A Lack of Participation
Everything we do online is driven by a pursuit of four goals:
- Exploration
- Consumption
- Creation
- Participation
When I first discovered the web as a teenager, my desire to explore, previously satisfied by a few acres of Ohio woods near my home, suddenly seized on the endless horizon of digital spaces. Exploration leads naturally into consumption, as the hunter-gatherer instinct to collect and ingest takes over. I bookmarked. I read, broadly and deeply. I looked and looked, first at images, and then at video as it came along. But exploration and consumption were not enough. I had to create the thing that brought me so much pleasure. I learned to design and code and I built and built and built.
The disappointing truth
What’s always bothered me is that, for all my professed love of the web, I’ve participated very little. In comparison to the time and energy I spend in exploration, consumption and creation, I spend very little time connecting to other people through this medium. And isn’t that kind of the point of the web, after all? In 16 years online, I’ve mostly been a lurker. That fact is very disappointing to me.
I was reflecting recently on my lack of participation. Everyone has reasons for what they do and don’t do. What were mine? I think it’s three things.
1. I have a greater desire for the other goals
It’s not that I don’t want to be an active participant in online culture. I want to connect with other humans. But my desire to search, to discover, to learn, and to build often outweighs my desire to communicate and relate with others.
2. Participation is the most difficult for me
Participation requires the most emotional energy and it feels the riskiest. I’m afraid of criticism, of not being like and accepted, of being misunderstood or simply ignored. Exploration and consumption are easy by comparison. Creation, although difficult, is manageable because I enjoy the process of building so much.
3. My habits are set
My online habits have been established over the years by choosing to do what is easiest and what I desire most. Even if my desire for participation grows and the difficult of doing so lessens, my behaviors are still largely governed by the habits I’ve made.
And now, a reset
I think I’ve been off track. It’s absurd to love a tool more than it’s purpose, a means of connecting people more than people. I need to change and I’ll need to move backward to do so. I need to change my habits, limiting my time exploring and consuming and increasing my time connecting with others. I need to accept that participation is difficult and…do it anyway. I need to change what it is I want and care more about people than my own growth and accomplishment.
<exiting observe mode>
Setting up multiple instances of Redis on a Mac
I’m using Redis on a project and couldn’t find a good guide for setting up multiple instances on a Mac. So, I decided to write up how I did it. (You might want this if you need one instance for development and a separate instance for running your test suite.)
1. Install Homebrew (great package manager for OS X)
2. Install Redis package with Homebrew
brew install redis
3. Create separate config files for your instances (in my example, a dev and a test instance).
Rename /usr/local/etc/redis.conf to /usr/local/etc/redis-dev.conf and change the following settings:
daemonize yes pidfile /usr/local/var/run/redis-dev.pid logfile /usr/local/var/log/redis-dev.log dbfilename dump-dev.rdb
Copy that redis-dev.conf and save redis-test.conf and change the following settings:
pidfile /usr/local/var/run/redis-test.pid port 6380 logfile /usr/local/var/log/redis-test.log dbfilename dump-test.rdb
Grab this Redis Startup Item git repo and change the following settings (then follow the instructions to install):
DEV_CONF_FILE="/usr/local/etc/redis-dev.conf"
TEST_CONF_FILE="/usr/local/etc/redis-test.conf"
StartService
$REDIS $DEV_CONF_FILE
$REDIS $TEST_CONF_FILE
StopService
for pid in $(ps -o pid,command -ax | grep redis-server | awk '!/awk/ && !/grep/ {print $1}')
do
kill -2 $pid
done
You may have to set proper ownership on the redis folder, as well:
cd /Library/StartupItems sudo chown -R root:wheel redis/
Here are a couple links that helped me along the way:
Bent on Creation Redesign
Overview
In the fall of 2011, I decided a redesign was in order for my personal site. I had a few reasons for this. One, I needed to update the look of the site to better reflect my design ability. And two, I wanted to recommit myself to blogging and being actively engaged online. With a new design, I realized a proper logo was also needed, so I started there.
Logo
I began by sketching out several logo concepts in my notebook. With a name like “Bent on Creation,” I was making associations to earth, a sunrise, a tree, a starburst/big bang and industrial-era inventions. But none of these fit well.
I ended up going with a simpler abstract shape: two overlapping diamonds. This shape better reflected me, personally. As a web designer and developer, I work in the overlap of two disciplines. The outer portions of the diamond shapes form angle brackets, hinting at HTML and underscoring my web focus. The “b/c” is set in American Typewriter, which has a nostalgic, mechanical feel that reminded me of monospaced fonts (another hint at coding).
Design
I wanted a design that focused on content, incorporated fresh typography and used a color scheme I hadn’t worked with previously. I wanted a layout that was balanced and maintained good vertical flow.
I thought the basic layout of the original site was working well, so I kept it the same: one main column on the left, two smaller sidebar columns on the right. Logo centered at top of page and navigation elements to the right and left of it.
I used a 6px vertical baseline grid to maintain vertical rhythm throughout the layout. All type is set to this grid, as well as most other key elements.
I chose Rooney Web for body copy and Franklin Gothic for headlines, navigation and meta elements, both served up by Typekit. I used Gedy Rivera’s social media icons for the Dribbble, Github and LinkedIn links.
Responsiveness
From the beginning, I intended to make the site design responsive. With the original three-column layout already set, I worked down from there to the smallest layout. I set breakpoints that would allow the sidebar columns to stack at the first breakpoint, then drop below the main content area after that. I decided not to use flexible widths on containers because I wanted to ensure optimal text line length for reading. I decided not to go any wider than a 960px layout at the largest because text line lengths would be much longer than recommended, with no added benefits that I could see.
Code
I coded the design in HTML5, using HTML5Shim for IE7 and IE8. Since this is my personal site with an audience skewed toward modern browser usage, and since time was limited, I opted for the Universal IE6 CSS stylesheet as a baseline stylesheet for IE6 users.
To maintain the 6px vertical baseline grid I used in the Photoshop comp, I created a repeating transparent png with 6px vertical rules that overlaid my web layout until the CSS work was finished. I finished up by creating a basic Wordpress theme out of the design with two widget areas for the sidebar content.
Final Analysis
After a month or so, I’m still fairly satisfied with the new logo and design. I’m very happy with the responsive layout and intend to improve it for smaller viewports (specifically, the navigation). There are a few site sections and additional sidebar information yet to be developed, but those will come in time. I had hoped to write a small Rails CMS to run the site, but couldn’t fit it in the schedule. Wordpress already does everything I need and is easy to install and create themes for.
