my rhetorical compulsion

• rhetorical - of or relating to rhetoric
• rhetoric - the study of the effective use of language
• compulsion - an irresistible impulse to act, regardless of the rationality of the motivation

I have a rhetorical compulsion. I suspect it's rare. It isn't even as popular as others in its category such as semicolon aversion. It's at once general, pervasive, and easily triggered. It's also simple in concept and tricky to fulfill. It's this: don't reuse non-basic words.

All the tenses of words like "I", "it", "be", "do", "have" are basic. Not reusing those words would be certifiably insane. My compulsion pertains solely to non-basic words. The previous paragraph's non-basic words include but are not limited to: "rhetorical", "compulsion", "suspect", "popular", "aversion", "general", "pervasive", "simple"... "Compulsion" is an exception since it's the subject in this case. As I compose a blog entry in Firefox I frequently activate the convenient "Find in this page" function to perform a redundance check with my hands staying on the keyboard. It's the next best thing to paying attention to the communication of my point.

I blame the growth of my rhetorical compulsion to several influences. The most reasonable of the bunch is that a moderate version of it is widespread advice: strive for precise, varied, colorful word choices. I'd add a close corollary: if every other sentence contains "very" then you should try harder, mmm'kay?

Another component is my awareness of stylometry. I'm perturbed by the thought that my mind can be correlated however imperfectly to analyses of my prose. What makes that annoyance still more illogical is that at the same time I know I have a particular style and I'm in fact unapologetic about it. Yet I avoid repetition in the hopeless effort to render myself more incalculable.

To flourish, especially in the beginning, a compulsion must have a driver that regularly presents the stimulus. Mine is when I read now and can't help noticing the author's favorite terms, descriptions, and expressions. "Huh. These characters' lips twitch a lot, and they often speak 'dryly'." I concede that it's unfair to compare the level of monotony in a novel to that of a blog (or an amateurish short story), but if I was applying a sense of proportion I wouldn't be compulsive about it, would I?

A vital ingredient of a habit is that it meets a real or imagined need of the actor. It somehow satisfies. In this instance, one of the favorable outcomes is remembering and using marginally obscure words. I'm not so far gone that I skim the thesaurus or dictionary for amusement (not enough plot). Nevertheless, I enjoy a little variety and novelty in my vocabulary, somewhat like listening to randomized playback or purposely not eating the same entrée at the same restaurant. And let's not bother to pretend that all words have equal zest.

Perhaps the ideal way to end this therapy session is a quote that exemplifies the disdain-provoking opposite extreme of my rhetorical compulsion:

You're asking me to be rational. That is something I know I cannot do. Believe me, I wish I could just wish away my feelings, but I can't.

UPDATE (04/22/08): Handy word frequency counter here: http://www.writewords.org.uk/word_count.asp . Test my posts. G'head. Dare ya.

why "Art Vandalay" writes Rippling Brainwaves

I was reading On The Meaning of "Coding Horror" (short version: the blogger's a coding horror because all professional coders are--and the best coping tactic is to be humble and teachable), when I followed a link to a past entry, Thirteen Blog Clichés. I agree with most of the list; fortunately, Rippling Brainwaves hasn't had many violations, although that's partly because its basis is unmodified Blogger (items 1, 4, 6, 13). Avoidance of randomly-chosen inline images (2), personal life (8), the topic of blogging (10), mindless link propagation (11), top-n lists (12) happened naturally because I try to publish using two fundamental guidelines: 1) only include content I would honestly find interesting if it was on someone else's blog (content Golden Rule), 2) only link elsewhere if I supplement that link's content with substantial and original commentary. The first exception to guideline two is when I judge that the link must be shared, but I don't have anything to add because the link is just that good or important.

However, the third item in the list, "No Information on the Author", needs further mention. The item's word choices are emphatic, so I'll quote in entirety.

When I find well-written articles on blogs that I want to cite, I take great pains to get the author's name right in my citation. If you've written something worth reading on the internet, you've joined a rare club indeed, and you deserve proper attribution. It's the least I can do.

That's assuming I can find your name.

To be fair, this doesn't happen often. But it shouldn't ever happen. The lack of an "About Me" page-- or a simple name to attach to the author's writing -- is unforgivable. But it's still a problem today. Every time a reader encounters a blog with no name in the byline, no background on the author, and no simple way to click through to find out anything about the author, it strains credulity to the breaking point. It devalues not only the author's writing, but the credibility of blogging in general.

Maintaining a blog of any kind takes quite a bit of effort. It's irrational to expend that kind of effort without putting your name on it so you can benefit from it. And so we can too. It's a win-win scenario for you, Mr. Anonymous.

These are excellent points excellently expressed. I hope the rebuttals are worthy:

• Like any blogger, I'm always glad to discover that my precious words are connecting to someone rather than going softly into the Void. However, I think it's up to me to decide what I "deserve". Attribution to my proper name isn't one of my goals, because becoming a celebrity is not one of my goals. Crediting the blog and linking back is thanks enough, because that action has the potential to prevent future precious words from going softly into the Void. And by all means, be ethical enough to not plagiarize.
  
• This blog is of my ideas, the titular Rippling Brainwaves. It isn't about (original) news. It isn't about (original) research or data, unless you count the anecdotal set of personal experiences I use for reference. The information in this blog, which is mostly opinions anyway, can and should be evaluated on its own merits. In this context lack of a byline should have no bearing on the credulity of the author, the writing itself, or "blogging in general". Here, the ideas reign or fall apart from the author. Think of it like a Turing Test: if a computer was writing this blog, or a roomful of monkeys at typewriters, etc., would that make any difference, in this context? Part of what makes the Web special, in my opinion, is the possibility that here, as in the World of Warcraft, everyone can interact apart from the prejudices and spacetime limitations implicit in face-to-face/"first life". Objectivity++.
  
• Given that credibility is not in question, and I function as the writer of this blog, not the topic (item 8, "This Ain't Your Diary"), I'm not convinced that my identity is of interest. I don't mind stating that I am not a famous individual, I do not work at an innovative software start-up or even at one of the huge software corporations, I am not a consistent contributor to any FLOSS projects, and in almost all respects my often-uneventful but quietly-satisfying life is not intriguing. More to the point, I don't want anyone who reads to "color" my words with knowledge of the writer: don't you dare belittle my ideas because of who I am.
• Probably the most childish or indefensible reason I have for being a "Mr. Anonymous" is anxiety about real-life repercussions from what I write, to both career and personal relationships. I also appreciate the freedom of expression which comes from disregarding such repercussions, and I believe uninhibitedness benefits the readers, too. Who wouldn't like the chance to say whatever one wants? I'm nicer in person, yet I'm guessing that's the typical case. It's rare to hear someone comment, "I don't have road rage. I only have hallway rage."
  
• Lastly, I won't dispute the assertion that "Maintaining a blog of any kind takes quite a bit of effort". Perhaps I should be putting in more, at least in order to achieve more frequent updates. Currently, and for the foreseeable future, I will post as I wish, and not until I judge the post is worthy and ready. I started blogging for the same reasons as many others: 1) I enjoy doing it, 2) I feel that I (at times) have valuable thoughts to share, 3) I hunger for greater significance, 4) I wish to give back to the Web, 5) I like communicating with people who have common interests, 6) I relish correcting and counterbalancing what others write. Those reasons are how I "benefit" from the blog. Are those reasons "irrational"? Eh, if you say so. Either way, I can't stop/help myself. As I keep repeating, this blog isn't about me, my career, or my finances. Ad income wouldn't earn much anyhow, and even it did, I wouldn't want to look like someone who's trying to drive Web traffic for profit. The blog is about what I'm compelled to publish. (And inserting ads would morally obligate me to use my real name. Hey, if you're planning to potentially profit off people, you should at least have the decency to tell them where the money's going.)
  

I'll end by saying that, notwithstanding the above, I'm certainly willing to consider revealing more about my identity. But what information, why, and how is it worth forgoing the benefits of anonymity?

96th post: a look at some past comments

96 posts. Wowzers. To celebrate, here's some links to past blog comments that I found most memorable:

• First comment. I was able to track down a problem in my KnoppMyth installation with some rather unimpressive tactics, but the root cause wasn't obvious so I posted my findings for others to find. And it helped someone! It never hurts to help!
• Comment from Neal Gafter. I linked and commented about a blog entry someone else wrote about Java closures. Neal, in turn, commented on my lil' blog. (My feelings since then are if you want to use closures, why not just use Groovy?)
• Haskell comment. Back before I had read more about Haskell, I was still on the fence as to whether it was too complicated to learn/grok. I linked to the commenter's blog as an example of hard Haskell code, which led to a fully-justified comment that more or less said, "The Haskell code wasn't the hard part at all. The hard part was the subject matter. It's to Haskell's credit that the code didn't need to be more complicated." Good call.
• Abacus manual comment from Totton Heffelfinger. My post about the abacus linked to an online manual, along with some honest words about how much I liked it. The author thanked me.
• Comments to "the worst interview question". Touched a nerve, did I? On one hand, having a blog entry on reddit is living the blogger dream: being published (and others online taking some valuable time to read what was published). On the other hand, the blog entry that appeared on reddit was an entry I barely spent any time or effort on, nor was it particularly insightful or deep. Que sera, sera.
  

a gaggle of minor updates to recent posts

• I thought up a scenario of House visiting Scrubs, which is mere wishful thinking because the two shows are on different networks. However, the inventive but seldom subtle Scrubs writers explicitly used House as the inspiration/theme for the last episode, "My House", with Cox as a House stand-in. It was okay, but I wish it had been more.
• Over my holiday time-off, I finally applied myself to trying multiplication and division on my (Japanese) abacus. The experience gave my memory of the 9x9 multiplication table a workout. Other than that, the biggest obstacle I had was keeping track of which rods to add or subtract products from. In the written methods, you can work your way down the page, so each product and addition/subtraction has its own space. On the abacus, I can only move left or right, although the procedure does proceed in a systematic order that feels more natural with practice. This also means that an abacus problem only has a "running" total for the answer; the intermediate steps leave no record. On the other hand, revising an incorrect guess at a digit of a quotient is a pretty simple task (no erasing!).
• I tuned in to Beauty and the Geek for some reason that I can't remember at the moment. This confirmed to me that I must be almost the very last person to become aware of Freakonomics, because one of the show's challenges consisted of the beauties attempting to carry on an informed interview with one of the book's coauthors, Mr. Dubner. How much do the authors of that book want to be noticed? There's your answer. By the way, I had a guilty conscience about watching a show whose whole premise is based on stereotypes and the attendant mockery, until I remembered that the majority of TV characters are stereotypical so at least this show portrays actual people who are attempting to burst through the boundaries of their stereotypes. And is it so wrong to laugh at the pick-up line, "I wish I were sine squared and you were cosine squared, so together we could be one"?
• A while ago I noted that Don Syme had made a draft chapter of an F# book available from his blog. Since that time he has added a few more chapters, and updated the old. Taken together, the chapters are great for learning how F# supports the Big Three paradigms: imperative, object-oriented, and functional. Unfortunately, my boss(es) are keen on restricting what languages we can use. I can see their point, but...
• As some of you may have guessed after reading the small list of Gnome vs. KDE complaints in the post that reported my surrender to the Ubuntu camp, I eventually installed the Kubuntu packages. Couldn't be happier.

Bonus independent mini-rant: I'm starting to hate the sites that have user-submitted, user-judged links. I'm not referring to the usual reasons: too much groupthink (resulting in articles that seem to always be about the same monotonous list of "safe" topics or viewpoints), poor-quality writing in the submissions, links to blogs that link to somewhere else, links to sensationalistic trash, periodically recurring links (cyclic dupes), etc. No, at this point in time I'm referring to the tendency for these sites to act as aggregators for Ars Technica. For crying in the mud, I got the message long (years) ago, when the site used white text on black background, that Ars is worth visiting on a daily basis just because it's Ars. Now please stop trying to constantly bring the site down by directing traffic there 24/7! Gosh!

blog updates

I switched this blog over to the new "beta", and then I applied some labels (or tags?) to the posts and tried out the blog customization. Not too shabby. Now the WordPress blogs don't make me feel quite as inferior.

Here's some further explanation about the subject each label represents, with the caveat that this list will soon be out of date:

• .Net/F#. (ASP).Net or F#
• Blog Responses. A response to a post on another blog
• Metaposts. The blog
• Philosophical Observations. Sincere but amateurish remarks about (what passes here as) deep philosophical topics
• Rants. Rants that serve no constructive purpose
• Reviews. Reviews of movies, books, TV
• Software Development. Techniques, debates, and general observations of software development and programming languages
• Software Explorations. My investigations into existing software, or any original (to me) ideas for/about software
  
• Trivial Observations. Miscellaneous topics and comments
  

First post!

I thought it might be fun to have a blog. I will try to not babble on about the insignificant string of occurences which is my everyday life. My purpose here is not to promote myself, but to provide a public avenue of expression. So I'll only post as I feel like it, about whatever topics I feel like...if anyone actually reads this, that would be dandy.