You might recall that some time ago I completely revamped the main site of Home for Fiction. In the same post I mentioned how one day, if I’d only find the motivation and energy, I’d completely redo the blog, too. Turns out, anger is great motivation. You’re reading a brand new Home for Fiction blog.
Where the anger (and motivation) came from? Before I tell you, know this: The whole process took about a week. It would’ve likely taken even less if it hadn’t happened during the holidays. That’s right; it took me about a week to go from “fuck this shit!” to coding my blog from scratch. Here’s how – and why anger, with certain constraints, can be useful.
This is the image that greets you on the front page of the Home for Fiction blog. Albert Camus’s quotation below it is also relevant to a discussion on anger and motivation: “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”(more…)
Quite a nice little series I seem to be creating… This is the second “why I became disillusioned” kind of post after that on making Android apps. I’ve spent 12 years at the university – as a student, researcher, and teacher. But it’s time to admit it: I’ve lost faith in the academia; perhaps irreparably.
We won’t change the world simply by reading literature a different way, even against the grain. It’s a matter of whether we want to be a part of communities outside the university, where issues of equality are the daily reality.
I also note there that “I have no interest in an academia that does not act this way, and every academic work I have produced has been a small but honest effort in that direction.”
Well, let’s reverse that somewhat.
Every academic work I have produced has been a small but honest effort in that direction, but I have no interest in an academia that does not act this way.
This has been a major reason why I lost faith in the academia.
The reasons I lost faith in the academia mostly revolve around freedom of thought and, mostly, around possessing the capacity for freedom of thought(more…)
This is a bit special, unusual post, squeezed in-between the regular flow of Home for Fiction posts. It’s basically an email reply I sent to a Narrative Nods user in regard to my response to a review.
This surely sounds a bit complicated (and perhaps the headline a bit overwhelming), so here’s a very brief background.
Some time ago, I decided to stop working on offering updates for Narrative Nods – for reasons you’ll see below. I also don’t feel motivated to work on the rest of my apps. This became apparent to users after I left the following response to a review on Google Play:
[…]Frankly, I think you might be quite right. This app is rather pointless, certainly not as engaging as a fruit tapping game or a selfie camera app. I’m considering removing it from the Store or, at the very least, never bother with it ever again. There’s more important things out there. Cheers!
This was understandably misinterpreted as sarcastic, so I had to offer another response:
Thanks for the support, but you might’ve (understandably) misunderstood me. I wasn’t being sarcastic in that response. I actually believed—still do—that the app isn’t as useful as I’d initially thought. Its main flaw is that it needs users to put in the work, and not everyone is mature enough for that (that’s what the ‘fruit tapping’ part implied).
This, again inevitably, was misunderstood further. Google Play allows only 350 characters in a given review – or “review” – or response, which makes it impossible to properly express what’s going on. A user emailed me and asked me not to be hostile and feel hurt by negative feedback.
Today’s post is a chance for me to extend my response to a more general audience. The purpose is for other users of my Android apps to have a proper explanation about the situation, as well as for others to catch a glimpse of the dynamics involved. Great teaching material regarding digital misunderstanding, among other things.
“Nothing is more important than cats. And even they are not very important” Old Chinese proverb (sort of)(more…)
