The eyes have it

Time for another potpourri post.

1. Here’s a bit on eye contact from the SIRC flirting guide which puts into words something I’ve been thinking about for a while but hadn’t solidified:

Eye contact — looking directly into the eyes of another person — is such a powerful, emotionally loaded act of communication that we normally restrict it to very brief glances. Prolonged eye contact between two people indicates intense emotion, and is either an act of love or an act of hostility. It is so disturbing that in normal social encounters, we avoid eye contacts of more than one second….

Once a conversation begins, it is normal for eye contact to be broken as the speaker looks away. In conversations, the person who is speaking looks away more than the person who is listening, and turn-taking is governed by a characteristic pattern of looking, eye contact and looking away.

2. When I’m chatting with someone on Gmail, I find that if they capitalize beginnings of sentences and use punctuation, so do I. But if they don’t, neither do I. And if they switch, I subconsciously do so, too, almost instantly. Weird. But maybe it’s for solidarity — the need to make others feel comfortable.

3. Check out Gever Tulley’s TED talk on 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do. An eye-opener. :)

4. Also check out this mini booklet stapler, courtesy of Cool Tools.

5. Today’s Dilbert pretty much sums up my feelings on New Year’s. :P

6. I rarely read the news, but today I started reading CNN, and man, it’s rather interesting. Since the media always has biases, though, I’m wondering (a) where CNN falls, and (b) who else I ought to read as a counterbalance. One source from the left, one from the right, and one moderate — that’s what I’m after. The way to circumscribe the truth, hopefully, or at least get a better picture. The other trick is finding the right RSS feeds that won’t completely drown me in news I don’t care about (like sports).

7. A few weeks ago I got sick (nothing major, just enough to be rather uncomfortable) and slept in for a few days. And the few days turned into weeks. And as a result I started going to bed later, moving from my 10pm-5am routine to something more like midnight-8am. I have to say that while I do feel more rested, the loss of my morning productivity time has been killing me. I can’t do it. I have to wake up early. Yesterday I woke up at 5 and it was bliss, like coming home after a long journey. Of course I still went to bed late (by habit) and then slept in again today, but it won’t take long before I’m back in my groove. ~fingers crossed~

8. I may not be at inbox zero, but I’m at inbox four, and all four are small to-do items. Hurrah! Now to figure out how to keep it up…

9. From M’s blog, I just discovered the Wikipedia list of fictional books. It’s like Christmas all over again.

Regarding 6: The counterpoint for CNN is E! Online. CNN, at least their website, is an entertainment destination, not a serious news outlet.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/merlin/2125194713/

Regarding 8: I’ve found that getting to Inbox Zero the first time is actually the toughest part. I had 500 emails frightening me, and after a while I got sick of it and just went through with no mercy. A day or two later, it was finished. After that, it’s not so tough. Delete everything you don’t need to keep, archive the things you do, respond to the ones that contain actions.

M: Regarding that pic from Merlin, LOL! That’s awesome. I have found real news (or at least what I assume is real news) under the “World” and “U.S.” and “Politics” tabs, though. But I’m not wedded to CNN, so as soon as I find a better outlet, goodbye, Cinnamon baby.

As for Inbox Zero, you’re right, getting there’s the hard part. Once I get in the habit, I should be fine. (That’s what I’ve been doing with my RSS feeds for the past couple of weeks, actually, making a point of going through them two or three times a day to keep it manageable, so it doesn’t build up into a huge mass of unread items.) I’m really, really hoping I manage to keep it afloat this time.

See, for me with RSS, I’ve pushed the problem in the other direction. I set the “check for updates” to every hour and then go for it, and any feed I feel like I’m just reading to make the numbers go away (Lifehacker, looking at you) I delete.

Good point. Too often I keep telling myself, “What if there’ll be a great post just around the corner?” And so I stay subscribed, but that’s silly, really. (This is for non-family/friend blogs, I should add. It’s very rarely that I unsubscribe from the blog of someone I actually know.) Time to declutter. (Lifehacker has a digest feed, though, with the top stories each week. Very handy.)