? Bewildered.

Hello! Since you're my main company, I thought I'd write an update. Tho won't say as much using only thumbs. I started sewing Sunday. I'll be sewing by hand probably. See my del.icio links for some of the story. Then, what to do while hand sewing what could take months? Well I found out how to listen to audiobooks on this. And I've only been using solar power to charge this, and so far, so good. Keeping phone in offline mode, such as when typing this or when listening to audiobooks may have helped.

My month of unlimited prepaid data is coming to an end in a day or two. But I'll still get email on this - I just forward non-spam on as mms messages to the phone. And reply by mms to the email. $5/mo for 200 msgs. Plus, I still have 836 or so left from the 1000 I paid $10 for, and these roll over, not expiring till July 10.

A lot more has passed through my mind as potential things to say here. The one that may sum them up: "Bewildered" as a possible title or part title for this blog. Not that I don't have moments when "*".

Learning more about the domestic sewing world has been an eye-opener. Hellomynameisheather blog and Blissful Living are two examples of the posher version. People spend hours sewing for meaning, pleasure, not money. No one you know? There are signs they exist. I managed at least an hour today, in spite of at least a few hours of fiddling with the best way to play librevox audiobooks on this.

I'm camped out just outside the back door under a 5'x7' blue tarp suspended from the edges of the house and the _Dr Who_ shed. I never recovered from some respiratory issue, perhaps left over from the Barcamp disease, and my recent late night tech fiddling depravities made it worse at one point. Staying outside seems better for me and is more like how it is in the forest. The weather has been very nice, if a little San Francisco foggy at times, and I fear the fig trees have been delayed.

My friend who got me to look more seriously at Permaculture wrote to share how transformative he has found nonviolent communication to be - Marshall Rosenberg may be the name of the main author there.

I have been increasingly unmoved these days. Recent parings-down have been of my Internet life and past selves and causes. You know of my feed reduction already. More recent has been filter reduction. Now I'm minus perhaps 75 filters-- of people who no longer send me email, or of the many lists I no longer subscribe to.

[Just back from a break to get the rest of _Mysterious Island_ on here, to get computer started converting _Gulliver's Travels_, to order 2Gig mem card ($11), to see if any more ripe bananas for cheap in Vons (no, mornings are best), to walk around and find orange trees (score 4 but pickings slim without bike tho plenty unpicked trees behind fences), to get some things started cooking. Now, to eat.]

So, I also got rid of many labels I used for the filtered mail - all that is left representing many of them is 'walking sangha' - no more carfree, green, permaculture, monasticism, etc. I did not vote in the primaries.

That's enough for now.

Peace,

fiddle, mobile feed use

I typed that last post as a multimedia message. But I could not send it. Earlier I had deleted some connection settings to simplify, breaking mms sending. Eventually I copied the message to an email, sent it that way. And the formatting came out nice. Not sure if urls will be turned into links ( http://j9k.org ).

Then did a factory reset on the phone. So this morning - still morning - re set up the phone for the third time.

Feed reading & sharing: a drawback of bloglines is that it is not easily connected with the google share feature, or any other sharing, at least on this device.

So I may be re-adding feeds to G Reader, so I can share what I read that most interests me.

Everyone who makes these features seems focused on new mobile browser tech, such as what is on the iPhone.

Learning the limits, what is possible.

I can queue up messages, either sms or email, if I'm beyond reception, send them later.

A record of the ton of time spent fiddling, eventually leading to integrating the tech more smoothly in life, doing new things with it.

time to sew

This will be my first post from the Nokia E62, typed by thumbs. Also a test of whether SMS text fields can be more than 1000 characters on this phone.

A long week. I finally got a part refund on this phone, ordered a replacement housing. An odd thing was, the seller did not do a factory reset on the phone before sending it. It had old text messages, accidental voice recordings, full address book, months of appointments in the calendar. I didn't find out about the reset option until I broke the built-in web browser and wondered what to do about that.

The violin sold for $417 minus $30 in fees, minus $30 in shipping. Someone offered to pay $420 early on - a price I had offered as a 'Buy it now' option, but the ebay system required waiting until the end or cancelling the auction against policy. The week-long auction stayed under $155 until the last minutes. Apparently and understandably there are moves toward having the fixed-price option available longer, or as the only option. Currently with most auctions Buy It Now disappears with the first bid, however low that might be.

Finances: when I get below $2000, I start to sweat a bit more about money. Thanks to the violin sale, assuming the buyer is happy with it, I should be good for a while longer.

Current deadline to leave the city again: Friday, June 20.

Tech: this phone can tether - my laptop can get internet through this - att prepaid$20 unlimited internet for a month.

I switched to bloglines for some feeds. I deleted many feeds from G reader - nearly all, except my own. No way to add or delete feeds easily from G reader using this device. Bloglines is more mobile friendly perhaps - and lets you have unlimited email addresses to turn any email list into a feed.

I had too many feeds and would mindlessly, endlessly read through them.

Browsers, email: many options on this phone, but except for sending email, doing everything through the web using Opera Mini seems the best. OM may load pages slower at first, but it can quickly go back - while every other browser needs a reload. OM is awesome in many ways, and better than the opera mobile you'd have to register eventually.

GPS/LBS: This phone does not have GPS, but with a new google maps app, you can get your location within 1200 meters (at least where I am now), map view, satellite view, no topo lines yet. It is amazingly fast to scroll the full-screen-sized map around.

Email: using Gmail IMAP access, you can maintain Gmail folders on the phone. But slow. Better just to use it for composing and sending.

Typing: Will I exacerbate RSI by typing on this? I have to press somewhat hard on the keys. Would be nice, and quicker, just to touch them.

It is very nice to have the option of using an always-on portable net connection.

Power consumption: still testing. Have to leave phone always on because slow to boot. But easy to set offline or on. So far it seems like it will work fine with the solar charger & good to have a limit to endless browsing.

no camera -

Ebooks: no replacement for the old grayscale Clie yet - that is still easier on eyes to read (by turning the backlight off & using external light), and uses less power. But the free Mobipocket reader can read straight html ebooks. So I can download new reading with this (at least if they are zipped). Adding stuff to the Clie needs a PC.

Cut and Paste: this phone has it, many others don't.

By going with this phone, not the blackjack, I avoid microsoft, though I hear some say the BJ is way better. But there are less things to fiddle with here. & while some BJs went for less than $100, more of these do.

I'd like to not buy another until Android phones are out, with paper-like, front-lit displays. If I get a used windows mobile phone then, well, at least I got to explore this too.

For blogging, though, more people might like to follow this if I could post photos from the forest.

What else besides the phone (never used as a phone)? (--except to manage account. You can do free voice chat on newer models if you have unlimited data, by the way.)

WHAT ELSE BESIDES THE PHONE?

All bamboo and cane is down, and neighbors who wanted it took it away!

I met a guy who grows tons of sunflowers out of a roundup-fried yard and makes card games about rabbits. The game has so many fans, he's got his own wikipedia page. A non-collectible game. (Enough info to find the page? I think so.) We went on a walk around the hood yesterday. Tomorrow maybe chess in the park or on the Mary Kay lady's glass treestump-inlaid front yard chessboard. May get Laurie to help. He's planted trees too, mulberry among them. And mulberries are in season! Check your neighborhood trees. My last tweet: apricots, not nectarines.

My leisurely life: I only actually make forward physical leaving progress every other day. The other day I exercise visualize meditate browse web eat. Today was that day. I stay and speak be with pool friends. Today met Brad in chronic pain from 1992 or so car crash. Seeing him you would not guess. Suicide level. But has year old daughter. Two massive Samoans, one diabetic? cared for by younger other. Huge tall huge, but friendly, shy and not so much english. And Art told me about a WIE.org essay - something (not) like 'resonation awakening' ["the resonance of awakening"]- he was telling me about cohen and wilber!

Now with the garden here, I may actually start some sweet potato vines to plant as ground cover. In my neglect-the-garden experiment, sweet potatoes have done well. Turnips and established chard and perennial lima, too.

But about sewing. Violin sold, equipment procured, bamboo down, there's little more besides the sewing (and comfort) to keep me here. And even that could be portable. So tomorrow I expect to begin. Jardine sold to me when he said, ~ ". . . too busy watching tv or browsing the Internet to sew . . . you could be making or preparing for something worthwhile."

We'll see. I love being lighter and lighter. Were I to die or disappear (no immediate plans), there is less and less anyone would have to do to pick up after me. No mark on the world. Or JIT (just in time)? But a greater freedom to be still with self, with others?

I hope I manage to sew. Things seem to be ever more wonderfully odd. My laziness, procrast (for tomorrow) ination, near lack of industrious function - either for earthcare or economic grubbing 'should' bite me. Will it? (Child of privilege, but only because I chose to/had to stop to live within the vast room that is the existing privilege ? I am unbearably lucky, but only because I seek so little and all that disturbs leaves on its own time? What to make of the non-manic joy? I am not in chonic pain and I can be. Brad smiles.)

( off-trail the room is vast. Off road, off city, off desire, off compulsion , at the edge of all accepted . And I am made of and with the broad currents too !)

Even I think I do not function well. I go to the forest as a way to limit the absolutely useless compulsions.

It all may be adding up though. Slowly a functioning being of some sort is emerging?

Jardine functioning?
Brad functioning?
Etc.

No direction here, my friends, but I've had more engagement composing now than in a long time. All that compares recently has been stillness and sensing on the days such as this one.

Peace,

--
http://fo-rest.blogspot.com
http://purl.org/j9k/sig/

A bit of progress moving out. Dealing with tech, ebay.

Since last post I managed to get some of the bamboo taken down in the back and to get other things tossed out, straigtened up, or trimmed. I have all the stuff to sew, but may be carrying it all into the forest to sew by hand. . . we'll see.

Yesterday afternoon the used Nokia E62 showed up--so I've been checking that out since then. It turns out that it may be a less than perfect ebay experience, but, either way, it does more than what my old device did. Here's the email I just carefully composed:

I appreciate the fast shipping. I have found two problems with the device however. The main problem: a tiny piece of the rear cover (on the right side) that helps it stay tightly closed has broken off. This means the cover is slightly loose, creaky, and makes it more difficult and unpleasant to use the keypad. Another issue: the memory card showed up as corrupted. I was given the option to format it, and it formatted to a size of 483mb, not 1G. It later corrupted again. Only the loose back cover truly hinders my use of the device, but given that I was not expecting either issue, I imagine you would find it reasonable to let me return the device for a full refund, or to refund to me $50 of what I paid for the device. I understand how you might have gotten used to or have forgotten about these issues. What do you think is the best way to address my concerns? I appreciate your help--peace, Colin

All this is just to document where some of my attention is going while I'm not yet in the forest.