Oblique Strategies

I just ordered a copy of Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies (wikipedia)—a box of cards with single sentences meant to resolve dilemmas:

These cards evolved from separate observations of the principles underlying what we were doing. Sometimes they were recognised in retrospect (intellect catching up with intuition), sometimes they were identified as they were happening, sometimes they were formulated. They can be used as a pack, or by drawing a single card from the shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case the card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear.

I’m interested in the idea of decks of cards with suggestions, so I ordered this one for my collection. Others include Writer Emergency Pack and The Daily Project Deck.

August 2023 Blog Roundup

This month I published four episodes of the Write While True podcast. They are all part of the third season, which is loosely structured around the basic building blocks of writing and exercises related to that.

I was inspired to podcast on this subject after reading Writing Down the Bones [amazon affiliate link] by Natalie Goldberg. I wrote a few posts referencing it.

The podcast generated other posts about writing

I decided to adopt Tailwind and wrote these articles about that process

Finally, I had a few thoughts about journaling

What is Art? What is Code?

Yesterday, when I wrote about the semantics behind art and content and making and whatever it is I do, I said that I know that calling my code “art” was a stretch.

There is code that is accepted as art. Games or any code that creates visual art or music are examples. But what about the payment system for a B2B SaaS app? I think a lot of people would call that craft.

But, I recently read Art & Fear [amazon affiliate link] and I am convinced by their distinction between art and craft.

In essence, art lies embedded in the conceptual leap between pieces, not in the pieces themselves. And simply put, there’s a greater conceptual jump from one work of art to the next than from one work of craft to the next. The net result is that art is less polished — but more innovative — than craft. The differences between five Steinway grand pianos — demonstrably works of consummate craftsmanship — are small compared to the differences between the five Beethoven Piano concerti you might perform on those instruments.

[…] your job as an artist is to push craft to its limits — without being trapped by it. The trap is perfection: unless your work continually generates new and unresolved issues, there’s no reason for your next work to be any different from the last. The difference between art and craft lies not in the tools you hold in your hands, but in the mental set that guides them. For the artisan, craft is an end in itself. For you, the artist, craft is the vehicle for expressing your vision. Craft is the visible edge of art.

– Bayles, David; Orland, Ted. Art & Fear (CRAFT) / emphasis mine

To Bayles and Orland, the Artist is using craft to explore Thousands of Variations of an idea. They are not seeking perfection. If that’s the distinction, I personally resonate with the idea that my code is more art than craft. I could see others thinking the opposite about theirs.

Make Art, not Content

The word “content” has become a catch-all for things that creators create. You hear it most on YouTube, which is weird to me because almost everything the “creators” there do is make videos, so I don’t know why they call it content or why they even call themselves creators. If they needed a catchall, we already had “Art”, which is what I use.

I know “Art” is a stretch, especially for the code, so, even though I use it, I don’t call myself an “Artist”. I usually call myself a “maker” to encompass programmer, writer, podcaster, sketcher, and graphic designer—but there isn’t a good equivalent word for the collection of output. Maybe “Works” or “Work” would be better, but it’s hard to use that word without explaining it. Art is also misleading, but I want to have that discussion.

I’m not always consistent. I call App-o-Mat a “content site”, because that’s what other people would call it. If there’s one thing good about “content”, it’s that people generally know what it means. But I don’t call this site (loufranco.com) a content site. In both my podcast and this blog, I refer to what this is as “art”.

Make Art with Friends is about my search for collaborators, but I think it was also the first time I realized this.

The First HTML Page Still Renders

If you look at the headers from GET’ing http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html, it has these lines:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Last-Modified: Thu, 03 Dec 1992 08:37:20 GMT

I believe that it really hasn’t been updated since 1992. Look at the top snippet of the HTML to see why I think this:

<HEADER>
<TITLE>The World Wide Web project</TITLE>
<NEXTID N="55">
</HEADER>
<BODY>
<H1>World Wide Web</H1>The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area<A
NAME=0 HREF="WhatIs.html">
hypermedia</A> information retrieval
initiative aiming to give universal
access to a large universe of documents.<P>
Everything there is online about
W3 is linked directly or indirectly
to this document

There are a few obvious differences between this and modern HTML

  1. No enclosing <HTML> tag
  2. <HEADER> instead of <HEAD>
  3. <P> is being used like <BR/>

But, Safari renders it as I think it was intended.

Is this because bad HTML has always been rendered? Or is HTML somehow backwards compatible to this? I suspect the former.

I’ve always been annoyed that browsers render bad HTML. I think it makes it harder to find problems. But, I also love long-lived systems that don’t require human intervention and substitutable versions, so I hope that it’s planned backwards compatibility instead.

Write While True Episode 32: Paragraph Checklist

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I think one sentence from David Lambuth really sums up what I want to say about paragraphs. Here it is.

There is no absolute rule for paragraphing. Your own feeling must be your guide.

Transcript

Soundtracks for Life

Maybe it’s my age, but the Rocky Theme pumps me up. I always run harder when it comes up in my playlist. The music from Rocky makes me think of the training montage, and then I want to exercise.

When I read (especially on an airplane), I listen to ocean waves. Music would be a distraction, but hearing waves won’t make me think about them.

I do sometimes listen to music when I program. I once read a study that it can help when doing mundane, rote tasks. Uptempo music helps me—I like to use dance music. Sometimes I’ll just put a single song on repeat.

Right now, I am writing this blog post while listening to “Going the Distance” from Rocky and Rocky II. It’s what plays right after Adrian tells Rocky to win. It’s a little more low-key than the main fanfare and for me, it means that it’s time to get down to business. I think it’s fine when I am trying to get out the words for the first draft, but I’ll probably have to shut it off when I edit.

In all of these cases, I am trying to use sound in the way that movie soundtracks work—to enhance the foreground activity. It’s working in tandem, manipulating my emotions while I am engaged in something else.

Minimum Viable Journal Entry

Most mornings, I get up and have a bowl of oatmeal. Then, while eating it, I open my journal and write down “Oatmeal” in the right margin of my daily journal entry. This is my minimum viable journal entry.

The idea comes from BJ Fogg and the Fogg Behavior Model (and described in Tiny Habits [amazon affiliate link]). To change your behavior, he recommends that you follow a formula that is patterned like this: “After I do [thing I do automatically], I will [do a very tiny version of the new thing I want to do]”. I use “After I eat oatmeal, I will write the word oatmeal in my journal” as a way to get myself journaling every day. After I write down “oatmeal”, I rarely stop.

I write down as much as I can from this list:

  • My appointments
  • My exercise plan
  • Three things I want to accomplish that day
  • What I will have for lunch and dinner

But, I’m ok with my journal entry for the day being “oatmeal”.

Journaling into an Empty Space

I stumbled upon an environment hack that helps me journal every day. Before this year, I just kept a running journal—each day just followed the last at whatever part of the page where the last one ended. If I skipped a day, then the journal just jumped in time. If I skipped a month (or two), then there was a bigger time jump. It’s annoying when I look over the journal, but there’s not much I can do about it.

Now I use a journal where there’s a space for each day. If I skip a day, I can reconstruct it from memory later. But, because there’s an empty space, I don’t often skip it.

The Third 13 Weeks

I journal in a Recurring Journal I made last year — it splits the year into four 13- week cycles where I journal the same day in the cycle in the quadrants of a two-page spread. We’re now in the in the third cycle—today is August 23rd, which I am journaling in the upper-right. In the upper-left quadrant, I see what I journaled on February 22nd, and in the bottom left quadrant, I see May 24th. Journaling this way gives me a chance to reflect on a similar day about 3 and 6 months ago.

The design of the journal makes sure that all four days on the spread are the same day of the week, which is why I use 13-week cycles instead of calendar quarters. A random Wednesday is August is a lot like a random Wednesday in February. For example, I can see a note from a recurring meeting with a mentee that I also met with today. I can see notes on my long-term project and feel a little joy in the progress I have made.

But, just as I noted in The Second 13 Weeks, the main benefit I am getting from journaling this way is that I rarely skip a day, and if I do, I backfill it. I know that I will be revisiting that day in the future, and it will be missed if it’s not there.