Sunday, April 03, 2011

On Imminent Domain, Proper iPad Usage, and the Original Mai Tai Recipe

No more than one year ago the concept of thinking about a consolidated online communication strategy for me would be as you would imagine, unimaginable.

Over the past year I have shed my inhibitions of writing online and derision of the format and have fully embraced the blog1. The unwitting realization I have come to realize in the past ten months is that there is a discernable difference between writing in a series of moleskine notebooks and what I blog about. With the transaction cost of posting on a blog being virtually zero it would be rational to expect that any and all musings would make it to the blog. Contrary to what occurs in my series of notebooks, bar napkins2, and regular napkins I have developed a strong sense of self-editing in the blog.

It is my firm belief that an implicit social contract exists between the writer and the reader. It is the writer’s duty to provide the best available content and to publish all the posts that are fit to blog. For every post that appears on the blog exist a series of musings, undeveloped concepts, and long lost ideas As a result the way I am as a writer3 comes very much out of what I want as a reader.

I’ve decided to consolidate my communications in a series of outlets that will be unified by a soon to be determined online domain4.

My newly acquired iPad will often be the center-point of my digital communication series. Over the past two weeks I have set-up my iPad to be a unified media manager of music, videos, documents, and nearly any time of digital file you can think of.

I have conveniently linked my iPad to a QNap Raid6 server and to a cloud service allowing me over 10TB of available storage space with multiple drive failure protection with data-duplication to save space8. This virtualized setup connects all of my points of contact including my stereo. This very morning I finished the setup uploading a substantial library worth of books, subscriptions to magazines, all of my newspapers, and nearly every piece of media one could want. It was at that moment I packed a small bag complete with a moleskine notebook, my copy of Rimbaud’s Une Saison en Enfer9, and the Sunday times and walked no more than twenty-seven blocks to my typical bench at East-River Park where I unpacked and continued to sit for several hours10.



Footnotes:

1www.capt-renault.blogspot.com

2My bar napkin musings are often quite informative, include diagrams, and often have a distinct gin aroma

3What really interest me about writing is this exchange between consciousness and this relationship to talk to each other when we otherwise wouldn’t.

4 Blog: www.capt-renault.blogspot.com

The blog will continue to contain long form post with a focus on economics and drink recipes

Twitter:

The goal of the twitter will be to document short ideas5, musings, jokes, and pictures. I will also use it to communicate with a select number of people I will follow

4Square:

Selectively document where I am and to best geo-locate with my close friends

Website6:

The website will provide the host to all the forms of communication and will also feature appendix information, diagrams, and details of any ongoing art projects

5Ideas and thoughts are really the greatest thing going

6My initial thought was to register www.jasonme.ad7

7Registering a webpage with an “ad” extension proves to be an issue as I am not an Andorran citizen and would have to register a limited liability corporation within Andorra. While this can all be done online and I enjoy the frivolity of having a holding company in Andorra I don’t believe I want to spend the requested $188 per year for that privilege against my ability to think of something equally clever.

8A large motivating factor was just knowing that I could do this

9I have yet to find another copy that has the English translation on the left page and the original French on the right page as is this copy that was misappropriate from The George Washington University library

10As we are beginning to feel the onset of spring I thought it would be appropriate to share a summer cocktail. Under the right setting I rather like summer cocktails. Mai Tai is a Tahitian word for “good” which appropriately describes the drink called the “Mai Tai.” The now-chain restaurant Trader Vic’s claims to have invented the Mai Tai, I am quite suspect of the claim “invented” but I do maintain that they popularized the drink in the United States. The below is the traditional Trader Vic’s recipe:

  • 2 ounces of 17-year old J. Wray & Nephew Rum over shaved ice
  • Juice from one very fresh lime
  • 1/2 ounce Holland DeKuyper Orange Curacao
  • 1/4 ounce Trader Vic's Rock Candy Syrup
  • 1/2 ounce French Garier Orgeat Syrup
  • Shake for no more than 10 seconds
  • Pour into an old fashioned glass and garnish with a spring of mint

2 comments:

with_love_and_squalor said...

Twitter handle
infinitejason

Michale said...

This is awesome...to see you back and the set on itself too.
I will enjoy this very much.Renault