Heaven in Hell's Kitchen

Seth Godin posted comments about the Kindle on his blog. He intends not to write directly for the Kindle until the device offers more than a linear reading experience.

It's precisely a strong linear experience from which the power of the book derives. A book gives an author a chance to refine his speculation, research, and inspiration. It presents elevated thought and experience. It doesn't need improvement. That's why the book has been around so long.

I understand Mr. Godin's point about a new device like the Kindle needing additional value over the book in order to establish its relevance. If it just does what books do, why don't you just get books?

However, consider the iPod, another linear content delivery device. It didn't enhance the linear listening experience. So what did it do that portable CD players couldn't? It improved on portability and accessibility. With an iPod you don't have to decide what you want to listen to in advance and then lug CDs around. This boon helped make iPods and other digital listening devices ubiquitous.

Even if the Kindle proves to be nothing more than an iPod for books, it will still be a boon. It also highlights an interesting pendulum swing in attitude. When hypertext came along we began losing our ability to focus. Now everyone seems to acknowledge, at least to some extent, that we're a little too distracted with all of our multi-tasking.

An antidote
The Kindle speaks to our growing sense that maybe we just don't need to bounce around so much. We've been getting behind in our reading; so far behind that we can't lug around all those books we want to read. Hey, let's take the benefits of portability and accessibility that iPods gave us and apply them to our must-read reading list. Maybe we've been a little hungry to get absorbed by one thing and pay attention.

Uh, I'll get back to you. Right now I'm reading. Don't bother me...

Posted by Jai at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I first started using AOL in the nineties, I discovered that they archived a bunch of magazines I was saving on my bookshelf. No longer did I need to keep issues of "Worth" in order to reread Peter Lynch's column. I emptied my filing cabinet of clippings from the "New York Times," "Money," etc.

It wasn't easy.

I had acquired all that information so assiduously. What if I wanted to look at one of those articles again? Two things were now evident. I could just go to Yahoo with my Netscape Navigator and find anything that I needed, and it was current, too. I had rarely actually looked at any of the material in my library of yellowing clippings. If I needed anything again, I would go to the web to get whatever was relevant now.

I adjusted.

Now I can't imagine keeping all that crud around.

I still have books in storage. Even paperbacks. Lately, I've been enjoying the New York Public Library more than ever. I can use their website to put items on hold and they'll transport them to my branch which is on the very block on which I live. I have a huge wishlist. What am I storing books for? A huge amount of what I want is already stored by the library. I don't need to rent space to store my own copies.

Perhaps very soon, keeping books on your shelf might be just as quaint as archiving newspaper clippings. We already have Google Books. I want to read Walden. It's in the public domain. I can download it in PDF. I don't need it on my bookshelf. The Kindle is coming. (I guess it is anyway. Have you ever seen one? I suspect Amazon never manufactured a one. Maybe it's still in development. Being "sold out" might be just one of the greatest marketing strategies ever imagined.) My entire bookshelf would fit in one gadget. I like physical books. I love them. Yet might I come to deal with them the same way I've dealt with my entire audio library? Practically the whole thing fits in one iPod that I can carry around with me. I haven't gotten a CD out in years except to import it into my computer.

Yes, I threw away books today.

Kurt Vonnegut, Frederik Pohl, Ernest Hemingway, Evelyn Waugh. As much as I enjoyed them, will I open them again? Well, maybe, but if I want to I could just put in the request at the NYPL, or I could download them to my Kindle (if I'm not still on the waiting list in 2010). Paying for the whole thing all over again would be a lot cheaper than renting storage to stockpile paperbacks. Why bother? Clear up my personal space for more library books!

All those textbooks from Chubb. Do I still need database textbooks? I learned the material, I have the job. Any references I need, I have at work. The textbooks on COBOL and Visual Basic? It hurts simply to discard them. I spent $10,000 on that education. But hey, mission accomplished. I work in technology now. Why would I want to store that stuff? If it were important, I'd have it at work!

I threw out books today. God have mercy on my soul.

Posted by Jai at 08:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When I was in college, I was into a writer named Jerry Pournelle. He's written a number of famous science fiction novels and he is also a science fact news writer. I've read a bunch of his books. I just found his website and blog.

Jerry Pournelle: Chaos Manor Musings

He's gearing up to do a video podcast. He says that it will encourage him to straighten up his office. I don’t know what he’s talking about. I think it looks just fine!

Posted by Jai at 02:17 PM | Permalink

My natural approach to organization derives from geology. The lower down you go, the older it is. Two inches down is last month. Two feet, 2003.

That's how they discovered Troy, by unearthing ancient layers. Troy happens to be the oldest layer in my personal history, too. How about that. Come in, Schliemann.

If I stacked stuff at home, it would drive Jan crazy. So this site is a chance for me to heap up junk while cutting Jan a break.

Visit

Hi to Josef, Christel, and Ralf Loegering, my relatives from Germany. It was great seeing you during your visit to New York. I know I promised to send you snapshots, but they didn't turn out. Darn. I can only handle still lifes. Maybe if you were sleeping, I could make a nice picture.

Still Life

A nice shot from my second photo session.

Posted by Jai at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After 911, I sent an email out to all my friends and family letting them know I was okay. I also posted it to Tango-L, an email list devoted to social Argentine Tango. Later, I got replies from people all over the world.

911 marked the beginning of my life in Hell's Kitchen. I went to see Jan because I couldn't get home to Astoria. I never went home after that.

Always choose being together.

Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 21:16:53 -0700 (PDT)

From: "Jai Jeffryes" <jaijeffryes@yahoo.com>

Subject: Still here

Hi everybody,

I'm still here, and I'm fine. If you can believe it, merely three weeks ago I began working at 2 World Financial Center, the building adjoining the World Trade Center. Yesterday, I was running a little behind schedule. The time that the first airplane impacted is the time that I'm usually walking across the plaza below. My train bypassed my station, which annoyed me because that meant I would have to walk two blocks back to get to the World Trade Center. I had no idea that anything had just transpired, except some guy got on one stop back and was raving about something that he said still had him shaking. I thought he had witnessed a mugging or maybe he was just crazy.

When I got out at the Wall Street station it was mere seconds after the second plane had impacted and I was in the middle of pandemonium. It looked like the beginning of a ticker tape parade with paper and debris raining down on the street. I turned a corner and saw the twin towers aflame. I circled the area trying to find out if my building was still intact.

It never occured to me that 110-story skyscrapers could collapse. Viewing the fire and smoke, I could not even believe what I was seeing. As I circled the area, the fires were becoming visibly larger and I could see more deeply into the interior of the building. It was dawning on me that this fire could never be controlled. Then I heard the sound of the tower collapsing. I didn't know that was what was happening because I couldn't see it. I thought maybe some of the facade had fallen away. Fortunately, I was not hit by any debris, but a tide of ash rolled over my area and engulfed all of us. It was like a nuclear winter. I was right against the river by Battery Park and just about ready to jump into the water, but I realized there was no fire coming at me. It was just ash and soot. I pulled my shirt up over my nose and mouth and avoided breathing any of it. It was akin to snowflakes, but thicker than any blizzard. I could see 10-20 feet anead of me and that was it. Day became night, and other people who were getting that gunk in their throats were hacking and expectorating.

I didn't know how much of the building had fallen, but I believed there could be more collapses, so I endeavored to walk south and east around the tip of Manhattan before any more waves of ash could roll over me. Shortly thereafter, I heard the same sound again which turned out to be the other tower collapsing. By this time, the first tidal wave of soot had thinned out enough for me to see that now a second one was rolling in my direction and would catch up in about 5 minutes. I kept walking briskly eastward, so when it finally hit me it was considerably thinner than the one that hit me when I was only a block away from the area.

I finally got far enough north not to be downwind of the conflagration. I was covered from head to toe with white ash that I heard one firefighter speculate consisted of pulverized concrete. It was as if someone had emptied a sack of lime over me. I knew from the time right after I exited the subway that it was important for me to make phone calls to loved ones to let them know I was okay. (That was before two 110-storey skyscrapers collapsed into oblivion practically right next to me!) However, long lines were to be found at every pay phone. I finally got my bearings and walked uptown. In Chinatown, I finally found a pay phone that had only a few people in line in front of it. I called my folks who were mightily relieved. (Incidentally, my calling card from Excel wouldn't work, but 1-800-COLLECT did... this is an unsolicited endorsement!)

I was starving, for I had eaten nothing at all yet. Street vendors were in business, so I bought a shishkebab in a pita. As I was standing there, I coughed from the charcoal smoke from the grill. I laughed ironically at myself standing there covered in soot from America's worst terrorist attack yet too oblivious to stand upwind of a street vendor's burning charcoal!

The streets were choked with people because no transportation services were functioning. You could easily discern who had been near the attack and who had not. The throngs of people headed uptown and covered in soot were the ones who'd been in it. The throngs of people headed downtown were the ones who hadn't been there and were trying to get a closer look. I made my way to the west side 20's where my brother works. I didn't know if my parents had succeeded in getting through to him by phone since phone service was spotty. He had heard nothing about me, and said over and over again that he had hoped I would have the sense just to come to his office.

It was there that I first saw the footage of the collapsing towers. I was dumbfounded. I hadn't realized that this was what caused the sound I had first heard from the next block. The area where the rubble fell was the side where I had been standing approximately 15 minutes earlier.

I continued my walk uptown. I bought an NYC tee-shirt from a tourist shop along the way to replace the soot- and mucous-encrusted shirt I was wearing and that had saved me from breathing any appreciable amounts of an incinerated World Trade Center. I also bought contact lens solution to clean my contacts and flush out my eyes. I stopped at a friend's apartment to wash off the soot, change into my clean tee-shirt and flush my eyes.

I still don't know if the building my company is in (2 World Financial Center) still exists. I don't know the status of my job nor that of the other guys on my team, who often arrive about the same time as I do. I might not get annoyed at slow trains anymore. Had I left for work 10 minutes earlier and not been on a delayed train, I would have been right under the face of the WTC when the first plane hit!

Every time I see clips of that blizzard of ash, I could swear that I still smell it.

Jai

Posted by Jai at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was bored with my old web site, so I trashed the whole thing and started over.

Heaven in Hell's Kitchen

Welcome to Heaven in Hell's Kitchen! I publish my e-zine bi-weekly. I hope you'll come back to see how the site cleans up over time. I could go out and buy a blog, but for me half the fun is building it myself. Later, I'll tell you how I did it (in a separate part, in case you want to skip the technical bits).

In the Beginning

Before life in Hell's Kitchen, life was just hell. Well, not really. Astoria isn't exactly hell, but I stayed too long.

I came to New York in 1990 to work as a musician. I set up digs in Astoria, and it was a great place to start out. It was cheap, and getting into town was easy. Lots of musicians lived there.

From Stepping Stone to Mill Stone

By the year 2000 I'd long stopped kidding myself that Astoria was a "stepping stone". I'd had a great time working in show business for a decade, but now I had gone as far as I wanted to go with that.

The Turn of the Century

I was now an IT consultant with Deloitte. Two weeks into my new job, I was a little late to work. Read the email I transmitted after 911. I don't complain about late trains anymore.

Later, I went to my girlfriend's apartment to shower pulverized World Trade Center off me.

I never went home after that. Good-bye, Astoria.

I like my life.

Posted by Jai at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)