Don't Be This Guy Who Travels

There's this post that's going around, called "Date a Guy Who Travels." It contains some good values. Experiences are more valuable than things, but that's the rule for Millennials, not the exception. The curiosity for the world and knowledge of the poverty people have to go through all over the world are good qualities as well. Being flexible and adventurous, looking for possibilities and leaving the comfort zone are all qualities to be admired. There are some beautiful sentiments and beautiful pieces of writing in the post.

And yet it rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it because, as an ex-pat and sometime-traveler, I have known many travelers who embody many of the actions described in the post, if few of the ideals.

I have known guys who scoff at resorts when they have never been to a resort.

I have never known a guy who scoffs at vacations. Who does that?

I have known guys who dismiss travel guides because they, "probably know the guy who wrote them."

I have known guys who fail to realize that using a "travel guide" as a "reference" is redundant.

I have known many guys whose number of Facebook friends is negatively correlated with their number real friends.

I have known guys who have lived in Southeast Asia for years, but have never traveled in Malaysia. This has as much to do with the anti-drinking laws and Islamaphobia as it does with the relative expense.

I have known guys who are always announcing new things they've discovered in loud and enthusiastic tones, only to clam up if you'd already heard of them already or want specifics (in other words, have an actual conversation--which is why no one ever listens to their stories anymore).

I have known many guys who are too busy documenting an event for Facebook to actually experience it.

I have known guys who lived out of a backpack. I have known guys who claim to be backpacking when the only time they carry the backpack is to the taxi taking him away from the airport (on the way to the taxi to the airport, the hotel porter handles it).

I have known guys who pontificate about human rights and the squalor of developing countries, but are blind to the inequality and poverty on their own doorstep.

I have known ethnocentric guys who claim they're not because they've, "been to 43 countries."

I've known guys who have hiked up the tallest mountain in Taiwan, but were unaware that there are Chinese supermarkets in the U.S.

I have known guys who love being at home because their mom unpack their bags and do their laundry for them, but when they feel cramped, they leave again.

I have known many guys who marry a local girl they met on their travels, even though her English is poor and he never learns her native tongue. Conversely, I have known guys who only want to hook up with white girls when they travel.

I encountered multiple publications who know that artisanal, local handicrafts are the new status symbol. The new height of cool.

I have known guys who confuse instant-gratification with a happy life. Maybe it is, but they have never considered the meaningfulness of their lives.

I have known guys who live to build a persona for themselves through Facebook and twitter and their desktop photos

Traveling is great. Even though we live in a world where we can view satellite maps, documentaries, and other people's Facebook pictures that document life from all over the world, the world itself is still a book, and people who don't travel only read one page. It is a privilege now, as it was when St. Augustine first penned those words, but nothing replaces experiencing things first-hand. So travel, and enjoy talking and interacting with those who travel. But remember not all those who wander have lost their prejudices and pretensions.

The Commons: Allrecipes is not competing with your food blog

Whoever thought of the idea of emailing people a couple of weeks after they've purchased a book from Amazon to encourage us to write reviews: it works (at least for me). I wrote my first 3 reviews that way. If I were ambitious, I'd write more, and try and get on the Amazon Vine program, but I doubt that will happen. For one thing, I don't know if Amazon would allow me to review books that I didn't buy through them. Maybe I should post my reviews on Goodreads instead. Actually, what I should really do is write a thoughtful review of every book I read, post a preview on a public site, and then link to the rest on my blog.

Granted, I wouldn't shortchange anyone. All of the important stuff would be upfront, inverse pyramid style. But if anyone wanted more detail, they could click the link. I don't know if this is allowed.

But it should be. As long as the links are not spam, this would be a great way to get the best of public knowledge, while still allowing people to self-indulge express themselves on their own blogs. Think of Allrecipes.

Allrecipes is my go-to site if I'm looking for a dish. It has tons of recipes, and it doesn't make you look at 20 (albeit sometimes gorgeous) photos before you can look at the actual recipe. Plus it allows you to convert the serving size and move from US (British) measurements to metric. It even has nutritional information at the bottom! Most important, it has ratings and reviews. If I really like a recipe blog, then I'll trust that anything posted is delicious. But even that doesn't replace a comment that is liked by 50 and references at least 3 other comments regarding changing the amount of pepper to add. Sorry recipe bloggers, you lose.

That doesn't mean they should stop blogging their own recipes. It just means they should ALSO POST ON ALLRECIPES. If you think about it, it's great advertisement, if their dishes (and photos and writing) are really that good. Hey, if food companies can promote their products on allrecipes, I don't see why food bloggers can't promote their blogs. Wikipedia says they promote such practices. And go ahead and post on Food.com and Recipes.com and Food52 and Epicurious and all of those other social-networking food sites I don't even know of. (Actually, I don't think you can post on Epicurious, but they have an awesome name and it was the first recipe site I used regularly.)

Sidenote: My subtitle for this post is that Allrecipes is not competing with your food blog. I considered adding that it's not competing with your cookbook deal either, but maybe it's competing with your cookbook deal. But that's more the internet's fault, and you can't blame the internet for that, because people still get cookbooks published based on their food blogs on the internet all the time. I guess that goes to show that cookbooks aren't really about cooking. They're about personality and food porn.

7 Rules for Writing in the Internet Age

Bora Zivkovic wrote an article posted in the Scientific American has some tips on how to break into science writing, but it has good advice on how to write, or get read, in the internet age. His original piece is a mine of useful links, but I'm posting a summary below for my own purposes.

1) Find a niche:
"Try to figure out your beat (or obsession) – what is it that excites you the most? Write about that. Try to find your own niche. Become a “go to” person on a particular topic, become an expert (or at least a temporary expert) on that topic" (18).

2) But show your writing versatility:
"Practice the usual journalistic forms – the feature, the interview, the brief news story with inverted pyramid. You will need to demonstrate that you are capable of writing in such forms and styles. But don’t limit yourself to traditional forms. Experiment with new forms. Explain animal behavior by letting animals have a dialogue. Explain science in the form of a fairy tale, Science Fiction or a poem. Try your hand at photography. Draw or paint or graph your own art, illustrations, infographics, cartoons and comic strips. Put some effort into making a video or animation every now and then. Record a podcast sometimes. Give data journalism a try. Try your hand at learning to code (but see). See what works for you" (17).

Also, see this prezi.


3) Don't worry about what's hip:
Blog with some regularity, even if it's just a few links, but you don't have to blog every day. Your readers will find you if they like you Make your blogs as long or as short as you want.

4) Practice:
Writing, of course, even if it's not something you publish, but also reading. How do writers accomplish their goals. Emulate them until you develop your own style. Pay attention to what editors change about your writing.

5) Get some training:
In addition to full-on master programs, there are summer workshops. You can also try an internship.
Educate yourself about writing ethics. Build credibility by citing your sources. Moderate your comments and be present to respond to comments occasionally.

6) Promote yourself:
Don't be afraid to write for free. Nominate yourself for awards. Submit to contests. Make a nice homepage with a simple URL that contains links to everywhere else you are present on the web.

"Your blog can serve as your homepage, or be a prominent and central part of your homepage. If not, make sure your homepage prominently links to your external blog. Make sure your homepage has a well written and accurate About/Bio page, contact information, link to your CV, and your Portfolio with links to all of your published work (perhaps your photography or videos or art on separate tabs). And of course, provide links to all the social media where you have accounts."

As for managing social media, Zivkovic recommends choosing two that work well for you (probably twitter, a professional facebook account, and google+ for the heck of it) and managing those, but also get accounts at other ones that can link back to your homepage.

7) Collaborate instead of compete:
Before, newspapers had to compete for readers. Now, there's so much competition that media outlets need to make allegiances with other media outlets with similar goals. After all, there's so much bad stuff to wade through, the best way to get your message out is to get other people to recommend it--if you recommend messages of similar caliber. This makes sense. Previous advice on how to get into blogging suggests that you comment on other blog posts and post a blog roll. It's also a good idea to join a group blog or do guest posts. Attend some events and network.

Mindbloom Review: Grow Your Productivity

I just did some floor exercises. Usually, I would continue surfing abyss of the internet, not even really reading anymore, but scanning, but I was smart enough to recognize the diminishing marginal returns. That, and I wanted to water my poor tree.

You see, in Mindbloom, every time you complete a task that you've set yourself, a little rain cloud hovers over your tree and your tree gets 5-10% more water. Of course, your tree also needs sunlight, which can be accomplished by you viewing your inspirational quotes and pictures once a day for a 10% sunshine boost. If that's not enough sunshine for you, you can also add inspiration to your inspiration roll.

I like Mindbloom. I came across in lifehacker. It's like a productivity game. When I tried to get one of my friends to try it though, she asked me if I was trying to ruin her life. That's because "productivity game" is an oxymoron, and the danger is that you can sucked into the game part instead of the productivity part. You can also hack your own game. It is fun though, like Sims for your real life (which means that it caters to the superego instead of the id). Why get satisfaction out of making your Sim wash the dishes when you can grow a virtual tree by actually washing the dishes?

My boyfriend would make fun of me for the above statement, but Mindbloom works fairly well for me. I'm not interested in culling through quotes, pictures, and music to find the perfect montage of inspiration (though there are some nice quotes in there). This can actually be a downside, because my tree is skewed in terms of its water/sunshine ratio. I really just want to water my tree though. I get sad when its leaves turn brown (or red), even though I swear I've been more consistent about my goals than usual (maybe I'm just setting the bar too high?).

That's one of the nice things about Mindbloom. It has a built-in calendar so you can go back and check how consistent you've been completing your tasks. It can aid you in your quest to form a habit (research shows it takes 21 days).

Mindbloom can also replace your to-do list, as long as your to-do list has a lot of repetition built into it. You probably need a separate to-do list  though, for more specific tasks or tasks that you'll only do once (unless you just want an excuse to add it and water your tree).

Mindbloom is also tapped into the most motivating factor of productivity: the observation effect.

Okay, there has to be a better name for it. But people do tend to perform better when they know they are being watched. More importantly, if you have a companion who pushes you keep up a habit (as opposed to agreeing with you that it's better to sleep in than go jogging), or even push you to do more, you are more likely to succeed. Plus, it might just look bad to have a dead tree in your backyard. Mindbloom also allows you to send rain or sunshine to your friends if you've accrued enough seeds, which serves as a kind of virtual encouragement.

So that's the good. Now for the bad. Like I said, I don't like the inspiration gathering aspect of it. It might help some people, but it doesn't do much for me. Plus, adding new inspiration is a potential time-waster. My other critique is that Mindbloom doesn't have a button to let you water your tree more than once a day for the same task. For example, when I finish writing this blog post, I get to water my tree again. But what if I write two blog posts? If I work on Chinese for 10 minutes (one of my set tasks), I get to water my tree. But what if I work on it for 3 hours (which is really what I should be doing)? Of course, I can get around that by setting another task, like "write two blog posts," but then my tree might suffer because I never write two blog posts in one day, and the extra task makes my leaves bigger, which means that it needs more water.

Hopefully Mindbloom can add a feature that allows for watering more than once for a task a day soon. If not, it's not a big deal. My main issue is that there is no real ipad/iphone app for Mindbloom. They have a version called Bloom, but it doesn't sync up with Mindbloom on your computer, and it seems designed to get money out of you. I don't grudge them that much for it. After all, the company has to make money somehow. Unfortunately for them I won't be participating in it.

Now, if you'll excuse me. I'm going to water my tree.

Halfway Conversations

Sherry Turkle, MIT professor and technology researcher, has a doomsday prediction about conversations: we don't have them anymore.

I have seen my student sit alone together, not looking up from their iphones and DSLs. I have resorted to cell phone games when a friend is sitting next to me because the conversation has stalled. Because of my many long-distance friendships, I rely on email and chat, and sometimes even facebook as a social medium. But I have also stayed up until midnight talking to my boyfriend about love and loss and family when we had both resolved to go to sleep early. Conversation is not dead. The dirty little secret is that just as face to face communication does not necessarily indicate deep conversation, digital distance does not necessarily prevent deep conversations.

One conversation I have had with my boyfriend is about the art of writing letters. I argue with him that email is just as good. In any case, we agree that taking the time to write down an extended response takes more thought than the average conversation. You spend more time figuring out how you feel, trying to say what you mean, and crafting the right words. Of course it's a one-sided conversation at first, but it's a respectful one. The reader gets to practice the lost art of perusal, and then send a similarly thoughtful reply. Personally, when I respond to emails, I make sure to respond to every point the other person makes, sometimes even copy-pasting their words into my draft box to remember what they wrote. Though the written word lacks tone and and expression of voice, and emails and letters don't give immediate feedback, I believe the benefits can outweigh the cons. *The same is true of chatting. I have known chats that have lagged because the other party had 16 chat boxes open, because I or the other party were cerfing the internet, and because the other party wandered off to Ralphs without letting me know. However, these instances are rare (maybe not the cerfing part). However, I do view chat as a real conversational medium and try to give timely responses. Even if I take time to grade papers while I chat, I always come back to the conversation (how many other "live" conversations take place when one party is paying the bills?). My friends and I have a habit of letting the other person know when we leave the chat, even if only for a few minutes. The cons of lack of voice and tone still apply. In addition, sometimes due to a lack of rhythm in the conversation, perhaps brought on by slow typing, the texts of two parties overlap. This also happens in live conversations as well though. The benefits of chat are that it does emulate the back and forth of real conversation. It is also very convenient. As long as both parties are online, it's like having someone in the room with you (in terms of availability for conversation).

I have to admit I have converted to facebook. I started checking it regularly for some practical reason--waiting for a reply for a message or a response on a post asking where I can get a whetstone (no luck yet). I got involved by liking my old friends' postings and posting on how and where to get a good gynecologist or a cheap massage. I started posting pictures and my boyfriend's friends like them. It's like . . . small talk. I didn't know I could do small talk. By the way, introverts are more likely to be socially successful online, because the textual medium does give them time for reflection and it is relatively anonymous and it takes out the social anxiety factor. Of course this can go to extremes, but online relationships are not necessarily fake relationships.

I have had so many inane live conversations. Like I mentioned before, I can't do small talk. It drives me insane, but this is what makes up a majority of people's chatter. I like one-on-one conversations. I don't like gossip. I don't care about my colleague's comment on what China has done this time. I don't care about how my other colleague went to a cat village. I try to be polite and respond, but I don't see how I'm supposed to engage in the conversation. I can't fake enthusiasm.

One example of repeated attempst involves my boyfriend's former FLU. They're still friends so we have had dinner together a couple of times. Every time I felt like she was just trying to elicit gossip about her former work place. We tried asking her about her work, her personal life, "So, I guess we should talk about boys and clothes." She deflected: "Oh yeah, do you still need to get new clothes?" Even my boyfriend found it weird how we avoided talking about her at all. Quite frankly, we didn't talk about us very much either. We talked about third parties (i.e. gossip), and they weren't even third parties we really cared about. Eventually, my boyfriend determined that we were just anti-matter that didn't know how to react to each other. Since FLU used to have actual conversations with my boyfriend, I suggested they have dinner alone.

Another example is of a former friend I have (that I have recently written off). I actually realized even before she moved out that we had little in common, although we had had some real conversations early on in the relationship, we didn't have enough shared interests to maintain that.

A final example is my best friend. Her long-distance relationship with her boyfriend got better for awhile, because they had more actual conversations online than they had in person. Then it deteriorated, because they discovered that they weren't compatible. My best friend's anger at her boyfriend had less time to dissipate when they couldn't go jogging or do sexual acts together. Though I am wary of long-distance relationships in general, I do agree with my boyfriend that there's the potential to get caught up in the minutia of every day, to fall into a routine and stop thinking about why you're with a person, and I personally believe that physical intimacy can overshadow a lack of emotional intimacy. Therefore, face to face conversation, while valuable, is not a panacea for being alone.

Half-baked Internet Ideas

There are three internet phenomenon that annoy me, although for different reasons. One is wildly successful even though I hate it. One is moderately successful and I think it has potential, although that potential has been wildly overblown. The third is not successful and probably never will be, mostly because it represents an internet idea that is not successful.

1. Twitter

I don't understand it. Granted, I don't use it, and I don't plan on using it. My boyfriend got a Twitter account expressly to not use it, which I think defeats the purpose, and he caved anyway. He now tweets articles that people send to him, even if he doesn't read them himself. I suppose this means I should send more articles to him. That way I'll have a twitter by proxy.

Mostly, I don't understand it. It's a one-trick facebook application: the status update. Why twitter when you can just update your status, with links to your favorite articles and everything? For personal stuff this makes sense. In fact, twitter did start out as a personal thing, and I once got into a debate with a colleague who believed twitter's main purpose was to disseminate articles for other people to read. Though I don't think that was twitter's main purpose, I have to admit that that is what twitter is now most useful for. After all, you have to be "friends" with someone on facebook to view their status update (or for the status update to show up in your newsfeed). You can follow random strangers on twitter.

But you can also follow random strangers on blogs, so what is the point of twitter when it's a haiku version of a blog (except when you link to a longer blog post)? The only thing I can think of is that twitter is a compiler.

It used to be that we had one of everything. We had one address. We had one phone line. People had one way of getting our attention, and that was face to face communication. We now live in an age where we have multiple (active) emails. Some have multiple facebook pages, or multiple social networking sites (how many people are part of facebook and google+, and maybe myspace and livejournal?). I have multiple blogs and blog accounts and even multiple prezi logins (partially to capitalize on their free space). Plus we have youtube accounts and perhaps subscriptions to the New York Times, New Yorker, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Salon, Huffington Post, Harvard Business Review, Science Daily, Wired, Psychology Today, and TED Talks. How to keep track of all of this, besides bookmarks? A compiler, such as twitter. Follow the right people on twitter and they will lead you to a variety of media (blogs, newspapers, youtube clips, and even prezis) all in a series of tweets. That is such bullshit.

Also, I know someone who is very into social media. She has an iphone and constantly checks her email, facebook, and twitter. You still can't get a hold of her. She once proposed teaching students to organize their social media around facebook and twitter instead of email, which I think is a terrible idea. Even though I think it may be good for children to have an internet presence, I still like the privacy and (dare I say it?) relative intimacy that email provides. For one thing, email usually requires more thought than a tweet, especially since its character limit often leads to atrocious abbreviations and a lack of grammar, capitalization, and spelling from people whom I would otherwise consider intelligent. In addition, it's unlimited length offers a chance for more depth than your average sound-byte. Lastly, email has the option of cc'ing and bcc'ing people. If facebook and google+ really want to protect people's privacy, they should jump on that feature.

2. Workflowy

I was led to workflowy by some slideshow on Harvard Business Review. It had such glowing reviews that I decided I had to check it out (especially since the other applications cited as being so revolutionary were things like google calendar. I know how to use that. Maybe not effectively, but I could if I wanted to. I use a google spreadsheet instead to plan my schedule, because it's infinitely more editable.

Workflowy was supposed to be one of the most innovative things to hit schools and the workplace and had an interface that mirrored people's natural thought processes. It's just an outline with collapsible bullet points.

Granted, I started using workflowy and I have found it very useful.

For one thing, it has an intuitive and easy way to indent and un-indent points, unlike, say, powerpoint, word, and many other documents which don't seem to understand the concept of letting be go back to a less indented point.

For another thing, it's ability to collapse certain bullet points makes it easy to put a lot of information on a small page. I have started compiling all of my lists onto workflowy, and so far it's holding up at less than a page because of the power of subcategorization. Also, if it ever gets too cluttered, I can just double click on a particular bullet point, and it will move it and all subpoints to a fresh page. Phenomenal.

Lastly, the ability to cross out/delete completed options gives one a feeling of accomplishment.

That being said, I could outline before, on, well, basically anything. The collapsible feature is nothing new. It can be found on most blogs and websites (this feature was one of the main reasons I moved my writing online). Granted, it's easier to have this nice collapsibility on Workflowy, but it's nothing revolutionary, and I doubt the coding was that difficult.

A third thing. Workflowy was supposed to mirror one's natural thought processes/the natural process of brainstorming that we used to do with pen and paper. That's not really true. My boyfriend used to take notes, and he would do so in a free-form, interactive way with arrows connecting things and doodles in the margins. I feel that one of the computer's advantages over paper notes is the ability to edit and move things around in a way so that it is both organized and non-cluttered. One could argue that we should be able to annotate Workflowy, but why annotate or footnote when you can just sub bullet point?

If I had one major suggestion for Workflowy, it would be to allow users to arrange topics horizontally instead of just vertically. That's one of the reasons I liked using google spreadsheets for keeping lists (as well as my schedules). Workflowy needs to get out of the internet/computer interface box of moving from up to down. We also need to be able to move from left to right. Hell, we need to be able to move like the visual thesaurus or inspiration. The computers may have started out 2D, but now they have the potential to literally make us see things from a different perspective.

3. Google+

I think google+ will fail the way search engines other than google and fashion magazines failed: imitation.

I believe that nowadays reverse engineering and "copying" is so easy that to really distinguish yourself, you need to carve a niche (that or be the first one to do something new and interesting in a big way). For example, when I first took an information studies class, we were warned about the hegemony of google search and encouraged to search for the same thing on different search engines. I did so and got different results. A year later I tutored that same information studies class and the students did the same activity. This time all of the search results were almost identical.

What happened? Everyone copied google's successful algorithm. That was a mistake (sorry yahoo search and bing, more sincere sorry to ask jeeves). If search engines really wanted to be successful, they should have, yes, analyzed google's algorithm, but then deliberately tried to be different. Google is constantly tweaking its algorithm to game the websites trying to game them (websites which are really advertisers but pay people to produce mediocre content with a lot of keywords). A smaller, niche search engine could have figured out an alternative algorithm that could have cut out the crap websites, even if it sacrificed some of the big players (and we don't really need help to find wikipedia).

So I don't think google+ will succeed, not because it didn't have an interesting idea (the different circles for different social groups), but because too many people are already too invested in facebook. Plus facebook quickly and easily copied the circles concept, while at the same time introducing the timeline layout (which I still find confusing, but I find more visually appealing). Google+ responded by coming up with its own snappy layout. Don't like. I knew google+ had sold out when it introduced games. I know they have to make money, but they're pretty good at generating revenue with unobtrusive ads, and lack of games on google+ had been part of the appeal. It made me feel . . . clean, like in the days before zombie bites on facebook.