Darkside Dreamland » Blogosphere

How Customers Like to Treat Vendors

Chris Schaffer — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:06:34 +0000

This video was posted by my friends Josie, and this video is pure gold!

If you have ever been a business to business service provider, this should all seem far too familiar.

The Wholeness Question

Chris Schaffer — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:44:15 +0000

Spinsterella, at Don’t Catch It Up, asked an interesting question in her latest post. That question, specifically, is: what is wholeness or what does it mean to be whole?

A more intrinsic part of this question is how do we be whole and broken at the same time. It may seem a paradox, but over time I have found that it is certainly not. A few things that have helped me arrive at the answer below have been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (I have read this particular gem three times and have a fourth reading planned), Stranger in a Strange Land, and practicing yoga with my friends and a number of good talk that have followed our weekend sessions.

The most simple answer is this… At this moment we are just as we should be. This may be the most important part of wholeness. We may be able , may even need, to improve but at this moment where are where we should be. It is that acceptance of the self that creates wholeness in my mind. Every fault, break, and problem is accepted because they are a part of every way in which we are a positive and growing being.

A great deal of literature deals with healing. I think healing from the breaks in our life is important, but I also feel we have focused to much on healing. I like to think of psychological healing in much the same way as a broken arm. Once a bone breaks, there is very little you can do about it. In most cases you should probably see a doctor to get some professional help. Even after that though, in everyday life there is not a whole lot you can do. You can avoid anything that will hurt the arm more, keep it safe, and follow doctor’s orders. However, staring at the cast will not speed up the knitting of bone. Personal problems don’t get better under intense scrutiny either. Big problems may need some guidance from a psychologist or therapist but beyond that the best way to heal is to go on living and let the healing take place in its own time and way. Once again I believe this related back into the idea of wholeness above.

At least one commenter on the post from Spinsterella spoke of “surrendering to a higher power.” I prefer to avoid higher powers myself, but there is a great deal of power in this. Some give themselves to God, I give myself to Yoga… Trust me, the parallel will be clear soon.

A big part of yoga is to stop focusing on the conscious self. Becoming one with your breath is not an attempt to get deeper inside ourselves but to free ourselves from thought and become one with something external. It is a gradual elimination of the ego. It is also an elimination of thought. If you picture the brain as a muscle this makes more sense. If you constantly use a muscle it becomes tired, sore, and not very good at doing what it needs to. If we let go of the ego, let go of the constant thoughts about who we are, how we are right now, how we could be better, and all the questions about why we may not be better we take a great deal of tension of that muscle. Then when we need to really apply our ability to reason we have a fresh muscle that produces clear thoughts.

This is the same process in accepting a higher power. We give up our ego to something above us. We accept how we are and that we are as we should be in the eyes of a creator.

All that said, how whole am I? Good question. Some days I am much more at one with myself and accepting of what my wholeness embodies. Other days I could be said to be a fair wreck. I feel that I am getting closer to personal wholeness because even on bad days I am more able to say “and this is where I am today,” without being nearly as critical as I formerly was.

So, focus less on being broken, focus less on being whole, focus less on healing. You are where you are today, you are where you are in this moment. Let the wholeness of that acceptance fill you, and let yourself be empty for it.

Microtransactions, Copyright, and the Internet

Chris Schaffer — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:05:45 +0000

Some recent MMORPG developments have stirred the pot about what it means to be greedy, the moral rightness of different payment or transaction models, and what, in general, players should be willing to accept.

While reading through some of the debates, I came across an article that covers very little of that first rather complex sentence but goes very deep into the topics of copyright, intellectual property, micro transactions, and how they do or do not apply in the real world; especially the internet.

Raph Koster’s: "Are microtransactions actually the future?"

I won’t attempt to summarize his views here. Let it just be said that this is one of the longest and most informative pieces I have seen on the topic.

Your Band/Album – The Meme

Chris Schaffer — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 05:19:10 +0000

Well, I caught this from Parallax who got it from Spunky. And despite my lack of meme indulgence as of late, this is decently witty!

1. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random – The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. Click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 – The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. Visit http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ – The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result.

Response to “The Plague”

Chris Schaffer — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:17:14 +0000

This is both a post about life and inspiration and a reply to “The Plague” by Ezra over at Grimjow.net

Mostly the question is, is normalcy right, or even good?

Of course in this question we get a few distinct parts that I will discuss:

Can we recover from despair?
Is society captivity, what is the effect of such?
How do we overcome, or become ‘above’ ordinary life?

The first two points I want to cover are a response to this:

Can something completely tainted and plagued by relentless despair recover? Even if it can be rebuilt will it be the same as before or will it always be missing that one piece of the puzzle that makes you a drone to society and to everyone else’s views and restraints? They say a bird held in captivity can never be reintroduced into the wild. Shouldn’t the same apply to a person?

Ezra

First, despair is a state of mind. It can be recovered from. However, just like cancer, despair can easily be considered a disease and the process of overcoming it can be just a difficult and fraught with peril. The recovery does change a person.

In some ways recovery from despair does force a person into the mold of society. As I see it, the majority of despair is caused by not being able to reconcile the self with the society one is faced with. At the same time I do not think this makes someone a drone, or even more likely to become one. Being always at odds with society will always crush the individual.

Is society captivity? Yes. At the same time though, we live in a time where being a functioning member of society requires far less than any time before. Ezra used the following line that I like very much, “Why should I have to jump through circus hoop after circus hoop endlessly just to live an ordinary life.”

Life and society is a circus. There are prescribed roles, and everything is organized into a very complex dance that often requires the suppression of the individual so that the full show can be accomplished. At the same time though, all the people jumping through hoops are only in one ring of the circus. Or to put it another way, even though the shows relies on submission to being in a show, there are a lot of people doing things that are totally independent of other parts. Thus, in order to exist freely and outside the normal role of the cog in the wheel, we need to assume a role which exists in society but allows us to become an independent actor.

Luckily, this has existed in society for a very long time in two ways. The Jester and the Shaman.

These two roles were very important to society, and very much within the walls and rules. At the same time, they are not ordinary life. Both are also positions that rely on an endless quest for knowledge and wisdom.

Obviously these jobs have changed a great deal with modernization. Most think they have disappeared. However, this is what our counselors, artists, priests, comedians, and others are doing. They exist outside the normal shell of the machine in order to keep things running smoothly and in order to point out the parts that are hurting the machine.

When done properly this should entail that the society is being evolved and moved by these forces in some subtle ways. When improperly done, these people serve as harsh enforcement tools by the state to correct “wrong thinking.”

I’ll discuss my views of superiority vs. worth is another writing. Before then though, hopefully Ezra will have a chance to respond so we can see where our ideas match up and where we can debate new points.

Blog Pet Peeves

Chris Schaffer — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:12:45 +0000

Or why so many blogs piss me off and how you can fix that

Your sidebar is too long.

I’m reading your blog because I want to read what you post. I am not reading your blog because I like to have seizures induced by the 3,000 dancing, flashing, multi-colored widgets you have collected. You might think it’s cool that every person who ever visited your blog is listed by every service that ever managed to track users, but the world of bandwidth and javascript load times thinks you are trying to destroy everything that is good and sacred.

I tend to like sidebars that are no longer than a medium sized post on the blog. This gives plenty of room for gadgets and advertisements that the average visitor might care about. I have reduced my own down to the size of a short post by using two columns. If you want to read my sidebar, you can do it with very little scrolling. If you came for content, you will be blissfully undisturbed for the majority of your scroll to the bottom.

The only exception to this rule is if the sidebar widgets add to what your blog offers. If you are a news site that has (text) links and summaries from other networks, have a large list of links of blogs you have reviewed, or things of this nature you get some slack.

If it flashes or breaks the does not fit with the general layout of your blog, dump it, all it does is make “attention whore” begin blinking in my mind.

I Hate Your Taste In Music

If I come to your site and it begins playing music without it being my choice, I will introduce you to the ban hammer. Remember, you mostly view your own site from the serene silence of the admin panel, I do not get that option, but I will happily never visit your site again in order to avoid the disruption.

Any time I get to click to play music or video, I am very happy. The only exception to this rule is if a clip or sample in one of these players decides to start up on it’s own accidentally (I have had two videos that simply refused to recognize what autoplay/start == False meant).

If you have audio ads on your site I will hate you even more than background music. At least background music only shows bad taste. Forcing me to listen to an ad will not only get me to blacklist you, but also tell my friends to do the same (yes all two of them).

Your Blog is Only a Billboard

Let me reiterate… I come to your site to read what you write. If after Adblock+ is done with your site the amount text is equal to that of a roadside billboard, you’re doing it wrong. If you have no more to offer the world than a pathetic attempt to make money online by gathering affiliates then you are actually offering nothing.

Let me compare it to birth control for an overly graphic demonstration of the point. Advertising is like a condom wrapper. It’s pretty, and it is great for marketing. Content is the actual condom. Content is there to catch my interest. If you’ve decided to use only the wrapper, I will be very disappointed, and you will be quite preggers.

I will also probably show up a couple weeks later with a wire coat hanger and the firm desire to abort your mistake by any means necessary.

But enough of that.

What are some of your pet peeves about blogs that you see?

Wednesday Image – XKCD Cookies

Chris Schaffer — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:33:00 +0000

We all have fun past times for fortune cookies. XKCD has a better one for you!

XKCD is one of the webcomics I really do appreciate. So make sure to stop by and show some love and, if you’re of the money making sort, donations.

This comic also randomly gave me another good idea for fortune cookies. Forget anything involving the bed, use “except for today.” It will give you great confidence your ability to achieve things except for those moments when you actually have an inspirational phrase to kick you into doing them.

Just think of all the great moments you will get to miss out on!

You are an inspirational leader, except for today…

Your creativity shines at work, except for today… (Just when you thought the presentation you slaved over might be worth something, eh?)

Have a phrase you think is great?

Tell me!

Is Project Wonderful Holding Up?

Chris Schaffer — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:15:07 +0000

I recently switched almost entirely from adsense to Project Wonderful (PW in this post) for ads. Overall my goal is not to make money on my blogs, but it would be nice to cover operating costs once in a while.

When I started with PW I easily had 20 active bids and prices peaked at about 8 cents per slot. Now I maintain somwehere between 3 and 15 bids, but they never get over 2 cents. It also appears that many people are gaming the system, putting up ads that just win a bid then canceling the ad before the day is out and generating no profit.

Not only has this caused me to not make any kind of money from the system, but it also hurts the people who might actually get clicks through the system and are playing fair. If I do not see much imporvement in the system I may find some alternative form of advertising that is still as unobtrusive as possible.

So, while I’m open on the suject, what have you had any success with?

What Google Sends Me

Chris Schaffer — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:15:24 +0000

It happens to have been quite some time since my last “How People Find Darkside Dreamland” kind of post. So lets get down to business and see what the world of search terms has brought me this time!

The Top 5

Yeah, two of my five top terms are still for porn. I’m sure the repetition of me talking about how I end up on lists for these kinds of terms does nothing to make me rank lower… But I really do like the irony of getting porn searches on a site that has never once in its very long history had a naked person on it.

I had always wondered why I got traffic for dreamland.com, and after a quick search I was happy to find I rank third for that term. So at least a few people have gotten bored with looking for the light and popular side of life and have started checking out the cynical darkside of it!

I’ve written a good bit about AEON. So I’m happy that I do get traffic for that. Maybe I need to talk more about the lesson structure, mostly I’ve been very vague about it. Although I’ll probably remain mostly vague for corporate reasons.

Google Transition is my big term (go figure). Oddly enough I also rank third for this term. Right below the Google Reader tour and a mailing list my little story shows up. Hell, I actually beat Webmaster World for it! But maybe that’s because the short search description is probably more than a little flattering for them.

The world will not be united by the global economy, not by humanitarian causes… It will be joined together when it all becomes Google.

Yeah. If you say the world will be united by the most popular search engine they certainly don’t frown at you.

The Other Stuff

I’ve started getting more hits for some of the music videos I posted. So at least they do get some organic traffic rather than only short burst traffic.

A number of other terms are some combination of AEON, Nagoya, Japan, and Teach.

A few search terms include my name, and a few of those also include some part of the website name. So apparently there are at least some searches to directly find this blog!

Sadly though I have dropped off the zombie search charts. This must change! In my never ending quest to defeat the not quite forthcoming zombie menace I should get at least a little traffic from it. Although I haven’t written anything about zombie lately. Time to get that reinforced thinking cap out.

Meme: I love books

Chris Schaffer — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:34:04 +0000

I found a mem about books. And if you know me you know how much I love to read. I found this via My Thermos who found it via Ton-Fifty-ONE.

1. One book that changed your life:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

I think I read this book four times. Coming from a background in both psychology and philosophy I really just couldn’t put it down. the story itself makes the philosophy very easy to read. Ultimately this may have been one of the books that caused me to start a fairly radical shift in how Sustainable Democracy is written and the direction it is going in now.

2. One book that you have read more than once:

Shogun by James Clavell
I was living and working in Japan and this was one of the few books I had in English. As a strong merit of the book I was easily able to read it twice without losing any interest.

3. One book you would want on a desert island:

The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene

I love theory and physics, so why not get a big helping of both!

4. Two books that made you laugh:

Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower, Book IV) by Stephen King
Probably not a laugh-riot comedy, but it has been one of the few novels that has made me laugh out loud without that being the intent of the story. It was just a great read that had me laughing when it was between the dramatic sequences.

World War Z by Max Brooks
Overall another very dramatic book, but it has many very humorous parts sprinkled in it.

5. One book that made you cry:

I really don’t get tearful with books… I’m sure some have come close, but I can’t recall anything specific.

6. One book you wish you’d written:

The 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris
Lets face it, not only is it a great book but also the ticket to instant fame, fortune, and free time by becoming a bestseller every place it touches.

7. One book you wish had never been written:

I’m sure there are lots of them, but I tend to avoid or stop reading any book that starts to fill that description.

8. Two books you are currently reading:

The Dark Tower V by Stephen King

Dianetics by Crazy Old Man Hubbard
Hey why not, besides I’m a sucker for alternative beliefs that make over-the-top claims.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:

Freakenomics
I finally bought it, but I still need to crack it open and read it.

As done by Scott at My Thermos, I will not be tagging anyone, but it you like books please fill this out and share your own passion for words!

Darkside Dreamland » Blogosphere

How Customers Like to Treat Vendors

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The Wholeness Question

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Microtransactions, Copyright, and the Internet

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Your Band/Album – The Meme

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Response to “The Plague”

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Blog Pet Peeves

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Your sidebar is too long.

I Hate Your Taste In Music

Your Blog is Only a Billboard

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Wednesday Image – XKCD Cookies

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Is Project Wonderful Holding Up?

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What Google Sends Me

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Meme: I love books

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