Rearranging the books, playlists

I can’t sort out my head properly, so I’m sorting my books. Plover the cat and I are drinking red wine and water, respectively, and pacing the apartment listening to Motown.

I’m rearranging my books.

I’ve you’ve read Nick Hornsby’s book High Fidelity or seen the movie, you might remember Rob rearranging his record collection. Today is sort of that, but without the breakup.

When I have something big on my mind, usually related to self-definition, I become more interested in music and stories.

The music I listen to becomes Important. The books on my shelves become Me. I download. I read. I sort. I fuss and swap and graze over my books, looking for the right system. And through this, somehow, I describe myself to myself. Whatever is going on in my head benefits from the organization I’m doing with my hands.

I externalize this stuff because it’s easier than neurosurgery and cheaper than therapy.

Behold my books. They are arranged by priority, then color.

An Engineer’s Guide to Cats

This is an excellent study of the many aspects of cats. I, for one, regularly check my cat’s depth, as it often changes depending on the shedding season, and sometimes I loose my cellphone in the fur.

Five things I love about Firefox 3

FireFox Logo

If you are feeling early-adopter-y, you can hop over to mozilla.org and download the new Firefox 3 Beta build. It’s faster, slicker, and has OMG HOT new UI tools that should make your day better.

Five Things I love about Firefox 3:

  1. Because this is a beta version, most of my extensions and themes don’t work in F3…and I don’t miss ’em. I’ve been using it all day and haven’t had a single withdrawal symptom.
  2. Fast. Hella fast. Hecka fast. So damn fast. The memory management of Firefox 3 is slick. It caches less, stores image data more efficiently, and plugs memory leaks from extensions before they happen. This all comes from of the kind of nerdy nerdy attention to detail that was a feature of pre-Moore’s law programming, when bits were carefully placed like bricks in an arch. Hooray for OCD programming!
  3. Oh Bookmarks! Ye annoy me less! You are now a one-click thing on the navigation bar, with a cute star icon instead of a time-eating top menu monster.
  4. Full Page Zoom. If you don’t like squinting, download this browser. Hitting Ctrl + makes EVERYTHING get bigger, including images. This feature eliminates the “Big Text Stomps Nice Layout” problem we saw in earlier versions.
  5. Tab quickmenu. Stop worrying about all those tabs stacking up in your window. You can get at them from a dropdown in the corner. No fuss. There’s more room for page titles too, so you don’t have to find the tab you want using only the first ten characters.

halp

cat on face… typing this from beneath the fur….halp!!!!

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Lists 4 u.

I’m home sick with an intermittent fever, which is leaving me both unconscious and contagious. I’m trying to get some work done, but the cold meds are leaving my motivation low. So, I’ve been catching up on RSS feeds and click-trancing.

Here are some highlights:
Geek Love: Wonderful NYT Obit for the inventor of Dungeons & Dragons.

Dad Labs video: Man tries breast pump.

Go Josh Go! A $100 Million Donation to the N.Y. Public Library

Preparing For “The Colbert Report – Jennifer 8. Lee writes about her stint as an author-guest.

NPR Unapologetically Harriet, the Misfit Spy

Sesame Street on information visualization – This reminds me of my research recently on Learning styles in new Second Life users. It’s a real design challenge try and accommodate both the square and the musician.

I’ve been reading the webcomic Questionable Content in between naps.