I keep iTunes playing consistently on shuffle, with higher-rated songs played more often. At night, I do not stop the music, I just mute it.

The song “A Long December” by Counting Crows, which has a five-star rating, is the only song in my top 250 not played since November 2005, which means that it was never played through the entire month of December.

I love the ultra nerdy Sprint PPC-6700, but one thing that had pissed me off was that speed dial was not at all speedy– I had to open the phone app, choose menu, and then choose speed dial. And since that was like four clicks, it was just not working for me.

Well, I hit Google and found a dude who writes apps for Windows Mobile, and this hack just happened to let me assign speed dial to a button on the phone. I assigned it to the web browser button on the side, which I don’t really tend to use to fire up the browser, and now I have one-click access to speed dial. Sweet.

Hoo boy. Mike told me a while back about a program that would go through and grab album art images, and it was only like $9. This sounded really good. But with 21k mp3s, I thought that it would hog up all the processor, and figured I would need to make a project of it sometime.

Well, I was reading PC World tonight and stumbled across a Yahoo Widget called iTunes Companion that does the same thing, only it’s f-f-free. Ba-ding.

So far, I’m quite enamored of this little thang– I have it coming to the front of my screen each time the track changes, and I’m letting it hang out over the Trillian buddy list (when I finally wise up and go multiple-monitor, that’ll be one of those running-in-the-background things). It has volume control and play controls, so I got rid of FoxyTunes, which too often would hold up Mozilla while iTunes was busy doing something.

I’m a happy dude.

I also installed the Easy Button. For kicks.

The idea of communities keeps coming up in everything I do– trying to establish a more effectively community of colleagues among the teachers in the LEARN NC program, trying to establish communities of affinity across disparite groups of students to offer some virtual clubs (a longer-term idea for me… I haven’t really started rolling on that one), trying to strengthen the ties between the existing DSI community and students who are about to enter it, and operating i the community of writers with my MFA work.

One frustrating thing I run into is that I want everyone to communicate the way I do, which is, of course, ludicrous. Especially since I am not exactly the best communicator in the world. (I know this because if my wife wants to know what’s going on with me, she has to read it in my blog, and because I apparently imagine conversations with colleagues and then assume that they really happened.)

Still, I find myself wondering if there are some characteristics shared among online communicators and collaborators. I think a lot of people are online quite a bit now, for work or for play, and a lot of people have heavy online interaction but little online communication. That is, many of the online interactions I monitor are completely meaningless. And though that statement cannot help but be evaluative, it is not intended to judge the character of the subject matter. I don’t care one wit for anime, but I can see how meaningful discussion of anime could happen online– there’s loads of it. I mean to single out messages in which the author does not further the conversation, a personal agenda rich with meaning, or a relationship with one or more people– the author merely posts, adding nothing.

I’ve long bitched about the useless response to the message board post: one that cannot be meaningful to anyone but the author, doesn’t constructively offer information or offers information that ignores the topic at hand. An example of this is:

“Hey, I am going to the movies to see Final Destination 3 Friday at 5. Post here if you can come with me!”
“I can’t come. Have fun though.”

In the response, the author ignores the topic at hand, which isn’t that someone is going to the movies, but is a call to others to respond. Telling people you can’t come does nothing productive; in fact, it sends the subtle message that the original author is not worth seeing a movie with. Even a response like, “I can’t make it, but I have heard that Final Destination 3 rocks. I wish I could go see it with you” is more useful, because it offers some information that supports the original post’s intention. Similarly, “I will go with you but would love for you to reconsider your choice of movie” establishes sincere desire to spend time with the person, opening discussion for the relative merits of seeing a particular film. And a simple “You’re an asshole, stop posting on our boards” actually serves some purpose as well– revealing the respondent’s emotional connection to the original poster and/or agenda. (In some cases, these self-policing moves are necessary for a community to preserve itself. I would argue that they are an extreme measure and should not be used lightly, but my distaste for people who flame newbies is another topic.)

So here are my research questions, if you are a social scientist who is interested in conducting some experiments, or an amateur authority on people (Jennings):

• How, in a community of affinity, do you encourage all participants to communicate meaningfully in all circumstances?
• What are the pros and cons of managing interactions among participants to ensure a level of meaningful communication among all participants?
• Does the number of one-line posts in a particular forum or thread have any correllation to the number of meaningless posts in that forum or thread?
• Does the number of threads started in a given time period have any effect on the willingness of new participants to participate?
• At what threshold (percentage) of meaningless posts do new participants leave the forum?
• What are the greatest barriers to entry for new participants in a community of affinity?
• What factors most influence a new participant’s desire to join an existing community?

I don’t know if any of these questions are particularly useful. I would, however, love to hear your thoughts. Especially if you’re on the DSI boards; that’s where a lot of this thinking is directed at this moment.

I am not going to be sick.
I am not going to be sick.
I am not going to be sick.

Seriously, I have been taking Emergen-C, Airborne, Zinc drops, and every other remedy I can find to make sure I do not get Ladybug’s cold. Most people have a preferred method for fighting off sickness; I’m using most of them. I’m also employing my own: sleep as much as possible. I slept an inordinate amount yesterday after feeling like I was most certainly going to catch the cold at 1 PM yesterday. This caused me to miss the Super Bowl party at the Doctor’s, which was a great consternation, but had to be done. I am not sick today and do not feel that I will be sick tomorrow, but I have every intention of drinking lots of water, taking another Airborne at dinner, and sleeping an extra hour tomorrow morning before I come in to work. Though really, I have so much to do that I would do better to work from home. But I may not do that.

My first graduate packet for Mary should come back in the next day or two, which is a source of great anticipation (though oddly, not one lick of stress).

DSI Comedy Theater features the owner of Chicago’s IO Theater presenting monologues and personal anecdotes for the longform improv of DSI’s acclaimed House Team Mister Diplomat as they slap a Dirty South spin on the Armando.

Charna has been teaching people how to improvise for more than 20 years. Her world-famous IO Theaters, located in Chicago and Los Angeles, are meccas for training in the art of improvisation, specifically Harold. They act as a breeding ground for television shows like “Saturday Night Live,” “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and “MADtv,” regularly supplying New York and Hollywood with writers and performers.

Who knows what you might learn about the modern movement of improvisation, the brilliant mind of Del Close, or the whirlwind world of All-Star comedy?!

Where, When, How Much:
DSI Comedy Theater @ Carr Mill Mall
(Entrance on dock behind Elmo’s Diner)
200 N. Greensboro St., Suite B-11 Carrboro, NC 27510
BOX OFFICE: 919-338-8150
FRIDAY 9:30PM FEBURARY 3, $8

Hammer sends this awesome link:

http://www.pimpmynutcracker.com/