Chaos and Creation in E-Prime

HTB Lab Notes

Hey all. Guess what? I found work! (More later this issue.) Also, the January "Electric Dreams" e-zine features an article I wrote about NLP and lucid dreaming. Check it out at http://www.dreamgate.com

I made this issue a little different: I wrote it in e-prime. That means avoiding any form of the verb "to be." I might write another issue someday about the benefits of this. For now, I'll just say it frees the mind.

I wrote in issue 14 about my experiments with unconscious music-making. I wanted to thank Oliver Broadway for pointing out Win Wengar's spin on this exercise. Wengar calls it "improvitaping." Basically, you play whatever you want, tape it, and later listen to it again. That way, you get twice the feedback (once while you play, and once when you listen to the tape) and therefore improve faster.

New on manifestation.com this week:

An Introduction to NLP (thanks to Toby Reiter and Colin Turner for pointing out that I'd never bothered with this before).
A JavaScript implementation of Eliza the computer therapist.

I want to offer a lot more with my website in the future. I wrote this issue about it. I hope you like it, and if you do, please tell a friend!

Letters

From now on, I want to publish a few letters every month. I won't include e-mail addresses unless you ask, and I won't publish at all if you ask me to keep it quiet. :)

I asked last issue about new year's resolutions. Thanks to all who responded!

Lulu Hall wrote:

As always, I love your 'zine. Now for my "resolutions" 1998 will see an unfolding of my untold talents and compassion. I see in this year the look on others' faces as I help them in some very meaningful ways, like how to adapt their behaviors to get the results they want. I see me stepping up my involvement with my son and the quality and richness of the life he experiences, by enhancing his and my exposure to the world around us.

Royce Stewart wrote:

[...] One of the reasons I focused on these points was my own resolution to clarify my life's path in the coming year. A couple of years ago, I took a buyout package from a large corporation and after a few months went to work at a much smaller firm. While I have enjoyed the change and learned a lot, I still feel that I need to clarify for myself more precisely what I would enjoy being (which includes a career as a major component.)

I look forward (that's how my timeline is constructed) to hearing about your adventures this coming year.

Rushton Davis wrote:

I believe two of the most important aspects to living are responsibility and unbridled playfulness. Thus my New Years Resolution is to knock out my responsibilities without exception or procrastination (I have already embedded a clear picture of the fruit of such action.) And then to make a point of doing all the things I like to do. This includes camping and hiking trips which I thought of doing last year, but am committed to doing this year.

Thanks again, everyone!

Chaos

My office exists with few organizing principles. I have a couple piles of clothes on the bed, and one or two books left on the floor instead of the shelf. Mostly I have twelve pounds of paper scattered everywhere.

I have piles of notes about NLP, webmastery, story ideas, letters, journals, programming notes, artificial intelligence, drawings, magazines. Some of it dates back five years.

Occasionally, I go through all of it. Rather, I start to go through it, and wind up with three stacks: stuff to throw away, stuff to look at again, and stuff I didn't look through at all yet. The last two usually wind up in the same stack an hour later.

Sometimes, I think I should trash it all and start over. Clear my mind. Then I realize how much cool stuff I have. I could use this, if I could only organize it!

Yet it sits.

Design

I found a webmastery job right down the street. They want to hire me by contract, which I like. They do consulting work, and some of their clients want websites.

I went in yesterday to meet one of the clients. They run a chain of skating and ice-hockey rinks. I saw their current website, I heard what they want, and I couldn't wait.

The moment I left, I drove to their building. These people didn't kid around. Three rinks inside, plus a snack bar, health club, and meeting rooms. Wow. I'd have to really stretch my skills to do this place justice.

I went to the bookstore and read three new books on web design. I didn't look at technique side - I know how to make tables, use Java, and find my way around a style sheet. I went for design principles like theme, navigation, and the use of color. I suppose you could say I photoread most of it, because I went through all three books in about an hour.

Yuck

When I got home, I looked at my website. I thought to myself, yuck. Granted, manifestation.com certainly looks a whole lot better than when I started. But who'd come back if I didn't write this e-zine?

I sat and thought about this for a long time. I realized my website needs a personality. What sets it apart from the next site? Not the content - other than HTB and a few Guru drawings, you can find the whole station in someone else's words elsewhere on the net.

It needs something of me. Not my ego. HTB feeds that well enough (next issue I'll cut out the word "I," too, just to see what happens). I mean it needs my own unique style. Otherwise, how can I call it mine?

I asked myself again and again, "What is my style?" I realized it "isn't" anything. The question goes nowhere. So I applied a little e-prime. "What do I do that makes my work unique?"

Oh yeah. I draw mind maps. I write outlines. I post to newsgroups. Most importantly, I leave myself countless notes in countless notebooks piled up all over my floor so I once I create something, I never see it again.

Aha.

Spiders

Most people on the net visit search engines. You can type in a topic or question, and find 20 related websites in an instant. Most of them also show you a random but related advertisement.

How do they work? Some, like Yahoo! have people that visit sites and decide whether or not to include them in the listing. Infoseek and most others use programs called robots or spiders that "crawl" through every link on your site, cataloging everything.

These spiders don't organize anything. They don't worry whether one bit of information fits best under category A, or category B. They just record it, and know where to find it later. The search engine itself finds out what you want to know, and presents you with related items.

What do you think would happen if I built a search engine for all my notes and papers? What if I opened it up so that anybody could add their ideas? Rather than search for links, you could search for good ideas, opinions, and stories. No one has a search engine quite like that!

From the start, I've wanted Manifest Station to "talk" with people, perhaps through the Guru character (you know, the little bald guy in the tunic and blue sash). I even wrote a bit about an automated NLP therapist in issue 7 of HTB. Well, why not make it interesting, and arm the little guy with all kinds of knowledge on all kinds of subjects, contributed by anyone who wants to contribute?

In other words, rather than letting good threads die on newsgroups, or burying ideas six links deep in a website, we could save up information so that people interested in a topic could learn right there, without having to try out six long-dead links?

Your Way

I've gone ahead of myself here. This project may take months. Yet it seems exactly what I want to do. I think it could really humanize the web, make my site unique, and offer quite a bit of value to web surfers. So I'll do it.

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with a question. If you do anything in this world, someone else probably does it, too. What makes your way unique? If you don't know, I invite you to consider how to put more of yourself in what you do. You may find it quite an uplifting and liberating question!

In fact, let me know. Since I already decided not to talk about myself next issue, let me talk about you. :) If you have a way of doing something - anything - that no one else has, send it in. If you don't (or don't realize that you do), try something new this week and let me know!