take the time to explore new things here, and split some of my other interests off into other areas.

Unquiet Desperation: The Blog

I’ve said that I want to write essays, and my goal for this site will be to host those essays. The areas I want to cover here are:

  1. Exploring living a simpler life in a rapidly-changing technological society
  2. Using creative disciplines and ingenuity to make sense of and enhance the world around us
  3. Examining the creative process in relationship and as a reaction to the pressures of daily life
  4. Touching on the care of the soul via aesthetic experience

Unquiet Desperation: The Podcast

The renewed focus of the podcast will keep the exploratory tone of past incarnations, while veering sharply away from the well-worn geekly tropes.  I envision it as monthly exploration of a single topic, via essay, interview, music, or whatever else suits. The first episode of the new podcast will drop in late July.1

Geeky Topics Live In The Secret Lair

The Secret Lair is a perfect outlet for  discussions about the entertainment, geekdom, and other topics I like to tackle. They belong there, not here.

Internet Memes, Video, Short Posts, Etc are Trinkets

Sure, I like to pass things along as much as the next guy. Those items will move to my Tumblr, Trinkets in a Coffee Can.

Programming Discussion

I consider this part of my personal creative life. Essays on programming will live here, as will topics in other creative disciplines, like writing or brewing.

* * *

Along with all of this, I’m working with Mick Bradley on a new look and feel for the site, and I’m looking forward to unveiling that once we’re done.

I will be restructuring categories and such over the new month, so if you see weirdness in the feed, please excuse it. It should only be temporary.

I want to thank everyone whose feedback and friendship have inspired and enabled me to gather this focus, especially Kris Johnson, Thomas Gideon, Mur Lafferty, J.C. Hutchins, David Moore, Jay Lynn, John Cmar, Natalie Metzger, Mick Bradley, and, my ever-patient wife, Cathy.

See you all when I return from my vacation. Try not to wreck the place while I’m gone.

-Chris




  1. This will include the contributions of all the folks who have sent me audio already.[back]

New Podcast Episodes Released

There are new episodes of both The Secret Lair and From Python Import Podcast available for your consumption.

  • In Episode 0036 of The Secret Lair, we discuss Iron Man 2, Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, and a few other assorted bits and pieces.
  • In Episode 004 of From Python Import Podcast we learn why Dave hates Decorators, and discuss whether the Standard Library is the place where code goes to die. Additionally, Mike Pirnat joins us for a revelation about the Zen of Python.

Note: Apologies for the sound quality on both of these shows. My studio equipment is packed for the move, so we had to us my Zoom H4.

CMDLN Nerd Merit Badge Arrives

The special Nerd Merit Badge which Thomas ‘cmdln’ Gideon issued for supporting his podcast just arrived. I will be sewing it on to my laptop bag in the next week.

Behold the wonder.

Twitter Suspends Ray Slakinski

Podcasting pioneer and all-around nice guy Ray Slakinski had his Twitter account suspended today. According to the video interview he did with Robert Scoble (see below), he received no warning, no reason, and when he tried to find out why, he received only canned responses.

Three thoughts:

  • This has to be a mistake. Ray’s hardly a troublemaker. He doesn’t do spam. He follows the rules.
  • Twitter really needs to have a better way of notifying people when they are suspended, just so they can appeal.
  • Twitter, as a private company, can do whatever they want. Unlike Scoble, I don’t think they OWE us anything. but boy, it would be nice to have some recourse in cases like this.

I’ll be curious to see how this is resolved. Good luck, Ray.

UPDATE: He was back online as of 4:09pm EDT.

To those of you listening to From Python Inport Podcast, we recorded ep 004 yesterday and it should be dropping this weekend.  Sorry for the delay…my purchase of a house and all that goes with it (packing, etc) has made it difficult to get all of us in one room to record. However, the next episode is made of 24-karat WIN and we think you’ll enjoy it.

Possible titles include Dave Hates Decorators or The Standard Library: Graveyard of Code.

Look for it to drop this weekend.