# Out of Sequence This is the Howell Creek Radio Address for Saturday, January 25, 2014. I'm Joel Dueck. * * * You'll never believe this, but the Joel who presents himself to the microphone this week (myself) is a different Joel than the one who has been hosting the addresses up until now. I'm a later version of Joel I guess is what I'd say; I'm forty-two years old, and the version of me that's indiginous, so to speak, to this timeplace, is 32, so in that sense I'd say I'm from ten years further in the future. I didn't make it back in two weeks like I said I would in last week's address; at this moment, as I record this, younger me is riding in a train and typing what should have been this week's address -- it'll become next week's address now. The guy's a bit silly actually, always complaining about taking the car battery that powers this little station in to get charged, and then lugging that typewriter around with him everywhere. But there is a world view in which those actions are consistent with each other. So many of you will be calling us a hipster for that, at least until he finishes what we're working on. You'll have to trust me on that. Actually it would make for a good podcast -- I'll just leave a note for myself...I was always struggling for ideas these days. Why am I here -- well, Joel, I'm on my way back, backwards, like I always wanted to do: backwards, and also "outwards"; and on my way, I wanted to kind of stop of, see the old radio shack, for old time's sake, but there's also something I wanted to try. If there was one thing I could change about this little radio endeavour, it was that too many people started to pick up on it too soon. I know I never thought I'd say that, but yeah...it sort of undermined the purpose a little. So I thought I'd sneak in here while I'm away and fill the air with a lot of intensely boring prose, that is, nonetheless, tangentially connected with the job I'm working on, the job that got me on that train to begin with. Combined with next week's address, that ought to set this thing back at least a year. * * * (Extended excerpt from *The Discarded Image* by C.S. Lewis; Cambridge University Press, 1964) * * * If you're still with me after all that, maybe it's because you recognized yourself in there. The practice of wrapping information in versioned APIs and shuttling it around, or in the early variants of RSS feeds which are still in use these days; the hackerly fascination with preserving and labeling every edit to text file they ever created using distributed version control, starting with code and then of course the prose too -- these are all thoroughly medieval instincts, with all that that implies. It's been said before now, but I'll say it again: those who ignore the Medieval Model of the Universe are doomed to repeat it poorly. Perhaps you thought that quote was originally about Unix? It's the same thing. * * * Time for the sign-offy thing at the end. Thanks for listening to Howell Creek Radio. I'm Joel Dueck -- that much, at least, is obvious to everyone. To myself, Joel: keep going, and chill out a little. Agonising isn't going to help you keep from screwing this up. You're only going to get to experience this job the first time once; pay attention, and enjoy it. No shipping news I guess, huh? I think I'll let other me bring you shipping news next week. The book excerpt was from *The Discarded Image* by C.S. Lewis, the last thing he published before he wrapped up. Background music cues are by Anders Trentemøller. This podcast is supported by Icosahedronspace, the company that lets you create your own gorgeous, professional and compelling colinear atomic-narrative loops. The text of this podcast is available for reuse under a Create Commons license. ## Synopsis Radio address for January 24, 2014. Mention is made of the book [*The Discarded Image*][tdi] and (towards the very end) of ["Unix philosophy"][up]. Music is by [Trentemøller][tm]. [tdi]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521055512/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0521055512&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [up]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy [tm]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ZNUUIE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000ZNUUIE&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20