David Raynes

Is my son a communist?

2010-05-21T22:01:56Z

In a recent driving-home conversation I had with the boys, I went on to discuss some of the basics of capitalism and how money works. Here’s a rough transcript:

Me: [explaining why we pay their preschool and what they do with the money]

William: Why?

Me: Because that’s how capitalism works.

William: I don’t like that.

This might, at least partially, explain his preference for pink.

Getting older?

2010-05-13T16:22:14Z

Whenever something gets me thinking about my age (you know, like today being my 32nd birthday), I always come back to this XKCD:

Batman is awesome.

Habit: Eat Less Red Meat

2010-04-23T01:43:37Z

I need to take control (and responsibility!) of my diet. I don’t think I’m prepared to go full-on vegan, especially with the boys and their dietary requirements around. But I can make better choices about the meat that I do choose to prepare and eat.

Specifics:

Eat red meat (beef, duck, pepperoni, salami, and so forth) no more than twice a week. I’m tempted to include bacon on the list, even considering that it’s pork. Because it’s bacon.
Relevant Goals:
- “Be Healthy”:
  
  I want to eat better.
Possible Future Habits:
- Eat even less red meat
- Eat more fruits and vegatables
Possible Future Goals:
- Specific weight loss
Revisit:

I will revisit this habit in one month.

First stargaze

2010-04-16T04:32:04Z

I went out to look at the stars tonight. I was going outside to get some groceries out of the back of my car, and I decided to lean back against the car and look up for a little while first.

The Big Dipper was easy to spot, as it has been lately. I did not see Orion tonight, but I think this is not the time of year to be seeing it. I need to learn more about the constellations.

The longer I stayed out and looked up, the more adjusted my eyes got to the dark (as much as that is possible with the street lamps nearby) and the more stars I started to see. It was wonderful.

Habit: Stargazing

2010-04-15T04:35:00Z

I have always loved the stars and the night sky. For a number of years recently, I forgot how much I enjoyed them, but I am bringing them back into my life. One of the first habits I want to form is to start regularly stargazing.

Specifics:

At least twice a week, spend five or more minutes looking up at the night sky. Locate either the Big Dipper or Orion each time.
Relevant Goals:
- “Be Happy”:
  
  Looking at the night sky relaxes me greatly and never fails to bring a smile to my face.
- “Be Healthy”:
  
  Stargazing gets me out of my head for a little while, helps to keep me grounded and gives me some much needed perspective. It is hard to worry about most of the problems of life when you are trying to comprehend the vastness of the universe.
Possibile Future Habits:
- Increased time and frequency
- Learning and locating additional constellations
Possible Future Goals:
- See the Milky Way
Revisit:

I will revisit this habit in two weeks, including a progress report and any plans for modification or expansion.

Goal: Be Happy

2010-04-15T03:40:00Z

Maybe it is silly to have “Be Happy” as a goal, but I think it is a pretty important thing to strive for. I could probably lump this goal in with the mental and spiritual portions of the “Be Healthy” goal, but I think “Be Happy” is slightly different. In my mind, mental and spiritual health are one thing and actively seeking joy is, while related, something else entirely. And that is why it gets its own goal on my list.

Goal: Be Healthy

2010-04-13T04:40:58Z

First and foremost among my goals is “Be Healthy”. And I do not just mean physical health, but also mental and spiritual health. Being in ridiculously good shape does me no good if I am unhappy (though I suppose it would still help).

Metrics

How can I track progress? Well, for the physical portion of the goal, it is simple:

Weight
Heart rate
Endurance
Cholesterol
…

Lots of options there.

For the mental and spiritual parts of the goal, I am going to have to fudge the measurability requirement I have for my goals a little and just gauge how I am feeling. They are there to keep in mind while I am building new habits, to keep me from focusing solely on my physical health, because I am a whole being with many facets and such.

Asset Poller 0.2.0

2010-04-11T05:00:00Z

Asset Poller is a plugin idea I had while contemplating a useful workflow for getting screenshots from Skitch into Movable Type.

Sure, there’s the default workflow:

Take screenshot
Drag file to desktop to create image file
Click Create > Upload File in MT
Browse to the file
Upload it and enter the field data
Insert the image asset into my entries

Maybe I’m just lazy, but that feels like too much work for me. Recently I had learned that Skitch can, in addition to posting to skitch.com and flickr, upload images via (S)FTP. And I thought about what I could do with a file that already existed on my site. Sure, I could just link to the image and leave it at that, but having it exist as an asset within MT would make it so much more useful (and fun!).

Thus was born Asset Poller!

You can configure a particular directory to watch for a given blog, a directory to place the files for the newly created assets (so the watched directory does not need to be web-accessible) and optionally remove the original files from the watched directory (turned on by default).

Now the workflow (once Skitch is configured to sftp to my site):

Take screenshot
Click the webpost button
Go have a beer (or whatever you’d prefer to do for ~15 minutes)
Insert the image asset into my entries

Much nicer!

You can grab the plugin from github (http://github.com/rayners/mt-plugin-asset-poller), as well as vote for or contribute some thoughts on future features and versions in the issues section.

Enjoy!

Defining principles and values

2010-04-11T02:45:00Z

Values and principles are, in my mind, things to keep in mind while I build my goals, evaluate my progress with the metrics, and create new habits with which to move forward.

Progress, not perfection.

Perfectionism is something I fight with often, and not being able to finish something completely and perfectly can be enough to keep me from starting in the first place. The journey of one thousand miles may start with a single step, but that single step does not have to be one thousand miles long.
This too shall pass.

Life is not always perfect; it can be really rough sometimes. Instead of reacting to problems and setbacks out of anger, fear or desperation, I should take a moment, let those emotions run their course and regain my rational self before reacting to the situation.
Forgive, but not excuse.

Noticing a trend? I know I need to be able to give myself a break, but I cannot allow myself to just make up excuses either.

Id Shorts 0.7.0

2010-04-10T04:23:43Z

I have updated IdShorts based on some initial feedback:

Added the <mt:entryshorturl> template tag
Added the short url (for easy copy+pasting!) to the edit entry page
Added a config setting for the short url “template” defaulting to “<mt:blogurl><mt:entryid>”

Defining goals

2010-04-09T18:30:00Z

I’m in the process of building a list of goals that I want to work towards this year. Applying my programmer-brain to the process, I have a list of goal criteria that I’m working with.

The wording of the goal has to use an active verb.

The goal has to be something I am actively engaged in.
The goal has to be measurable in some way.

The goal itself doesn’t have to have a specific metric, but I should be able to create one or more metrics with the goal as a starting point. If I can’t measure my progress somehow, the goal is not very useful or productive.
The goal has to be self-centered.

That may sound very selfish, but I consider it more pragmatic than anything. Keeping in mind the first criteria, the goal has to involve me doing something. And to keep myself sane, the goal has to be something I am entirely in control of, which limits it to only my own actions or reactions to the world around me.

I’ve got a couple in mind that I’ll be writing about soon. And I may add more later in the year. There is no better time than “now” to add a new life goal. I also plan to start implementing (and writing about!) new habits as well; habits specifically derived from one or more goals and the metrics I set out for them. I figure I’ll be adding a new habit every few weeks or so, depending on how well each habit takes hold.

About page and contact info

2010-04-09T13:30:00Z

So I feel like I should write up an about me page or at least include some contact information for me somewhere, considering I suggested that people let me know if there are any plugins they would like to see on github sooner rather than later.

I’m also (again) thinking about some kind of “Ask Rayners” section. I imagine it would mostly be Movable Type based, but I’m open to other things.

So is there anything anybody would like me to include in my about page? Anybody feel like writing a short bio of me?

New desktop background

2010-04-08T05:02:27Z

Matt Jacobs pointed me at this iPad wallpaper tonight, and given that the boys are constantly trying to touch my laptop’s screen (because, as far as they know, everything is touch sensitive), I thought I might honor them with usage of that wallpaper on my laptop. So I downloaded the image, rotated it in Preview and set it as my background. Behold!

Id Shorts 0.6.0

2010-04-07T05:18:41Z

The Id Shorts plugin for Movable Type provides a cgi script that, when passed an entry id, will return a redirect to the permalink of that entry. With a little mod_rewrite magic, you could use it to build custom short urls for your site. For example http://rayners.org/6 will bring you back to this entry. It can also optionally track click-throughs and display the number in the edit entry page.

Information on installation and setup is in the README in the github repository for the plugin: http://github.com/rayners/mt-plugin-id-shorts

Dancing at the gas station

2010-04-03T06:00:53Z

The boys are spending the night at their grandmother’s tonight. They were told that they would be going up to her house at around 4pm, and they spent all day either asking me if or telling me that it was 4pm, and I’m pretty sure Nick spent most of the day with his backpack (“packpack!”) on.

On the way up there, I had to stop for gas and William asked if he could help; Nick has helped pump gas a couple times before, but William had never expressed interest. So I had him help me get the gas tank open and select the grade, then we danced to the music being piped over the gas station’s speakers while we waited for the tank to fill.

I love to watch them dance and to see how easy it is for them to just be joyful.