Cleaning out your digital gutters !

Jul 04

Before I left on holiday (a blissful week in the North of France where sunshine is plenty and data coverage is poor) I set out on my little quest to gather all the stuff I wanted to read, listen to and watch during my few days away from civilisation. (Civilisation being the triple screen uber-workstation I call “my office”). It was a nice exercise picking out books I want to read, downloading Youtube video’s I want to watch and some podcasts I wanted to catch up on. Of course I will never have the time to consume all of that content (Unless we get snowed in for 3 weeks straight) but it was a fun exercise in “Curating” my own digital library.

“Curating the library of your mind”

“Curating the library of your mind” had been a topic for a show many moons ago where I talked about ways to “slipstream” the information overload a geek has to live with into something that adds to the quality of your life. Mainstream media (Both online and offline) are filled with 80% sludge and 20% valuable content. Before you know it you spend hours on Facebook, browse endlessly through 9gag or Instagram while you COULD be listening to a lecture from Harvard University or teaching yourself how to program. I try to think about these things whenever I use my computer. Am I using my time in a valuable manner or am I just watching cat video’s ?

To help me in this I’ve started to build a sort of library of content on my Linux machine that I synchronise with my mobile devices where I have divided up this library in “To Watch, To Listen, To Read”. It features download Ted talks, PDF’s of articles online, Books, Courses I found somewhere etc. Because I always have them handy I always have an excuse NOT to surf Facebook for hours because, I have alternative (and higher quality) content.

As a geek it’s important to clean out your “digital gutters” from time to time,

As a geek it’s important to clean out your “digital gutters” from time to time, taking stock of what you are spending (or waisting) your time on and, if it is getting you anywhere. My personal career as a IT professional has been fundamentally altered for the better because I spent 3 hours a day listening to podcasts instead of listening to stupid breakfast-radioshows. There is a lot of information out there that you can get into. You are responsible for the quality of the content you consume.

A couple of days ago I was cleaning out the gutters of our new house (you know, the ones so clogged up your drainpipe has nothing to do when it’s raining). I pinned on my Mike and started a recording for HPR about “Cleaning our your digital gutters”. Hope you enjoy.

Link: http://hackerpublicradio.org/eps.php?id=2587

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