tess's blog

I've been thinking increasingly often of what's next for the site. While there's nothing technically wrong with deninet's current incarnation, the underlying purpose is in serious need of refinement.

Deninet 1.0 through 3.0 were geared  toward content delivary of first Denizen Soft's, and then Denizen Entertainment's projects. Due to various circumstances -- life, work, my own ineptitude -- none of those projects have yet come to fruition. Toward the end of deninet 3.0, it became obvious that we needed a proper framework to help us create, manage, and publish our projects. 

Deninet 4.0 was the birth of "The Internet Idea Database", a web application geared toward communal development and tracking of ideas. I spent a great deal of time on Gazelle, the software powering the Idea Database. I still love the concept of communal idea development including our sales tagline of "Invent, Share, Expand".

Gazelle wasn't the most complicated software project I've attempted (InterLock still holds that title), although it had plenty of problems of its own. In Gazelle, Ideas (big 'I') were a fundamental unit of content. Ideas were made of Versions, and contained the actual content of the idea itself. Versions were submitted to the community; authors and others contibuted Thoughts to extend or refine the Idea. Those who liked a particular thought could vote on the thought. When the author is satisfied, they considered the submitted Thoughts and published a new Version. Authors weren't required to change their Idea based on community suggestions, they retained complete control of the Idea's development. Ideas could be grouped at a higher level via Channels, which often reflected a sense of a whole project. 

On paper, the concept looks wonderful. Individuals and organizations can post and track ideas throughout the entire development lifecycle. Once we had a working version of Gazelle, the Idea Database became a useful tool for my own projects. There were, unfortunately, a huge number of problems with the system. There was very little security within the framework. All Ideas were left wide open to the entire site. This reflected my high-minded idealism at the time,  today I just shake my head my nievate. Gazelle itself was a nightmare to extend. Each new content type required new code. Everything was library and no engine -- there was no dynamic way to organize content display. 

The biggest mistake I had made with it, unfortunately, was I began to think of the Idea Database as a generalized content manager. News and blog posts co-mingled with Ideas proper resulting in confusion. In retrospect, I probably did it to reduce the amount of content types within the framework as well as gain the functionality Ideas provided.

Six months after the "completion" of Gazelle, I dumped the entire project. I hated to do so after investing nearly two years of my evenings developing the thing, but I felt it was really the best choice. I had come to the realization that I'd never be able to keep up Gazelle while attempting to work on Paper Girl. There were fundamental problems with the design, and I didn't have the knowledge, expertise, let alone time to write them myself. After investigating my options -- as well as rewriting the framework entirely -- I selected the open-source content manager Drupal to power the next version of deninet.

Deninet 5.0r was the first version of the site to run the new content manager. The site also completely lost it's Creative Cooperative bent and became my own personal domain. My failure to perfect the Idea Database and attract interested people to the concept led me to this decision. Interestingly, once the whole "Were a real company, honest!" charade was dropped, the site began to swell with content. Instead of being project or idea centric, I uploaded my artwork, some writing, and began writing posting blog entries to the main page. I could, of course, publish more complex creative works from the site if and when I ever came to that juncture.

Then a curious thing happened a few months ago. I was no longer the only active person on the site. This both caused me excitement and concern. First of all, deninet 5.1 was designed to be a single user site. While I kept multiple users in mind, there were critical places where it began to break down. The image gallery, for example, isn't set up for multiple users. Even though blog posts are nicely separated, the "river of news" main page is not terribly effective. 

Even more curious was the fact that I was no longer the only person wishing for a Creative Cooperative. Indeed, there seems to be a strong desire to refine the site and reclaim the purpose I had thrown away with deninet 4.0. Although the desire was there, I haven't really been in the position to research our options.

Looking back at the history of the site, certainly have gained a sense of what was good, and what was a mistake. Right now, I'm looking at the Idea Database topology I described above with scheming eye. Yes, it was a mistake to shoehorn all content management into the concept. It may have also been a mistake for me to write the management system myself. As one person, I can only write so much. Developing a new CMS from the ground up simply takes too much time. Gazelle's internal lack of generalization also complicated things unnecessarily. Switching to Drupal, however, saved me huge amounts of development time and added many new features.

What if, I began asking myself this afternoon, I used Drupal to power the Idea Database? We would certainly gain a powerful backend with a preexisting development community. We would only be responsible for what fulfills our goals as an organization. Are Ideas as laid out in the topology, I thought, enough to fulfill the ends of a "creative cooperative"? This is a trickier question. While I believe that the Idea Database topology will be part of our end goals, I very much down it will be enough to fill the project management role required to bring make ideas manifest. There's a lot I have yet to investigate.

I very much doubt that deninet will jump from 5.2 to 6.0 directly. There's a lot of new technology and refinements required in order to get to that point. The present site needs to be updated to the latest version of Drupal and key features made available to all users. There are several more minor releases in our future before we get that far. I for one am very much excited to see how the site will evolve.

I feel I owe everyone an apology for my insensitive (if honest) query in my last post. I obviously wasn't as ponderous as I usually expect of me, and instead let my frustration and lack of ability to act influence my writing.

Several commentors made excellent point both on, and off the comment threads. One pointed out quiet insightfully that even thought we live with the mistakes of previous generations, we also tend to make our own mistakes of similar gravity. It's easy when one is frustrated to point fingers at everyone else and scream, "Stop fucking things up for me!" This neglects the mess people often make for themselves. Furthermore, the same commentor points out that the available data at the time didn't properly communicate the implications of problems like larger families or burning fossil fuels. 

Perhaps for the first time in civilized history, humanity is dealing with a complex system on a scale we are only beginning to grasp. Chaos theory, memetic evolution, emergence found in weather patterns, alteration of the climate -- all systems we can only begin to simulate with only the most powerful systems on the planet. Most people have a difficult enough time trying to figure out a personal budget let alone fathom what the beat of a butterfly's wings are capable of producing. Maslow's triangle of needs limiting our scope.

Back when I believed in things such as fate, I often wondered what I could do to help prevent the coming downfall of humanity. I'm not terribly skilled in mathematics, or biology, or chemistry. I tried each, of course, as I'm have a love of knowledge. It was, however, only with computers I felt I had skill or any sort of future. From a practical standpoint, the information technology industry is terribly wasteful. Entire landfills compose of old and broken cell phones. Toxic chemicals are used to produce LCDs and etch silicon substrate. Operating systems and hardware are designed around the concept of a constant, cheap power supply, and are no where nearly optimized for power-savings. How can I help? The simple fact is that I'm having enough trouble getting my life in order to say nothing of reducing my carbon footprint.

I'm no better than all the other 6.5 billion people on the planet.

I tend to view myself as a fixer, a cerebral sort of mechanic with a mind full of learning, culture, and cheesy movies. With that world-view, it's difficult for me to sit idling back when things are obviously broken. It's not just that I want to fix it, it's that I'm compelled to fix it. When I'm unable to fix something, it's terribly frustrating to me. Lately, I've been hearing more and more about how seeming everything is breaking. A prominent biologist claims we're on the cusp of a 6th great extinction event. The oceanic dead zones are expanding. Crops fail and energy prices skyrocket. It's not difficult to look at each as a piece of a larger complex system on the edge of collapse. And I can't fix it. 

Hell, I can't even warn people about it by writing or so much as win a political argument. I'm rubbish at both. If I wasn't struggling to support my own Pyramid of Needs, I'd have more time sit and contemplate and research. Perhaps then I could construct a convincing argument. Or maybe not.

When chatting about this on IM with a friend, she conveyed something telling. "We're in a struggle with stupid people," she typed. A century ago, people thought that nature was infinite and boundless. If we clear-cut the forests, it wouldn't matter as there are more forests. Cue the Amazon Rain Forest. How much of that are we still losing today as others support their Pyramid of Needs? "The problem is, there are more stupid people, and they don't want to listen." The culture of this nation (and increasingly other nations) honor and hail the stupid, and denigrate the intelligent. Anti-intellectualism runs rampant world-wide. After all, no one wants to be thought of stupid, nor does any one want to listen to prognostications of doom.

This incident is tangential to a key personal observation, but it's time for me to continue my Atlas and the Pyramid routine.

The clock on my deskphone blinks a solemn "11:20 AM", reminding me I only have 40 minutes of my lunch hour remaining. Lunch itself was devoured in less that time, while I depleted the contents of my feed-reader and scanned a few websites. The typical course of the day is for me to go back to work at this point, saving any pursuits of my non-working life for off hours when I'm well away from my desk.

It seems, however, that less and less happens while I'm away from my desk. Work has taken over my life, my demanding work-out regimen feasting on the remains. As a result, I barely have the time to relax let alone be creative. It becomes more and more difficult to ignore the creeping thought that I should simply give up creative pursuits. The weary mantra of "There's no time nor energy for anything else" seems a sad stereotype. "Occasionally, I find the time," I begin, squaking some lackluster justification to complete the sutra. Perhaps it's true that I'm simply not at the point in my life where I can sustain anything else.

You'd think that giving up would provide me with comfort. "Give yourself a break," "Take some time off," "It'll come back." My friends do try to help, but taking their advice to heart only seems to make me feel more and more confined. I can't escape the demands of my life, I can't walk through the immaculate gate in my mind that leads to imagined people and realities. I seem forever chained in the present, free only to catch glimpses through the doorway before it's slammed shut once more.

When writing software, I can fly. I can speed through intricate, ever-changing machines in a infinite field of electric blue.
When writing stories, I'm an invisible telepathic. I can listen in on conversations and peer into secret dreams.
When drawing, I don't exist at all. The world consists only of shape, stroke, and motion. Color is solitary expression.

I'm tired of being chained. I'm even more tired of being aware I am chained.

For all my artful descriptions, there doesn't seem to be any easy solutions. There seems even less a simple explanation for my state.  Maybe there aren't any, maybe the only thing to do is shrug off the weight and sound of clanking metal, reach for the doorknob and turn...

I must be out of my mind this morning.

I just bought tickets to Opeth at the Myth nightclub on September 27th.

This despite the lousy state of my bank account right now... Maybe I just need something good to look foreward to.

Just a little sketch, maybe a warmup.