Rethinking Facebook: Some reflections

“They have their story, and I have mine.”

These words have been on my mind a lot over the last few months. The idea, as deftly explained in this blog post by a friend of Donald Miller’s, is that we can’t compare ourselves to others, since our respective paths through life are never so parallel. So these words make for a pretty good mantra when browsing Facebook.

I read an article on CNN’s website recently that really resonated with me. (Not something I frequently say about CNN, but hey.) It cited several studies as saying that the more time we spend browsing Facebook, the more likely we are to feel worse about our own lives:

In early 2012, a study out of Utah Valley University also found that many people had a case of the blues after checking Facebook. The researchers talked to a group of 425 students and found correlations between the amount of time people spent checking Facebook and negative feelings about their own lives. The more time their subjects spent on the social network, the higher probability that they would think their friends lived better, happier lives.

In January, a study from Germany found that a third of people felt worse after spending time on Facebook. Seeing updates of friends' successful careers, cute babies and fabulous vacations inspired feelings of envy, loneliness and even anger.

I can sympathize with this. When my Facebook friends post photos of cool vacations, cottage outings, excursions with friends, etc., it’s hard for this introvert to not feel like a pretty boring person by comparison, even though I know that my life is anything but boring. It seems to me that Facebook was designed more for extroverts than introverts, and that the constant pressure to share our experiences runs counter to the way introverts interact with each other.

People put their best foot forward on Facebook – I’m certainly no exception – but the result is that using Facebook has increasingly been feeling like performance art, like I’m trying to come off as a more interesting and extroverted person. When I post some sort of funny status or anecdote, or even a YouTube video of some obscure musical piece, it’s hard not to hope for some kind of reaction. This is an awkward feeling in that we’re usually told we should live life without being worried about what others think of us – but everything we do on Facebook provides the opportunity for “Likes” and comments from others, and it’s hard not to judge the success of one of my Facebook posts according to the number of “Likes” and quality of comments it receives. In other words, the value of what I post on Facebook seems inherently tied to what others think of it, since by definition, I’m posting it to a social media site, and I’m not posting it in a vacuum for my own use.

***

Part of the problem, I think, is that Facebook has become a social destination in itself as opposed to a social tool. Ideally, social media should be part of a balanced social life: it provides the ultimate place to see and be seen, but it doesn’t always foster real connection on its own. After I post anything to Facebook, I check that browser tab frequently to see how many comments and “Likes” it's accumulated, but none of it is as satisfying or memorable as a good long-form conversation with a friend, or a dinner outing, or a university event. It’s hard to shake the feeling that I’ve spent too much time browsing and updating Facebook and not enough time being social.

And Facebook is indeed an addicting thing to browse and update: there’s lots of ways to update our profiles to reflect our interests, since it’s both a place to create an online identity and a place for advertisers to play to our interests. It occurred to me recently just how much junk from high school there is on my profile these days: bands I once had a passing interest in, books and movies I read and watched years ago and haven't revisited, and notes and status updates that don’t necessarily reflect who I am today. It’s almost as though Facebook expects you to constantly curate your profile as you change throughout life, but that’s pretty narcissistic in and of itself. Still, if I become Facebook friends nowadays with someone who maybe doesn’t know me all that well, and they look at this stuff, what message does it send about who I am today?

***

There’s lots of other arguments to raise in regards to Facebook, such as the ethics of a profit model based on targeted advertisements, the constant cat-and-mouse game of privacy, the contradictions inherent in “Facebook creeping”, the ubiquity of cyber-bullying, etc. Maybe I’ll touch on some of these in a future post.

In the meantime, I’m planning to refocus my use of Facebook. I’ve been removing some of the junk from my profile, but I’ll also pay more attention to what I post and why, and give more attention to social opportunities outside of my computer screen. I might even post photos more frequently, if that proves to be a better way of using this tool to connect with people!

Facebook has certainly been a valuable tool for me: it’s the only way I’m still in touch with various people, and it’s been useful for sharing updates on my health situation (and receiving lots of lovely encouragement in return). But sometimes it feels like it comprises too large a portion of this introvert’s social life.

[Author’s note: This was the first post I started writing in this new wave of blog posts, around July 31st by the looks of it (and before the CNN article was published). It originally sounded a bit apprehensive and depressing, and I hope I’ve succeeded in minimizing this.]

Is golf a sport, or a game?

I was watching PGA.com’s live-streamed coverage of the PGA Championship this past weekend: as with a lot of tournaments that do online streaming, they had live streams for a couple select pairings of players, and didn’t keep switching between all the players like the TV broadcasts do. Even though it wasn’t one of the major-network, high-budget TV productions, I actually found I was enjoying the commentary a bit better than the usual network stuff.

Since they didn’t have to keep cutting to other golfers immediately after each shot, the commentators got to go into a bit more detail about the pairing they were following. It also happened to be probably more detail than the average TV viewer would appreciate, explaining every shot afterwards like, “Did you notice where Keegan Bradley’s chip shot landed before it rolled onto the green and came up short? Let’s take a look at this again. He should have flown it another foot – it landed on the fringe first, but it would have gotten a firmer bounce if it had landed on the green. That shot looked wide open, but he really had a slim margin of error.” The usual commentators would probably just have said, “Well, it came up short,” and then cut to the next player, but I felt like I had learned something I could apply to my own game. Another thing was, “That was a tough putt to read that Tiger just had, since it looked like it broke left-to-right, but it was sort of neutralized by the break on the right side of the hole, so it ended up being pretty straight.” I’m not sure what they meant by that, or how it’s even possible, but it was fantastic. Somehow, they also ended up talking about Timbits at one point.

And then while Keegan Bradley and Tiger Woods were finishing their short putts for par, the commentators got into that age-old debate: is golf a sport, or a game? They both firmly believed that it’s a sport, and watching the PGA Championship, I would tend to agree with them. They talked about the condition these players have to be in, and noted that if you want to play golf well, you have to do it as an athlete. That last part is something that had never occurred to me, and it raises some interesting questions.

The main acts of athleticism that pro golfers undertake during a round, as I understand it from my armchair, are that of walking the 7,000-yard golf course (which requires a fair amount of endurance), and more importantly, that of swinging a golf club with as much force as required for the shot while quieting one’s body and mind to reduce distracting movements and thoughts. And to do this well, modern-day pro golfers work out religiously with strength training and stretching, and they work with sports psychologists and chiropractors. Tiger Woods, and Gary Player before him, set an example of fitness for the pro golfers of their generations. But what about the rest of us?

I tend not to play golf as an athlete – contrary to what I’m sure must be the widespread public perception, I don’t work out – and this might be part of why I’m not a better golfer. But more than that, the two terms “sport” and “game” seem to have different connotations. Golf, to me, has lately been more of a leisure activity than an athletic activity, more a game than a sport. Perhaps it’s because I play so infrequently, and can’t really see how I improve as I get more experience at it (unlike with running, or navigating Toronto on crutches). In a way, improving my game doesn’t matter to me like it did when I was twelve: it’s just fun to be out there these days.

So maybe golf is a sport if you treat it like a sport, and a game if you treat it like a game? With golf, possibly more so than any other sport (even baseball), it’s possible to play in a totally casual, near-lazy way and still enjoy it: you don’t need to give 100% as often, so it’s a nice chance to explore the great outdoors, and a unique social environment.

On the other hand…it sounds like even the pros need to see golf as a game, lest they overthink their swing and forget to relax. I’m currently reading Moment of Glory: The Year Underdogs Ruled Golf, by one of my favourite authors, sportswriter John Feinstein, who explains the problem like this:

Golfers often talk about the key to improving being the ability not to make golf work. Tom Kite once said, “You have never heard someone say, ‘I’m going to go work golf.’ You say, ‘I’m going to go play golf'.’ You need to take that approach to your swing on the range. When it becomes work, you almost never get any better.” (pg. 59)

This vaguely zen philosophy is contrary to the modern sports ethic of constantly pushing oneself, and might be golf’s biggest differentiator as a sport. I’m reminded of the NFL coach who started his team’s training camp by holding up a football and saying, “Gentlemen, this is a football,” and going right back to basics. It’s like the best way to improve at these things is to step back for a moment, and keep them in perspective. Maybe golf is fundamentally a game – unless you want to get good at it, in which case it becomes a sport, and unless you want to get really good at it, in which case it sort of has to become a game again.

So…is golf a sport, or a game? I’d say the answer is “yes.”

Rethinking blogging: Some reflections

As I hinted in a previous post, I’ve been feeling more compelled to write recently. And blogging seems like the most suitable venue for it! I’ve recently been inspired by Lifehacker posts like this and this, and also by a fascinating article in Scientific American that spoke deeply to this brain-tumour patient. But in a larger sense, as I explained earlier, I’ve been inspired by the growing feeling that I need to create something, and find sources of self-development, motivation, and satisfaction outside of my coursework and co-op job duties. There’s also the fact that I’m currently on crutches and unable to explore Toronto as thoroughly as I had wanted to this summer...but that’s a story for another day!

I’ve been hesitant to use my blog for a while, and I think there’s a few things at play here. First is that back in 2007, when I created this blog, I think I saw it as a fairly simple way of publishing interesting links, with the hope that maybe further discussion would ensue. (Nowadays, of course, I tend to do this on Facebook – but back in 2007, I think links were relegated to a different part of your profile rather than showing up with your statuses and everything else.) Starting in 2009 or so, however, I started to post some more “long-form” writing. University makes you think through everything in a bit more depth, I guess, so this is the path I’d like to continue on, even if the long-form writing looks inconsistent with my earlier blog posts. But the ironic thing here is that university also tends to sap any excess intellectual energy out of me, so it’s made this sort of long-form writing and the ensuing discussion more taxing for me (my deepest apologies, Luke).

The other issue is that I’m toying with the idea of creating a personal website again, but using it more for professional purposes, with these lengthier blog posts and a digital portfolio. So in the meantime, I’ve been hesitant to put more effort into this here Blogger blog. (Really personal blog posts, however, would stay here.) I recently used WordPress to build a new website for my church, and fell in love with it, so I’d want to use WordPress instead of Blogger for the new site. I’d blog about environmental and social-justice issues, like I’ve tended to since 2009, but I’d also like to get into topics of Geomatics and geography, human–computer interaction, and my various discoveries during daily life as a computer geek. In another previous post, I quoted from science-fiction author Bruce Sterling’s column about simplifying your life by getting miscellany out of your time-space. I re-read this piece every now and then, and there’s several things in it that I rather disagree with, but something that always jumps out at me is this point: (emphasis his)

Experiments need to be slotted into some larger context of research, and their results need to be communicated to other practitioners. That's what makes them true "experiments" instead of private fetishes.

If you're buying weird tech gizmos, you need to know what you are trying to prove by that. You also need to tell other people useful things about it. If you are truly experimenting, then you are doing something praiseworthy. You may be wasting some space and time, but you'll be saving space and time for others less adventurous. Good.

If you're becoming a techie magpie packrat who never leaves your couch – that's not good. Forget the shiny gadget. You need to look in the shiny mirror.

The thing about buying weird tech gizmos isn’t particularly relevant to me, as I’m notoriously frugal, and I also spend most of my digital time on my laptop. But it occurs to me that even my laptop exploits can sometimes be considered mere hedonism if there isn’t some intention of sharing my discoveries. That is to say, the various apps I test out for my own purposes and the solutions to random problems I have with Windows might be worth talking about, especially if they can make someone else’s life easier. I don’t intend to become Paul Thurrott or anything, but I think it would be interesting to share random tips I might come across.

So that’s the idea at the moment. Since I’m just not sure I can wait any longer, I’ve been working on a few other blog posts which I'll hopefully share within the next week or so: one on golf, one on the relationship between karma and crutches, and one on rethinking my use of Facebook. I can also think of a couple tech-related blog posts I could write fairly efficiently: one on a little-known-but-pesky Windows Vista bug I investigated a few years ago, and one on my varied opinions of Windows 8 and 8.1. Looking forward to seeing where this goes!

A new era

Note: This is likely to be the most personal post I've had on here. Consider yourself warned.

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So it's now 2013. I'm back in Sarnia for a while, having finished my co-op term in Ottawa. It was a tough term for the four of us, with the illnesses, subsequent deaths, and funerals of both my grandmothers. In the middle of it all, I was also confronted by my own anxiety problems, in ways that I hadn't been before.

But we're back together now, for Christmas. I enjoyed living in Ottawa; don't get me wrong – but I'm relieved the term is over. It's the first time all four of us have been home at the same time since August, and it feels great; it feels exactly the way things are supposed to be.

I've been thinking recently about how far away I am from being the person I want to be. I feel like I need to be more spontaneous, more creative, and certainly more social. I need to get in shape, eat healthier, and get more sleep. I need to be better about maintaining (and starting) friendships, and replying to things within a reasonable amount of time. And I feel like I should be living life more ambitiously, speaking as someone who nearly lost their life and is grateful to still have it.

As I said, I loved living in Ottawa (at least until it started to snow). It's a really livable city, with lots to see and do, and it's picturesque to boot. It sounds obvious, but some of my best memories from my four months in Ottawa came when I got out and did stuff:

• Labour Day, when I went on tours of Parliament Hill, sat overlooking the Ottawa River at sunset, and toured around Sparks Street (and had some awesome poutine)
• The Waterloo alumni event I attended at the National Gallery of Canada (by the way, walking through downtown Ottawa while wearing a suit – walking past the Parliament buildings and Bank of Canada building – feels AMAZING)
• The Saturday in December when I explored downtown Ottawa, saw the new Lincoln film, and walked along the Rideau Canal at night (Ottawa's best poutine might have been involved on this particular day as well)

The point isn't my undying and artery-clogging love of poutine (though that always helps); it's that I could easily have spent this time sitting in front of a computer like I usually do, and the time would have escaped from my grasp without anything to show for it, without any photographs, without any memories made.

***

I was on the phone with my parents near the beginning of December, when my grandmother in Cobourg was on her last legs. At one point in the conversation, I must have sighed more loudly than usual: Mom asked me what was wrong, and I mentioned how strange it was that both grandmothers, mainstays of our lives, would suddenly no longer play an active role in it. Mom replied, "Yes; it's a new era."

It is, and likely in more ways than Mom meant. It's the alarming realization that it's just the four of us now – that my parents are now without their parents; that I'm really an adult now, and my own person; that our home in Sarnia is now a place where I spend an occasional weekend, or break between terms; and that I have a professional career now. And back in Ottawa, where no one knew me, a lady at church asked if I was a bachelor or not, and a taxi driver asked if I had a wife. So it's also the realization that I'm at the age where this sort of thing isn't out of the question. And it's the growing feeling that I need to create rather than just consume, that I might develop myself more by doing than by spectating.

For example, I always enjoy writing, even if I don't do a lot of it (as evidenced by this quiet blog). I enjoy stringing words together to create just the right meaning and connotation, and once I'm finished, feeling like I've contributed something that hadn't existed before, something where nothing had previously existed. I have lots of ideas for things to write and create, but I always seem to end up browsing Wikipedia.

So why am I telling you all this? I suppose it's my way of letting you know what's been going on over the last few months, of apologizing for not being a better friend, and asking for your patience as I sort things out. (And it's a way of holding myself accountable!)

It's a new year, and a new era.

Who’s to blame? And does it really matter?

The manager at my residence’s cafeteria just posted this story on Facebook. It’s good, but I thought it left a few things out. Here’s the story, followed by the comment I left.

This is a bit long but worth the read. A little something for our Environment students to think about!

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Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books. But too bad we didn't do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Certainly worth the read -- lots to think about here. I agree with the basic message of this story, but I think it sort of depends on which generation we're talking about. For example, our grandparents' generation, who I think are the protagonists here, knew from growing up during the Depression and/or the War that nothing should go to waste -- they didn't have to see it as a "green" thing, because responsible resource use was (and still is) common sense. This seems to describe the world that our parents were born into, the one they inherited.

With that in mind, I'd love to be able to walk to a grocery store like they did, but it wasn't my generation that decided that maze-like suburbs and box stores were a better idea. I'd love to be able to rely on public transit in Sarnia, but it wasn't my generation that decided to tear up the trolley line to the beach, cut bus lines, or cut half the VIA trains. It also wasn't my generation that decided that plastic bags and TVs the size of Montana were the way to go, that designer clothes should be marketed towards 10-year-olds, or that decided to ban outdoor clotheslines.

The world that the protagonist is describing sounds awesome, and I'd love to live in it, but between now and then, something went wrong. I don't know which generation caused things to go wrong, and I also could never prove that it was an entire generation's fault, or that they did it out of malice for our environmental welfare as opposed to plain old greed or scientific advancement. Plastic bags probably seemed like a good idea at the time because of their durability, but it took us a while before we realized that there were environmental implications. Hindsight is 20/20, and we need to learn from our collective mistakes.

After all, our generation has been born into some shiny, sexy habits that are going to be hard for us to kick since we can't remember a time like the one described here. We need the wisdom and memories of our elders as we reclaim a lifestyle that got thrown away.

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What do you think?

EV3, Starbucks, and Consumerism

There’s been a fair amount of consternation in the Waterloo parts recently over the plans for the new Environment building (EV3) to contain a Starbucks. This decision was reportedly made by the university honchos and/or food services management, and not by the Faculty of Environment – but the idea of a Starbucks in an Environment building has been controversial because of a lack of consultation with the student body, the harm it will likely cause to the student-run coffee shop in EV1, and the faculty’s commitment to ideals such as Fair Trade.

Recently, the Environment Student Society sent out a survey asking for students’ opinions on the matter, which they’ll use in their discussions with the Faculty and with Starbucks reps. My response took a different tack from the others listed above, though an equally important tack, if not more so.

(For the curious, I think I was channelling my inner James Howard Kunstler when I wrote this, with perhaps a dash of Jack Cafferty thrown in.)

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1. What faculty are you in at the University of Waterloo? Environment
   
   
2. How do you feel about having a Starbucks franchise in EV3? I don’t support it
   
   
3. Please state specific factors that led to your decision in question #2.
   
   The way I see it, Starbucks is a powerful symbol of the excesses of our consumer culture. Whereas, say, Tim Hortons (or Country Style, etc.) takes pride in its everyman image, Starbucks seems to take pride in having a hip, stylish image -- turning a cup of coffee into a status symbol. Of course, both images are just marketing ploys, which makes the suggestion of a cooler-than-thou cup of coffee all the more ludicrous. With their relentlessly trendy image, their irresponsibly high pricing that gives the illusion of a "boutique" product, and their sheer ubiquitousness, Starbucks contributes to Western society's faux ideals of owning the smartphone, camera, and HDTV du jour; living in a McMansion with a three-car garage; driving the coolest cars; and wearing the latest fashions.
   
   When was the last time you heard of a movie star drinking Country Style or Dunkin' Donuts? I'm not saying that all movie stars drink Starbucks, but this is more easily imaginable since it's the image Starbucks creates, the delusion they want the public to buy into and adopt for themselves. If you're a middle-class Canadian envying a piece of the high-class lifestyle, Starbucks is right there on your doorstep; it's more accessible than Gucci. This sort of marketing and media-induced peer pressure plays a huge role in turning citizens into consumers, never content with what they have and seeking more than they *need* -- which, in turn, causes resource exhaustion; urban sprawl; overworked and overstressed families; the inequitable distribution of resources; an ever-growing hunger for energy, whatever the source; and all sorts of other stuff that the Faculty of Environment seeks to reduce. It seems ironic, therefore, that the faculty would willingly share its space with an organization that contributes to these very problems.
   
   
4. If you don’t support the Starbucks franchise in EV3, what food outlet would you suggest instead?
   
   That's the thing; I'm not sure I could recommend any particular brand, for the reasons stated above. I'd be most likely to recommend Tim Hortons, but there are enough of those on campus already. This being the case, I'd like to see some sort of independent coffee shop in EV3 -- not one of those hipster-calibre indie coffee shops, but one that is what it is, doesn't try to be anything but wholesome and genuine, and serves environmentally and socially sustainable products on principle and not because the faculty is forcing it to. In particular, I think it would be great if the ESS Coffee Shop could expand into this space, giving the Faculty a proper C&D. It's got a pretty good menu already, but its current ordering area is cramped to the point of being uninviting. Nonetheless, if an established brand sets up shop in EV3, the ESS Coffee Shop will likely need more than a renovation in order to stay competitive.

A brief history of the past few months, Part I

This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now. When I learned about my brain tumour, a friend from church suggested that I write about my experiences. That didn’t happen, but I still think it’s worth chronicling, if only to have a record of it for myself.

Since I wasn’t really keeping track of this stuff as it happened, what follows is, as Margaret Atwood’s heroine Offred would say, a “reconstruction”. I’ll try not to recount every detail of every doctor’s appointment I’ve had, but even so, my condensed version will require a lot of text, so I’ll spare you the eye strain and do this in chunks. Think of it as episodes in a serial medical drama.

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PROLOGUE:

• 2007:
  • I’m talking with friends in the TDCH Commons at lunch, and I realize that it’s hard for me to hear them. I cup my right ear in their direction, and it seems to help.
  • I realize that I’m having a hard time hearing the people who sit to my left on the schoolbus.
  • It’s the TDCH talent show, and I’m working as a stagehand, helping the acts with their microphones as they go on and off the stage. The people working at the sound booth gave me a headset so I could hear their instructions. Except that it was one of those headsets that only has one ear, and it was made for the left ear. By this time, I had a slight suspicion that my left ear was a bit weaker than my right ear ("Just like being left-eye- or right-eye-dominant," I told myself at the time). And sure enough, I could barely understand their instructions, leading to some embarrassing misunderstandings (really embarrassing given that one of the guys on sound – a friend of one of the teachers – was a Juno-nominated producer).
• 2008:
  • I noticed that I was having problems swallowing dry foods like bagels. The stuff seemed to get stuck in the upper part of my throat until I washed it down with water. I had a barium swallow at a nearby hospital, but the images didn’t show anything suspicious.
  • One day, I talked with my grandmother on the phone, and, trying to multitask, I held the phone against my left ear. I could barely make out the words she was saying. I spent the rest of the afternoon lying on the couch – I suppose I was stressed out by it at the time.
• 2009:
  • On the way to a band practice with Dad one morning, I mentioned how I definitely thought my hearing was getting worse; my estimate was that I had lost 15-20% of the hearing in my left ear, and gained a strange hiss in its place. I had a hearing test at the doctor’s office – the most basic hearing test you can imagine. It showed no hearing loss.
  • I was still having problems swallowing, so I was referred to an ENT (ear/nose/throat) specialist in Sarnia. While I was there, I mentioned about my hearing loss, and I had a more sophisticated hearing test there. My estimate of 15-20% turned out to be pretty accurate – but the hearing loss was mainly in the lowest and highest frequencies. Based on this characteristic and the hissing, the ENT specialist suspected that my auditory nerve was damaged, and he sent me for a CT scan at the local hospital.
  • The CT scan didn’t show anything suspicious. So, since it was nerve damage and not eardrum damage, it was the sort of thing no hearing aid could fix – make the sound as loud as you want, and it still won't make it to the brain. I was just going to have to live with the nerve damage and hope it didn’t get worse. I imagined myself walking from class to class at Waterloo that fall, messenger bag slung over my shoulders, trying to be a hip university student, and still having this annoying hiss in my ear.
  • During the early part of the summer, I went for acupuncture to try and fix my hearing. Didn’t work.
  • Oddly enough, once I stopped the acupuncture, my hearing got worse. To the point where I told my classmates at Waterloo that I was basically deaf in my left ear, so if you’re going to walk beside me, walk on my right side if you want me to hear you.
  • My hearing loss didn’t go unmentioned when I would phone my parents from Waterloo. Shortly before Christmas, Mom called the ENT specialist to get me in for another hearing test while I would be home for Christmas. Being the only ENT clinic in Sarnia, they were booked solid, but they said they could squeeze me in when I would be at home for Reading Week.

NEXT TIME…“SWEET! I had forgotten about that!”

"The Right Man For the Job": A Short Story

In Grade 11 English class, we were shown this photo, without being told who the subject of the photo was. We had to imagine who he might have been, and write about him, relating his story to our interests in some way. This is who I made him.

It's certainly the best piece of fiction I've ever written, though of course that's not saying much since I tend to stick to non-fiction. Here it is, with a couple minor word changes:

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THE RIGHT MAN FOR THE JOB
By Jonathan Van Dusen

EDINBURGH, 1894.

Click, tap, clack, thwump. Click, tap, clack, thwump. Click, tap, clack, thwump.

It was a sound that grew monotonous, but Reynolds knew that the process took patience. He watched the gears turn, the steel output rods dancing up and down to the mechanical beat, and the stack of punch cards that the analytical engine swallowed one by one. He crinkled his nose as he watched the translucent puffs of steam fly out the window into the Victorian winter.

It had been two weeks since his consultation with the local Science Council. His analytical engine was the sort of phenomenon they had only heard about in their yearly conferences in London, when Charles Babbage had introduced his machine, and Ada Lovelace her visions for this invention. But Babbage had been dead for decades now, and his visions for these mechanical mathematical machines had never been truly realized.

This is where Ronald Reynolds came in. He had spent thirty years of his life teaching logic and mathematics, which led to an interest in these analytical engines. His machine was but his hobby, something that he worked on simultaneously with the garden behind his city house. He saw logic as another aspect of the beauty he experienced in this garden, and it was this rustic nature that him from shaving a beard that was turning increasingly grey, and kept him in the sort of unpretentious clothes one would not expect from someone in the Edinburgh city centre.

The Council had said they would send a carriage to transport him to their weekly lunchtime meeting. Noticing on his pocket watch that the time was growing nearer for his departure, Reynolds placed a piece of plywood in the machine’s gears to lock them, and left the house. The carriage arrived at exactly the specified time, and took him to the building the Council had been renting. He was escorted upstairs to their spacious boardroom, where twelve men, seated at a long oak table, were regarding him with a mix of curiosity and excitement.

“Good day, Mr. Reynolds,” came the greeting from a smiling, portly man at the head of the table. It was Higgins, their leader, who had taken an interest in Reynolds' work due to an acquaintance with Babbage himself. He motioned for Reynolds to sit across from him, at the other end.

“We have reviewed your application for a grant. We recognise the usefulness of your discoveries, the potential uses by the military. To this end” – Reynolds shifted nervously in his chair as Higgins began to smile – “we are prepared to invest £5000 in this project.”

Reynolds grinned. “My deepest thanks, gentlemen! I am convinced that this will be of benefit to us all.”

“As are we,” nodded Higgins, who then took a sip of his tea. “However, our grant comes with a condition. Mr. Burton?” He pointed to another seated man.

The young man named Burton stood and nodded towards Reynolds, smiling.

Higgins continued. “Mr. Burton’s current field of study is that of electricity. We assume you are familiar with, for instance, the current studies of Edison and Bell?”

Reynolds gave a small sigh and nodded. He was familiar with the field and found it intriguing, but he had always wondered if such applications would ever truly enter the mainstream. After all, no households owned telegraphs, did they?

“Our friend Mr. Burton is experimenting with such things, and is spending a particular amount of time on the concept for an electric version of your math machine.”

Reynolds raised his eyebrows as Burton, still standing, cleared his throat.

“My training lies in electricity, Mr. Reynolds, and yours in mathematics. We have seen many advances in electricity lately, and we have come to the decision that much of the coming century will involve further advances, possibly to the demise of the mechanical trades within the next few decades. But with electricity, the possibilities are endless. Imagine your logic, contained inside a box the size of a loaf of bread!”

Higgins regained control. “As such, we will give you the grant on the condition that you use your logic skills and experience to aid Mr. Burton with his research; a fusion of sorts between the two areas of study.”

Reynolds leaned back in the padded chair and took a slow drink of tea. It was an avenue he had never considered and didn’t know how to respond to. He would have been perfectly content, oh yes, to use a grant on his beloved apparatus, and then present it to interested clients. He frowned slightly, all eyes on him, as he wondered if it was possible to teach an old scholar new tricks.

He sat up slowly. “It if is possible, gentlemen, would you grant me some more time to consider this proposal?”

Higgins took a look around the table, his face showing both disappointment and irritation. “Very well. You have until our meeting next week to reach a decision.”

Reynolds stood up, put on his coat, and said thank-you. He used the carriage ride home as a chance to gather his thoughts. As they approached the house, however, he could identify the bitter smells of a steam engine, but a smell far stronger than he was accustomed to. Minutes passed, and he noticed the wafts of not just steam, but smoke rising from a corner of his house.

He realised his mistake at once: prior to leaving, he had locked the machine’s gears in place, but had never turned off the steam engine. The machine had overheated, and he entered the workshop to find a warped rack of steel, with gears fused together, and ashes for punch cards.

The fabled analytical machine, the object of Reynolds’ devotion, was no longer.

But its successor was needed, and as Ronald Reynolds sorted through his surviving notes on the fundamentals of logic, he realized that he was still the man for the job.

---

The Right Man For the Job by Jonathan Van Dusen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Run XP programs within Windows 7!

Did I just say that Paul Thurrott was getting on my nerves?

I take it back.

http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/04/24/secret-no-more-revealing-virtual-windows-xp-for-windows-7.aspx

I just wish it weren't limited to the higher-end versions. But on the other hand, how many home users are willing to set up a Virtual PC in order to prevent old programs from crashing? Either way, this is seriously awesome.

Why I don't use Twitter...

I've started reading ZDNet (partly because Paul Thurrott has been getting on my nerves lately). Found this article today: this basically sums up why I've never actually joined Twitter, and I'm glad I'm not alone in feeling this way.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/igeneration/?p=1540

OK, so what is sustainability, really?

In honour of Earth Day.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=top-10-myths-about-sustainability

Points #4, #7, and #8 are particularly awesome.

I'm a firm believer in the theory of global warming through CO₂, but I'm not really the apologist I once was. Thing is, as one scientist interviewed in The 11th Hour put it, global warming is not the entire problem. Global warming is a symptom of our inability to live sustainably.

What's more, even if you don't believe that we're warming our planet, sustainability is still a valid topic. Example: whether or not you believe that your Hummer causes harmful emissions, you probably won't be driving it as much when gas is scarce and expensive.

David Suzuki illustrates this well:

While filming a special program on forestry for The Nature of Things in the 1990s, we arranged to interview loggers working in a cut block near Ucluelet on Vancouver Island. When we arrived and set up the camera, the loggers came out of the forest and began to cuss me out as an environmentalist who was threatening their jobs.

The confrontation made for good television, but I was frustrated at our inability to find common ground. Finally I told them, "I worked as a carpenter for eight years, and to this day, I love working with wood. No environmentalist I know is against logging. We just want to be sure that your children and grandchildren will be able to log forests as rich as the ones you’re working in now."

Immediately, one of the men replied that he’d never let his kids to go into logging. "There won’t be any trees left!" he said. And there it was. Those men knew that they were cutting the trees down in a way that ensured there would be no harvestable timber for future generations of loggers, but they saw the trees as the way to put food on the table day after day and make the house and car payments at the end of the month.

Here's the paradox: yes, learning to live sustainably will solve the problem of emissions. But when solving global warming means capturing coal emissions and pumping them underground, or putting loads of mirrors into the sky, we still won't be solving the root problem of sustainability.

I think they’re trying too hard.

Evidently the recession is making SanDisk resort to guerrilla warfare:

Advertising usually tries to convince the consumer that money buys happiness. That’s the nature of the beast, but this ad was just so damned transparent that I couldn’t leave it alone.

To add insult to injury, their website doesn’t display correctly in IE8 either. Seriously, SanDisk, if you expect us to buy your products online, then make sure that your website doesn’t suck in the first place. Even the most ludicrous of ads are best delivered in a user-friendly way.

---

I haven’t been blogging too much lately, at least not as much as I had been hoping, but suffice it to say that there’s a lot going on. Lots of projects, and family stuff. Hopefully once things calm down a bit I can really sit down and give this blog some more attention.

Consumerism Conscience

This is a speech I wrote and presented as a Grade 12 English assignment, and the topic is something about which I am quite passionate. (If you’ve really been paying attention, you might recognize Sterling’s quote from my “Favorite Quotes” on Facebook.) Bear in mind that it was written as a speech – by which I mean that I would have written it differently were it an essay, commentary, or blog post.

---

The man worked at a Wal-Mart on Long Island. His death occurred on Friday, November 28^th, 2008, a day when most of the nation was looking the other way. You see, the day was 2008’s “Black Friday”, the first day of the December shopping season. So how did the worker die? He didn’t die in a car accident in the New York traffic. He was not mugged on the street on his way to work. On the contrary, he died at work around 6:00 A.M., after being trampled by a crowd of avid shoppers.

With this in mind, I must say that I am not here today to tell you to live like cavemen. I am not here today to claim that Wal-Mart is evil. However, I am here today to give you a chance to reflect on a societal habit that our age group often overlooks. Because the more I look at our society, the more I grow convinced that our biggest threat is one for which we are all responsible: our consumer culture.

In truth, consumerism has dominated humanity for most of its civilized existence. A civilization’s economy helped it expand, trade led to cultures and empires discovering each other, and trade routes eventually led to the global village we have today. But the irony is that this global village is now being damaged by the consumerism that helped create it, and the effects are worse than ever.

We see this when basic commodities are made in foreign countries, made by the hands of women and children paid little for their efforts. This is not just. And we see this when, in the middle of a cold Canadian winter, supermarket produce departments are filled with foods that have been shipped from warm tropical climates half a world away, just to get to our dinner table. This is not sustainable.

We also see this when our global village is linked by a media that serves only to advertise. We complain about advertisements when they interrupt television programs or websites, but do we ever try to reject the mentality that gives us these ads? Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, we are being told to buy items we don’t really need. We are being told that buying these items will increase our self-worth and outward image. We are being told all this through whatever forms of media we choose, but unlike in previous generations, our modern media is so deep and so far-reaching that it we often turn it into our own personal universe, a cocoon made from the messages we like best.

I would like to close by going back to the Black Friday movement. A group called Adbusters has created a counter-movement, called “Buy Nothing Day”. This day intentionally falls on Black Friday, every year. A peer of mine commented, upon hearing of the idea, that buying nothing that day would be a “stupid” idea, because of the day’s lower prices. But ultimately, neither Black Friday nor Buy Nothing Day is about prices. If we are to try and weaken the pull and temptation of consumerism, what better time is there to do it than on consumerism’s strongest and most tempting day? So I encourage you to not only participate in Buy Nothing Day this coming year, but also to be conscious for the rest of the year of the things you buy, want and need. Science fiction author Bruce Sterling recently said it best:

It’s not bad to own fine things that you like. What you need are things that you GENUINELY [sic] like. Things that you cherish, that enhance your existence in the world. The rest is dross.

Dross. Anything that is trivial, that has no worth.

Dross. Waste, impurities, scum.

What in your life enhances your existence? And what in your life is merely dross? My challenge to you is to reflect on this. But don’t just stop there: do what you can to remove this dross from your life.

---

Bibliography (Works Cited)

“dross.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009. Merriam-Webster Online. 12 February 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dross>.

“dross.” Wiktionary. 26 Oct. 2008. Wikimedia Foundation. 12 Feb. 2009 <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dross>.

Long, Colleen. “Wal-Mart worker dies in Black Friday trampling.” Sympatico/MSN Finance. 28 Nov. 2008. Associated Press. 12 Feb. 2009 <http://finance.sympatico.msn.ca/investing/insight/article.aspx?cp-documentid=14539064>.

Sterling, Bruce. “The Last Viridian Note.” Viridian. 19 Nov. 2008. 12 Feb. 2009 <http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/451-500/the_last_viridian_note.html>.

---

Developing a Conscience for Canada's Consumerism Culture by Jonathan Van Dusen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Note to Facebook: “Don’t let the whiners get you down, but…”

My feedback to Facebook, word-for-word:

I don't mind the new home page, but I am still respectfully concerned about a few things.

1. The new style for Wall posts -- they now look far too much like status messages. Were a person to change their status and then write on their own wall, the two events would look almost exactly the same.

2. "Recent Activities" seem to be arranged illogically, grouping them between Wall posts. It made more sense when everything was arranged chronologically, and when each Activity had its own date and time by default.

3. The new advertisement sidebar makes the pages too wide for a 1024x768 monitor. I could be wrong, but this is still the dominant monitor resolution.

I don’t really like this week’s redesign that much, but (a) it won’t cause me to stop using Facebook in protest, (b) it’s not even worth whining over, and (c) it’s not as major as the last upgrade, the “New Facebook” we received over the summer. As I said in a status message, technology evolves. (Would you like it if your new iPod classic didn’t support photos or videos?)

That said, I do think this Facebook is too much like Twitter, and unlike the New Facebook, I actually dislike it overall. Here’s the thing, though. With the New Facebook, we had a lengthy chance to test it before it was released. With this one, you really had to be paying attention to know it was going to happen (Facebook announced it on their blog weeks ago), and only then would you even have the chance to provide feedback. (I suppose this could be compared to the development cycles of Windows Vista and Windows 7, respectively!)

When the New Facebook was in beta, I sent Facebook feedback then too, suggesting that profiles should have ways to filter Wall posts from actions, and reminding them that each profile should have a link to your Wall-to-Wall with the person, instead of only showing this link on Wall posts themselves. Both of these features were eventually implemented, or in the case of the Wall-to-Wall link, re-implemented. Hopefully Facebook will take feedback as seriously this time around.

 

P.S. – Yes, I am blogging again! I seem to have more time for it nowadays. Hopefully my next blog post won’t take seven months. Probably closer to seven days this time around.

Well...

Those promised blog posts didn't really happen.

Stupid hard drive failure.

Not to make excuses, but our laptop's hard drive crashed about a week ago. For the curious, I usually spend the first week of a vacation to "exhale" whatever stresses I might have accumulated, and then use the second to "get to work", whatever that means given the circumstances. Sometimes it's doing homework. Sometimes, as here, it's stuff that I assign myself.

So with a defunct laptop, and, counting a trip to the library, only one chance at Internet until today (we're back in Sarnia now), I couldn't write the blog entries, or accomplish the other computer-based goals I had set for myself for the trip (i.e., mixing some audio, cleaning out my Inbox, etc). And it's unlikely these will get accomplished during the next week too, for what I hope are obvious reasons.

Not like anyone was eagerly waiting for the blog entries anyway. Or that anyone will even read this sentence. Ah well.

P.S. If anyone's curious, the computer that crashed was five years old, ran XP, had a mere 128 MB of RAM, and -- worse yet, perhaps -- 16 gigs of total hard drive space. If anyone can commandeer such a system in 2008, it'd be a nerd like me, but sometimes things fall apart on even the most cautious users. You have been warned. That said, I made a backup before we left, so it's not as bad as it could have been.

P.P.S. Re: the last sentence before the post-script: some comments here would be nice! I suspect that there's at least a couple people reading this. So, in the hopefully-immortal words of Chris Martin, "If you love me, won't you let me know?" I have little free time as it is, and I'm not going to waste it on a thoughtful, insightful blog series if no one's going to read it.

Stay tuned! (aka "My Blog: Seven Months Later")

So my last blog post was in January, and this fact isn't as hard to believe as you might think. A second semester that was absolutely killer in terms of homework (picture this: American History + ISU, Physics, English, and Law), a more-than-melancholy trip to Pennsylvania immediately after my Law exam, and a busy couple weeks here in Brights Grove [sic], meant that this blog shrank to far less than what I had imagined for it.

Next week, though, I'll be heading back to Pennsylvania for what should be a slightly more normal visit. During this time, I hope to not only finish off some of my summer goals, but to write a series of long-overdue blog posts, on topics including my recent experiences and mindset, the presidential race, Windows Vista, ABBA/Chess/MAMMA MIA!, the New Facebook, and beyond.

So don't touch that dial! Before you know it, this pathetic little blog that no one reads will turn into a slightly less pathetic blog that a few more people read.

-JVD

The Glass Menagerie

Let this be a lesson to the lot of you...we stay in hotels frighteningly often (at least once every other month), so I myself have just learned a valuable lesson. (And from FOX News, no less -- who knew?)

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Hotel Drinking Glasses Expose

The environmentalist in me takes great issue with this, actually, because it sort of forces you to use the disposable cups. On the other hand, my Nestea addiction travels with me, and that stuff comes in recyclable tin cans. Of course, no hotel that I've ever been to has had a recycling bin in the room....

 

P.S. OK, so I've sort of neglected this blog, and for that I apologise. Writing more frequent posts is indeed one of my New Years' Resolutions; however, I might have to keep neglecting it until exams are over.

Should media make killers 'famous'?

"Just think tho," wrote the 19-year-old Omaha shooter in his suicide note. "I'm gonna be (expletive) famous." And he was, at least for a while.

This is something I was wondering about, after seeing all the media buzz that accompanied the recent mall shooting in Omaha: the killer had wished that, through his rampage, he would become famous, and guess what? Thanks to all the media coverage, he did indeed become famous.

This excellent article discusses what CNN, CityTV, and FOX News would fear to imagine: where news doesn't have to be sensationalised or personalised: but sensical and sensitive.

The whole concept can be best summed up by its quote from columnist Michael Mayo, who refused to mention the killer's name:

"I want to deny him what he wanted, the way he denied life to eight innocent victims."

I guess I can't be trusted...

...to not buy anything. Thing is, today is Buy Nothing Day. In a gesture of good will and non-conformance -- because, (a), I'm a non-conformist, and (b), it's Black Friday and 25,000 children die every day of poverty -- I signed up for the associated Facebook event, having been invited by a friend (good thing you know who you are, because unfortunately I don't).

Easy enough, I thought. I never buy much anyway. Chances are -- Black Monday be damned -- I won't buy anything on Buy Nothing Day.

But today, during music council, our "Music Minion" t-shirts were distributed -- for $5 each.

So I bought something. On Buy Nothing Day. When I had already said that I wasn't going to buy anything.

<sarcasm>

Shame on me. On the other hand, at least there's 365 other opportunities within the next year to defy consumerism.

</sarcasm>

...

But shouldn't we be doing that everyday? I mean, you look at things like this and it should be obvious why the terrorists hate us, in a continent where more money is spent on pets than is donated to charity. When will we learn?

...

P.S. In case your head isn't reeling yet, yes, 25,000 children do die of extreme poverty each day. Think about that for a second, before you ask for that PS3 or iPod touch for Christmas.

"Riot Gear!" - Max Mobley's column for Crawdaddy!

Crawdaddy! bills itself as the premier magazine for rock music criticism. Makes sense, given that Rolling Stone is more preoccupied with taking photos of a womanizing Kid Rock than it is with talking about, say, the political ramifications (or, sadly, the lack thereof) of Neil Young's Living With War record.

What's more, Rolling Stone essentially sleeps with the enemy, where "the enemy" translates roughly to "the recording industry". Crawdaddy! does nothing of the sort, and leading the pack is the brilliant Max Mobley and his biweekly column called "Riot Gear!". You might have seen on Facebook that I posted a link to one of his articles, this one (profanity warning!) on the drawbacks to MP3s and even CDs in comparison to analogue media like vinyl, and called "There Once Was A Note":

So then you take this cold and perfect [digital recording], and you strip away things that were there in the performance and the production so you can make it smaller—because if you make it smaller you can carry more of them with you. [...] It’s the sonic equivalent to pizza rolls. It tastes a bit like a real pie and has some of the same ingredients, but nobody’s fooled—unless pizza rolls are all you know, ya poor bastard. And so I pity the mp3 generation every bit as much as I envy them. Working in music production and pro audio, I will probably grow angry with them, too. Because what am I going to do with this expensive gear designed to provide subtle nuances that first will be captured coldly, then stripped out entirely so the listener can hear the tune on a bus?

Good stuff. But there's too much else here to leave unmentioned, like his post from Oct. 24th about the struggle of buying CDs under the noses of the record company "weasels":

I stopped downloading when my favorite sites went away or started charging actual money. And downloading never stopped me from buying CDs. In fact, I bought more because I got to test drive the band. I certainly can’t leave the decision of who to buy up to the weasels. They like crap! [...] But like my contemporaries, and many consumers, I dig the packaging. I want to hold the disc and read the booklet, check out the album, not just a file of a single. I still believe an album has a beginning, middle, and an end.

And an article about the history of making music more portable, and the sacrifices necessary:

Cassettes also gave birth to the mix tape. Take your favorite vinyl, your brand new cassette deck, a blank tape, a sixer of beer, and a broken heart, and you could create an epic sonic drama that defined who you were and why your ex-girlfriend should come back. In the ‘70s, mix tapes probably saved more relationships than Dr. Joyce Brothers, Pauline Reage, and Phil Donahue combined. Now it’s as though the music market is one big mix tape. Hello MP3, goodbye album. Hello quantization errors, goodbye rumble, wow and flutter. Hello digital, goodbye vinyl, goodbye tape, goodbye rock star. At least vinyl lives on as a bastardized musical instrument, which I find very rock ‘n’ roll since rock music is art’s most infamous bastard child.

Anyways. All his stuff rocks. If you, like me, won't settle for the current state of music -- where the artistic experience equates all too often to listening to an iTunes track at 128Mbps, without any sense of individuality -- then you should check out his stuff. The music industry is in turmoil, and neither side seems to be pursuing an environment that allows creativity to flourish. Thus, the music industry needs more people like Max Mobley.