After some discussion with folks, some comments, and some further consideration, I'm going to shut off the LoudTwitter thing here.  It was a fun one-day experiment. :)

Turns out I essentially agree with the folks who like different sites/channels for different  kinds of communication.  That said, however, I really do hope that we evolve to the place where I don't have to manually "follow" or "connect to" all of my contacts over and over again on each different site - this, to some extent, is what I was trying to circumvent for some of you on here who might be interested in somewhat more frequent (if less detailed) content from me.

For now I'll stick to infrequently updating LJ.  If people would like to follow my tweets, they are public and available either through Twitter's UI, clients, or as an RSS feed.

Many thanks for all the good input.

UPDATE: After 2 minutes more consideration, it doesn't do any harm to post the tweets here with an opt-in filter.  So, if you would like to be on that filter and see my tweets via LJ, just let me know.  (I'm assuming based on comments that both lillibet and muffyjo would like to be on said filter)

So, er, I don't update my LJ very often.  I sometimes have the best intentions of doing so, but the truth is I get swept up in the day-to-day, and don't even *read* all y'all's wonderful writings most of the time let alone make time to sit down and crank out my own.

However - I am kind of a Twitterholic (though nowhere near as bad as some :)), and I find the streamed mini-update mode works quite well for me. My tweets in a day do often give a pretty good sense of what's going on, although necessarily in 140-char bite-sized chunks.  There are anywhere from zero to thirty or so.

So here's my question - I know there's been some kerfuffle about the whole reposting-tweets-to-LJ thing, but I was thinking about starting to do so, just so that you who don't follow me on Twitter and want to see the updates could read 'em once a day.  I will certainly put them behind a cut, but should I make them opt-out or opt-in?  I'm thinking opt-out, but if there's a vast majority of you who are all "nooo, please, we hates the Twitter!" then I might switch it around so people have to ask to see them here.

Whaddya think?

(incidentally, http://twitter.com/gdaniels if you didn't know that already)

Hi, LJ group-mind!

So it seems to me that I've heard an awful lot of positive stories about interactions on CraigsList.  From finding great roommates or apartments to buying or selling things, I keep hearing of a lot more successful results than I'd imagine was average, and more than I've heard with things like eBay or newspaper sites.  I've experienced this myself - just about every time I've dipped in there I've had really good results (a perfect sublet in SF, buying stuff, selling stuff), moreso than with eBay certainly.

Questions - 1) have others gotten this impression as well, or am I just not gathering enough data?  2) Why would this be the case if it's true?  Is it something the folks running CL are doing with the business or the site, is it due to a certain kind of self-selecting community, or is it something else?

We are now one step closer to the machine at the end of UtEotW which could let you see your dreams... :)

http://www.pinktentacle.com/2008/12/scientists-extract-images-directly-from-brain/

I don't know if during dreams the cerebral visual cortex would react in the same way it does when processing live data from the eyes, but this is still hugely intriguing stuff.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?ex=1379131200&en=dd4449ce3310ba6e&ei=5124&partner=facebook&exprod=facebook

In the long run, and in the face of who's actually listening to what, do these articles really matter a whit?  I wish I could be convinced that they do, but I'm not.

As others have already noted, David Foster Wallace committed suicide a couple of days ago.  I was just stunned when I heard the news, which saddened me at several levels.

I remember first hearing of him (and hearing him) when he was on Fresh Aire soon after the publication of Infinite Jest, the book that really rocketed him into the "mainstream".  The things he was talking about with Terry Gross, and the ways he was talking about them, deeply intrigued me, and I decided I needed to check this book out.  It was several months, and three false starts, before I finished what became one of my very favorite novels ever.  The way DFW played with time - jumping around in a chronology you didn't even have a fucking REFERENT for (all the chapters begin with brand-ified dates like "The Year of Glad" or "The Year of the Perdue Superchicken") until page 223, when he lists them out - was maddening and exhilarating.  I actually used three bookmarks for some of it, because the end notes themselves had end notes at times.  But the crazed, intellectually demanding trust-fall of a journey that was that book ended up being well worth it.  I remember typing in a whole passage (about the hilarious emotional reasons that videophones failed to catch on in his world) and emailing it to a bunch of friends, and really, in Adam's words, just "raving" about the book.  I loved a bunch of his other stuff too, but Infinite Jest was far and away my favorite.

Clearly he had a deep grasp of the ways in which our psyches can turn in on themselves and trap us in loops and extremely dark places.  Some of his later work brought this even more to the fore, and I guess at some point those same kinds of patterns might have been too much for him to pull back from.  I certainly have no idea what was going on with him personally, and I'm very sad that he felt this was the only way he could move on.  I hope he left some kind of explanation for those closest to him, even if not for the public.  And I hope whatever of him might now exist in whatever way is at peace.

I've been meaning to read IJ again, and I think I'll drop it on the queue right now.

msarty will be showing off her aht (here's her website) at ArtBeat tomorrow.  She's got some new calendars which are quite cool, and a much lower price-point than her actual pieces.  We'll be hanging at the booth all day, so please do stop by and say hi if you're around!!

Hey folks!

If you're reading this and you happened to leave a pair of sunglasses or a funky hat (LOTS of pins on it from various places) at our 4th of July party, please let me know. I would describe them better but I'm not at home right now...

Wow. Muy impressive!!