It’s been just under 2 months since my last post, and three and a half months since I posted anything about programming. I haven’t had any grand code related inspirations lately and my upcoming work projects don’t promise anything.

I an effort to expand my knowedge base I’ve decided to learn a new language and undertake working with a full fledged framework for the first time. My webiste has suffered one of the worst cases or bit rot that I’ve seen. I’ve decided to redesign it and build it all using Python and Django. It will also give me a chance to work with JQuery and to experiment with some database design ideas.

I’ve also decided to kill two birds with one stone and work on being a better blogger at the same time. As such I’ll be doing my best to document everything I go through with this project. Look for that late this month or early in December.

I tried various different ways to express this thought on twitter, but 140 characters just wouldn’t do it. So instead I’ll expand a bit and vent as part of a proper blog post. I don’t make enough of those anyway.

I am firmly addicted to RSS feeds. This despite my assertion when they first came out that they weren’t useful to the end users of a website. They say the ability to change your mind is a mark of intelligence… right?

I currently subscribe to 66 feeds in google reader. On an average day this amounts to about 150 to 200 items that come through GR. I skim over quite a few and take my time reading the ones I like. This is a very manageable arrangement that take occupies about an hour of my day.

Then there are days like today in which just about every blog on the internet with any leaning toward technology has posted basically the same stories about iTunes, iPods, TC50, and/or Demo. As a result I’ll probably have sifted through about 500 feed items by the time the day is over.

What I want it some basic filtering built into to Google Reader. I am a big fan of the app in all other ways but the lack of filtering may actually end up being a deal breaker. I blame Apple… or at least the echo chamber that surrounds it. My desire for a GR filter started with the iPhone, grew to a serious annoyance with iPhone2, and has come to a head with iTunes8.

I know there are options out there. There’s a Greasemonkey scripts to add filters to Google Reader, but I have no desire to have Grease Monkey installed. There’s also yahoo pipes, but Yahoo’s been shutting a lot of stuff down lately and it would mean running every feed through Yahoo before I add it to GR which is less than ideal.

Now taking bets on when my desire for a filter starts to out-weigh my lazyness to the point where I switch to another RSS reader.

That was what, 4 characters more than 140?

Failure? I say no… because I said so.

I made it 55 hours without using the internet for anything personal. Then I got bored. Then I discovered some things. First I discovered that we’re going to Portland this weekend and a long drive means needing podcasts. My “Buzz Out Loud only” rule thusly had to be abolished. Secondly I learned that Spore came out yesterday and not Sunday as I had thought. This means my preorder should arrive at some point today and I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait.

Therefore I must fall back on the theorem of 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2. Two+ days without internet plus 2 very good reasons to use the internet equals 5 days without internet. Success!

I actual have more reasons, but that makes my theorem more complicated. They include the season premier of Bones being available on Hulu, Friday company lunches with usually involve a fair amount of non-work related youtube, a need to brush up on my Perl skills, a largely empty DVR, and boredom. Oh the boredom.

Things I learned while not online: Aside from TV being far more insipid than I remember the last time I spent a fair amount of time devoting all my attention to it… not much. I played with the cat more than usual, which is good, and I finished (mostly) sorting all our CDs away space saving wallets.

I have been inspired to undertake a personal experiment. I am going to attempt the possible and give up the internet for 5 days. From the morning of Wednesday September 3rd, 2008 until Monday the 8th my laptop will be internet free.

Why, you might ask, am I doing this? A more cromulent question might revolve around why I’m telling you this. Never the less I shall only attempt to answer the first question.

1. I want to see if I can get more done if I’m not chained to my laptop. Twitter and Google Reader seem to occupy all my free time lately.
2. I want to prove to myself that I can do it. I don’t think I’m over dependent on the web, but it would be nice to know for sure.
3. I’m tired of it. The internet, at least in the circles I’ve been traveling lately, seems to be a deafening cacophony that frankly is giving me a headache.
4. I’m hoping my desire to read, dead since college, will return to me. I’ve got a stack of books that have gone unread thanks, at least in part, to my time online.
5. By starting now this will be over by the time my preorder of Spore arrives.
6. I couldn’t sleep tonight and in my daze this seems like a good idea.

For various reasons I am going to have to make three exceptions that will wholey invalidate this as an experiment at least from a scientific standpoint. Two of these are unavoidable and the 3rd is just… because.

1. Work
   There’s no way to escape this one. I work building a web application, I have to be able to use the internet to do that. I will, however, not be using the internet for anything recreational while working. I figure the timing for this is good since all of the shows I watch on hulu are currently on hiatus.
2. Email
   Over the years email has become my primary form of remote communication. Me giving up email would cut me off from most of my friends and family.
3. Buzz Out Loud
   This is that just because I mentioned previously. Firstly, this podcast is probably my current favorite thing in all of media. Secondly, I would go a little mad without any access to tech news. A half hour a day should be enough to keep me from going completely nuts.

I thought about keeping a journal like a civil war solder. Sadly I very much doubt that this experiment will produce any results that could be called interesting no matter how bored historians get in the future. I predict I’ll get some more chores done than usual and I’ll finish reading Watchman. Other than that it will probably just be business as usual. I will post the results here on Monday at the experiment’s conclusion… or shortly there after.

After thought: There are going to be over 1,000 unread items in my Google Reader by Monday morning. That is a little freightening.