Today, I go all narcissistic and give you a list. Here are the podcasts that I currently listen to:

• History According to Bob, in which a history professor talks for ten to twenty minutes about some odd or unusual or interesting bit of history. Sometimes it’s about a specific event (The U.S. Presidential Election of 1796), other times about an aspect of a larger event (prostitution during the American Civil War). He’s great to listen to, and he usually chooses fascinating stuff to talk about. Daily.
• Introduction to Human Nutrition, the lectures in a course taught at U.C. Berkeley this year. Learn about how the body works, digestion, the effects of alcohol, water, malnutrition, etc. Fascinating stuff. Twice a week.
• The Diner, a more old-school radio show in which James Lileks leads you through the goings-on at an old diner. Might sound boring, but it’s hilarious and fun and interesting and brilliant. Weekly.
• this WEEK in TECH, a technology news show by several old faces from TechTV’s The Screen Savers. The group has great chemistry. Weekly.
• Manager Tools, where a couple of professional coaches talk about ways to be a better manager and to better interact with your own manager. Weekly.
• The Animation Podcast, in which Clay Kaytis interviews Disney animators and animation directors about the art of animation. Fascinating stuff, with lots of behind-the-scenes information about Disney animation throughout the decades. Bi-weekly.
• ArtistLaunch.com Sunrise Podcast, an eclectic selection of ”easy listening,” light jazz, and other music that’s interesting but easy on the ears. Bi-weekly.

There. Wasn’t that informative?

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On Sunday, I had my parents over for the afternoon. We chatted a bit about various things; had a good time. I was re-amazed that I have such a good relationship with my parents. Not that they don’t deserve it; they’re great people. But I know so many people who don’t get along with their parents. I’m blessed.

We then went to the Leesburg Flower Show. Booths stretched up and down two streets of Leesburg, and there was greenery as far as my eyes could see. All the plants were in beautiful shape, and I had to resist shelling out some good cash just to buy…something, anything!

And there was food. Man. Sausages, soft-serve, lemonade, funnel cake, cotton candy, soft pretzels. Enough to make you perpetually hungry, just from the smells.

I’m sure some might make snarky comments about the inevitably of money-grubbing capitalism at all this. But I was surrounded by people who wanted to beautify their environment and support local businesses, as well as local artists and business people who were doing what they loved.

It inspired me a bit to think about myself, and how I might spend more of my time doing the things I love. Worth thinking about, certainly.

I’m naturally drawn to an all-or-nothing mindset about this sort of thing, and I wonder if that’s common. That is, I tend to think that one must make a huge break with one’s current life, quit one’s job and max out the credit cards to start a little business carving jade figurines or what-have-you. There are probably less extreme paths, but I don’t recall reading about them.

Maybe humans are just wired to make big shows when they switch gears. We do so love to trumpet our own horns, at times.

Imagine a website/blog that posts really good poetry, and pays good rates to poets for that poetry. And that writes about the poetic form. And that points people towards good poetry. And that sells collections of good poetry. And that sponsors poetry-writing contests.

In other words, imagine a poetry portal, though a non-proprietary one. A website that gets people talking about poetry.

Imagine RSS feeds of good poetry. Imagine getting poetry in your e-mail inbox every day.

Imagine if a poet could actually receive some kind of useful reward for writing poetry.

Imagine a digital poetry publisher.

I imagine I’m missing a bunch of things. Such as…?

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So I spent Saturday with Mandy, in D.C. We met at the metro, then stopped off at the Holocaust Museum to pick up tickets for later in the day. We then poked our heads through the Natural History Museum and marvelled at the prehistoric animals. We spent a few minutes in the Museum of Fine Art before heading back for our appointed times at the Holocaust Museum.

And that was almost too much to bear. A large amount of the exhibit is spent on the buildup of the Nazi party and repression of the Jews (and others; communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, gypsies). Mandy and I agreed that the worst moment was nearing the section on the prison camp, when you can walk through one of the boxcars. It smelled like death.

Then, of course, you get to the camps themselves, and the gas chambers, and the ovens. A thousand bodies a day burned in each oven.

After that, we walked over to the World War II memorial, which we agreed felt very appropriate. It’s on a huge scale, but basically just a large marble oval with a fountain in the middle. Somehow, it feels right.

From there, we visited the Lincoln Memorial, and chatted about our feelings on the Holocaust Museum. It was a lot to take in.

We headed back to the metro, and after getting on the wrong train and having to double back, I finally made it out, where I had to go to a party at a friend’s house. I was not exactly looking forward to being at a party after experiencing the Holocaust Museum, but I went, and surprisingly enough I had a really fun time. Thoroughly enjoyed myself. I was able to integrate all those experirences without being overwhelmed.

I credit my recent lack of projects. I no longer have so many things to do that I’m thinking about them, or trying to get back to them all the time. I can take a day off, and not worry about its impact on my projects.

This strikes me as a good thing.

I’ve been listening to audio recordings of Open Tech 2005 (previously known as NotCon). As seems to often be true, about half the presentations are uninteresting, dully presented, or so poorly recorded as to be unintelligible. The other half are fascinating.

In particular, I listened to a talk given by a distinguished-sounding gentlemen, explaining that his view of computing is different from probably everyone else’s in the room, and how he’s been using computers for decades, and how computer are operating on completely the wrong metaphor for 90% of us (that they’re primarily representing secretarial functions). I thought to myself, “This guy is great. I’ll have to check up on him and see who he is.” Then he explained that he was finally now codifying a lot of his ideas, and here it was, the latest iteration of Xanadu.

It was Ted Nelson.

For those unfamiliar, Ted Nelson essentially invented the notion of ”hypertext,” of documents with embedded links that take you to other documents. But his view goes much beyond that (indeed, he sees the world-wide web as a pale shadow of his idea, since in his view the links should never die). He assembled his ideas into a system concept he called “Xanadu,” but which has never come anything close to a real-world system.

Until now. He’s released a very early alpha version of ZigZag, a cross-platform (Windows/Mac/Linux) piece of software that lets you enter chunks of data and create relationships, then manipulate that data in what sounds like amazingly useful and powerful ways.

It’s a completely different way of looking at computing. I wonder if it has any legs.

Amazing to think of a guy, working for decades to achieve a specific vision.

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Been watching a lot of anime recently, and it’s been instructive in its own way about the state of the anime industry and how folks in the anime industry have changed lately.

A good example is The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, the story of an extremely odd, extremely energetic high school girl who starts her own club. The entire first episode consists of the terrible video project that they put together as a project; there are tons of continuity errors, bad camera work, and incomprehensible plotting and dialogue. Everything’s bad.

But the amount of work that’s put in to making it look bad is amazing. In one shot, the ”camera” is zoomed in very close on a character, so that as she talks she’s constantly shifting in and out of focus. But this is all animated, so they had to explicitly shift the focus in and out on that shot. What is done automatically in real life had to be painstakingly created in animation to make it look like a mistake.

Then there’s Zegapain, a ”high school boy is chosen to pilot giant robot” series. It begins with him seeing visions of a woman (who you later discover is still “synching” with this dimension of reality). Much of the episode is spent with him just fascinated by this woman and following her around.

The last part of the episode involves him teleported into a giant robot and piloting it, and here’s where things get interesting: as the woman explains it, she tries to use an anime cliche (“Just pretend this is a game.”) And he doesn’t fall for it; he immediately jerks his head at oncoming enemies and says, “The way things are, it’s a little hard for me to believe that.” She smirks and murmurs to herself, “He’s faster” (than the previous pilot, presumably). But he goes ahead and fights them. The series is generic conceptually, but almost cannot step into typical anime cliches.

And there’s High School Girls, a slice-of-life comedy/drama about a group of girls just entering high school, and their various dreams and adventures. It’s clearly aimed at guys; there are lots of unnecessary panty shots (not that panty shots are usually necessary). So, yeah, it has a sexy element to it. But it manages to combine that with a charming slice-of-life aspect and downright well-written comedy that transcends the panty flashes.

What does this have to do with the anime industry? Anime wasn’t like this fifteen years ago. When the anime industry was flush with money, folks either crafted beautiful pieces of animation, or pumped out junk. Now, since anime is a smaller world, the junk is much more readily apparent. You can’t get away with junk as easily. Even the junk has redeeming qualities now.

It’s like any form of art, really: imposition of non-arbitrary restrictions usually results in better art.

Stayed up until 12:30 last night, then tried to get up at 7:15. I clearly need to make a few adjustments to my ”workload.”

Which probably makes me sound like I’m stuffing my evenings with busywork. Here’s the thing:

When I get home, I have four broad ways to fill my time: maintenance work like checking my truck’s oil or dusting the house, creative work that feeds my desire to build things (like writing and drawing and programming), all the random stuff that comes up in our daily lives (like calling back my aunt or writing a thank-you note), and free time to do whatever I want (like watch anime or read).

Problem is, I could spend all evening on maintenance work, creative work, and/or random stuff. I could always write more, and I could always keep the house more clean. Not that I do fill my time like that; I just know I can, and there’s always a higher standard of living one could be living in.

Thus the balancing act. I need to spend some time relaxing. But if I spend all night every night relaxing, the house gets covered with dust (and I have a slight dust allergy), e-mail doesn’t get answered, etc. etc. etc. That’s not how I want to live my life.

I’ve tried to do my relaxation first thing in the evenings, but that doesn’t work; I end up getting into a groove of watching a show or reading a book, and keep at it until bedtime. Perhaps I need to be more firm with myself on that, but then, the whole point of this is to make me more relaxed, not more tense.

If I do my relaxation later in the evening and do maintenance work, creative work, and random stuff as soon as I get home, I end up essentially adding an hour or two to my workday, straight through. I can get halfway through that extra hour and be exhausted, much less push all the way through.

Hmmm. Maybe I should add in some relaxtion right when I get home, but not too much. Half an hour or an hour or something. I can try to put my ”home work” in the middle of my evening, cushioned between two periods of relaxation.

I am determined to get a stable system going here. Not that it will work for ever and everything, but I want something that will work most of the time. That will help me to keep up with all the demands of life, without pushing me to exhaustion. To keep me “resilient and alive from all sides,” to quote a Tai Chi Master I watched recently.

I had a great day at work today, and I’m feeling good this evening. I have all the energy I need to get stuff done.

Which means I need to slow down and not burn through all this energy and go into another boom-and-bust cycle, probably. I’ll try to do some relaxing tonight, and see how that goes.

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I went out on Friday night to Blues Alley, where I and a date watched Jack Jones perform.

Boy, was I nervous. Felt ill all day. Freaked out at the idea of taking a date in to Washington, D.C. and into an alley where we’d be in a blues club. Very, very much outside of my regular comfort zone.

And I had a wonderful time. Jack was great, my date was great, and I just had a great time eating chocolate cake, sipping from a tall glass of iced tea, listening to an accomplished performer swing his way through “Not While I’m Around” and, of all things, “For Once In My Life.” All I had to do was push through to the actual event, and I had a grand time.

Even walking outside to the pouring rain was fun, as we joked and laughed our way to a bus stop, and from there to the Metro station. And then, I went home, to a dry bed.

Nice.

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Following on to some comments I’ve made here recently about resting and relaxing and not getting too much of it in, here’s the beef I have with relaxation:

I don’t mind relaxing. Especially taking out an hour or so to do something fun (read a book, watch a TV show, putter around in the garden; whatever). But I think that “boom and bust cycles” usually signal that something is wrong. If I have to spend a full 48-hour period totally zoning out, that means something is out of whack. It means I pushed myself too hard in the previous, say, week.

So the question becomes, how do I resolve this? Seems like I need to take more time to relax throughout my week. Not sure how I can do that; I’m already taking a good twenty-minute walk at lunch at work, and taking a tea break in mid-afternoon, and spending an hour or two every evening watching anime or otherwise not producing.

Anyone have any suggestions? How do you relax?

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