ArtLung [Joe Crawford]

Photo of Mom from 2005. Happy Mother’s Day Phyllis. Save us a seat.

So over several months I was consulted for an article about Flash. There were some issues and errors in it initially, but now that it’s all there, I’m delighted to show you the link: Time to de-Flash your site?

Now, Betteridge’s Law of Headlines states that “Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word ‘no’”. Still, I think the article manages to convey the complexities of the decision website owners need to make about replacing Flash. It’s still a very mixed bag out there.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had any media mentions, but this was harmless enough. Thanks David Weldon for seeking me out and for the thorough picking of my brain!

I’ve been very interested in gamification since I saw Jesse Schell’s “Visions of the Gamepocalypse” back in 2010 (See Jesse Schell: Beyond Facebook, and later when I got a lot of interest from Asian foursquare users in a bid to acquire “Mile High” badges (See: Mile High).

So here we are more than a year later, and gamification is as close as my local Wells Fargo ATM, it says “You’ve earned a new badge: Express Depositor”:

I didn’t click the “Learn More” button, but I’m fascinated by the way these things work. I enjoy playing with and getting location information from Foursquare, and I really like participating in StackOverflow (and related sites). I’m not sure what these badges will mean to me at my bank.

In my last, incredibly brief post I said I’m tired of being sick, and declared a hearty: No More.

I mean that. This week I went to the doctor. Why? To get a sense of where the heck I stand. I’m 42 years old, 360 pounds, and often don’t feel so hot. So, what does a Medical Doctor have to say about where I stand.

I told him my colds last month had freaked me out. Side note: I’ve gotten a ton of advice on avoiding colds. Some of the advices include: kimchi, room-temperature Sunny Delight, matzoh ball soup, fluids, bedrest, Emergen-C, hot tea, juicing. As Slim Pickens says in Dr. Strangelove: “A fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.”

Turns out, on physical exam I’m 360 pounds and 42 years old, and not much else against me. My lovely wife pointed out I didn’t ask him about sleep apnea — and honestly I didn’t think about it. I know for a fucking fact (sorry relatives, I need to swear. My Mother is dead, my grandmother is dead, and I can say fucking on my blog now without starring it out) that I don’t want to wear a CPAP or BiPAP device every night of my life. As a Respiratory Therapist I know they do good, but the quality of life attendant to such a machine I don’t find them compelling. I will admit to the fact that my opinion on that may change in the future. But I don’t have the mysterious swelling I got in my lower extremities maybe 6 years ago. I don’t have the terrible back pain I got about 3 years ago. In some ways I’m in improved overall shape. I’m pretty strong (I have to be, I’m carrying around 160 pounds extra, all the time). I still like to swim, when I do it. I don’t find myself out of breath if I pace myself walking (for example, running for a bus or a train or whatever). Now, I couldn’t do a push or pull-up to save my life (hah!) but that’s not everything.

The truth is I believe I gained a ton of weight after my Mom died. That’s on me. My Mom took all kinds of ownership over me being a heavy kid. Truth is, the only time I’ve NOT been a heavy kid was when we lived in the Philippines. That was mostly because we had no money at the time. Ate a lot of rice and beans and that’s pretty much it. It’s in my genes – the maternal side of the family (hi again Mom) has more obesity than the paternal – but that’s backstory. Ultimately my habits and diet are the key.

I actually have felt better and weighed less in the past. When I worked nights as a Respiratory Therapist, running to cardiac arrests, doing treatments, chest percussion, lugging equipment, I was in better shape. Now I’m a computer programmer and sit all the time. I’m sitting as I write this.

So the doctor, I told him I’m working on it (and truth be told, I believe I’m down 10 pounds in the past month or two) and he said, “well, let’s set up an appointment two months from now and see where we stand.” So I did it. He also ordered blood work for me. Always fun to get blood drawn. He ordered the standard labs, and thyroid levels, and cholesterol levels.

The blood work was unremarkable, mostly. The little pink zones (they’re not colored pink, but in my mind’s eye bad labs have a pink background to them, remember I used to look at people’s laboratory results as part of my job) are two:

First, I don’t have enough good cholesterol (HDL Cholesterol 35 mg/dL, should be greater than or equal to 40 mg/dL). My bad cholesterol level is actually okay (107 mg/dL), not great, but not bad, like my Mom, or like folks they worry about for heart disease. The Mayo Clinic website says this level is “near ideal.” Still these numbers could improve.

Now, the brighter pink factor is my fasting glucose – 104 mg/dL. That’s high. Maybe not diabetic high, but high enough to have a name. Not that I’m hung up on names. I mean, they give a name to “restless leg syndrome” but just having a syndrome name doesn’t mean something’s a life sentence or is the end of the world. It’s just a name. But the American Diabetes Association calls that 104 by a name. Here’s the synopsis: having a fasting plasma glucose level greater than 100 but less than 126 mg/dL indicates impaired fasting glucose, or IFG — this is considered prediabetes. It’s not diabetes, but I’m at high risk for developing diabetes in the near future. If I were 45 or older, the ADA says I should be getting checked for diabetes with every check up. I don’t want diabetes, it’s terrible disease. Took care of plenty of patients with diabetes. It’s a bummer.

So that’s the watchword. This is not so much for you, the home viewer, as it is for me, the Joe. I’m looking closely at lifestyle (read: habits, activity, diet, exercise, quality of life).

So that’s all the news this morning. In another post perhaps I’ll speculate on the ages of my grandparents and my Mom at their death and what that might mean for me. Maybe I’ll go for a swim.

I’m still kind of sick. I’ve been sick too long, and I’m sick of being sick.

No more.

This past week I turned 42. It was a good week but I did get sick at the tail end.

Had bacon chocolate cake at Riviera Supper Club out in La Mesa. Went there with our pals Matt and Margot. Totally not planned, but it was great. I didn’t want a big deal for my birthday, and it was perfect.

And here’s a lovely photo of Leah and me.

And that’s it. Thanks for reading.

Recruiters really, really want to contact you even if you ask them not to.

In an effort to curtail the amount of contacts I get from recruiters, I made this addition to my LinkedIn profile:

So now, here’s how one recruiter solves this problem.

With unemployment out in the world, complaining about this probably seems unseemly. It is nice to be wanted.

In February I posted about a tumblr called “David Letterman Holding Records.” I called it sublime. I still think it is. I even went so far as to post it to MetaFilter.

Well, I got to thinking, there had to be old footage of Letterman, from the old days of the NBC show, of Letterman, holding records.

There was lots of it.

And so, I have a new hobby, finding old YouTube clips of bands and musicians and even segments of “Dave’s Record Collection” (it’s a deep pile of fun!) where Dave is, in fact, holding records. I make screen captures, and post them to tumblr.

This gives me an amount of satisfaction disproportionate to what you would think likely.

Everyone needs a hobby.

Find her on tumblr, twitter, blogspot. I dig her drawings. Turns out I dig her musicianship too.

Things go in storage, things come out. Like the tide coming in and out.

“Just in time” has many meanings.

Hey, admit it, in California it’s basically Spring already. Enjoy these lovely photos:

February is over, and here we are in March. Time is absolutely flying by in my life, almost completely for the best. So what’s happening in my life?

Taxes.

The enormous tens-of-thousands of IRS debt that Leah and I have been shouldering since 2008 is now low enough that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The incredible things that happened were two:

1. We managed to do the paperwork of our taxes in the first 2 weeks of January. This itself, was amazing, considering that for the last decade if we filed on time, we only did so because we started them on the 15th of April and I have an amazing tax person in my aunt, Joan.

2. Our taxes were almost entirely NORMAL (W-2) as opposed to contract (1099), which meant that we did end up overpaying, which meant that it subtracted a huge chunk from our outstanding balance.

Drawing.

I have no idea how it happened, but I’m drawing more regularly. This is good for my mental health, though what I have found is that I’m not as good as I wish I was. I’m as good as I was when I basically stopped drawing in the early 1990s. But I’m doing it, and I hope I’m improving. I even submitted a drawing to March MODOK Madness. I look at it and only see how I’d improve it, but I’ve been looking at MMM for about 4 years wishing I could submit, and finally did.

Bureaucracy.

In past years, I’ve managed to avoid important paperwork and important tasks for years. This stupid, retrograde habit seems to be sunsetting for me. As we came to the expiry of our Virginia car registration, I took control, bit the bullet and took care of the registration, the smog check, the tags in short order. In past years I’d drive around for months with expired tags, avoiding the law. Now, not.

I also managed to get my California license back, and the photo is not half bad. I did learn my vision in one eye has declined, as I did the eye test, I started with “two” and the DMV Guy said “They are all letters sir, why don’t you try the other eye.” Sad and hilarious. Oh, and I took the driver’s written test and managed to pass, though I had to do both sides. Blood alcohol level, seat belt, and smoking in the car with kids questions nailed me! But on average, I passed.

Comic-Con.

Well, this is in the future. The incredible gauntlet of purchasing Comic-Con tickets was something I managed to beat this year. Tickets went on sale Saturday, and within an hour were completely sold out. I’ve attended many Cons, but not in MANY years. I have a desire to go again, somehow. This surprises me, but it’s good to get back to something I enjoy. Mind you, I don’t really read much in the way of comics, other than web comics, but I follow a lot of comic artists on tumblr. You can see some of what I like on the New City and ArtLung Tumblrs, along with a lot of other stuff that catches my fancy. Well, Nueva Ciudad also has a lot of stuff from my friend Chris, but still, the comics stuff is mostly mine.

Photos.

Thanks to Instagram, mostly, I take photos again. You can see most of these on the ArtLung Tumblr, or more concisely, on my flickr account. It’s fun to point my eye at things and record. This visual culture probably also feeds into the drawing, though the links are still mysterious to me.

Inbox Zero Plus Or Minus Five.

There’s a concept called Inbox Zero coined by Merlin Mann. My email inbox is really important. I’ve managed to have an inbox at about fifty for years. Always a pile of TODO items, emails to reply to, that I don’t. Projects to update, that I didn’t. People to interact with, that I left hanging. Frankly my personality can veer toward avoidant, which is particularly toxic. I have burned MANY, MANY bridges with this trait, and it saddens me greatly to think of the many opportunities, and even friendships that I have destroyed by emphasizing my possibility of failure more than the opportunity to success. If you are reading this and I’ve burned you in this way in the past, please feel free to reach out and let’s figure out if there’s a way I can make amends to you. I have made an effort to reach out to several in the past few months, and the impression I seem to leave is that the avoidee seems to think I got offended or they did something wrong. Nope, it was 99% more likely you were great, and I screwed up.

Work.

I keep my workplace on the quiet side. I don’t want my words here to be used in a way deleterious to my employer, so quiet. But I’m happy with my performance at work, and my contribution there, and I will continue to improve along those lines as we push forward.

Sorry that’s so vague. Maybe in a few years I’ll be more specific.

Television.

We don’t have a conventional television. We get cable, but don’t use it in a normal way. We use Netflix and other non-cable methods to watch television. Our expectations about television and incoming media are different. We use twitter and facebook and RSS to get news. It’s bizarre and thinking back to a time when there were 4 or 6 tv channels total over the air. It’s also bizarre to think back to times when there were 60 cable channels. And bizarre to think back to having 500 cable channels. Now media is so different. It clears the decks a bit too, to not have it on all the time. Now, visiting friends with normal television, it feels different. We’re not snobs, mind you. We watch all kinds of lowbrow television through Netflix. We try stuff out and wax and wane. Stuff we like a lot: Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Sherlock, Downton Abbey (the only soap opera I can manage to watch), among others. And more than anything else, we love 30 Rock. We have watched all the seasons all the way through more than 4 times. It might be pathological. The high density highbrow, slapstick, absurdist, sometimes emotional comedy hits us perfectly.

Podcasts

Also on the media bill of fare is podcasts. I particularly have fallen in love with WTF with Marc Maron and Greg Proops’ “The Smartest Man In The World.” Old standbys remain Le Show with Harry Shearer; The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell; and The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith. If you want something good to listen to, try these. I have others I like too, but that’s a good sample of smart folks talking about interesting things.

Projects.

I have some other projects simmering. About which more I will not say, but they will appear here in some form in due course.

Blogging more and again.

For me of course, and perhaps for the few readers out there in the æther, I hope these posts are meaningful to you. Thanks for your attention. Have fun, be safe.

via Surfy Surfy

How will the digitalization and networking of information affect us and change people’s lives?

Bruce Sterling: You’d do better seeking out the very few aspects of people’s lives that will remain unchanged by this.

What should we watch out for in an information-rich, techo-Utopia?

Bruce Sterling: Surveillance, spies, Mafias, stock market and currency bubbles; stalking, scandalmongering and pervasive transnational economic corruption.

AP, April 1998

There’s a reason I’ve been reading Sterling since 1988. The man has a view of the reality of the future that often jibes with reality.