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I understand that many people like things. They provide pleasure, a sense of homely belonging, memories, security etc. And, I must confess, have a particular appreciation of finely crafted items, "brown wood" furnishings, and a deep love of written word on paper. But the path I am taking in life commands more minimalism, in part from döstädning (Swedish for "death cleaning"!). I grok the approach of Marie Kondo's apparently Shinto-inspired advocacy to only keep those things which "spark joy", although the fact they have an online shop and their partner is a sales consultant leads me to question how genuine they are. What makes good empirical sense is that less clutter in one's life reduces entropy, reduces anxiety and stress, improves diet, reduces cognitive overload and improves productivity. etc. As for my friends who love cultural artifacts, a well-organised book, music, or video collection does not really constitute clutter even if it consists of many visual things. Does anyone really consider a library, "cluttered"? A poorly organised file system however does, even if it is just one system unit!
Which a very round-about way of saying that I've been decluttering and simplifying the objects, real and virtual, in my life. The past couple of days I've spent some time working through about eight old desktop computers that I've had under the desk in the games library, one of which (my old VPAC desktop, Slackware Linux) hadn't been turned on for around five years. Some of the others haven't been turned on for ten years, and one machine (which I'm currently working on) dates back from 2001! There is, among all this some old data that I'd like to recover, mostly of a similar vintage if not older - I've done this a few time in the past and it's worthwhile documenting - it's not that hard! So that careful process of data recovery, often by making use of old Linux live CDs and mounting even older IDE drives, is underway. It will take a few days overall, I suspect, but lost data is irreplaceable. There is at least one drive which I know will have to go to a specialist service (I have recommended Payam Data Recover for a number of years now).
Just as one cannot have everything (where would you put it?) nor can one know everything. Many years ago I was introduced to the notion of "epistemophilia", by my honours examiner, Dr. Zoe Sofoulis. It is expressed as the desire and even the paraphilia when the quest for knowledge becomes irrational. The sanest expression of this is seeking understanding and communication; the worst is secret knowledge for manipulation. One could make a point about where our social system fits in this regarding so-called intellectual property rights, let alone direct political censorship of factual content. On a personal level, I consider myself a bit of a late bloomer in my love of languages, but in the past week, I powered through a number of Duolingo stories in French, German, Spanish and found myself on top of the Diamond League, the highest possible level. It only required two days of obsessiveness, but obsessiveness nonetheless. At least I can justify it by saying I have, and will, use those languages in real practise. I would like to get my teeth into some SE Asian languages again at some stage with travels in mind, once this damn virus is done with. It's been a long time, for example, since I've been to the Malay archipelago, and my time in Thailand has been woefully short. Idle speculation at this point of course, but something on mind.
Which a very round-about way of saying that I've been decluttering and simplifying the objects, real and virtual, in my life. The past couple of days I've spent some time working through about eight old desktop computers that I've had under the desk in the games library, one of which (my old VPAC desktop, Slackware Linux) hadn't been turned on for around five years. Some of the others haven't been turned on for ten years, and one machine (which I'm currently working on) dates back from 2001! There is, among all this some old data that I'd like to recover, mostly of a similar vintage if not older - I've done this a few time in the past and it's worthwhile documenting - it's not that hard! So that careful process of data recovery, often by making use of old Linux live CDs and mounting even older IDE drives, is underway. It will take a few days overall, I suspect, but lost data is irreplaceable. There is at least one drive which I know will have to go to a specialist service (I have recommended Payam Data Recover for a number of years now).
Just as one cannot have everything (where would you put it?) nor can one know everything. Many years ago I was introduced to the notion of "epistemophilia", by my honours examiner, Dr. Zoe Sofoulis. It is expressed as the desire and even the paraphilia when the quest for knowledge becomes irrational. The sanest expression of this is seeking understanding and communication; the worst is secret knowledge for manipulation. One could make a point about where our social system fits in this regarding so-called intellectual property rights, let alone direct political censorship of factual content. On a personal level, I consider myself a bit of a late bloomer in my love of languages, but in the past week, I powered through a number of Duolingo stories in French, German, Spanish and found myself on top of the Diamond League, the highest possible level. It only required two days of obsessiveness, but obsessiveness nonetheless. At least I can justify it by saying I have, and will, use those languages in real practise. I would like to get my teeth into some SE Asian languages again at some stage with travels in mind, once this damn virus is done with. It's been a long time, for example, since I've been to the Malay archipelago, and my time in Thailand has been woefully short. Idle speculation at this point of course, but something on mind.
