A pinch of tradition

March 12, 2008

Ice cream at 22/9Gifford’s opens back up for the season on Friday; if you’re familiar with my obsession over ice cream, you wouldn’t be surprised that I’ve already started a countdown. Thinking about this new tradition made me realize the other annual observances on my calendar. Whether it’s a signal of a new season or a tie back to my childhood, my annual traditions all have special meaning to me.

Here’s a fairly complete list of the events that pop up each year on my calendar. The year links lead to media I’ve created. I’ve been doing “lifetime” traditions for as long as I can remember.

  • Downtown Countdown (January 1, started in 2006: 2006 2007 2008)
    I (literally) start off the new year in downtown Bangor as a beach ball is thrown off the side of a building. Yes, that’s how we do holidays in Maine.
  • Gifford’s opening (mid-March, started in 2007: 2007)
    One of the first sure signs of an oncoming spring is the opening of the Gifford’s Ice Cream stands around Maine. Nothing beats one or two hundred people waiting in line to get (free) ice cream in a nine-degree wind chill as it starts to snow.
  • Winter/spring sunrise trip (winter/spring, started in 2004: 2004 2005 2007)
    Each year I take one weekend and head down to southern Maine. I spend Saturday night in a hotel and wake up early enough to catch the sunrise at either Portland Head Light or Old Orchard Beach. Sure it’s cold. Sure the lighthouse is covered with snow and the beach with ice. Does that stop me? Of course not. To be honest, it’s really refreshing to have a place all to yourself with crisp winter air as the sun rises over the Atlantic.
  • Mount Battie hike (mid-April, lifetime: 2002 2004 2006)
    My mother has been making the trek up the side of Mount Battie in Camden since she was a child. The tradition was passed down to me early on, and we spend a weekend day each April hiking the side of Battie. I even have a custom-made walking stick for the occasion.
  • Dance concerts (late April and mid-December, started in 2004: 2006 2007)
    It should not be a surprise to anyone that I’m a huge fan of dance performances, both for their creativity and the photo opportunities. It’s a great way to welcome in the holiday season or welcome in the summer.
  • Independence Day fireworks (July 4, lifetime: 2006 2007)
    My parents and I would always scope out a spot on the hill on the corner of Exchange and Hancock Streets in downtown Bangor when Dad worked at United Bank. Our old spot may now be a construction site, but we still find a place to watch the fireworks over the Penobscot River each year.
  • Whale watching (mid-August, lifetime: 2002 2006)
    Mom and I (along with an occasional special guest) head down to Bar Harbor each summer to head out on a Bar Harbor Whale Watch boat into Frenchman’s Bay and the Gulf of Maine. Over the years we’ve seen sunfish, dolphins, right whales, minkes, and humpbacks. Cruising out into the open sea at 35 MPH is worth the chill you cover up with warm layers of clothing. (Why do so many traditions have to do with being cold?)
  • American Folk Festival (late August, started in 2003: 2006 2007)
    The AFF is Bangor’s best event, and I’ve attended in 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2007. There’s a good chance you’ll find me running from stage to stage at the yearly three-day music festival. Starting last year, you might also see me volunteering. (You may also spot me eating blooming onions, hot wings from Governor’s, lemonade, donuts, peanut butter cake from River Driver’s, and more.) I’ve discovered some great bands at the Festivals, and it’s been the home to some of my best-ever photos.
  • Apple picking (mid-September, lifetime: 2003 2005 2006)
    Right around the start of school each year, my parents and I would head to Winterport to pick our own apples. Lately we’ve continued the tradition in Dixmont, filling up a bucket full of Macintoshes.
  • Thanksgiving cornbread (late November, started in 2005)
    When I found my own apartment, I wanted to bring something to the table (literally) for our Thanksgiving trips to each of my grandparents’ houses. I settled on the Homesteader Cornbread at Allrecipes.com. It’s gotten rave reviews each year.
  • 30holidays (November 26 through December 25, started in 2006: 2006 2007)
    For two years now, I’ve spent late November through Christmas taking one holiday or winter-related photo each day. I’ve yet to make a complete set, but it’s still a great way to get in the holiday spirit.
  • Christmas tree (early December, lifetime: 2002 2005 2006 2007)
    Christmas is in the air as my parents and I head out to Piper Mountain Christmas Tree Farm in Newburgh to choose and cut our Christmas tree. Out of all of the yearly traditions, this may be the most important one; I’ve trudged through snow with strep to have a say in tree selection in the past. When the tree has been chosen, the real fun begins: hot apple cider and donuts in the Piper Mountain gift shop.
  • Holiday baking (mid-December, lifetime)
    Although it’s been tougher to schedule since I left the nest, Mom and I always make time to do some holiday cooking each year. The menu doesn’t change that much from year to year: cinnamon rolls, mint-filled sandwich cookies, brownies with mint and hard chocolate toppings, mulled cider, and chocolate bread pudding.
  • South Paris and the elk farm (December 24, started in 2005: 2006 2007)
    Who says the Web can’t lead to new friendships? I met Melody online in 2003, I think. After learning that her parents lived in Maine, we started a Christmas Eve tradition in the form of a visit to a local western Maine elk farm. I explained the rest of the story – including the Route 2 Christmas carol sing-along – in a blog post last year.

What are your yearly traditions?

A new world for me

March 8, 2008

I’m not surprised if you’re looking at the length of this post and thinking something like, “Oh, great.” to yourself. Here’s the general idea: I’m launching a new blog called Another New World today. If you’d like more of the backstory, please read on. Otherwise, feel free to just check out the new site.

I realize that I’ve been in another one of my blog posting slumps lately. It’s not intentional; I’ve just been trying to figure out which direction I want to pursue now. Over the last few months it’s become clear to me that my next project shouldn’t be a new service, community site , or anything like that; it has to be a place where I can express everything that’s taking up space in my brain.

The problem(s) with Web development

I was doing Web development before I was even connected to the Internet in 1996. I’ve been doing it as my primary occupation for just about five years. The problem with Web development is that it takes quite a bit of time to finish the process that starts with an idea and ends with a new site. There’s brainstorming, design, development, testing, and marketing. To be completely honest, I just don’t have the time, people can be elevating your payroll management.

Even if you discount the time factor, there’s something even more dangerous: Application-ADD. I’m as guilty of this condition as any developer. The forgotten part of the development cycle is the maintenance it takes to sustain and grow a site. By the time you’ve gotten to that point, you often have a new “next big thing” idea. In fact, I’ve had somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 “next big thing” ideas since I started doing Web development. I’ve completed about five of them, but I haven’t followed through. I’m just starting to understand the merits of realizing that they just won’t all be done. (It reduces my stress level quite a bit.)

But wait! I do Web development as a full-time job. When doing Web development in a client-based setting, your time is spent fulfilling the wishes of other people; often those wishes don’t align well with what you think would be best or most effective for them. Application-based development is a bit different. As one of three developers responsible for Hula, our e-commerce product, I had a fairly large amount of input into the features and overall decision-making process for the product.

And finally, there’s burnout. After forty (or more) hours of doing development a week, I often don’t feel up to the task of sitting down and wrangling PHP for 10, 20, or 40 more. I think Google’s 20-percent time rule is one of the biggest business innovations in decades, and it obviously has very rewarding benefits (see Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and others for example). Unfortunately, not all businesses have the ability to incorporate a similar program.

Passion

I read a lot about passion. It seems to be a underlying theme of the current tech boom (and our generation as a whole).

Web development isn’t my passion. I don’t wake up with a “Eureka!” moment in the middle of the night wondering if a certain CSS or PHP trick would solve a nagging problem. My passion is helping people understand what technology enables us to do, and it’s inspiring people to move forward into a new and better world. We have the ability to do so much. The difficult part is moving there.

A lot of people tell me that I’m a quiet person. That’s true, to a point: I enjoy listening to others and thinking a lot more than I enjoy talking. If we’re talking about something I’m passionate about, though, you’ll have a very difficult time getting me to shut up. When I’m passionate about something, I’m anything but quiet.

Something new for me

It would seem, then, that I should talk about topics that interest me more often. How do I combine these all into a single focus?

I found the answer in other blogs. I’ve read Boing Boing for as long as any other blog. Recently I’ve been a somewhat religious reader of John Gruber’s Daring Fireball. The answer was another blog. Writing reduces the time from idea to product, and it’s also a purer way of expressing my thoughts. I really just love writing in general (as evidenced by this post).

Tonight I’m launching Another New World, a blog about how we’ve reached today and what we need to think about before we can reach tomorrow. It will be a combination of essays and links to related information, and it will be the closest representation to date of what takes up space in the ever-changing landscape of my mind.

I invite you to check it out and, as always, tell me what you think.

Politics

February 9, 2008

Y’know, I was 3/4 done a post about politics and then I decided to scrap it. It just didn’t sound right. This is my second try.

I don’t enjoy talking about politics in the course of normal discussion. The simple reason is because people are often so closed-minded when it comes to debatable issues that they very seldom open their minds enough to risk a change of opinion.

As I see it, there are just too many facets of government to be able to know everything about everything. I’ve developed a set of beliefs based on my past experience, but I like to think that I’m open enough to able to change my opinion if a better set of beliefs is presented to me.

Abortion is the perfect example for me. I’m pro-choice. Laura, one of my best friends, is most definitely not. For the past couple of years, we’ve had an ongoing e-mail conversation covering just about every detail of the topic: what we believe, why we believe it, what we believe should be done. After really diving into the discussion, I realized that although our views of the subject appear to differ quite a bit at the surface, there are really only one or two differences in our beliefs… the most notable of which being the point at which life actually begins.

In the end I believe real progress on political issues will only be achieved with a through, heartfelt conversation over the differences people have on any given topic. There are a lot of smart people in the world, and not all of them share the same views. In other words, there’s a very good chance that there are some very good reasons why people disagree with you on any given topic. Shouldn’t we all invest a little time to hear why others feel the way they do?

In 2004 I thought of an idea for a site that would act as sort of a political MySpace… a place where candidates for any race could sign up for a page, list their thoughts on issues, and allow people to find the best candidate. Facebook has done something like it, but I had wanted to open it up to anyone from presidential candidates to local sheriffs or school board members. I was quite honestly tired of not knowing what any of the local candidates on the ballot really believed. In rethinking my idea, I think I’d also want to open up a sort of issues garden: a place where people could go to thoughtfully supply the reasoning for their personal beliefs without attacks on the other side of the issue.

Obama said something that resonated with me during his little overflow rally this afternoon. It’s actually the first line in this video:

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

For those of you on dialup:

I will listen to you even when we disagree. We’re not going to agree all the time.

There needs to be less talking and more listening in politics. Maybe that’s what would get me interested in it again.

I don’t want to be just another person spouting off my political thoughts until November. Instead, I want to start a little mini-project to cause you to rethink some of the beliefs you may have. I’ll occasionally write a blog or a Twitter post marked “Politics Unusual” (and they’ll be in Collage, of course); these will be things that I believe will either strengthen your beliefs or cause you to reconsider them. If you have any thoughts for me, let me know.

I adore Wired magazine

January 20, 2008

Wired’s fun with subscription cardsI’ll admit it: I was planning to let my subscription of Wired run out.

This month’s Wired cover story features Sarah Silverman helping readers understand why so many parts of the world suck. I’m always impressed by their stories; they’re topical, fun, and really comprehensive. This month’s issue also includes the paper version of the iPhone story, so I thought I’d flip through and see which pictures they decided to use and how they decided to lay the story out. (I’m a bit of a page layout geek, too.)

Not surprisingly, I was interrupted on my way to the story by a stupid pack of magazine subscription cards stuffed annoyingly into the middle of a story. On the facing page I noticed Sarah out of the corner of my eye. I looked down, and she was surrounded on a couch by a plethora of the very same Wired subscription cards I now held in my hands. I cracked a smile, and I couldn’t help but shake my head and whisper to myself, “There’s no way.” I read the segment of the “Why things suck” story on the page underneath the cards:

“You know all the subscription cards cluttering up this issue of Wired? Well, um… sorry … The worst part about ’em? They cover up some really good stories.”

I think my jaw dropped at that point. I’m not an expert on magazine design, but they either had to choose that page for the placement of the cards or lay out the issue so that the story would appear at that spot. They addressed an annoyance about the medium and had some fun with it.

I wanted to cancel Wired because each issue takes me about two hours to read and I have a pile of about twenty unread magazines collecting in my bedroom. I literally enjoy the magazine too much. Needless to say, the pile will continue to grow thanks in large part to that little stunt they pulled this month.

How’s that for marketing?

Why I do what I do, where I do it

January 13, 2008

The question I’m asked most often is why I’m still in Maine. The answer to this question is a lot more complicated than you might think.

First you have to understand why I still do Web development. Although I have some pretty strong complaints and annoyances with this line of work, the fact is that I like to help people. Above all else, I like to help people. I like helping people understand this new world. I like seeing their face when they say, “You can actually do that?” I tell stories to try to make people understand what makes me excited about it all. And while Web development isn’t the closest match to my real technology interest, it’s a fairly secure way to have some sort of anchor in this world that I adore (and it’s something that I’d like to believe I’m fairly good at). I also like it because it’s a fairly reliable 9-5 job (although that sometimes doesn’t happen). The set schedule allows me to spend my non-work time exploring this space even further, trying new things, and being creative in ways that I just can’t while I’m doing business sites.

So why do I do it in Maine?

I am within a two-hour drive of what I believe to be the best national park in the country, a great city, and one of the best mountains in the East (and within three of one of the coolest areas in the world). We have some of the best people in the world here. We’re independent, we’re opinionated, and we do things our own way. We have snow, we have heat, we have rain, and we have thunder. It’s laid back. I honestly believe there’s no other place in the world that can match the place I am right now.

What happens if you combine the two? I have the chance to help the businesses I’ve grown up watching, visiting, and paying. It’s a way of saying thanks, and it’s a way to let other people know about the businesses that I love.

My final point is this: I do not do what I do where I do it for the money. It’s true that I could be making a lot more dough in the middle of a city, or if I tweaked my job a bit to become more specialized. Instead, I do it so that I can be proud of the work that I do. I do it so that I can enjoy the work that I do. The combination of those two serve as the barometer of my happiness; if I am enjoying work and am proud of it, I’m happy, but if either of those two fade, so does my happiness.

In 2008

January 1, 2008

I’ve thought a lot today about what I want to include in this post. I realized pretty quickly that I have one encompassing goal for 2008:

Less planning, more doing.

2007, in my opinion, was a year spent figuring out who I am, who I want to be, and how I want to get there. I constructed a bunch of systems – both personal and public – to organize what I do in a more easy-to-understand way. The prime example? Collage. I launched Collage a little less than a year ago as a place to keep track of everything I publish, mark, and discuss online. Today, about 90% of my public work is included in Collage in an easy-to-read (and subscribe-able) format. I’m really proud of it.

I want 2008 to be a year of advancement instead of planning. I want to take the systems and practices I constructed last year and move forward. As it stands right now, I’m in a pretty good place to do just that.

Don’t get me wrong, I intend to plan when appropriate. In fact, I’m planning two new projects right now.

The first project is a new blog I intend to launch soon called Another New World. I’ve always debated whether Two Cents and a Thousand Words should be the random collection of personal tidbits it is today or whether I should focus a bit more. I realized last year (largely due to my columns in The Maine Edge) that I really do enjoy focusing on a topic. I tried for months to figure out what the focus of the blog should be; I wanted to find my true passion. I realized after some time that my passion in technology has always been looking at what’s new, reflecting on how we reached this point, and seeing how it may affect what’s next. ANeW will cover that. I’ll have more details when it launches, of course. I was originally planning to launch it today, but I just felt as though it wasn’t ready yet. I’m not setting a launch date now, but I hope to have it up fairly soon.

The other project is a new service by Sephone (and more notably, the Sephone Development Teamâ„¢) that we’re currently storyboarding. I can’t go into much detail about it right now, but it has the possibility of transforming Sephone (at least partially) into something new. It’s also more in line with my personal interests and philosophies than anything else we’ve ever done. We hope to have it ready by Q2 ’08, but it’s at a very tentative stage right now. I’ll update you as more details emerge.

As I said before, I’m in a good place right now to move forward. I’m already trying some new things this year; I’ll let you know about them as soon as they’re ready to go. Some of the projects I’ve done in the past may receive a little less attention as I carve out my ideal “brand.” But with a good understanding of who I want to be, a good lineup of tools to get me there (including my amazing new iPod touch – thank you Mom and Dad!), and some great ideas waiting for their chance to shine, 2008 will hopefully be a very fun and inspiring year.

A dash of reflection

December 31, 2007

Quite a few years ago, I set an annual goal for myself to complete all the outstanding things I had to do by the end of the year. The reasoning behind the goal was to start out the new year fresh and hopefully stay on top of things throughout the year.

This year will not be one of those years. I don’t like goals.

This past year was tough for me in some ways, and it was great in others. Overall, it was a year spent trying to figure out who I am, what I enjoy, and how I should be who I want to be. I made some progress, but a lot of the year was just spent thinking.

I have a lot to do on my day off tomorrow, but I’ll hopefully have a chance to write a fairly extensive post about the things I want to focus on in 2008. (Call them resolutions if you want… I don’t want to.) I really don’t want to spend a lot of time dwelling on the past year instead of moving onward and (hopefully) upward, so I’ll just end this last post of 2007 with a few of my very-very-favorite photos out of the approximately 4,500 save-able shots from the last twelve months (for comparison, I took just about 2,000 in 2006 and 1,800 in 2005). Some have deep emotional attachments; others are just cool shots.

American Folk Festival American Folk Festival

Spring Dance Concert Chadbourne Tree Farms

Carbon Leaf Portland Head Light

Rustic Overtones Fall Dance Showcase

Happy New Year, everyone!

The new Christmas tradition

December 22, 2007

We have a lot of traditions in my family, and I enjoy them all: holiday baking, whale watching in the summer, apple picking in the fall, a hike up Mount Battie in Camden in the spring. We’ve done them for more years than I can remember.

Melody and the elkTwo years ago I started another tradition: a Christmas Eve trip to South Paris, Maine. I’ve spent the last two Christmas Eves with my friend Melody. We usually grab a bite to eat and catch up on what’s happening in our lives. We also visit the elk farm in West Paris.

The elk at the farm are amazing. They’re beautiful animals, and they’re used to being fed grains by people. They walk right up to the fence and will lick the grain out of your hand if you so choose; you can also throw it into a feeding trough. They seem to like being patted, and they’re lots of fun overall.

The other highlight of the trip is the drive back home. I stay in South Paris until around five, and then I make the three-hour drive back through Rumford, Farmington, and Skowhegan, stopping at the Irving station in Farmington for a cup of hot chocolate and admiring the Route 2 Christmas decorations along the way. On the radio for the trip is WHOM‘s “Home for the Holidays.” The leisurely drive on Christmas Eve with Christmas music in my ear makes me smile for the whole trip home.

On Monday I’ll continue my South Paris elk trip tradition. It’s one of the few new traditions I’ve started recently, and it really makes me realize what’s so special about doing the same things year after year: it evokes emotion. The drive back is a quintessential Christmas season experience for me.

Merry Christmas to you all. No matter what you practice, enjoy the season.

Watch me fullscreen

December 12, 2007

Yes… I’m videoblogging. I made this video right after the big snowstorm, and because my PowerShot SD600, blip.tv, and the Internets in general are awesome, I can share it with you now.

Any future videoblogs will, of course, be part of Collage.

A collage (and blog) upgrade

November 25, 2007

I felt like it was time to do some tweaking this morning, so I changed some stuff on my blog and on Collage.

Let me say this right off the bat: Subscribe to or bookmark Collage instead of this blog. Collage reads in EVERYTHING I do – not just blog posts. You’ll get all of my pictures from Flickr, any YouTube vids I post, and a ton more. More sources will be added soon-ish. Of course, if you read my posts through Facebook or something like that, it doesn’t really apply to you. I’d love to have you read or subscribe to Collage anyway!

In fact, here are the only links you need: Read Collage | Subscribe to Collage

I wanted to make Collage even more appealing. Two Cents and a Thousand Words has kind of gone by the wayside as far as usefulness is concerned, and I’ve pretty much used it only as an outlet to inject Collage with content that won’t fit anywhere else. You won’t miss a thing if you subscribe to Collage instead of this blog; everything here ends up there. I added a list of sources to each Collage section, and I also added a little description of what each page shows. I think I finally squashed the time bug, too, that’s been showing incorrect times since I moved my site to a different server (in California) this summer. I now understand why lots of Web apps use relative time instead of absolute time.

At the same time, I didn’t want to lose all faith in the blog. If you’re coming to comment on a post or if you just find the blog in a search engine, I’ve scaled down the number of categories I use to be more content-driven than topic-driven. In other words, if you want to see my “photoblog” (stories and events that revolve around the photos I take), check out the Photography category. For project updates, check My Work. I may go back and re-associate everything, but don’t hold your breath. You’re on your own for older posts. I almost have 700 blog posts, after all.

Questions or comments? Get in touch with me. More to come soon, of course.