there is an interesting way to focus creative effort that i stumbled upon some years ago. i've heard people call it "limiting your pallette". the idea is you enter a constraint into the process, or a set of them, and then create within that "space".

haiku is a good example. there are several ways to do it but the most common i've seen is:

first line: 5 syllables
second line: 7 syllables
third line: 5 syllables

then you try to communicate some kind of poignant emotion and meaning within the bounds of that limited space.

we could look at mondrian as an obvious example of intentionally limiting the creative range of expression. there are as many examples as there are successful pieces of art. even an artist as wildly expressive as jackson pollock intentionally limited himself to a simple technique. he dripped paint on stuff. that was it.

here at jonvon.net i type in small letters, no capitalization except in rare circumstances. why do i do that? i dunno! but it sorta works for me somehow.

whatever the case, the limitation you introduce into your craft turns out to be freeing. the constraint frees your mind from thinking too broadly and focuses your attention on what you are going to pour into that limited space. or something like that. i don't know why it works, but it does.

why am i talking about this? well i thought chris blatnick's response to andrew's post on twitter hit the nail on the head, and i thought i'd push into what chris was saying a little more.

andrew's argument is that twitter's infrastructure isn't up to the task of users chatting. far be it from me to dispute him on that topic. he's investigated it and i'm sure he's right. we've all seen the fail whale when twitter goes down.

frankly my dear, i don't care if the infrastructure isn't up to the task. they've got a huge runaway hit on their hands and i'm sure the money will come from somewhere to get the infrastructure right eventually.

for me the point chris makes is more interesting. well he makes a bunch of great points actually, he nails all the right stuff quite well. but this part made me think:

It encourages interesting ebbs and flows within a conversation or a person's thought patterns that you would not otherwise see if they had the ability to type free form.

twitter is all about limitation, but it's the good kind. you choose who you want to follow, and you don't follow anyone else. you only write in 140 character installments (just right to fit in a haiku btw). you can't "d" another person unless you both follow each other, and so on. pretty cool.

i think there is some kind of sleeper effect going on with this model. you might not know you have this amazing creative engine inside your skull. but something about twitter turns it on. what is it? well they are forcing you into a small 140 character window. every time. it does something to the mind. i don't know if they meant to do it. maybe they had the same infrastructural concerns that andrew has, and they limited it to 140 chars because of that. maybe they were targeting mobile phones. maybe it was all of that along with reasons i can't think of. but whatever it was, it just freaking works.

freakin blammo.

awesome! i can hear the drums beating in westford. and THAT is exactly the way it should be.

JV: i wish i could walk up walls
JV: that would be COOL
BB: i know man
BB: if we were mutants we could do that
BB: personally, i can't wait to mutate
JV: u mean we aren't mutants?
BB: no, silly!
JV: all this time i was sure we were
BB: the nuclear holocaust hasn't happened YET!
JV: ah
JV: right
BB: i hope i mutate into some kind of batty-type thing so's i can gly
BB: fly
JV: if you were a mutant you'd probably call it gly, just to be mutie
BB: i know . . . that's so totally mutie
JV: loog ack me i gan gly
JV: lol
BB: LOL!!!
JV: ok i better get something done
JV: i needed that laugh tho
JV: hehehehe
BB: that is hilarious
BB: people are wondering what i'm laughing about
JV: just read that line out loud to them
JV: they'll stop bothering you soon
JV: ;)
BB: hee hee hee
BB: loog ack me
JV: i gan gly!
BB: i'm SO using that!
JV: lol

lazywebbing it here - someone at work needs a spell checker that works on the web. domino back end of course, to work with something like Tiny MCE or the like.

anyone know of anything off hand? we can buy, in fact they want us to buy rather than develop.

a few people in the community have posted lately about losing weight, or wanting to lose weight. i just lost 7 pounds, in about 2 weeks, kinda accidentally, so i thought i'd post what i am doing in case it helps anyone out.

my triglycerides are high. a high triglyceride count is a strong indicator of future heart problems. my doctor told me to lay off of starches. and of course, i ignored him for about a year or two.

but lately i've wanted to eat differently. i picked up a copy of one of the Enter the Zone books we have around the house, and in the introduction Barry Sears talks about triglycerides. hm! he had my attention.

basically the approach in the Zone diet is to balance what you eat hormonally. not all calories are alike, in other words. so it isn't quite as simple as the basic caloric math.

he says, you put a piece of meat on your plate (or some kind of protein), about the size and thickness of the palm of your hand. then fill the rest of the plate up with fruits and vegetables. make sure some kind of fat source is there too, like maybe cook the meat in olive oil, or eat some almonds. the fat helps regulate everything hormonally.

when we are talking about hormones here, we are mainly talking about insulin. basically if you dump a bunch of sugary or starchy food into your system, you will probably dump a bunch of insulin into your blood stream to deal with it. this in turn leads to the high triglyceride count, and to the accumulation of fat, and eventually, predictably to heart failure.

my wife and i did the Zone diet thing when we lived in colorado. we were always hungry, except right after we ate. and that sucked. we were a lot more active too. i was riding my bike to work, and we both took kung fu. so that probably had something to do with it.

i'm doing something a little different this time. i've just stopped eating starches. period. no bread, no pasta, no rice, no potatoes. and no beer. hehe. except on rare occasions, which is pretty much my drinking style anyway.

but the thing is, i have to find food to replace the sugars in the starches. cuz i don't like the feeling that i am starving. starch is kind of like gasoline, it has a helluva lot of "power" in it. the sugars are very dense, and you only have to eat a small amount of starch to equal bowl fulls of fruit. so i have ended up sorta by default following a Zone-like diet plan. but i pretty much eat what i want to eat. and i cheat here and there. i eat tacos once in a while (homemade) or maybe a burrito, and maybe once a week i have a sandwich at the cuban place.

the other day we walked into a grocery store. there was a scale there and my daughter wanted to get on it. ya know, cuz its fun. so she did, and then she wanted me to get on there. i couldn't believe it. not expecting any change at all, or maybe just a small change, i'd lost 13 pounds. i've been pretty steady at a weight that fluctuates about 5 pounds or so for several years.

dinner consists of whatever meat we are having, some sort of vegetable, and a bunch of fruit. sometimes i have to eat extra fruit, like half a banana with peanut butter for "dessert".

lunch is more hit and miss. sometimes i buy some lunch meat, like turkey, and a bit of cheese, and eat some almonds with it, and a piece of fruit like an apple. if i eat out, i get a salad. but the restaurants always serve bread with the salad. they count on us eating it to fill our carb quota. like petroleum, bread is full of densely packed energy, so you can eat just a little bit of it and make up for what you aren't getting in the salad. so i have to keep fruit on hand in my office, and when i get back i eat it to round out my meal. apples keep great for a long time so it's usually apples.

breakfast is an omellette i get in the cafeteria at work. i have them put in green peppers, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, ham and cheese. and i eat an orange. which sounds sorta healthy and sorta not. but it works for now.

it will be interesting to see, in a few months, what my numbers look like. i wonder if triglycerides will go down, and what will happen to the other cholesterol numbers, LDL and HDL. i wonder if losing the weight will affect them, or if i'll need to do something else.

i'm also walking the dog twice a day. but i've been doing that for a few years, with no effect on my weight.

generally speaking i have more energy. i rarely crave snacks in the afternoon anymore. when i do i have healthy things on hand. i used to have to go down to the snack machine and get a candy bar to make it through the afternoon. i also used to put sugar in my coffee, and i stopped doing that. funny how my cravings for coffee disappeared after i took the sugar out.

the other thing that has happened is my teeth are getting a workout. i discovered, earlier than i would have if i'd kept on eating starches, that i had a deep cavity in one of my teeth. the tooth simply couldn't handle the pressure of all the chewing. i'm getting a root canal done on it tomorrow. i predict my dental health overall will improve over time. i've had several problems the last few years with my teeth. this seems to be a strong positive step in the right direction in so many ways.

i know what i am doing will be difficult for many other people to even conceive. i'd heard of people giving up starches before and i thought they were crazy. but it does seem to be working for me, and i'm rather enjoying all the interesting things i'm eating. pineapple, blackberries, blueberries, watermelon (<--interesting article - watermelon ~= viagra!), all sorts of things i rarely ate before. along with the more common things we usually have around like bananas and apples and grapes and oranges.

the only thing i'm adding to this is fish oil supplements. i figure i'm getting a LOT of vitamins naturally now. we do eat salmon once in a while but not enough. besides the fish oil is supposed to be good for the triglycerides too. i have some niacin i need to start taking again for the other cholesterol.

now i just need to get the exercise program going more fully. i'm doing a few things but not quite enough yet.

anyway, hope that is helpful to someone. :-)

update: in the interest of accuracy, i got on the same scale that i weighed in on about a month ago. weight loss was about 7 pounds instead of the 13 i originally reported. original time frame still applies - about two weeks.