eveninghawk’s links

Josh pointed me to howtofoldashirt.net, and all I can really say is I’m amazed. I almost want to do a load of laundry…

Sometimes watching children at play can show us a lot about their personality and where that personality development is going. While pondering over some of the things I’ve learned interacting with children over the past year, a friend pointed out to me that self confidence is key all along, and in fact, rejection massively reduces IQ.

Social censorship was one of the topics that came up today over at Jeff Jarvis’ BuzzMachine. This is an interesting twist in a puzzle of me rarely being able to connect to some interesting websites.

Living in China, there are certain things that I take as fact about the Internet:

• I cannot access geocities
• I cannot access angelfire
• I cannot access Justin Hall’s stuff online
• I cannot access tripod sites
• I cannot access blogspot blogs
• I used to be able to get around this by using google’s cache, but this no longer works

It surprises me since some Chinese free blogging community services have popped up over the past bit. Also, contrary to popular belief, porn and illicit drug information is extremely accessible from China, which only confuses me. Also, what is available in different parts of China is not the same. In Southern Gansu’s Tibetan Autonomous Region, many Tibetan dissent websites were available, no problem. Those aren’t available from anyplace else I’ve been in China.

Then again, young monks there played a lot of Counter Strike, which struck me as very un-monklike. So much for predictable patterns of behavior.

One of my favorite reads that I’ve gotten behind on of late is Neil Gaiman’s journal. This would be because the feed isn’t showing up in Kinja, and while I haven’t the foggiest idea why, I will be sure to try to remedy that fact (and pick up all that lost reading).

So, today I went back to take a look and, as always, was met with a serendipitous collection of things I wanted to know. The most important being how to survive collaboration. These are nuggest of wisdom worth reading, for example:

1) Only collaborate if you both are working on the same thing. If you and your collaborator are writing the same book, great. If you want to write something like Prisoner of Zenda, and he wants to write something like Atlas Shrugged you’d better stop now, while you’re still on speaking terms.

Why would this be important to me? I plan on launching a webcomic in the fall. I really do, only it will be a words and pictures experience rather than a webcomic. I want a little more. I want character journal entries in there, I want interaction, I want ensemble. Only… while creative I am going to consider channeling 7 or so really strong characters. I hope to bring in some folks to “write” those people. I am looking for potential collaborators who are willing to take ideas and run far, hopefully not away from me and deadlines.

I like biology, I like bugs, and anyone who met me at Hampshire knows that I am a big fan of interdisciplinary studies. This means I was all jazzed up by ethnomusicology, very excited by studying socioeconomic impacts of environmental change, and very jazzed up by human ecology. Things link together and interact and this is enough to send me jumping up and down and telling everyone al kinds of information that they don’t want to know.

Well, today Dev (a friend from NL), pointed me to something that will have me pointing and clicking and reading for a while because, to me, it’s exciting. Yay interdisciplinary happiness, and it’s bugs. I’ve been thinking about cute and interesting bugs all semester because kids get so into it, so I’ve had bugs on the brain. You too can read bug bios.

As an aside, I have always been a firm believer as personal experience as the way to really build people’s interest in things. This is why zoos, though often poorly executed, are a good idea. When in college I was able to play with a Tanzanian millipede. Let’s just say it’s a millipede that is about 8 inches long and 3/4 of an inch thick. It was a great experience, and gave a whole new level of indentification to me whenever I looked at the Nine Inch Nails album cover.

There are things that we can all learn from other people. For me, being abroad doesn’t mean that I can’t continue to learn, that I can’t do my market research, or that I can’t network. It just means that I have to find a different way to do it, and I have a different sense of community.

So… for those of you who might be interested, these are the communities I take part in.

Dreaming In Ink: this is a small writing group that has a limited memberlist. Regardless, if you’re interested you should submit an application. We always like to see new faces.

Evolution: this is another online writing group that is open to anyone who is open, if you catch my drift.

Nightingale’s Lamp: an offshoot of sheroes, this is a network of people who are and are supportive of women of all ages and all walks of life.

Comixpedia: a comic person’s resource. This one is very new for me, but I love it so far.

Wet Canvas: an online artists’ resource and community.

So those are the ones that I find relevant to me and most certainly worth checking out.

Have you ever taken the Myers-Briggs personality test? It’s a little more insightful than anything that most blog quizzes have to offer, which is appropriate considering it’s development in psychology. Regardless, bloginality has offered up a much shorter and less painful version of the test online. It’s actually a pretty accurate boiling down of all the questions.

My friend Josh Shaine once had me take this test in a class for HSSP over at MIT, and at the time I came out borderline. INTP/INFP. What’s a little scary is that it still reads that way today for me.

INTP:Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving

What’s interesting is that this is a lot of the things about me that everone finds frustrating (if you follow the link there’s a much more lengthy and eloquent description). Basically it means I have a tendency to over-correct people beyond their own limits because I think it worth making a point, and try to refrain from major confrontation and making a scene. The other really big one going on there is fear of failure. There are some areas where I’ve gotten better. I am constantly waiting for someone to tell me where I am going wrong with my art or writing, and these things used to be unshared and “untouchable” to me. Now I will give away artwork without secretly wanting to spite the person I gave it to. This probably shows a lot of why I like languages and occasionally shock myself at being good at math.

INFP:Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving

Pretty much this is my internal sappy side that is always being stuffed back in the box, but is most certainly the more fantastical side of my writing and most certainly a creative home. Maybe this is why when I read and get started on an editorial, there is no way that I can go back to my fiction work. The gears just don’t switch that easily. The one that caught me in the profile was that some INFPs can take tech info and put it into everyday language. That’s most definitely one of my stronger points. Actually, I can’t write the highbrow other stuff just because it feels fake on some level. It’s not the way I think, and I hate writing any other way.

Overall, between the two desciptions you’ve got me pretty much 100% of the time. I’ve “acted” more extroverted as situations have required, but it’s always a lot of work and requires a good shower afterwards. It’s an interesting overall way to think about things for sure. Worth thinking over.

You too can enjoy a neatly scripted scrabble solitaire and go nuts like I do trying to better your top score.

(link via kottke)

Perpetual Preschool has great resources, though I find they are appropriate for my first and second grade ESL kids, since the vocabulary is more accessible for them.

Today I have stumbled across Boggle’s World while trying to build an 80 minute fun Christmas oriented class. I am very excited about the resources there and the flexibility of the materials there.

I’ll be going back to them with some of the curriculum development we’re working on for next semester. Score!