I'd like to promote some creativity in my brain by breaking up my morning routine. And no. I'm not talking about a blog content routine because there obvious isn't one. I'm talking about the seven-thirty wake up, before I sit drinking coffee in front of computer looking at Tweetdeck and Google Reader until eight-thirty when I then scramble to shower and get to work before nine. I do this every day. When I don't do this on a Saturday, I feel off. Same deal on Sunday. That's not cool. It's the weekend. I should feel good.

So, here's the plan: I want calendar entries for each morning that occupy time anywhere between 6:30am and 8:30am of something new to do. In a brief attempt to think of a few, I've decided that these should be one-offs. The idea is to break routine, not get into a new one. So something like "learn to play the piano" is a bad suggestion, whereas "eat a bowl of cereal for children" is a good suggestion (except for all the stomach pain and corn syrup).

I haven't come up with too much so far, but it's easy to blame that on my creativity-stifling routine. Por ejemplo:

• Bike down one street for forty five minutes, then bike back.
• The same with walking.
• Read a book. (Does anyone read a book before work in the morning? It seems weird.)
• Sleep in
• Go straight to the office (ok, fine, shower first)
• What time do gun ranges open?
• Take swimming lessons
• Write a real letter to a distant relative/old friend/wife
• Call mom/dad/grandpa/other
• Write a blog entry about how coffee beans are roasted (could you hear the creativity wane as I searched for another idea and looked at the half-empty cup next to me?)

I want more. Then I'll pepper my calendar with them and report back. Comment below, or just tweet @elgreg and tag it #newroutine. I'll pick it up.

Over the past few years, a tremendous amount of my non-fiction reading and media consumption has been focused on a recent popular set of materials about food and its origins. I'm speaking here about books by Michael Pollan and movies like Food, Inc.. I'm hoping that I didn't just happen upon these books and films due to some personal fascination. Rather, I want to have found them because they're popular and that everyone else is reading and seeing them too. If everyone read these and started (or continued) to think about where their food comes from it would help solve problems like global warming, oil dependence, obesity epidemics, and poverty.

I'm not talking about "hippie" sentiments concerning animal welfare like "how did that cow feel?" or "eating raw" (not that I can find much fault with such sentiments). I'm talking about ideas that any rational person should disagree with. Things like, "I'm fine if animals are covered in their own feces at slaughter" or "it's OK for workers to slaughter animals at a pace that causes food and workers to be unsafe". "Ketchup is a vegetable." "It's acceptable if eating ground meat puts you at risk for paralysis." "I'm OK with 60% of my calories coming from corn and soy."

I don't mean to preach and I don't pretend to be perfect. I don't spend the time and resources to know where everything that I eat comes from. But, thanks to the list below, I do flip over what I'm looking at to inspect the ingredients. I avoid meat most of the time as it seem like the easiest point of entry. Given the choice, I'll go to a restaurant that I know sources local produce or grinds their own local beef. And, in general, I try to vote with my wallet to change the system.

While off in Colorado visiting grandpa for xmas I finally finished In Defense of Food. I'm not going to call it the last straw, but it gave me the idea to list out the various materials that have caused me to start having these crises of conscience while standing at Whole Foods wondering what to buy for dinner. (I also listed most of this on anamazon listmania list and I'd appreciate any suggestions that you might have for additional food-related media.)

In any case, here we are, listed in the order that I experienced them (links are to wikipedia unless otherwise noted):

1. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

   It would be unfair to list the set of popular books without listing their inspiration. I can't help but think that things have actually gotten worse since this book was written. The factories may look cleaner, but workers are in a bad way and, thanks to government regulations that encourage industrialization and our overuse of antibiotics, the food is full of bacteria more dangerous than those of the early 1900s. In short: food was dirty. Food's still dirty. Workers were mistreated. They're still mistreated. Yay!

2. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

   

   The book that got me to quit fast food. Big ups to whoever gave it to me for Christmas in '05 (jeff?); it's probably saved me a few pounds, cavities, and that pesky type-II diabetes that I'm still missing out on. I learned how I was being marketed to, that fast food isn't really food, that it's flavors are made elsewhere and injected, and

3. Super Size Me

   One of the first popular films to "expose" the fast food industry by (get this) eating its products. Watching Spurlock throw up out of the side of his car after downing a big mac is a testament to the whacked out nonsense this processed crap does to your body.

4. Swine of the times: The making of the modern pig by Nathanael Johnson (site)

   The best exposé of the pork industry I've ever read. It stopped me from eating it outright for a year and a half before I learned I could find non-industrial pork if I shopped around. Yes, that includes bacon.

5. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

   

   Things start to get serious here. Pollan talks about four different meals: fast food, whole foods, farmer's market foods, and foods you hunt and kill yourself. The oil->corn connection is made and things really start to gel. If you have to start somewhere, please start here.

6. This American Life - Pandora's Box (site)

   This episode of the TV show version of TAML was prompted by the aforementioned Harper's piece. A good reminder a year and a half later that industrial pork is disgusting.

7. King Corn (site)

   

   Following corn from over-fertilized genetically modified plant to a sticky syrup that's in everything we eat (bread? really? damn it!)

8. Fast Food Nation (the movie)

   The film version of Fast Food Nation adds a fictional plot to the concepts from the book - with particular emphasis on the life of workers in the fast food industry. Worth a watch, but I'd read the book first as it helps flesh out all the subtle details behind what's happening on screen.

9. E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection by Michael Moss

   A terrifying article in the times a few months ago that describes the lack of accountability in the US agriculture system when it comes to beef processing.

10. Food, Inc.

    

    A well designed summary of a lot of the books listed here, feature Scholsser and Pollan. After reading all the books, it was frustrating to know the parts that were being skipped, but a great movie nonetheless.

11. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

    

    Pollan provides a book focused on rules that we can try to live by. "Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants." It's easier said than done, especially after you delve into what Pollan calls "food" compared to what the rest of the US calls "food", but still doable. Essentially, economies of scale and ensuing industrialization of our food supply has made our food nutrient-deficient, culturally deficient, and abundant.

I've been getting more and more requests as a "front end developer" to do design work (logos, whole web sites, or just little buttons). This isn't the most comfortable position for me. The last drawing class that I took was in college and I've never had any kind of training in graphic design. I typically just mess with photoshop and steal from other sites until I have something that looks good.

The more I talk to other developers about this, the more it seems that they're being put in a similar position: because we turn photoshop files into web pages, we're being asked to turn ideas into photoshop files. It doesn't help that most of us know how to use photoshop; the real problem is that we don't know the fundamentals of graphic design. This isn't to say that I don't want to do graphic design. I'm jealous when I see some of the beautiful, innovative, designs that just the designers in my Twitter network come up with. I want to know when to shade something one way or another or why a shadow looks good here or there.

But how?

Well, I've come up with a few ideas, one of which I'm planning to throw my weight behind (guess).

1. Formal classes: there are dozens of schools in the DC area and many of them have graphic design programs ranging from the uber-expensive corcoran college of art and design and Center for Digital Imaging Arts at BU (CDIA) to the cheapo courses at the usda grad school.
2. Self taught: I learned almost everything I know about programming from books and on the job, why not do the same with graphic design? Grab a bunch of books, sit at home sketching, and cruise the web for inspiration and tutorials. The problem with this one is the same self-motivation issue that keeps most of us from doing Rosetta Stone to learn Mandarin when we all know we'll need it sooner or later. There are much more interesting and short-sighted things to do at home... like blog about wishing you knew graphic design fundamentals.
3. Social Network School (hint: this is the one I like): I had this idea yesterday when I twittered about looking at CDIA and had a few other developers respond that they were interested in something similar. What about gathering ten+ developers together who have a similar interest in basic graphic design fundamentals and then finding designers to come in to teach us? We could either pay them back in trade (i.e. show us how to draw circles and we'll help build that site you designed and could never find a developer for) or just use *shudder* money to entice them. I know that my twitter network is oozing with design talent and developer talent. There's not reason that we can't organize ourselves to teach. There will be challenges: keeping things consistent, scheduling, maintaining quality without sacrificing the informal nature of the proposition - but, like any bugs, these can probably be fixed in the first few iterations (yay, developer speak).

So, I'm planning to try to organize #3. It won't be dissimilar to a gathering I've been doing with friends to teach each other about random things that we know or want to know, except that I'm hoping it will be more formal and focused week to week. I'll report back on progress, but probably set up another site.

Thoughts out there? Anyone heard of something like this already? Does this crappy blog I built even allow commenting?

I'm going through with my big backup plan and in doing so ran across a bunch of old email from my senior year at UMD shortly before moving to Spain with @robodc. Here's the summary I sent my mom of my last week of college. I was obviously highly caffeinated and pardon the use of the "R" word... I was young.

I will have several boxes of stuff and pillows and crap like that for you and dad to throw in back-seats.
The last week was absolutely retarded, here's a rundown:
Last time you talked to me was on Mother's day when I was leaving for work so...

• Sunday, May 12th - worked from 6pm-2am.
• Monday, May 13th - Thought I was receiving a Linguistics take home exam, instead received that and an extra homework assignment due on Wednesday. Worked from 6pm-2am
• Tuesday, May 13th - Handed in an eight page paper for Urban Studies, had last philosophy class. Worked from 6pm-2am.
• Wednesday, May 14th ("Study Day") - Completed and handed in Linguistics assignment by 4:02pm, began studying for History final on Thursday morning. Ended up at library with discman, batteries and CDs, but forgot bring headphones. Damn!
• Thursday, May 15th - Took History exam at 8am after sleeping for almost a whole hour! Began working on Linguistics take-home final and studying for Urban Studies final on Friday morning.
• Friday, May 16th - Took Urban Studies final at 10:30am. Rosanna's last day at work (she leaves for spain in six days!) she was shat on by a bird through her car window (only slightly cracked). on the way to the office.Friday night went to Orioles vs. Devil Rays game at Camden yards, which got rained out in the top of the sixth inning. Upon arriving home began studying for Philosophy final on Saturday morning. Unfortunately fell asleep and woke up two hours before the exam.
• Saturday, May 17th - Took Philosophy final at 10:30am after studying for almost an hour and a half. It went surprisingly well. Saturday night went out for a beer with Kyle and Rosanna, but had to go home by 11:30 because of a certain 10k run at 8:30am Sunday morning that a certain girl named Rosanna "accidentally" signed me up for.
• Sunday, May 18th - Woke up at 7:15am, drove to stupid race, put on stupid shirt, ran 6.2 stupid miles. It was actually a lot of fun and I was surprised that I didn't need to walk or anything. The race was organized to benefit the area around Capitol Hill and I finished with at time of an hour and five minutes, Rosanna was only half a step behind. Sunday afternoon went to a barbeque at Rosanna's boss' house in Frederick, MD. Got home and fell asleep.
• Today, May 19th - Woke up at 9am, finished Linguistics take-home final to hand in by noon. And that's about it.

It's been a long week. My legs are so sore I can't jump in the air to celebrate being finished and I can't walk up or down stairs to go drink at a non-street level bar (like Cheers). I have work tonight too.

I like how I separated "pillows" and "crap" from the "stuff" in the first sentence. V. important.

After a recent hard drive failure, I'm in a backup/recovery mindset - thinking about where all my stuff is and whether or not its secure.

Some of it is sitting on hard drives, some of it is in the cloud... but there's no single place where it's all stored. Here's my current setup with notes on where I need improvement:

Hardware

I have an old mac mini that's plugged into a 300GB Lacie hard drive. These are both backed up to mozy.com every day. I also have a 500GB Lacie hub that I use as a backup for larger files and for Time Machine. Time Machine-wise, I plug my laptop into the Lacie hub every few days and let it whir away. I'll have my first chance to test whether it actually works when I get my laptop back with its new HD and try to do a restore.

Bookmarks

This I've done a pretty good job with. They're all sitting in delicious and have been for a long time. I need to look into ways to export these on a regular basis.

Pictures

These are a total mess. They're distributed between flickr, a short stint on TwitPic (before flickr had a url shortener and email/twitter connection), the iPhoto library on my (now dead) laptop, the iPhoto library on my old mac Mini (still kicking, I hope) and a few random CDs I found around the house recently with "photos" written on them. I've been bad and I need a real solution to this problem.

Music

Music is split just as poorly as photos, if not worse. There are a bunch on the laptop and a bunch more on the old mac mini. Both are backed up but not unified into a single iTunes library or even a single HD/iPod.

File systems

File systems (aka applications, settings, etc) are often overlooked. If I had to rebuild my laptop (which I might just have to redo), it would take me a few days to get all the software installed again. Is my etc/hosts file backed up? What about my keychain with all of the various wifi passwords that I've acquired. My firefox saved passwords? I won't be sure if Time Machine is good enough to keep all that stuff until the restore. I'll make sure to update.

Social Network Content

I've overlooked this one completely. Where are all my facebook posts, blog posts, and tweets being saved? The quick answer is that they're not. Even twitter's API currently has a pagination limit that makes it impossible to get back past 3,200 tweets. I've looked into and tried a few solutions (good article on read write web here on how to back them up), but haven't found one yet that will have the number of tweets in the archive match the number that I see next to my avatar on twitter.com. I also don't have an archive of the old molt be blog, nor any of the status updates and wall posts that I've made on facebook (just googled and found this).
Re: Firefox settings - I've been looking into weave as a solution on that front - but that just makes one more software as a service that I'm relying on (flickr, delicious, mozy) not going bankrupt. Ideally, I'd have all those sites funneling into a home solution.

Email

Having switched to gmail back in its early days, it's all still there. I just need to remember to open up Apple Mail once in a while to get the full contents downloaded and into the backup queue. Someday I should bust out my old CD's of college email for nostalgia and put those in there, too.

I'm probably missing something here, so comment below to fill in the blanks if you care to.

Solution

I have an evolving idea for a permanent solution:

Step 1 - Online Activity Archive

Set up various cron jobs to regularly backup all social network stuff. Most of the online activity I'd want to store is publicly available via RSS, but has private bits that make this more difficult than just archiving the feeds. I need to set up oAuth'd applications that suck in facebook, twitter, flickr and delicious on a regularly cron-jobbed basis and save them locally.

Getting data out of google should be easier than expected, thanks to The Data Liberation Front, and really only email is necessary and that can be done through various mail clients.

Step 2 - Combine Disparate Local Resources

I need to suck it up and start keeping all of my photos and music on one hard drive. It's too easy to screw up the backup if they're separate. As this makes portable photos a pain in the ass, the hard drive should be backed up again at home to a machine that puts it in the cloud. That way I can still carry the small HD with me when traveling and not have to worry about losing it and the PC.

Once I have all the Step 1 stuff and Step 2 stuff - I'll need to decide what of that needs to be portable and what's just around for nostalgia. Portable stuff needs to go onto that portable HD and the other stuff can sit on one of the Lacie's connected to the old mini. Of course, this separation won't work if I want to really have all my photos and music in one place...

Step 3 - Mirror laptop to avoid productivity dives when hard drive fails

The setup described in this article on coding horror is probably what I'm going to go for. Three hard drives that are exactly the same as the internal laptop hard drive, one complete mirror, one periodically mirrored and kept off site and a third left blank to serve as a backup should one of the other three (two purchased, one in laptop) fail. If they're exactly the same and mirrored often, when the laptop hard drive fails, I can just swap in the mirror, order a new one online and continue right where I left off.

I could even skip the offsite drive by using a home computer to do backups to a cloud service like mozy. The best reason to have a home computer/router doing backups is that backing up to the cloud can take hours and I don't want to be tethered to the house just to wait for a backup.

A buddy and I went down to ride some mountains and visit @AlphaShooter and his lady @Amy_Grady in Charlottesville. Saturday morning (well, ok, almost noon) we headed for Douthat State Park and did Stony Run up and back. A 2 hour climb provided for some great views and an intense 20 minute descent. Some pictures here. The park was huge and we definitely could have done more with more daylight and less sprained wrists (mine). Also, the park's name sounds like "Do That", which is pretty excellent.

Despite having a good time in Virginia, I still despise the state in general - especially after last Tuesday's election. Given the frequency with which I've had to go to VA lately for work and biking, I just don't want anyone to get the wrong idea.