Earlier this year, I started listening to
podcasts on a regular basis and it's had a big impact on my life.
Steve Runner's Phedippidations got me running again and I participated in
Red Dog's Dog Days and earned a t-shirt.
I listened to
a couple courses from Berkley's History Department; one on U.S. History since the Civil War and the other on European History. It was interesting to hear so many parallels in the histories. Like Mark Twain is credited with saying, "History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme." I have a degree in history, though not from Berkley and while I enjoyed the lectures, I felt that they weren't really much better than what I received from my public university.
I enjoyed listening to other podcasts so much, that I bought a cheap MP3 player/recorder and made
my own podcast. That seems like a life time ago. Since releasing those podcasts, I've made a few more but haven't posted them. They are too much like rants, too political and opinionated. I don't want to turn off my "audience" by being myself, so I've kept them under wraps.
And I've been extremely busy with a remodeling project, which has kept me from producing any podcasts and severely limited my blogging as well. But, I'm still listening to lots of podcasts. Over the last two days, I listened to the entire collection of
Boing Boing Boing podcasts featuring one of my favorite online technologist types,
Cory Doctorow who gave an
amazing keynote address at the
2006 Red Hat Summit.
Last week while working on my remodeling project, I listened to Doctorow's
"Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom as read by the
Brooklyn Bluesman, Mark Forman. Great story and what a great service for Forman to read this book which is licensed under the
Creative Commons.
I've started listening to
Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture, also being read by Forman. So far, it's great. I've admired Lawrence Lessig and his work for years.
Lessig and Doctorow are both (or were) involved with
The Electronic Frontier Foundation which I officially joined earlier this year. I first heard of EFF when they cracked the U.S. Government endorsed Data Encryption Standard (DES). Our government spooks said it was safe and that we should all use it and not question it's security. EFF took a quarter of a million dollars in 1998 and built a specialized computer that cracked DES encrypted messages in a few short days. Yes, our government lies and they don't want you to be able to keep secrets.
I recently listened to
John Perry Barlow a retired cattle rancher from Wyoming and one of EFF's founders, along with
John Gilmore a software developer and open source pioneer and also a founder of EFF. The two of them gave a talk at
USC's Fullbright Chair's Speaker Series hosted by Doctorow. Worth a listen.
I was telling my wife over lunch today that I wanted to be like these guys. I want to be a person doing creative things, making things, innovating and giving it all away. Hell, I applied for a job at EFF this year, but given the salary range and the fact that I have a family to support, there's no way I could have taken the position and moved my family to San Francisco for a scant $45K, though that would have been the most difficult job offer to reject.
So, I have a longing to be creating things. To build something. I've been talking about learning how to weld for years. And in fact, that's one of the secret reasons for taking my current job, we have several welders and I'm told that if I want to use them, I can. Now if I can just get some instruction I'll be set.
Then it occurred to me, I am "making" something. For the last couple months, I've spent an average of two hours a day converting my garage into a master bedroom. I completely gutted the garage, framed in the garage door, put in a window, framed in the bedroom, bathroom and walk-in closet, installed venting for HVAC, ran all the electric circuits, installed nearly two dozen recessed lights, a dozen electrical outlets, a bathroom fan and I'm currently staring a two huge holes in the slab of my house so that I can install sewer lines for the new double-vanity, toilet and bathtub/shower unit that I'll be installing.
So my point is, I may not live in San Francisco or Los Angeles. I may not have written a few novels or built cool robots or some useful piece of Web 2.0 software that everyone wants to use and Google's going to pay a billion dollars for, but I am still a maker. I am making things everyday. I'm making a better life for myself and my family. And who knows what I'll make next when my current project is completed, but it's going to be great in it's own little way.
I'm not one to make New Year's resolutions, but I'm declaring that 2007 is going to be "my make year." In 2007, my wife and I will move into our new master bedroom that I am making. We'll be having a new baby any day now, that we'll be making into a productive citizen for years to come. And who knows what else we'll make in 2007, but I've got some plans brewing in my head.
After!
After!
