tumbled thoughts

Final post of the evening, and I may have to disconnect my tumblog from Facebook to stop annoying people with my explorations of P2PU and Web Making 101.

I have chosen TextMate as my editor of choice on the basis of using it daily to take notes (usually in markdown), compose blog posts, or badly destroy Python scripts. I like the simple interface and the tab-correct, and find the automatic syntax highlight colours pleasing.

Also, I bought it years ago, and don’t see the need to try out yet another text editor to create html files :)

As part of the Webcraft 101 set of tasks, I’ve written my first HTML file by hand. I should clarify, that this is the first bit of html I’ve ever written into a notebook (proof below), not the first bit of HTML I’ve ever written.

It’s an interesting task, as it made me think about what I was putting onto the paper, and also took ages because I’m not used to scribbling with ink and paper. The task is supposed to be legible, and I hope I’ve managed that. I have to admit being virtually entirely dependent on keyboards for arranging text.

I’d be interested in how others find this process, and how it’s beneficial above simply creating text documents.

I’ve landed myself in it now, haven’t I? After spending 5 years on and in the web, I realise I’ve missed out on many of the building blocks of the web itself, and believe it might be time to go back to school.

I am also keen to explore the world of the Peer to Peer University project (P2PU), and have signed up to the Mozilla-backed School of Webcraft. This introductory post is both a way of highlighting the P2PU, and also to fulfil one of the first tasks in WebCraft, which is to introduce myself in a post.

So, I am Zach, and have written here and on Blogging Perspective for around 5 years, working for the web as a journalist and community manager in the UK. I studied linguistics in London, and consider myself to generally be a writer and communication strategist.

I’ve spoken about the web as an enabling technology, and delved deeply into the world of the Semantic Web, but would like to spend some time reviewing the basics of the web I may have missed here.

I tweet, flick, and undertake other webby verbs too.

I know pedantry is unbecoming, but i would like to discuss a phrase or two and try to explain why I think they are usually bad choices.

• utilise
• leverage (verb)
• action (verb)

I am not alone in finding these words annoying, and they seem to live with many others in the company of corporate jargon. They create a strong impression, and bring to mind ideas of competitive pretension, and impersonal inhumanity. Choosing a word with extra syllables seems like a kind of one-upmanship over drab, simpler words like: use and do. Is this a form of snobbery even more unbecoming than non-standard, corporate English?

I’m not entirely sure, but let me lay out a few reasons for disliking this kind of English.

The three in this list are marked, that is: they stand out from other words. They display a kind of ornamentation that doesn’t add much value in encoding ideas. Let’s look at utilise. Taking the definitions from Wictionery:

Verb

utilise (third-person singular simple present > utilises, present participle utilising, simple past and past participle utilised)

To make useful, to find a practical use for.
To make use of; to use.
To make best use of; to use to its fullest extent, potential, or ability.
To make do with; to use in manner different from that originally intended

Each definition here makes use of a particularly useful word in defining utilise: use.

No matter which way you look at it, utilising something means using it. So, in what way is it more preferable to utilise something, than to use it?

Utilise does bring to mind more than just “use,” but does it improve the meaning being conveyed? I think the extra little syllables draw attention to the word itself: highlighting it within your other words. I am surely guilty of choosing gilt words which draw the mind to them, but I do hope they at least make sense on their pedestals. Does it make sense to highlight the word “use” in a sentence?

“Our service utilises this new technology!”

Wouldn’t it usually be more appropriate to draw attention either to your service, or to its new technological wizardry?

A simpler, bolder:

“We use this new technology”

seems to emphasise the active nature of the statement by making the agent personal (we instead of our service), and naturally points toward the new technology.

I suppose utilising feels less active than using. If I use a stick to bash your car, the emphasis is on me, and my action of bashing with a stick. If I were to utilise a stick, it feels like I had less choice in the matter of bashing your car, and more in choosing my implement. It’s along a similar vein to choosing the passive over the active voice: your car was bashed, and I’m too ashamed to admit to being the basher.

Leverage and action follow utilise. Attacking the verb leverage has added pedantry points because that final bit at the end (the morpheme “-age”) changes a verb into a noun in English. For example, I might spill this beer and create spillage, I have never yet spillaged anything. I will leave leverage here, but you can read more about it in Gabriel Smy’s “Are you stupid enough to use leverage as a verb?”

To action something, makes my mind contort into funny shapes trying to follow the logic. It follows utilise in its attention-seeking added emphasis, but it also feels like a completely wrong-fit for any sentence. Here’s how it goes for me:

Generally, language works in terms of agents, actions and objects. “I do a task” is a simple sentence in which I’m the thing performing an action on an object. Using the word “action” (which is a noun meaning “to act”), makes me wonder exactly how I’m supposed to act out the action of actioning something. If it’s a task, I could perform other actions on it (complete, delegate, begin, ignore…), but what action does “to action” imply? I’d rather just do tasks and save the mental gymnastics of attempting actively to undertake an action by actioning them. I’m sure someone better at logical reasoning than I could find a way around it, but they won’t alleviate the headache.

There is more “corporate jargon” out there (misuse of reflexive pronouns, “going forward”, “solutions”… ad nauseam), and no doubt other writers are actioning a list of words to attack, leveraging additional words and utilising blogs, tweets, and postings, so what is one more?

Well, I hope it’s shown that there are real reasons for some of us not liking the words some others choose, and to poke around a tiny bit into the details. An entire book could be written on this, and I’m sure it could be done without being bullying or entirely pedantic, but I’ve got to go now and find something to mop up the beer I just spillaged.

Buying relatively healthy food is difficult.

We’ve built up a framework to sell “what people want” as cheaply and quickly as possible, and in the process, began processing every ingredient until it seems to match nearly any recipe. Instantly-edible (if barely nutritious) food is abundant, surrounding an option which would more likely be good for us to eat. It’s cheaper to buy the stuff that’s quickly produced and processed, as everything’s geared up for its creation, dispersal, and marketing.

The side of the shelf with relatively healthy food seems less interesting, more expensive, and to involve more work in preparing, so it’s difficult to make a healthy decision when you’re tired, hungry, and have little time to cook, or are on a budget—all important and ubiquitous nudges in the wrong direction.

There’s a branding around “healthy” “wholesom” “organic” food, which is often no better than its cheaper counterpart, and makes it a statement of your class, intentions, and income when pushing a trolley full of brown-paper, leaf-grean wrapped, Organic-branded produce which is supposedly less produced than the processed, pimary-coloured boxes for the poor.

So buying food is a challenge. It’s a challenge to your purse, to your diary, and to your identity.

Reading this post is making me think quite a bit about cultural/social influence. I’m starting to think that individuals need the sense of responsibility, and an understanding of what works (i.e. via training and education), but there’s a strong social factor which needs challenging too.

I guess we’re not the sum of our parts as a big group, because the group dynamics influence us too. Just like peer pressure and bullying in kids can so strongly influence individuals and be partly the cause of a nice kid ending up hurting another; I think a huge social pressure to become fatter (and I don’t know how else to put it) is also influencing individuals who would like to be fitter, and would generally make decisions which in a different culture would keep them slim.

So things which work on a large group of people need changing if they’re causing damage (i.e. the population is changing into one in which it’s acceptable to live an unhealthy lifestyle), and individuals need empowering with understanding of what to do to change their own lives, and a sense of responsibility for their state of being.

shops

So many independent, and no feeling of corporate death-hold on expression

Plenty of variety, and far less pointless plate-glass repetition

Friendly people, both buying and selling in the shops

quiet curtesy

People give way on pavements

Cars give way and watch out for the crowds of cyclists

People speak in soft tones: it doesn’t feel repressed, just not boisterous

Simple respectful gestures

dogs

Many people walk a dog with them

They seem normal in a big city

kids

Families seem more normal than in London

Many children, shouting in German and pointing at dogs while their folks are dressed for work, they seem to slot into their lives

I’m excited about the trade I just made by selling the PS3 and ordering a cycle trainer. I’m not mended enough to get out on the roads yet (right-arm still meant to be alung and I’m prone to dizziness and fatigue), but cycling in the living room while listening to audiobooks sounds like a rather excellent way to move about a bit.

It’s one of these things: http://isza.ch/mrcPLA, which looks fairly impressive thanks to the black-background photo and silly but fun high-contrast lighting.