Feed

  • Twitter

    I logged in the first time soon after it started in 2007. I did my ten years and then mostly logged off by 2017. I’m not likely to start using it again regularly although I still use it occasionally as a people bookmarking service of sorts. I logged in last week to get an ‘archive’ of all of my data and publish it elsewhere1,2.  I tweeted 828 times and based on the IDs in the data, I’m guessing that I was the 950,535th person to ever tweet. The process felt achingly familiar3. I’ve had some discussions with others about it recently and it reminds me to think about how I use the web. Per the course… I like to flush it out, write it down, and publish it so I can send a link instead of hashing it out in an email or text thread.

    Twitter was built as a MicroBlogging service. Microblogging as a type of broadcast medium was the forerunner to social networking platforms. Social networking existed from the moment the first network computer connections were made. Twitter had a good name and was the best breed of something not unique amongst the landscape at the time. The fundamentals of Twitter already existed elsewhere. The Twitter idea originated from Odeo4,5, a podcasting company. It was just a means of having an SMS group chat.  Evan Williams created Blogger which was sold to Google and was the basis of the ideas behind both podcasting and blogging. Before Twitter, social media meant connecting with others online primarily through email and RSS, both of which could be read from the same client and in a browser. Some folks worked out unique ways to notify others via email for pingbacks and trackbacks6. I was a fan of Friendfeed because it supported pulling feeds from various sources. Facebook acquired it for $15 million and shut it down7.  Similarly, Pump.io, StatusNet, and identi.ca were using the open-source Activity Streams format which was a precursor to the ‘Fediverse’ or federated social network terms tossed around today. 

    Inter-Net-work….the web was inherently social long before the media part. In Silicon Valley’s race to capitalize, proprietary methodologies were created because open standards hinder income potential. Even the data archive I got from Twitter last week isn’t exactly portable. The WC3, who sets the standards has recommended Web Mentions, Activity Streams, and Activity Pub9 standards which is the protocol that makes Mastodon federated. I migrated most of my Twitter follows over to Mastadon while I was at it last week. Watching the other platforms pivot to gain new users is amusing. Substack has added ‘mentions’, ’cross-posts’, and ‘best seller’ badges10. Tumblr rolled out a $7 badge and the owner insisted they would be implementing the activitypub specification which I noted appropriately11. I’m sure folks will figure out a way to spam those protocols too as long as there is a way to profit from them. Twitter turned to bots after it gained popularity and the account APIs were introduced. The bot, spam, link farms, etc were online long before Twitter too.

    Elon Musk recently tweeted “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” likely in reference to his surveys on reinstating previously banned accounts. It translates to the “Voice of the People is the Voice of God”,  but the full context of the most cited reference to that term is:

    Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.  “ And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness. 

    ~ Alcuin in his letters to Charlamagne Epistle 127 in 760AD12.

    The riotousness of the crowd is Twitter. And Twitter is just a bellwether for the internet as a whole as we adapt to new communications mediums. Those first couple of years were just techie types tweeting because those were most of the same folks with websites.  Then came the journalists, media, celebrities, publishers, and internet celebrities. Then everyone’s uncle had it installed on their phone.  When those other folks started rambling on about their other interests, I lost interest. And then they started to monetize it all with adverts, tracking users across the web, and rewriting shared URLs so they could track those too.  The most retweeted thing ever was a pyramid scheme offering a reward for retweets. The web was already decentralized and will likely always be outside some platforms’ walled gardens. I just hope that the efforts to improve the open standards aren’t sabotaged by private interests.

    I’m sure in the coming year we’ll end up hearing a lot more on free speech and social media. I have a very simple minded approach to it which I wrote about pretty extensively in my article on Section 23013. I think that you’re welcome to espouse your opinions, ideas, or theories however you’d like but not entirely without consequence if they are damanging to others. I think that the main product of social media platforms, aside from usability, is sorting and moderating that information so that it’s vaulable to it’s end users. A platform like Twitter is a private company and can make itself reponsible for moderation however it best see’s fit to it’s own business model. And likewise, I can excersize my own liberty to not pay it any attention.

    I’d use social media again if I had something to promote and I suppose I’m lucky not to have the need. Former Twitter CEO Evan Williams apologized saying he was “wrong to think that an open platform where people could speak freely would make the world a better place”.  I wouldn’t completely agree with him on that because I believe there have been some good things gained through social networking platforms.  I read an essay recently fed to me, not via social media but my handy dandy good ole’ fashion hosted RSS reader…  entitled A Tweet Before Dying that said “What then? We’ll all move over to some Twitter replacement like Mastodon, hundreds of millions of us, and ruin that too? Sigh.”13. Other than echoing my sentiments here, whatever happens with Twitter means very little to me because I choose to rely not on the platform itself but on the interoperable standards of the internet which were social from the get go. 

    2022/12/03 Update:

    Right on Cue… Matt Taibbi, the investigative journalist published a series of tweets he’s calling the Twitter Files15 yesterday afternoon looking into the content moderation efforts of Twitter during the last election. Main takeaway for me was the fact that, imagine this… people are sending emails around requesting removals and questioning various policies. Sometimes just having an audience has it’s own consequences.

    2025/11/15 Update:

    The thing is… all this new reporting on foreign spam accounts seems so obvious to me, I can’t even really understand how it’s news other than the fact that they added the ‘about this account’ features showing country of origin16. The new reporting did kinda touch on something I hinted at here and that America’s Polarization Has Become the World’s Side Hustle17. Perhaps I’ll log in again and leave this as my only ‘tweet’ since I previously deleted all of the others… na, ole Space Karen isn’t getting any eyeballs from me.

    1. @windhamdavid tweets – https://davidwindham.com/til/lists/tweets 
    2. @windhamdavid follows – https://davidwindham.com/til/lists/people#i-follow-on-twitter
    3. Windham, D. 2020. Dirty Algorithm – https://davidwindham.com/dirty-algorithm/
    4. Odeo – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odeo
    5. Twitter History – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#History 
    6. Pingback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback
    7. FriendFeed – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriendFeed 
    8. Silicon Valley – S3E10 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_(TV_series)
    9. W3C Social Web Protocols- https://www.w3.org/TR/social-web-protocols/ 
    10. Substack – https://on.substack.com/p/introducing-mentions-and-cross-posts
    11. Tumblr –https://windhamdavid.tumblr.com/
    12. Alcuin – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcuin
    13. Windham, D. 2021. Section 230 – https://davidwindham.com/section-230/
    14. Ford, P. 2022. A Tweet Before Dying – https://www.wired.com/story/tweet-dying-revolutionary-internet/
    15. Taibbi, M. 2022. The Twitter Files – https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394
    16. Elon Musk’s Worthless, Poisoned Hall of Mirrors – https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/11/x-about-this-account/685042/
    17. America’s Polarization Has Become the World’s Side Hustle – https://www.404media.co/americas-polarization-has-become-the-worlds-side-hustle

  • David Byrne

    I went to see David Byrne in Asheville a couple weeks ago. We were in the first rows and the audience started following the performers dance moves. It was like being in some sorta intimate line dance with the band. It was stellar. Watching him perform is more akin to watching a preacher than a rock musician. I’ve had a long held fascination with David Byrne and I think it began in August of 1981 when MTV first went on the air and I saw this video.

    I would have been just under 10 years old the first time I saw the video, but I remember quite vividly the debut of MTV on our console television in the living room. MTV aired a bunch of the same videos1 over and over, but none of them grabbed my attention the way Once In A Lifetime by the Talking Heads2 did. In retrospect, I believe the innovative use of film editing was just the product of the art school background of the Talking Heads band members. At that age, I didn’t really understand the meaning of the lyrics and it was only the motion that intrigued me. Regardless, the song reappeared in a 1989 film entitled Down and Out In Beverly Hills3, which gave me a bit of insight into the meaning of it. The theme of the film kinda nailed the existential crisis of the song lyrics. About that same time (1989) I owned exactly two concert films on VHS: The Song Remains the Same by Led Zepplin and Stop Making Sense by the Talking Heads4. Both of which are two of my all time favorite concert films. I bought up about every Talking Heads and David Byrne CDs I could get my hands on. And I played them non-stop. I had a couple friends who also enjoyed them, but they were few and far between.

    Skip ahead fifteen years or so, when I met my wife in college. Two things really stood out about our first date from my other gal pals. The first is that she had a really good sense of humor, not just the giggle type, but the dark and cynical gut rolling humor I like. The second thing is that she really liked the David Byrne and Talking Heads. It wasn’t just the ‘oh yeah, they’re cool’ type of like. She knew all of the lyrics to most of the songs and understood them. The first birthday gift I ever bought her was a talking heads CD box set. We played that thing out on every trip we took. I’ve since read How Music Works6 and followed about every recording project, film, or book he’s been involved with. I’m also particularly fond of his internet radio station7 because of the way he curates the playlists. I can’t say there is anything he’s created that I don’t like. I am particularly fond of a couple though… the film True Stories, Look Into the Eyeball, and Uh-Oh. I also really like the soundtrack to The Last Emperor and it was nice seeing him play himself on the Simpsons Dude, Where’s My Ranch? and in This Must Be the Place.

    Neither of us have ever seen David Byrne in concert. I bought the tickets as soon as they went on sale and put us in the second row. As with what has been noted the style of that original video in that he studied archive footage of “preachers, evangelists, people in trances, African tribes, Japanese religious sects” to see how he could incorporate them into his performance… the live performance we watched wasn’t too far off. The way he engaged the audience wasn’t that of a rock star, but of an evangelist. Because the set design was so simple and the accompanying band members engaged in a rehearsed synchronized dance routine, the first ten rows of the auditorium were completely engaged in the performance. Him and his crew were working hard breaking a sweat, and had obviously spent countless hours rehearsing the material and choreography. Like I said… it was top notch. We already knew the lyrics to the new album so we listened to the Imelda Marcos inspired musical Here Lies Love5 written by Byrne on the way up, while Ginny researched the Marcos’ real life. On the way back we listened to Brian Eno. I’d give the American Utopia concert a 10/10. And I give David a 10/10 on being an artist and a decent human being.

    Here’s the setlist for the show (Asheville, NC – May 8th, 2018):
    Here – Lazy- I Zimbra (Talking Heads) – Slippery People (Talking Heads) – I Should Watch TV (David Byrne & St. Vincent) – Dog’s Mind – Everybody’s Coming to My House – This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) (Talking Heads) – Once In a Lifetime (Talking Heads) – Doing the Right Thing – Toe Jam (Brighton Port Authority) – Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)(Talking Heads) – I Dance Like This – Bullet – Every Day Is a Miracle – Like Humans Do – Blind (Talking Heads) – Burning Down the House (Talking Heads) – Encore: Dancing Together – The Great Curve (Talking Heads) – Hell You Talmbout (Janelle Monáe)

    25/12/04 Update: We saw David again last night in Atlanta for the Who Is the Sky? tour8. The thing is I’ve seen a lot of concerts in my lifetime and it’s definitely different. David takes a bunch of highly trained dancers, musicians, and vocalists and puts em through their paces in a thematic visually stunning choreographed set. He gave em what they wanted on this tour, yet the set list of songs somehow still felt like a tightly planned concept album. It’s really about him as an artist. It’s kinda hard to explain, but it’s like he’s floating up above it to steal a line from his song. He’s not rooted in any physical place or timeline even though several of the songs have very physical references. The lyricism is timeless and abstract – he blended a setlist that spans almost fifty years. Here’s the setlist:

    • Heaven ( Fear of Music )
    • Everybody Laughs ( Who Is the Sky? )
    • And She Was ( Little Creatures )
    • Strange Overtones (Brian Eno – Everything That Happens Will Happen Today )
    • Houses in Motion ( Remain in Light )
    • T Shirt ( Who Is the Sky? )
    • (Nothing but) Flowers ( Naked )
    • This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) ( Speaking in Tongues )
    • What Is the Reason for It? ( Who Is the Sky? )
    • Like Humans Do ( Look into the Eyeball )
    • Don’t Be Like That ( Who Is the Sky? )
    • Independence Day ( Rei Momo )
    • Slippery People ( Speaking in Tongues )
    • I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party ( Who Is the Sky? )
    • My Apartment Is My Friend ( Who Is the Sky? )
    • Hard Times ( Paramore cover )
    • Psycho Killer ( Talking Heads: 77 )
    • Life During Wartime ( Fear of Music )
    • Once in a Lifetime ( Remain in Light )
    • Everybody’s Coming to My House ( American Utopia )
    • Burning Down the House ( Speaking in Tongues )

    Anyway, you can go find the tour show reviews out there so I’m not going to sum it up. The Fox in Atlanta is wild with its mosque design. All I’ll say is if you haven’t seen a performance – it’s good – definitely worth the effort. Seeing the show is just a reminder of possibilities.

    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first_music_videos_aired_on_MTV
    2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_in_a_Lifetime_(Talking_Heads_song)
    3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Beverly_Hills
    4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Making_Sense
    5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Lies_Love
    6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Music_Works
    7. http://davidbyrne.com/radio
    8. Who Is the Sky? – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Is_the_Sky%3F

  • Man from Plains

    All this talk of politics has affected my netflix lineup. Last night we watched the documentary “Man from Plains“2 about Jimmy Carter3 and his most recent book. I’ve got to say that Jonathan Demme4 is one of the better filmmakers of our time. Ever since Stop Making Sense5, a video concert of the Talking Heads was released I’ve been a fan. What I like about Demme is the unbiased and personal approach. I’ve always said of good photographers and painters whom work with portraiture that the best approach is to be as transparent as possible so as to not influence the subject in any manner. This film does just that as it documents Carter’s travels to promote his most recent and controversial book entitled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid6.

    The film gives an honest perspective on the man and his principles as Demme was obviously given good access the former president during the filming and what impressed me most was exactly how candid and emotional Carter was during the filming. He is obviously a very intelligent man in the way he handles conversation and which may also explain why he is a physicist by trade. What is controversial about the book is that Carter is trying to explain that perhaps the Palastinians have been wronged which is very bold and politically incorrect these days. But Carter does it with eloquence and good rhetoric in the face of staunch adversaries.

    After the film, I followed up with some research on Carter and his policies. What amazed me is how strong his opinions about peace and energy conservation. He actually reduced the dependence on foreign oil by half during tenure as president. He installed solar panels (which were later removed) on the white house! It’s amazing how we continue to repeat ourselves in history as I think my third grade teacher began the first history lesson i remember with that exact phrase. President Carter had some interesting approaches to energy policy that may hold in todays atmosphere.

    Don’t get me wrong…I’m not a political or economic expert, but I can tell you a good deal about the Laffer Curve7 and supply side, trickle down Reaganomics including the fact that Author Laffer and Wanninski, credited with coining the term did so over a meeting in 1974 with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld present…so I’ll let you do your own research8. But I am a good with the study of human character and I can tell you that I am compelled to believe that Jimmy Carter is a good man with honest motives or at least the film did an excellent job of concealing anything otherwise.

    April 20, 1979, White House photo of Carter and rabbit from the Carter Library
    April 20, 1979, White House photo of Carter and rabbit from the Carter Library [1]

    I can whole heartedly recommend that you see the film for yourself. The photo above is of Carter fishing when a swimming rabbit “attacked” his boat.. lucky the secret service was there to capture it on film.

    23/12/06 – The rabbit incident came up in a conversation likely due to conflict in Gaza9. I replaced the missing photo and added the references. I didn’t replace any of the original links, correct any of the grammatical, or fix the spelling errors.

    25/01/09 – I referenced this essay in a recent conversation with friends since he passed away at age 100. He was the longest-lived president in U.S. history. I read quite a bit about him recently and I watched the service on C-Span 10 this morning. The Carter Center published a tribute site 11 that’s worth your time. I left a condolence message. The more I learn… the more I like.

    Jimmy Carter is an inspiration for a life well lived. I told my friends I’m gonna pick up some tools in his honor and to handle some carpentry work for myself and I might even go so far as start working on the solar thing. I’ve referenced the Crisis of Confidence speech12 a number of times recently and I suggest a revisit. I first picked up on it in the film 20th Century Women and rewatching it had profound affect. I sympathize with Jimmy Carter’s tough mind, soft heart mentality and I hope that his work to advance human rights and alleviate human suffering is an inspiration for generations to come14.

    1. Jimmy Carter rabbit incident – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident
    2. Man From Plains – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_from_Plains
    3. Jimmy Carter – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter
    4. Jonathan Demme – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Demme
    5. Stop Making Sense – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Making_Sense
    6. Palestine Peace Not Apartheid – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine:_Peace_Not_Apartheid
    7. Laffer Curve – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
    8. Reaganomics – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics
    9. Israel – Hamas War – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Israel–Hamas_war
    10. President Jimmy Carter Funeral Service at National Cathedral – https://www.c-span.org/event/public-affairs-event/president-jimmy-carter-funeral-service-at-national-cathedral/429876
    11. Jimmy Carter Tribute – https://www.jimmycartertribute.org
    12. President Carter Address on Crisis of Confidence – https://www.c-span.org/program/american-history-tv/president-carter-address-on-crisis-of-confidence/154404
    13. 20th Century Women – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_Century_Women
    14. Carter Center – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Center

  • Cold Mountain

    We took a small trip up into the hills last weekend. An old friend had lined up a rental cabin up on Lake Logan North Carolina for the Cold Mountain Music Festival1.  He was pretty stoked to gather a couple friends for the event because The Mother Hips2 rarely play the east coast and he had spent some time with them out west. I just wanted to jot down a couple of notes on why I enjoyed it to share.   

    It’s a three hour drive on the back roads across the rolling Piedmont following the Saluda River3 watershed to Sunset up through the Jocasee Gorges4 across the eastern continental divide5 near Sassafras mountain6 and back down into Rosman following the headwaters of the French Broad River7. For whatever reason, possibly because it was late in the afternoon and had rained earlier, we had the twisty backroads almost entirely to ourselves.  Right as it passes over the some of the highest elevations of the Blue Ridge Parkway8 at 6000ft near Devil’s Courthouse9 you drive back down along the the headwaters of the West Fork of the Pigeon River10.  Lake Logan is fed by the river running through the Middle Prong Wilderness11 and sits in the valley of the Shining Rock Wilderness12 area of the Pisgah National Forest13.  With highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s, the weather is spot on for this time of year. It’s an area that I’ve been through hundreds of times over the last thirty years but it never seems to fail at renewing my sense of wonder. 

    Lake Logan14 was original used for logging because it’s sitting in the middle of one of the largest old-growth forests east of the Mississippi. Kudos to the Episcopal diocese for the usage and preservation. A reverend from the church spoke about how the church doesn’t judge folks based on their beliefs and that the festival is used as a fundraiser for and an inclusive summer camp program.  The volunteers running the beer/wine stands were so kind to everyone.  I grew up in an Episcopal church and attended other summer camps up that way.  My wife and I jokingly said to one of the staff that we needed summer jobs with lodging and she invited us to apply. On the way home we conceded that we might just make it a reality. 

    I almost feel bad writing about or talking up the event because it’s still relatively small given the quality. It could have been the two year hiatus. It had just enough vendors and people to make it comfy without the crowd.  I Draw Slow15 came in from Ireland with some fairly hip folk music. Catham Rabbits16 are a husband wife folk duo out of NC who have their own PBS series. Futurebirds17 are from Athens, GA and they knocked out a lovely rendition of Bertha.

    His Golden Messenger18 was the headliner and I’ve been following along for the last ten years. Their tone was about perfect for sunset. It’s nice getting up close and personal without the crowds.  About halfway through the afternoon, they decided to have an impromptu dog show before the closing act with each dog owner parading them across the stage.  One of the three best of show awards went to this really old dog. It was stellar. 

    Although I could go on a great length about the venue and event… that’s not really what makes it so potent to me.  The overwhelming feeling I get being amongst a group of people who are happy…. that’s the real key. Kids running around everywhere having fun. People of all walks of life and ages just laid back on a grassy field enjoying a mountain meadow. On several occasions as I stood there taking it all in, all I could feel was lucky.  Perhaps it was just the feeling of normalcy from the last couple of years.  Instead of being buried in the day to day of folks running around trying to make it, it is just so nice to remind yourself what life can really be about when you can take a break to breathe it all in.  

    His Golden Messenger – Sanctuary
    1. Cold Mountain Music Festival – https://www.coldmountainmusic.org
    2. The Mother Hips – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_Hips
    3. Saluda River – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saluda_River 
    4. Jocasee Gorges – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorges_State_Park 
    5. Eastern Continental Divide – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Continental_Divide 
    6. Sassafras Mountain – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassafras_Mountain 
    7. French Broad River – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Broad_River 
    8. Blue Ridge Parkway – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ridge_Parkway 
    9. Devil’s Courthouse – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Courthouse 
    10. Pigeon River – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_River_(Tennessee–North_Carolina) 
    11. Middle Prong Wilderness – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Prong_Wilderness 
    12. Shining Rock Wilderness – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Rock_Wilderness 
    13. Pisgah National Forest – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisgah_National_Forest 
    14. Lake Logan History – https://www.lakelogan.org/about/history/ 
    15. I Draw Slow – https://www.facebook.com/idrawslow 
    16. Catham Rabbits – https://www.chathamrabbits.com 
    17. Futurebirds – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurebirds 
    18. His Golden Messenger – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiss_Golden_Messenger 

  • A Second Brain

    I recently wrote an essay entitled Slow Thinking1 about how I manage my attention in the era of constant notifications.  As a follow up, I’ve been thinking about how I manage my knowledge and wanted to write some notes on it because I’ve been seeing more references online about using a personal knowledge management systems and have recently been sharing my approach with my wife and her cohorts working on their doctoral theses. I suppose that my process originally started  as soon as I began keeping digital documents on computers and really solidified into a system around 2017 as a Today I Learned2 ( TIL3 ) which I was based on keeping technical notes. It has been gradually evolving into a more general Personal Knowledge Manager4.  Some folks also refer to it as a Second Brain5,6 and there is an active community of software developers, productivity speakers, and academics all espousing the methodology.  We all already have a form of personal knowledge management that we use. It could be in your word documents, todo list, emails, your calendar, or just handwritten sticky notes attached to the refrigerator or your monitor.

    My own experience leads me to believe that Hypertext7 as it was envisioned in the 1950s and the standardization of markup languages and databases as the a building blocks of the internet are the root of the concept which encompasses a wide range of other topics like semantics8, ontology, information architecture, metadata, and metacognition.  I think the real more recent kick start of folks discussing it is the availability of software tailored towards it. Ward Cunningham’s 1995 book The Wiki Way and software WikiWikiWeb really solidified the idea that a knowledge base could be using the Hawaiian language word for quick. 

    I think ‘quick’ is the key to building a personal knowledge base that is sustainable and usable. Even though more recent software options like Roam Research14 highlight PKM ( Personal Knowledge Management ), there has been all kinds of software options available for many years under other terms like mind mapping, knowledge graphing and just plain note taking apps which have dominated the mobile app market. Remember that any software is only as good as how you use it. If your sticky notes are working just fine, don’t change.  It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking the tool is making your more organized when in fact, you’re just spending more time making charts, tables and hyperlinks.  I’ll list a bunch of options in the footnotes below if you want to look at all of them all15. 

    One of the software options Logseq, recently announced they raised 4.1 million “to accelerate growth of the open source neuron-inspired knowledge management system to build a new World Knowledge Graph”16. I think it’s a great product especially the ability to connect to the Zotero17 but their /publish repo has some room for improvement. I like to use a combination of software and techniques for managing my personal knowledge base.  I recently started adding more non-technical information to mine because I found myself looking for real estate closing documents or re-searching google for things like the make/model of my lawnmower.  I use Markdown18 as the file format because it’s relatively easy to migrate between it and other document formats , it’s supported by the text editors I use for development, and much of the other available documentation online in places like Github also already use it. I like to use Obsidian or Logseq when I’m working outside of my VSCode text editor and I organize the files the old fashion way using system folders in one directory where I can publish them using Docusarus19 and Lunr20 for search. 

    My biggest takeaway in having managed a personal knowledge base is that data portability and usability are the keys.  You’ve got to be able to quickly make a note on your mobile device when you think about it, migrate between software/publishing platforms easily, and search.  I think I actually get the most millage out my search. My organization doesn’t matter that much when I can get instant search results from my queries.  For instance, let’s say I’m working on a project when I stumble remembering a configuration setting I’ve previously used I’ll head over to my site and start typing in the search box with the type of software and viola my notes on it are there. It’s just like giving good file names on your computer so that you can find them when you looking. 

    A well crafted and easy to use knowledge system can be really useful. I certainly understand that you may not have the technical skills to self host, install a search, learn markdown, or even consider the need. Perhaps you’re just making research citations, keeping tabs on your exercise or making music playlists. The usage possibilities are endless. You can get around the technical hurdles by paying a small fee to a provider who will handle it for you.  You’re going to want interoperability with the systems you’re already familiar using.  Whatever works for you is what’s best and the tool is only as good as the user. I think the most important concept behind all of the recent jargon of PKMs, mind mapping, second brains, or whatever you want to call it… is that well organized, hypertext’ed, semantic, indexable and searchable knowledge is a powerful tool for any organization or individual.

    1. Slow Thinking – https://davidwindham.com/slow-thinking/
    2. Today I Learned – https://davidwindham.com/today-i-learned/
    3. TIL – Docs – https://davidwindham.com/til/docs/ 
    4. Personal Knowledge Management – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_management 
    5. Tigo Forte – Building a Second Brain – https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com 
    6. Maggie Appleton – Building a Second Brain – https://maggieappleton.com/basb 
    7. Hypertext – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext
    8. Semantic Network – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_network
    9. Ontology – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science)
    10. Information Architecture – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture
    11. Metadata – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata 
    12. Meta Cognition – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition
    13. Wiki – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki#History
    14. Roam Research – https://roamresearch.com 
    15. PKM Software
      1. Obsidian – https://obsidian.md
      2. Logseq – https://logseq.com
      3. Unigraph – https://unigraph.dev 
      4. HyperNotes – https://zenkit.com/en/hypernotes/ 
      5. Athens Research – https://www.athensresearch.org
      6. Joplin – https://joplinapp.org
      7. Dendron – https://www.dendron.so
    16. Logseq raises $4.1M to Accelerate Growth of the New World Knowledge Graph – https://blog.logseq.com/logseq-raises-4-1m-to-accelerate-growth-of-the-new-world-knowledge-graph/
    17. Zotero – Personal Research Assistant – https://www.zotero.org
    18. Markdown – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown 
    19. Docusaurus – https://docusaurus.io 
    20. Lunr – https://lunrjs.com 

  • Jocassee

    Jocassee – “Place of the Lost One”

    I took a trip up to lake Jocassee1 last weekend with some old friends.

    1. Lake Jocassee – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Jocassee

  • Bob Dylan

    I went to see a Bob Dylan concert last night1,2.  I had seats up front just a couple rows back in the middle aisle and it was good.

    1. Watching the River Flow
    2. Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine
    3. I Contain Multitudes
    4. False Prophet
    5. When I Paint My Masterpiece (Bob on harp in beginning then on piano)
    6. Black Rider
    7. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
    8. My Own Version of You
    9. Crossing the Rubicon
    10. To Be Alone With You
    11. Key West (Philosopher Pirate)
    12. Gotta Serve Somebody
    13. I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You
    14. Melancholy Mood (Frank Sinatra cover)
    15. Mother of Muses
    16. Goodbye Jimmy Reed
    17. Every Grain of Sand

    The setlist mixed several unique renditions of his songs from the last 59 years flanked by the majority of his most recent work from Rough and Rowdy Ways which in my opinion is as good, if not better than any of his previous work. It’s not really appropriate to compare his works because each one reflects a different state of mind and time. The most recent is littered with references to mortality and art keeping him alive. For the last several weeks, I’ve been recently listening his discography, interviews, outtakes, and reading anything related because there’s a small part of me that likes to try and personally connect to the event. Dylan explained in his Nobel Prize in Literature essay and in other interviews that he had connected to Buddy Holly in a very mysterious way just days before he passed. Ole’ Zimmy will turn 82 years old before this tour is over and although literal volumes have been written about him, this is mine. 

    The first time I actually paid attention to Bob Dylan was when I was in my early teens listening to the soundtrack Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid3.  I had a kind of peculiar luxury growing up when it comes to listening to music. Our house as filled with albums because my father worked in radio and had promotional copies. We had a whole wall of cabinets filled with albums. I would just pick them out randomly based the covers and listen to them. I tended to gravitate towards the playful and colorful albums of The Beatles when I was really young. But for whatever reason, I first discovered Bob Dylan through an obscure soundtrack which only has two songs on it that aren’t instrumentals even though a couple outtakes have since been recorded by other artists. Kris Kristofferson played Billy in the film and the album was recorded a couple days before I was born. 

    I listened to the other albums with interesting covers before I was old enough to drive… Dylan, Planet Waves, and Slow Train. I didn’t really pay much attention then because the lyricism didn’t resonate with me and I was too focused on new music and the sounds of bands like Led Zeppelin. In my late teens, I picked up a couple CD’s that I listened to a good bit.  During my first year of college, one of my best friends was a rabid Dylan fan. Her dorm room was covered in Dylan posters and out of respect, I borrowed and listened to every album meticulously reading the lyrics alongside.  Another college girlfriend would also listen to Blood on the Tracks regularly. And during my most debaucherous college days my friends and I would listen to The Basement Tapes somewhat religiously and play our own versions.  The CDs I wore out more than any other was the double disk live 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert. The very first songbook I purchased while I was playing guitar was called Classic Dylan which included Blonde on Blonde, Nashville Skyline, Blood On the Tracks, and Desire. At one point, I knew every note and lyric to all four of those albums and that’s pretty tough for even Dylan to remember who has often ad-libbed some of the lyrics in live performances. 

    So what is it about Bob Dylan? I mean… there’s a reason he’s won a Noble Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Academy Award, Golden Globe, 10 Grammy Awards, various Hall of Fame awards, numerous books and documentary films. His own book Chronicles Vol. 1, received acclaim. My dad and wife both like to joke about him with the nasal voice bit. Just writing this is making me try to find the seed. My father has a deep interest in early American Rhythm and Blues which I think comes from his own experiences. I don’t have any real world experience that connects me with any Dylan’s political or protest songs. I think that the nonconformity and anti-authority aspect certainly hit some personal ideals, but it’s more than that. Dylan walked off the set and refused to appear on the Ed Sullivan show after CBS informed him that his tune my be considered libelous to the John Birch Society. But it’s not his political nature that appeals to me either even though I very much respect him for his participation in the anti-war and civil rights movement. In a way, I think it’s more about his individualism and sarcasm. At every turn in his career, he’s never taken the path of least resistance even though he could have retired on his reputation alone forty years ago. Even his albums from the last ten years have remained somewhat controversial because he shifts his artistic style.

    I have had two very small personal connections to Bob Dylan. The first is that a friend of mine briefly exchanged words with him on the street in New York. As I was told, it went something like this… “Uh Mr. Zimmerman, I just wanted to say that I’m a big fan” and Dylan replied “what are you, some sort of penis salesman” and walked off.  The second is that I was building a website for a polo association down in Aiken, South Carolina when I met the sister-in-law of D.A. Pennebaker, the filmmaker who caught Dylan flipping cards in front of Allen Ginsberg for his documentary Dont Look Back4. They asked me to help build their website and I still host and manage it5. Pennebaker shot another documentary film titled Eat the Document6 that Dylan edited and has never been released.  

    I still discover things about Bob Dylan that I didn’t know. I was recently listening to an interview with Larry Charles7 where he describes how Dylan had contacted and met with him about creating a TV Show.  That eventually became the movie Masked and Anonymous8.  In April of 2020, Bob Dylan had his first ever Billboard top charting track with Murder Most Foul9which is a 17 minute track about the killing of John F. Kennedy which is his longest song ever and references 70 other songs10.  I return to Dylan every so often when a new album is released and each time I listen to a new album, it leaves me the feeling of wanting just a little bit more. If I could attempt to distill my enthusiasm in the simplest terms, I think it would revolve around his distaste for the obvious and his embrace of the mysterious.  While listening to a lot of Dylan recently, I was constantly reminded that his music and lyrics make you think. In my opinion, his art attempts to closely mirror the type of balanced juxtaposition that our world is made of in the tradition of all the great works or art. If he reaches the end before this tour is over or another album is released, it’d be a perfectly poetic ending. Cheers to everyone I’ve known that shares my enthusiasm for Bob Dylan. These are some of the best people I’ve ever known because they seem to share an appreciation for the sublime that’s as old as humankind. 

    1. Bob Dylan – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan
    2. Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_and_Rowdy_Ways_World_Wide_Tour 
    3. Pat Garret & Billy the Kid – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Garrett_%26_Billy_the_Kid_(album)
    4. SubterraneanHomesick Blues – https://vimeo.com/63913470
    5. Dont Look Back  – https://phfilms.com/films/dont-look-back/ 
    6. Eat the Document – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_the_Document
    7. Larry Charles – You Made it Weird with Pete Homes – https://youmadeitweird.libsyn.com/larry-charles
    8. Masked and Anonymous – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masked_and_Anonymous
    9. Murder Most Foul – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_Most_Foul_(song)
    10. A List Of The Songs Named In Bob Dylan’s ‘Murder Most Foul’ – https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2020/03/27/822468820/a-list-of-the-songs-named-in-bob-dylans-murder-most-foul

    22.07.02 – I had a text thread going with a couple friends about Dylan and we started ranking our favorite albums. I went ahead and made an exhaustive list excluding the various bootleg and outtakes compilations. There are some ties in here and I might could shuffle a couple around. It’s just me reminiscing about listening to them which might be affected by the state of mind I was at during the time that I liked each album. I’ll just put it here as a reminder.

    1. Royal Albert Hall
    2. Before the Flood
    3. Budokan
    4. Basement Tapes
    5. Highway 61 Revisited
    6. Bringing It All Back home
    7. Desire
    8. Street Legal
    9. Hard Rain
    10. Blood on the Tracks
    11. Blonde on Blonde
    12. Rough and Rowdy Ways
    13. New Morning
    14. Dylan
    15. Infidels
    16. Freewheelin
    17. Another Side
    18. Bob Dylan
    19. Dylan & the Dead
    20. Triplicate
    21. Tempest
    22. Under the Red Sky
    23. Slow Train
    24. Nashville Skyline
    25. Rolling Thunder
    26. Self Portrait
    27. Real Live
    28. John Wesley Harding
    29. Time Out of Mind
    30. Oh Mercy
    31. Empire Burlesque
    32. Shadows in the Night
    33. World Gone Wrong
    34. Shot of Love
    35. Saved
    36. Planet Waves
    37. Fallen Angels
    38. Love and Theft
    39. Knocked out Loaded
    40. Unplugged
    41. Good As I Been to You
    42. Together Through Life
    43. Down in the Groove

  • Automobiles

    I sold two cars and got a new one last week so I’ve been thinking a good bit about automobiles recently. Before I get started on this, let me first just say that I don’t really like automobiles or driving anymore. I find the roads just too congested with idiot drivers in a rush. I used to commute a pretty good distance on highways every day and often found myself dodging the lane swayers on their phones. I can now go weeks without leaving the neighborhood because I work from home and ride my bicycle to the tennis courts. I enjoy a vacation where I can just park my car for the week and ride a bike. 

    I wish U.S. metropolitan areas had been developed before the car. I think the best cities are those that were built before the car even mattered. I was down in Charleston last week and I wish someone would ban cars downtown in favor of trolleys even though the port there is shipping out a mass of them overseas keeping the economy afloat. It’s not just the whole dinosaur juice-burning thing either.  Electric cars will only solve part of the equation and we should be focused on high-speed mass transit and urban mobility at this point in the game.  I spent almost eight hours in the car last week and it wasn’t exactly what I’d call a luxury.  So what I’m hoping for now is a high-speed rail with a station within a short drive. There has been some discussion of a rail connecting Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, and Washington DC that runs through Greenville just up the road. That’d connect almost the entire east coast. Automobiles used to have that distinctive sort of American freedom attached to them, but they’ve become more of a burden than a luxury1,2.  

    I still enjoy a nice drive through a quiet country road on occasion. I used to love cars and driving. I have this thing where I can identify almost any year and model of automobile just from the front or rear. I’ve driven up and down and back and forth across the United States in several different automobiles. I’ve also driven hundreds of models of cars too because I would ask the valets at a hotel I worked at to let me park em and go on joy rides. I grew up riding around in a 1967 Pontiac Lemans Convertible. It was the first car I ever drove. My uncle had taught me to drive while I was still in elementary school and one afternoon while my parents were away after school, I loaded up my brother and took it for a ride through our neighborhood while I could barely reach the pedals or see over the dash. I was embarrassed by that car because I thought it was old, but the reality was that my other uncle was quite the grease monkey and had that thing in mint shape tuned up to high hell and back. It would burn the tires off the wheels with the 450 GTO package, Cragar mags, and a Holley carburetor.  The top stayed down most of the time and those seats would burn your skin off the back of your legs if it had been sitting in a parking lot during summer. I just didn’t realize that my mom was driving around in the 1980s in a classic muscle car. 

    I’ve personally had an assortment of vehicles: Honda, Porsche, VW, Jeep, Nissan, BMW, Mazda, & Toyota. I think the best one I ever had was a 1989 Toyota Tercel that I bought for $400 and sold for $1000 after driving it for two years. I lived in downtown Charleston during that time, so it was the perfect beater. I blew up the Porche engine because I was irresponsible and reckless. I’ve put 150,000 miles on the Honda and Nissan. The 86 Jeep Grand Wagoneer got about 12 miles to the gallon and was the worst driving but most comfortable of the bunch.

    I got a new BMW X3 last week and traded in a BMW touring. I originally got a BMW for the interstate drivability. I just found that at high speeds it handled better than other cars.  I’ve now grown fond of their driving style and will even rent them when available. It’s also partially to support our local economy because the new car was assembled just up the road from me. BMW has been the largest American-made vehicle exporter for the last 10 years. They have been great at customer service providing us with great loaners, customer loyalty discounts, and quick recall repairs. I’m not likely to drive the new one more than 50,000 miles before I trade it in, but our i3 is almost 10 years old now without a single issue3. I think it’ll end up outdoing the old Tercel for my all-time favorite. 

    I just don’t look see the automobile as the luxury I used to and more like a necessary cost of doing business. I might add a small pickup truck back to the mix at some point because I just prefer the everyman image it exudes. Although I’ve been tempted to take on a project car, I just don’t want it taking up space and I’ve kinda got this attitude now that the perfect automobile is one that’s paid off, reliable, and under warranty.  Perhaps when I’m closer to retirement, I’ll fix up an old Pontiac LeMans to try and relive the joy and freedom I had of driving in my youth.  

    1. U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics The Average Cost of Owning and Operating an Automobile – https://www.bts.gov/content/average-cost-owning-and-operating-automobilea-assuming-15000-vehicle-miles-year 
    2. U.S. CDC – Road Traffic Injuries and Deaths – https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index.html 
    3. It’s Electric – https://davidwindham.com/its-electric/ 

  • Old Photos

    https://photo.davidwindham.com (1)

    Back when I was in my early teens, I got an old Minolta SL-T 1012 camera and started taking photos. It was my parents camera and you can see it in this photo of my mom3. These were the pre-digital days and I even signed on to newspaper and yearbook staff at school so that I had access to the darkroom4 and learned to develop them the old fashioned way. At one point, I wanted to become a photo-journalist because I thought it’d be fun. While in high school, I went to journalism camp several summers at the University of South Carolina… yes there is such a thing for all the really hip kids. We stayed on campus and went to various classes. I like to carry around my camera and take edgy odd perspective images of all kinds of people and stuff. I heard one of the best comments about photography from a friend’s father that has really come to stick with me in the digital age and define my attitude towards the ever present camera these days. He said “I used to take photos all of the time, and then it occurred to me that I was actually missing out on life trying to get photos”. I very much feel that way now in that I will not keep my phone or camera on me for events, I regularly duck out of group photos, and avoid a camera aimed at me like a virus.

    While at the College of Charleston, I got a job in the art department as the slide library manager. This is back when professors had to line up a carriage of slides for art lectures. I photographed student artwork and managed a library full of analog imagery. I was honored to have the gig, because I was nominated by a department professor for the position. It was a great way for me to get to know all of the art department staff and many of the students. At one point after I started messing around with VR and time lapse photography. I remember vividly one time while working on a large format painting and the head of the studio art department asking me why I was distracting myself with the camera. The reason I remember is that within just five or so years, it became a very popular with other visual artists. Aside from building websites for art school pals, learning to embed these images are one the things that really got me into learning web publishing. Needless to say, I’ve kept all of those old photos over the years and I’ve developed some digital asset management strategies that work for me.

    I’ve used an assortment of software and cloud hosting for managing images such as Adobe Lightroom, Apple Photos, Flickr, Dropbox, and Picassa. Having run into various migration pains, I’ve always liked to keep the originals organized in a plain file system with backups on my local computers. I’ve scanned in thousands of old family slides. Recently, I had a project moving a bunch of old VHS movies to digital files… because if you didn’t know, they degrade pretty fast. I kinda fret when folks these days just upload imagery to Facebook, not realizing they’ll be downscaled and you’ll never get back the original you uploaded long after your current phone or computer is gone. I can only image the volume of videos and photos being generated today. When folks, usually documentarian parents, ask me about good system to store them all, I always try to steer them towards a hybrid cloud solution. In the process of migrating computers and servers, I usually shuffle around various projects between machines. Sometime after 2000, likely in another migration process, I started using a hosted open source photo manager5 so that I could share some of them with others and because I think it’s in our best interest to control our own resources online6.

    So there I am in 1985 if you are curious what I might have looked like. It’s nice to watch yourself grow and age. Perhaps I’m just using it to remember. Right around the turn of the century must have been fun because I have literally no imagery from it. I used to keep the majority of them password protected, but I’ve since made some of them public. On newer images, I scrub some of the exif7 data. I try to keep those images blocked from being indexed by search engines even though I know some will not respect my requests. Having had my website running for almost twenty years now, I’ve got a good feel for who my real visitors are. I ran a the PimEyes8 facial recognition scanner recently to see if they could match my face and the only photo that turned up in the one I use on my personal about page for my website.

    Although I try to keep my phone camera out of my hand, I still have a pretty nice photo rig and I make the effort to take some photos on occasion9. There is just something about an image that it might take me a thousand words to describe10. Sometimes when it’ll take me looking at an old photo for some period of time before I discover something interesting about it. I’ll add new and old photos to that collection as I have time. I’ve had numerous opportunities in the last couple months to reminisce about old photos, so hopefully I live long enough to one day reminisce about the one’s I’m publishing now.

    1. Photos | David Windham – https://photo.davidwindham.com
    2. Minolta SR-T 101 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minolta_SR-T_101
    3. David Windham – My Mom – https://davidwindham.com/my-mom/
    4. Darkroom – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkroom
    5. Lychee – https://lycheeorg.github.io
    6. AlwaysOwnYourPlatform.com – http://www.alwaysownyourplatform.com
    7. Exif – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exif
    8. New York Times – A Face Search Engine Anyone Can Use Is Alarmingly Accurate – https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/26/technology/pimeyes-facial-recognition-search.html
    9. David Windham – Butterflies – https://davidwindham.com/butterflies/
    10. An Image is Worth a Thousand Words – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_picture_is_worth_a_thousand_words

  • Slow Thinking

    How I try to organize my attention.

    I started this essay because I got a new computer a couple months back which always prompts me to reevaluate exactly how I use it.  I also recently added in a set of notes to my Today I learned1 and in the process of doing so, I mapped out my personal workflow and started thinking about it.  I have the tendency to ‘zoom out’ on anything to conceptualize it and I suppose the ideas here might find themselves inside of a larger topic. A couple of days ago, a fella asked me where I thought we were with internet technologies and I found myself repeating my opinion that we are only on the cusp of the information age and the implications are just now starting to come into focus. 

    Photo of my 1982 Apple brochure… the same one I used to convince my parents that we needed a computer in the house. ( Illustration by Don Weller )

    Computers are really just based on organizing information via file and network systems protocols. I’ve noticed that the vast majority of computer software focuses on file and communications organization. There are literally thousands of productivity, communications, note taking and reminder apps. At the core of it is something I completely understand because my better half has the manual for every kitchen appliance filed in a drawer in her office. I use an 1989 Matt Groening illustration for a Macintosh brochure on my desk page which captures the essence pretty well. And because I’ve always been loose with my focus, I have a tendency to try and balance that off with a bit of retentiveness and minimalism. What I’ve come to realize is that staying focused is an exercise that is heavily dependent on your state of mind. It’s not exactly a secret that everyone is overloaded with emails, text messages, notifications, various communications systems, and whatnot2. It always reminds me a song lyric from Sylvan Esso3: 

    I’ve got a television, it’s filling me with home.

    I’ve got a phone that beeps, makes me know I’m not alone.

    – Sylvan Esso – H.S.K.T3

    Although there may be some fundamental psychological truths as to why we want to stay so connected,  I personally try to disengage from all automated notifications systems.  Engagement is the metric by which everyone is trying to measure their effectiveness.  It’s literally your attention that’s being capitalized and mine is not for sale. Those little notification bubbles and email reminders are why many have started to wish for the web of days old calling it the ‘slow web’.  Jack Heng wrote in his 2012 essay The Slow Web4, “The Fast Web is a cruel wonderland of shiny shiny things” where he succinctly lays out a great explanation of problem. There are now countless articles5 that follow up on that same philosophy with a bunch of approaches6 to handling it. One essay7 in particular struck a chord with me because it’s so close to my own method. The technique I use revolves around two basic concepts: avoid all distractions and everything can be organized with just a couple files.  

    Calendar: As much as I think things could be organized non-linearly8, there’s no way around the reality of the forward march of time.  My mechanic needs to know when he’s working on my truck and my doc needs to schedule time to see me. Although I’m not a big fan of meetings, I will concede that there is something that feels very productive about in-person discussions that can’t seem to be replaced by shared documents or whatever new fangled ‘team’ communications software you’re using.  The best way to make them work is to have exactly what is to be discussed outlined and well documented.  I use the native Calendar app on my devices and I only set events for actual events and alerts for things I actually need to prepare for like leaving the office at a particular time. It’s mostly my public contract/project work calendar, meetings, birthdays and travel. Otherwise, I never add deadlines, reminders, or anything else in my calendar because I find it’s just another way or trying to make me feel like I’m organized that just ends up being another distraction. 

    Notifications: I avoid real time notifications like the plague.  I literally only have phone and text messages on two numbers that notify me in real time. I silence them twice a day on a regular schedule between 6-10am and 6-10pm. It doesn’t prevent me from checking their status by looking at them, it just stops me from being interrupted by them. An unintended outcome is that because others have gotten accustomed to my often delayed responses, I’ve found that I’ve conditioned them to be proactive in how they contact me. I have push disabled on my email clients and I only receive new emails when I open and request them in the morning and before I shut down. 

    Reminders: Aside from a calendar and email, I keep reminder files available on all of my devices. Todo, Short, Middle, Long, and Pass. Pass is the only one I do not sync between servers because it contains my cryptographic keys and passwords that allow me to log into various services. I also keep a list of those accounts and a list of contact info just in case all of my devices are ever taken offline. Todo is shared with my wife because we keep groceries, house chores, and other tasks together on it. I divided the others by priority. I don’t have any limits to these list but they tend to hover around 10 items on them at a time. 

    Visual: I keep my screens clean by letting those items dominate prominently in large format widgets on my devices.  It keeps my calendar, reminders, and notes prominent so that I have to make a purposeful decision to open any other application.  I also keep identical start pages on all of my browsers across computers so that the first thing I see when I open the browser or new tab is a page dedicated to what I’d like to focus on.  It maps out all of my devices, servers, projects, and accounts. 

    screenshot of my phone and tablet
    screenshot of my start page

    Attitude: A lot of my state of mind has to do with my attitude towards work and chores.  I always try to make my chores a game of staying ahead and I always try to consider ‘work’ as the opportunity to help people. Sure, I sometimes glare at it like an opponent in a game that I’m trying to win. But what I realized long ago is that there is more to it than just money. If you look at it just for the money, it’s a game you can’t win. I try to enjoy my work. Even in little small side projects, I try to slide in new concepts to have fun and learn new things.  And lastly, I’ve found that keeping a focused state of mind means letting it completely loose on occasion for moderation.  I enjoy the absolute worse of the mindless fast web as long as it isn’t programmed to try and re-engage me via notifications.  I like to occasionally surf r/PublicFreakouts and r/IdiotsinCars.  Long gone are my days of debauchery and social media because I now find them mostly boring.  In my down time, I try to enjoy the most basic of things like mowing the yard, reading a book, or a game of tennis. The very best of days involve a midday nap and an afternoon movie. Slowing down to control attention is something I recommend to everyone and I hope the attention you just spent on this essay was worth it. 

    1. David A. Windham – Today I Learned –https://davidwindham.com/til
    2. Johann Hari – The Guardian – Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen. – https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jan/02/attention-span-focus-screens-apps-smartphones-social-media 
    3. Sylvan Esso – H.S.K.T – http://www.endlessendless.com/sylvan-esso-hskt-1  
    4. Jack Cheng – The Slow Web – https://jackcheng.com/essays/the-slow-web/
    5. Tariq Krim – Drifting. Why we need a Slow Web. – https://medium.com/@tariqkrim/drifting-c45102df9e3
    6. Ian Bogost – The Subversive Genius of Extremely Slow Email – https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/01/slow-internet-email/621232/
    7. Jeff Huang – My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file – https://jeffhuang.com/productivity_text_file/
    8. David A. Windham – Non Linear Publishing – https://davidwindham.com/non-linear-publishing/

  • The Greenwood Promise

    While updating my site recently, I noticed that I hadn’t added many recent projects. This is likely because I don’t depend on it as a marketing tool for selling my services and I try to keep a low profile regarding business because I really don’t want it dominating my social life in a small town. In the last year, I’ve also done a half dozen charitable projects as tax write-offs mainly because they’re fun without any purse strings attached.  With that said, let me take a moment to brag about myself and catch up on some more recent projects. 

    The Greenwood Promise is a local charitable organization designed to provide locally qualified students with financial assistance for a post-secondary education1. One of their board members asked me to help them because they had an outdated website that a staff member had made on a free website service, so I reworked it into a static site and migrated it.  

    The thing I’ve noticed over the last twenty years about internet communications and websites is that they’re only as good as their message and content.  The problem I see with many self-built projects using website builder platforms is that they tend to undermine the organization’s professionalism. Don’t get me wrong, I like the DIY spirit and sometimes the effort comes off as earnest and sincere.  However, clean and clear communication is key if you’re trying to communicate to a larger audience online. I’ve also seen where DIY’ers will go for over-the-top designs in an effort to make themselves look more grand even though it usually looks like a secretary went to town in a web editor. I’ve also seen the overuse of content management systems when folks don’t really need them3. I think this is mostly because of the tools available and it’s easier for folks to use a builder to create a site. The designs tend to reflect whatever tools they’re given. I can usually spot the CMS just by the design and for this reason, I’ve gotten pretty quick at migrating back and forth between static and various CMS-powered websites. 

    I also try to make these projects fun for myself by adding new techniques to my toolbelt. In this case, I mostly stayed in my comfort zone with a workflow from my usual technical specifications…  a task-runner, bundler, CSS framework, vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.  Although I kinda wanted to go full-on Typescript and use Svelte4, I prioritized a really quick turnaround and they didn’t need any additional JavaScript features or an edge network because 99.9% of the valued visitors will be regional. Instead, I focused my learning on mapping custom color modifications using Sass5 which gave me easy-to-use class names for various elements and an easy way to change the color scheme. And as always, I’m a stickler for creating really clean markup which you can see in the published source code online6. 

    My approach to web communications is simple… keep it simple. I try to make the websites as performant and easy to use as possible on every device so that the design is just an add-on that stays out of the way. In the case of The Greenwood Promise, they just needed to convey their mission, leadership, and information to potential candidates because all of the rest of their outreach would be done via social media. I plopped their existing graphics, color palette, and content into an extensible web framework. I put up a preview domain for them to revise and edit, and then I migrated the domain. Every so often, I’ll get an email for a revision so it’s easy to maintain.

    * 23/01/09 – Yesterday I published a new version of this site. A new director requested the ability to change the design so I migrated the site to WordPress, added full site editing capabilities, and changed the design to match the annual report from last year. Since I did it over the holiday as a charitable contribution, not only am I able to share my work here, I made it worth my time by learning some new skills related to the WordPress Gutenberg editor and Full Site Editing. It took a bit of work debugging some of the template errors in React, but otherwise, I was able to basically plop the existing static site into a theme. Because it was fun, I went ahead and threw in all the bells and whistles and customized the editor to match the site. I went so far as to future-proof it with fundraising and form-building tools. At some point, I’m sure they’ll go to an entirely digital workflow. Most of the technical details on it are available in my notes7 and here are a couple clips I made to walk them through it:

    1. The Greenwood Promise – https://greenwoodpromise.com
    2. Website builder – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website_builder 
    3. Content Management System – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system
    4. Svelte – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svelte 
    5. Sass – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sass_(style_sheet_language)
    6. Code – David A. Windham – The Greenwood Promise – https://code.davidawindham.com/david/gwp 
    7. Notes/WordPress/Blocks – https://davidwindham.com/til/docs/host/WordPress-Block

  • BASIC

    I was scrolling the intra-webs last night while the better half was wrapping up class when I came across something from my past.  I was searching the trending repositories on Github for fun when I ran across a collection of BASIC computer games1. I opened the bowling game directory and instantly recognized it.  Even thought I discovered it trending on Github, the fella that created it is one of the few tech writers I actually subscribe to in my feed reader.  In his post on Coding Horror2, he mentions the first book I ever got on computers and how this book was the first on computers to reach a million copies have more circulation than actual computers.  

    In order to determine the exact year last night, I had to first determine when the Atari 2600 Pac-Man3 was released.  It was released in 1982 and I went with my parents to Dutch Square mall in in Columbia, South Carolina to get a copy.  I remember having to stand in line at the store to get it.  In that same mall just down the way, there was a bookstore next to a record shop and down the way from an arcade.  My parents would give me a little bit of money to spent there and it was there that I picked up some of the most influential things on me as a kid. I got a copy of School is Hell, Cerebus the Aardvark, and most pertinent to this essay… More Basic Computer Games4. 

    I got the book in 1983 after I managed to talked my parents into getting a computer. We got an Apple II which was also partially spurred on by the movie War Games which I’ve previously written about in Shall We Play A Game5. I spent countless hours typing those BASIC games into the computer.  As a third or fourth grader, I didn’t even understand what I was entering. It seemed like magic to me but I gradually started to understand what was going on enough so that I was soon making my own games. Looking at the code now reminds me of exactly how important it was to learn those fundamentals. 

    Although I really didn’t dig into programming until late into college, all of the elements of programming were there in those games… commands, functions, loops, conditionals, operators, types, and variables.  I was at an in-laws house over the holiday talking with a young kid who must have been about third grade or so who was telling me he really wanted to learn computers. I went out to the car and got my iPad to load up Swift Playgrounds6 which I had started tinkering with. I could tell he was hooked immediately.  

    When folks ask me about teaching programming to their kids, I recommend Swift Playgrounds because it teaches the fundamental of programming in a way that has incremental steps, immediate feedback, and playful results7.  I enjoyed it so much, that I’ve gone through much of the Learn to Code, Starting Points, and Challenges just for fun. Discovering that code repository last night was a friendly reminder that everything is incremental knowledge, it’s never too soon to learn, and it’s never too late to have fun. The goal of the repo is to transcribe them all to other programming languages by the end of 2022 and I might contribute for fun. 

    1. Basic Computer Games – https://github.com/coding-horror/basic-computer-games
    2. Jeff Atwood – Updating The Single Most Influential Book of the BASIC Era – https://blog.codinghorror.com/updating-the-single-most-influential-book-of-the-basic-era/
    3. Pac-Man ( Atari 2600 ) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_(Atari_2600) 
    4. David Ahl – Basic Computer Games – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Computer_Games
    5. Shall We Play A Game? – https://davidwindham.com/shall-we-play-a-game/
    6. Swift Playgrounds – https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ 
    7. Teaching Code – https://www.apple.com/education/k12/teaching-code/ 

  • 2021 in Music

    I make a new playlist every month while I’m at my desk and about this time every year, I do a round up of my listening habits from the last year. I mostly try to add new releases and throw in any older songs I may have on repeat. I still try to listen to complete albums as they’re published, but I’ve found that so many artists are just releasing a track at a time prior to the album so I end up hearing several tracks before the complete album is out. And before you murmur to yourself… yes I agree the artist royalties are terrible for streaming and I would argue that they’ve been poor since the beginning and until artist go direct to consumer there will always be a cut. The problems is that the listeners need a way to find music and that will mostly be done where there are large libraries that act as a discovery mechanism. The reason I originally switched to streaming is that the cost of listening to hundreds of albums a month is much much cheaper and I still listen to streaming radio to discover new music so I’m not pigeon-holed into the streaming provider’s algorithms.

    I think the big music news this year was everyone selling their catalogs. Simon, Dylan, Springsteen, and Young sold everything last year1. Although I don’t understand it completely, I can see where the art is already out there and that’s the only thing the artists is really concerned about. Who and how money is made from it when they’re long gone doesn’t seem to be a concern. I suspect that in the coming years, music streaming services will fragment like streaming television has done with more and more music publishers like making standalone streaming apps. I’d imagine that even the even independent record labels who’ve managed to sell download make far more from merchandise, LPs, and CDs. Part of me hopes that eventually the publishers will figure out the technology and they’ll be able to compete with the likes of Amazon, YouTube, Apple, and Spotify but I don’t see it happening anytime soon if ever because the consumers will take the path of least resistance.

    I started out this year listening to Paul Simon and The Beatles discographies in chronological order because I recently listened to Miracle and Wonder2 by Malcolm Gladwell and watched Get Back3 by Peter Jackson. I’ve noticed that because of it, Paul Simon is now outnumbering Bill Evans in my charts. The last part of 2021 was dominated by me listening to music my brother liked so there is a lot of Dmitri Shostakovich and Glen Gould in there. I think 2021 was a pretty slow release year overall and even though I still peruse the charts and the end of year reviews, I don’t give them any precedence unless I respect the author’s tastes. I suppose music charts have always been reduced to the lowest common denominator and because they’re tracked worldwide in almost real time now. I try to remain open minded about all new music even though I have however many listening years under my belt. I’m pretty quick to critique and cut off a track just 10 seconds in. I’ve really started to focus on one particular artist at a time and I’ve started doing it with filmmakers and writers too.

    The main way that my listening habits changed last year is that I started listening to more audiobooks and podcasts while I’m working. While thinking about how I’ve archived my music listening habits, I may have to switch this annual post from music playlists to podcasts, audiobooks, what I’m reading and watching too. I think that the best way to handle it will be to publish a non-linear list of recommendations. I’ve always planned on using the data I’ve collected to create a singular playlist of my music tastes. I’ve listened to just enough music now that the majority of popular music from the last century is starting to sound like the same song. I’m really hoping to see some good work from artists in 2022. I mean… the last couple years have been pretty serious. I’m kinda over any sorta cliché sound at this point and I really look for artistic integrity and sincerity in both the music and lyrics.

    On a technical note, I started using an Apple One account alongside of Spotify mainly because of the new Dolby Atmos lossless audio codec4 at my desk. The 24-bit/192 kHz ‘high-res lossless’ is stellar but it doesn’t support Bluetooth in the car where I’m still using Spotify. Unfortunately Apple Music doesn’t not offer the ability to plug into the Last.FM API5 and I have to use a standalone app to stream the data. This also got me to thinking about my data portability because I don’t want to be locked into any particular service provider for my playlists and tracking. I found a couple apps6 that can export the data into a raw format for me to keep indefinitely irregardless of service. I’ve embedded my Spotify playlists below and you can see everything I listen to @ https://davidwindham.com/studio/music7

    1. NPR – Why are So Many Artists Selling Their Music Catalogs – https://www.npr.org/2021/12/22/1066650388/why-so-many-big-name-musical-artists-are-selling-their-music-catalogs
    2. Miracle And Wonder – Conversations with Paul Simon – https://www.pushkin.fm/audiobook/miracle-and-wonder-conversations-with-paul-simon/
    3. The Beatles: Get Back – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles:_Get_Back
    4. Spatial & Lossless Audio – Apple Newsroom – https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/05/apple-music-announces-spatial-audio-and-lossless-audio/
    5. Last.fm API – https://www.last.fm/user/windhamdavid
    6. Github – Exportify – https://github.com/watsonbox/exportify
    7. David A. Windham – Music – https://davidwindham.com/studio/music/