Outside of the built-in web browsers, the one that I use most is Mozilla's Firefox. When I first found myself in cyberspace, I had to stick it out with Internet Explorer as it was the default for both the family and school computers. With my first laptop back in '08, I didn't mind it much with the Internet security software I installed...
...until the crashing happened. So I switched because I remember someone saying that Firefox was faster. This was also when Chrome jumped into the scene. Months later, I had an idea for an article I wanted to do for my high school's newspaper where I just tested all the major ones. This, during a time when I was unfamiliar with web standards aside from speed and design, never panned out. Although that's when I defaulted over to Opera.
The speed was personally on par with Firefox, if not more, but it was the design that did it for me. The rectangular tabs were smooth around the edges and I fell in love with the speed dial and multi-purpose sidebar. There was also a BitTorrent client built into the browser--this is Opera 9--that I used to download the Summoning of the Spirits album.
I surfed through Opera for around two years, then switched back. I forgot why, but I remember it being a rendering issue. Not that I minded much.
Fast-forward to Vivaldi, from Opera's founding creators, and I find myself using it more and more. Clive Thompson's Boing Boing post led me to it--I related to the tab issue--but it was the bookmarks manager that did me in then. Later it was the tab stacking and tiling that convinced me. While I'm still waiting for the build with either private browsing or UI extensions before making it my default, here's why I want to do so...
Vivaldi promotes both productivity and the user. With the former, there's no need to have a home page. During my undergrad, my home page was always the university's hub page, or the one that lead to the e-mail and online coursework. Now, I set three folders as my speed dials and use them as a substitute for a homepage. With this, I find myself less distracted by the usual homepage clutter and skip straight to the personal to-do list most of the time.
The latter refers to the slogan, labeling Vivaldi as, "A Browser for our Friends." Friends in this case being the community who once made Opera what it was and other power users. Even if it is closed-sourced and based off the Chromium engine, the face that Vivaldi gives the user control over how they browse, from layout to shortcuts through keyboard and mouse, convinced me to give it a thought.
The tab stack tiling also proved to me that Vivaldi would be my go-to for social media management. Cross-posting to the other networks would be a breeze, meaning that I don't need to use any automation recipes making everything seem emotionless and spam-like. Stacking alone would make reading through articles, or commenting on multiple threads on Boing Boing's BBS much more manageable, meaning that I won't find myself distracted elsewhere on the web.
It's still in alpha, but I have high hopes for Vivaldi, a browser that does what it says on the tin and then some.
22 July, 2015
17 July, 2015
Maximum Security Showcase, or Last Year's NaNoWriMo Thought Out in Full
Note: First posted here.
It’s hard to explain what this long-term project is about. I started writing it last year as merely a short story for a creative writing class. The premise itself was simple enough: Man dreads visit from old co-workers and finds out why when his girlfriend leaves for dance practice who does not know that co-worker one is ruthless in getting to the top at their old job, and co-worker two used the protagonist to start dating him. The end result being that the main character realizes that he’s now free from them, or rather “been free” as his girlfriend tells him.
Problem was that, thinking about it, I wanted it to do so much more. After I graduated last year, I started writing bits and chunks trying to figure out where I wanted it to go. The plot from the short story wasn’t enough. Come NaNoWriMo, I found myself at a roadblock. I salvaged some of the material, unused in the short story to fit in a new character along with developing co-worker two, but everything else fell flat.
My major problem: the main character.
Even if it was he who drove the story forward, his nervousness about the whole situation and afterward drove it to a standstill. Why does he stay that way?
Then some inspiration happened on a bus ride home, which allowed me to develop the main character more, along with adding in co-worker one's point of view. Later on I started reading Richard Littler’s Discovering Scarfolk. I first discovered the time-locked dystopia while I was at university on accident through their Soundcloud, more intrigued by the constant loop in the 1970s than by the strange oddities contained within.
It was when I started following the Scarfolk blog, before reading the book, that I began finding where my story would go. One of the things that made the town so interesting was the hauntology angle, which I further learned about in Andrew Gallix’s Guardian article:
So where does hauntology fit into the mix?
In the short story, the main character’s past “haunts” him through a visit from his co-workers. In the long-term project, it torments him beyond those two.
It is now a story in which a recent past colonizes the area where he lives. A time where he and his friend broke their chains from the heresy tumbling between servers which marked them. Now they click back to life to wrap around him for a Maximum Security Showcase*.
(More on it as I go along, plus research. I referenced Scarfolk in previous posts on Ello--one with a track and another with a review of Discovering Scarfolk.)
*Working Title
It’s hard to explain what this long-term project is about. I started writing it last year as merely a short story for a creative writing class. The premise itself was simple enough: Man dreads visit from old co-workers and finds out why when his girlfriend leaves for dance practice who does not know that co-worker one is ruthless in getting to the top at their old job, and co-worker two used the protagonist to start dating him. The end result being that the main character realizes that he’s now free from them, or rather “been free” as his girlfriend tells him.
Problem was that, thinking about it, I wanted it to do so much more. After I graduated last year, I started writing bits and chunks trying to figure out where I wanted it to go. The plot from the short story wasn’t enough. Come NaNoWriMo, I found myself at a roadblock. I salvaged some of the material, unused in the short story to fit in a new character along with developing co-worker two, but everything else fell flat.
My major problem: the main character.
Even if it was he who drove the story forward, his nervousness about the whole situation and afterward drove it to a standstill. Why does he stay that way?
Then some inspiration happened on a bus ride home, which allowed me to develop the main character more, along with adding in co-worker one's point of view. Later on I started reading Richard Littler’s Discovering Scarfolk. I first discovered the time-locked dystopia while I was at university on accident through their Soundcloud, more intrigued by the constant loop in the 1970s than by the strange oddities contained within.
It was when I started following the Scarfolk blog, before reading the book, that I began finding where my story would go. One of the things that made the town so interesting was the hauntology angle, which I further learned about in Andrew Gallix’s Guardian article:
As a reflection of the zeitgeist, hauntology is, above all, the product of a time which is seriously "out of joint" (Hamlet is one of Derrida's crucial points of reference in Spectres of Marx). There is a prevailing sense among hauntologists that culture has lost its momentum and that we are all stuck at the "end of history". Meanwhile, new technologies are dislocating more traditional notions of time and place. Smartphones, for instance, encourage us never to fully commit to the here and now, fostering a ghostly presence-absence. Internet time (which is increasingly replacing clock time) results in a kind of "non-time" that goes hand in hand with Marc Augé's non-places. Perhaps even more crucially, the web has brought about a "crisis of overavailability" that, in effect, signifies the "loss of loss itself": nothing dies any more, everything "comes back on YouTube or as a box set retrospective" like the looping, repetitive time of trauma (Fisher).
So where does hauntology fit into the mix?
In the short story, the main character’s past “haunts” him through a visit from his co-workers. In the long-term project, it torments him beyond those two.
It is now a story in which a recent past colonizes the area where he lives. A time where he and his friend broke their chains from the heresy tumbling between servers which marked them. Now they click back to life to wrap around him for a Maximum Security Showcase*.
(More on it as I go along, plus research. I referenced Scarfolk in previous posts on Ello--one with a track and another with a review of Discovering Scarfolk.)
*Working Title
15 July, 2015
Where I've Been, Where this is Going, etc.
This post is a few things, with the major one being that it's geared towards Google+ users, mostly because I don't take advantage of the cross-posting feature. If you follow me on Ello, skim through my page there, or via RSS, there's not much new here. If you came here through Twitter, skip down to the "July and August Itinerary" for what I'll be up to.
So far, I wrote two new flash fiction pieces this year--one with a follow-up Wattpad story, and the other as part of the "Mechanic's Garage" series of flash fiction.
There's also a review of Thomas Piketty's Capital that I got myself into courtesy of a couple Ello shelfies and a post detailing my information diet in brief.
After that, I started focusing more on my long-term project. Three months later and now I have a better idea of where I want to take it. I charted my progress over on Ello, where I'll continue to do so.
I meandered from the schedule I set myself for June with the work-in-progress being only one of those reasons. The other being that I switched computers, going from an 11" to a 15" screen. I'm still in the process of reorganizing my digital spaces, both online and off, but I feel both more confident and productive using a bigger screen when writing from home.
July and August Itinerary (Note: First posted here.)
July: I'll write a long-form post each about the topics that I meant to cover along with any book reviews that I missed along the way. Topics and reviews include my new-found love of the Vivaldi web browser, reviewing British comedian David Mitchell's Thinking About It Always Makes It Worse and Jan Wong's Red China Blues, about my current long-term work, etc.
August: Instead of just one Wattpad short story, I plan on doing two. One to make up for the lack of a June story and the other to round up my initial goal for this year. I plan on cross-posting all three of them on Ello instead of just leaving them there.
So far, I wrote two new flash fiction pieces this year--one with a follow-up Wattpad story, and the other as part of the "Mechanic's Garage" series of flash fiction.
There's also a review of Thomas Piketty's Capital that I got myself into courtesy of a couple Ello shelfies and a post detailing my information diet in brief.
After that, I started focusing more on my long-term project. Three months later and now I have a better idea of where I want to take it. I charted my progress over on Ello, where I'll continue to do so.
I meandered from the schedule I set myself for June with the work-in-progress being only one of those reasons. The other being that I switched computers, going from an 11" to a 15" screen. I'm still in the process of reorganizing my digital spaces, both online and off, but I feel both more confident and productive using a bigger screen when writing from home.
July and August Itinerary (Note: First posted here.)
July: I'll write a long-form post each about the topics that I meant to cover along with any book reviews that I missed along the way. Topics and reviews include my new-found love of the Vivaldi web browser, reviewing British comedian David Mitchell's Thinking About It Always Makes It Worse and Jan Wong's Red China Blues, about my current long-term work, etc.
August: Instead of just one Wattpad short story, I plan on doing two. One to make up for the lack of a June story and the other to round up my initial goal for this year. I plan on cross-posting all three of them on Ello instead of just leaving them there.
23 May, 2015
Weekend Links for May 23-24
It's been awhile since I've done one of these, but instead of the previous format, I thought I'd curate approximately five items of interest that I read over the week plus one video.
With that, the video for this week comes from this year's re:publica conference where Cory Doctorow discusses the issues prevalent with the Internet of Things and general purpose computers with regards to surveillance and digital locks. Reminded me of his 2011 talk at the Chaos Computer Congress that I also recommend watching.
This Week's Links of Interest
Alice Bolin writes about how Agatha Christie plays around some of the most common tropes in mystery writing through Miss Marple:
Simon Pegg follows up on what he said in this week's Radio Times about science fiction and genre films "dumbing down" audiences, noting the traits expressed by Tim and Daisy in Spaced:
Same as April's so there won't be another flash fiction piece this month. I do plan on posting a short story to Wattpad in June.
With that, the video for this week comes from this year's re:publica conference where Cory Doctorow discusses the issues prevalent with the Internet of Things and general purpose computers with regards to surveillance and digital locks. Reminded me of his 2011 talk at the Chaos Computer Congress that I also recommend watching.
This Week's Links of Interest
Alice Bolin writes about how Agatha Christie plays around some of the most common tropes in mystery writing through Miss Marple:
Miss Marple elevates the archetype of the spinster, which has been, as Kathy Mezei writes, “a recurring icon in British literature.” This phenomenon reflects a reality of British demographics, particularly after the traumas of two world wars: women outnumbered men, and single women were seen as “lonely, superfluous, and sexually frustrated.” Mezei’s wonderful article “Spinsters, Surveillance, and Speech: The Case of Miss Marple, Miss Mole, and Miss Jekyll” from the Journal of Modern Literature lays out the way that a spinster character has been used by Christie and others to accomplish feats of narrative misdirection, and, more importantly, to “covertly query power and gender relations while simultaneously upholding the status quo.”
Simon Pegg follows up on what he said in this week's Radio Times about science fiction and genre films "dumbing down" audiences, noting the traits expressed by Tim and Daisy in Spaced:
In the 18 years since we wrote Spaced, this extended adolescence has been cannily co-opted by market forces, who have identified this relatively new demographic as an incredibly lucrative wellspring of consumerist potential. Suddenly, here was an entire generation crying out for an evolved version of the things they were consuming as children. This demographic is now well and truly serviced in all facets of entertainment and the first and second childhoods have merged into a mainstream phenomenon.Jessica Valenti writes in her Guardian column about how the lack of female authors on one's bookshelf might denote sexism, but also points out how others view authors based on sex, race, and gender:
Part of the problem is that while art or books that white men put out is portrayed as universally appealing, culture produced by women or people of color is seen as specific to their gender or racial identity.Leigh Alexander writes about why video game stories are not always gripping:
Having a writer helps, but developers often just bring writers in to help fill in dialogue around setpieces (make up a reason for everyone to have a huge zombie battle in the football arena!) not to contribute to an overall narrative design. Writers on big games have told me privately of the friction they felt between what they wanted to happen in the game and the absurd, dissonant moments of gameplay that were beloved to the developers and too late to change.Alistair Coleman points out some of the click-bait books that he found on Twitter. Here's one of them:
This man was shipwrecked on an island for 28 years. His one great life hack will blow your mind, and you can use it too!May's Itinerary
Same as April's so there won't be another flash fiction piece this month. I do plan on posting a short story to Wattpad in June.
13 April, 2015
Thomas Piketty's Capital
Last year, just before the holiday season kicked into full swing, I went and bought Thomas Piketty's Capital after reading through Cory Doctorow's review on Boing Boing. That and during those first few post-undergraduate months, academic reads became one of my guilty pleasures, reading through the Issues in Feminist Film Criticism anthology along with ordering Richard Schechner's Performance Theory alongside other books. This was the result of my two years as a university transfer student when I took mostly English classes and wrote mostly analyses of literature's past hits, from Shakespeare to Truman Capote, with a Marxist bent. Hence my purchase, which later appeared on my first shelfies for Ello.
When I first took those shelfies, one of the users asked if I read the book, to which I responded that I didn't but said that was one of the first for next year. Three months later, I can proudly say that I read through the entire thing, except the reference notes. I promised that same user a review so here is my verdict in full.
Goes without saying, this is definitely not a causal Sunday read. Nor do I recommend reading it while snowed in. Even if I do enjoy those academic forays, there's a lot to digest here even if Piketty repeats and reinforces the same points and statistics.
There is his formula in the beginning: r > g (or capital return rate is greater than economic growth). From there on out, Piketty puts this theory into action to reinforce the state of wealth inequality throughout history, on a global scale. Piketty is very thorough to the very conclusion and his proposals to regulate wealth and to shorten the divide between the classes.
There's a vast expanse, but here's what I found noteworthy...
The parts where he brings in literary examples, specifically Jane Austen and Honoré de Balzac, to explain how wealth worked in the Eighteenth Century primarily through bonds and land that turned into rent payments, kept me from getting lost in the statistics of it all. Having that lens into how literary characters accumulate, invest, and utilize capital helped mesh the subjective into the objective. There's also Piketty's reference to the "Rentier", which he goes back to later in Part Three where he talks about the resurgence of capital through merit and inheritance, maintaining today's wealth inequality.
Then, Piketty's look at the structure of said inequality over time helped finalize the big picture as to why is there this imbalance between the bourgeoisie and the middle and working classes. With the States, Piketty notices the sharp rise in the wealth chasm before the 1929 Great Depression where he mentions that it briefly compressed shortly after, but not as much as Europe due to the wage inequality that developed overtime.
All this paints the picture today. One where movements like Occupy Wall Street march to advocate for the 99% (proletarians) opposed to the 1%'s (bourgeoisie's) abuses from finance to environment. Piketty himself has his own proposals to curb the gap, including economic transparency and a global tax on capital itself.
Capital's a book worth reading, but if time's short, Pikettty's TED Talk summarizes it well enough...
When I first took those shelfies, one of the users asked if I read the book, to which I responded that I didn't but said that was one of the first for next year. Three months later, I can proudly say that I read through the entire thing, except the reference notes. I promised that same user a review so here is my verdict in full.
Goes without saying, this is definitely not a causal Sunday read. Nor do I recommend reading it while snowed in. Even if I do enjoy those academic forays, there's a lot to digest here even if Piketty repeats and reinforces the same points and statistics.
There is his formula in the beginning: r > g (or capital return rate is greater than economic growth). From there on out, Piketty puts this theory into action to reinforce the state of wealth inequality throughout history, on a global scale. Piketty is very thorough to the very conclusion and his proposals to regulate wealth and to shorten the divide between the classes.
There's a vast expanse, but here's what I found noteworthy...
The parts where he brings in literary examples, specifically Jane Austen and Honoré de Balzac, to explain how wealth worked in the Eighteenth Century primarily through bonds and land that turned into rent payments, kept me from getting lost in the statistics of it all. Having that lens into how literary characters accumulate, invest, and utilize capital helped mesh the subjective into the objective. There's also Piketty's reference to the "Rentier", which he goes back to later in Part Three where he talks about the resurgence of capital through merit and inheritance, maintaining today's wealth inequality.
Then, Piketty's look at the structure of said inequality over time helped finalize the big picture as to why is there this imbalance between the bourgeoisie and the middle and working classes. With the States, Piketty notices the sharp rise in the wealth chasm before the 1929 Great Depression where he mentions that it briefly compressed shortly after, but not as much as Europe due to the wage inequality that developed overtime.
All this paints the picture today. One where movements like Occupy Wall Street march to advocate for the 99% (proletarians) opposed to the 1%'s (bourgeoisie's) abuses from finance to environment. Piketty himself has his own proposals to curb the gap, including economic transparency and a global tax on capital itself.
Capital's a book worth reading, but if time's short, Pikettty's TED Talk summarizes it well enough...
02 April, 2015
1st Wattpad Story and April Itinerary
After a month of sporadic procrastination, I finished my first short story to Wattpad* which continues where "White Sheet" left off. I would like to thank commenters Wilma Nesti and Chuck for their suggestions that inspired me to take Peter's story further into something that I plan on making a serial. That said, I considered porting the other pieces on here over to Wattpad and cross-post between there, here, and Ello.
With that, here are the changes to April's itinerary...
I may not write a flash fiction piece for April. I mentioned on Ello, when I planned on dedicating a week to the short story, that I wanted to work on last year's NaNoWriMo. I had some ideas between February and now that I want to add, along with organizing and writing the thing in full. That, and I've also been playing Badass Space Dragon over on Boing Boing's BBS where I play as a space lobster with a love of all things fashion, except if it's cardigan sweaters. This, along with other commitments outside the web makes the lack of an April flash fiction a possibility.
There will be musings based on how I procrastinated last month--from my new-found love for the web browser Vivaldi to binge watching Korean television and even a review on Thomas Piketty's Capital that I promised to write when I announced my first reads for 2015 over on (yes) Ello.
...and that sums up all the changes. Have a Happy Easter Weekend!
*If you are not on Wattpad and would like to provide feedback, comment away here or e-mail me at the addresses listed here.
With that, here are the changes to April's itinerary...
I may not write a flash fiction piece for April. I mentioned on Ello, when I planned on dedicating a week to the short story, that I wanted to work on last year's NaNoWriMo. I had some ideas between February and now that I want to add, along with organizing and writing the thing in full. That, and I've also been playing Badass Space Dragon over on Boing Boing's BBS where I play as a space lobster with a love of all things fashion, except if it's cardigan sweaters. This, along with other commitments outside the web makes the lack of an April flash fiction a possibility.
There will be musings based on how I procrastinated last month--from my new-found love for the web browser Vivaldi to binge watching Korean television and even a review on Thomas Piketty's Capital that I promised to write when I announced my first reads for 2015 over on (yes) Ello.
...and that sums up all the changes. Have a Happy Easter Weekend!
*If you are not on Wattpad and would like to provide feedback, comment away here or e-mail me at the addresses listed here.
08 March, 2015
On Having an Information Diet
For three years and counting, I put myself on what Clay Johnson coins as an information diet. I bought his book bearing the namesake a few months after it came out, but I let it collect pixelated dust between my day-job with the community college wilderness years coming to a close. Then, what got me thinking about this whole info-cutting business?
Before then, I was obsessed with world news from the BBC to Al Jazeera English and NHK World. That and in 2010 I gave US national media a shot through the Huffington Post's media section with all the he-said she-said soundbites. That last experience was rather unnerving courtesy of my first introduction to the craft through shortwave broadcasts of NHK World that turned into visiting the BBC website daily. From teen to early young-adult, I was naive about journalism and what the Internet could do.
Fast-forward to February 2012 where a friend of mine reminded me about national media and how they covered politics. I read through Dan Gillmor's Mediactive months prior which got me thinking about managing my own news consumption. That and considering additional sources beyond the established press. More on that in a few.
Clay Johnson's The Information Diet reminded of Gillmor's book regarding how one can organize through information both sensational and informative alongside other techniques. Whereas Gillmor calls for the user to not only embrace active media consumption, but to also maintain an internet presence, Johnson focuses more on the former noticing the smaller details including filter failure and brand loyalty along how to make one's information diet work effectively though mastering consumption techniques that allude to nutrition, personal fitness, and psychological experiments.
I already utilize some of the methods in my own diet, even before I read Johnson's book combined with Gillmor's suggestions. When it comes to recognized media outlets, I use both local and international sources alongside non-profit organizations including ProPublica, Global Voices, and the Sunlight Foundation without the need to tune into the cable news landscape. Excluding social media feeds, I bookmarked seven international sources along with my region's local paper, and three alternative publications to distill and figure out the stories I find interesting and ultimately newsworthy.
Which leads me back to the additional sources idea, going beyond the non-profits I previously mentioned. One of my favorite parts in Mediactive is when Dan Gillmor asks readers, "What is journalism?" This question, and the chapter in question shows how the idea evolves to include citizen journalists, bloggers, and organizations which he says perform "journalistic acts". I seriously recommend going through that hyperlink, but long story short, the idea encompasses the mentioned organizations and more. Personally this includes blogs such as Boing Boing, Popehat, Feeling Listless, and other sites on my blogroll that are part-humor and part-opinion, but also link to articles elsewhere.
That, and instead of just going through my bookmarks and scrolling my news feeds, I make it a habit to go through my Feedly where I can subscribe to feeds relevant to my interests a la the now-defunct Google Reader.
I could go on, but I'll just say that any exposure to political partisan material I limit to Jacobin Magazine and any of the mentioned publications or blogs. Because of this ongoing diet, I have a more optimistic and somewhat detached view on current events. In other words, I combined Johnson's advice with Gillmor's suggestion towards a "slower news culture" which I also suggest going through. All this information consumption takes place within an hour to two based on whether or not I'm working or writing. Sometimes, I bookmark an article for later reading. Sometimes, not.
So would I recommend reading through Clay Johnson's Information Diet? I say yes, but also read through Mediactive to get a bigger picture of the evolving media landscape to keep the data-consuming regiment fresh.
Disclosure: I wrote a review on Mediactive for the student-run publication, Campus Lantern, back in 2012.
Before then, I was obsessed with world news from the BBC to Al Jazeera English and NHK World. That and in 2010 I gave US national media a shot through the Huffington Post's media section with all the he-said she-said soundbites. That last experience was rather unnerving courtesy of my first introduction to the craft through shortwave broadcasts of NHK World that turned into visiting the BBC website daily. From teen to early young-adult, I was naive about journalism and what the Internet could do.
Fast-forward to February 2012 where a friend of mine reminded me about national media and how they covered politics. I read through Dan Gillmor's Mediactive months prior which got me thinking about managing my own news consumption. That and considering additional sources beyond the established press. More on that in a few.
Clay Johnson's The Information Diet reminded of Gillmor's book regarding how one can organize through information both sensational and informative alongside other techniques. Whereas Gillmor calls for the user to not only embrace active media consumption, but to also maintain an internet presence, Johnson focuses more on the former noticing the smaller details including filter failure and brand loyalty along how to make one's information diet work effectively though mastering consumption techniques that allude to nutrition, personal fitness, and psychological experiments.
I already utilize some of the methods in my own diet, even before I read Johnson's book combined with Gillmor's suggestions. When it comes to recognized media outlets, I use both local and international sources alongside non-profit organizations including ProPublica, Global Voices, and the Sunlight Foundation without the need to tune into the cable news landscape. Excluding social media feeds, I bookmarked seven international sources along with my region's local paper, and three alternative publications to distill and figure out the stories I find interesting and ultimately newsworthy.
Which leads me back to the additional sources idea, going beyond the non-profits I previously mentioned. One of my favorite parts in Mediactive is when Dan Gillmor asks readers, "What is journalism?" This question, and the chapter in question shows how the idea evolves to include citizen journalists, bloggers, and organizations which he says perform "journalistic acts". I seriously recommend going through that hyperlink, but long story short, the idea encompasses the mentioned organizations and more. Personally this includes blogs such as Boing Boing, Popehat, Feeling Listless, and other sites on my blogroll that are part-humor and part-opinion, but also link to articles elsewhere.
That, and instead of just going through my bookmarks and scrolling my news feeds, I make it a habit to go through my Feedly where I can subscribe to feeds relevant to my interests a la the now-defunct Google Reader.
I could go on, but I'll just say that any exposure to political partisan material I limit to Jacobin Magazine and any of the mentioned publications or blogs. Because of this ongoing diet, I have a more optimistic and somewhat detached view on current events. In other words, I combined Johnson's advice with Gillmor's suggestion towards a "slower news culture" which I also suggest going through. All this information consumption takes place within an hour to two based on whether or not I'm working or writing. Sometimes, I bookmark an article for later reading. Sometimes, not.
So would I recommend reading through Clay Johnson's Information Diet? I say yes, but also read through Mediactive to get a bigger picture of the evolving media landscape to keep the data-consuming regiment fresh.
Disclosure: I wrote a review on Mediactive for the student-run publication, Campus Lantern, back in 2012.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)