a thaumaturgical compendium

I’m feeling particularly myopic lately, and it has nothing to do with my new eyeglasses (yay, flex spending account!). I feel singularly indisposed to offering a cool wrap-up of the year, or a prognosis of things to come. No top 10 lists or statistics. No, the most I can hope to think about right now is… January. So, without further ado, my January Resolutions.

1. Start nothing new

With the exception of the items to follow, I will start no project that cannot be completed the same day. Of course, I have some ongoing projects I need to take care of, and the Internet Research conference deadline is looming, but for the entire month, I will only work on projects I consider “outstanding.”

This means, as much as I hate to say it, no recording of my sister’s brilliant reworking of Iron Man: “I am Santa Clause,” and not actually trying any of the neat projects in Make Magazine.

2. Two new distance courses.

Not surprisingly, I’m well behind in planning for my two courses this semester, both of which will be distance courses. Almost all the materials–at least those I create–will be open access. My short audio “lectures” and other materials will be posted to the blog here. So, for January, I want a strong plan for each course, and a good launch mid-month. This is going to take up the greatest proportion of my time, I’m afraid.

3. See at least one play, watch at least three movies, and read at least one new novel.

I already have some of these lined up. I’ve ordered a used copy of Spook Country, and will see one of those films tomorrow morning.

4. Finish writing a book

Yes, I actually have started the book, to be published by Polity. It’s nearly done, but needs some revision in places. The book is called Search Engine Society and looks at the social place of search engines. It needs a bit more theoretical development and to draw in a more global perspective, as well as some other changes, which I hope to have finished–or nearly so–sometime around the end of the month.

5. Make progress on hire

We’re trying to hire a new colleague to teach in the Interactive Communication masters program. Hope to have visits scheduled and maybe even some completed by the end of the month.

6. Learn new manual skill

Yes, that’s a little obscure, but I have my reasons. I’ll be able to say more at the end of the month, I hope.

7. No more Digg.

Yes, have to quit something bad for me, and I’m afraid Digg is getting the old heave ho. I’ve just removed the gadget from my iGoogle page. The good stuff usually ends up (or comes from) BoingBoing anyway.

8. Do something about AoIR Wiki

I’ve managed to enlist others’ help on the major projects for AoIR, including the website redesign and the conference web. The wiki remains a target of spam, and is running a woefully out-of-date version of Mediawiki. After several attempts at updating to the current version, I’m thinking I will probably throw in the towel and spin off a new install (without the current accounts), but I want to see if I can transfer as much as possible. Then I hope to do some serious reformatting and weeding on the site.

9. Lose 10 pounds

This is here because it would be bad form not to include it in a list of resolutions. I lost a lot of weight last year, and gained nearly all of it back again. So, I suppose a more careful wording would be “Weigh 10 pounds less than today by the end of the month.” There are subsidiary goals here: more exercise, etc., but I’m already boring you.

10. There will be blog

Hope to get back to blogging a few times each week. That’s made much easier by the list above, which I will be blogging about. (Well, probably not as much about #5 or #6.) By January 31, I’ll see how well I’ve measured up to these.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 8:03 pm and is filed under Planning.