Structure
15:36 Monday, 15 August 2022
Current Wx: Temp: 71.2°F Pressure: 1006hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 0mph
Words: 727
Insomnia strikes again. But I have some ideas and if I don't write them down now, I'll forget them.
There's the meetup I attend, which alternates between Saturdays and Sundays every weekend, where we talk about Tinderbox, the application I'm using to record these thoughts.
The meeting often focuses on particular aspects of Tinderbox (for there are many) in addressing individual wishes for working with information. Michael Becker is a person who has mastered many of the capabilities of Tinderbox, and he's been using it to help refine his thinking on knowledge management.
Yesterday he was elaborating on what he termed the "three pillars of" something, I forget what exactly. But the three were "content", "structure" and "appearance”. Appearance was a recent replacement for "design", because of some discussion about the differences between design and appearance.
I kind of understood where he was going, and where he was coming from, but it didn't feel right. It didn't resonate with me. I had to leave yesterday's meetup early to do a family virtual meeting, so I don't know exactly how things ended up.
But I've been "thinking" about this, or at least, this is what bubbled up as I tried to go back to sleep; and so I wanted to get this down.
I hate the word "content." It's sloppy, lazy, misleading, misinformed. Content is shit. Part of Michael's enthusiasm for his "three pillars" is the facility it brings to "repurposing your content." Oy!
I get that too, I know what he means. But "repurpose" is the wrong word as well, which is unsurprising because when you use one wrong word it often leads to using another. He wants to share his ideas, and be able to easily change or rearrange their presentation in order to facilitate their understanding by different audiences in different contexts. Reasonable wish.
The clue is in the word "structure." I know that what he means is how a document is arranged to convey an idea. But "content" is meaningless without "structure." Indeed, it is "structure" that forms, or, informs content. Without structure, there is no content, there is no information value in whatever you believe your "content" to be.
Structure is the arrangement of things. Letters in a word, subatomic particles in an atom, the chronological order of events, word order in sentences, language, media, light, darkness, shades of gray, what's in the frame, what's left out. Entropy is increasing, "structure" is a region of low entropy in which "information", the "difference that makes a difference" may be discerned.
Smarter people than me have already thought about this, I'm sure.
Structure is inherent in information, integral to it, without it, there is no "information," and if you don't pay attention to the structure, if you treat it as something separate, you either aren't getting the most "value" from your information, or you're misunderstanding the nature of the information itself.
And structure is tricky, because it's contingent. The world does not exist in the Platonic ideal of forms. One thing leads to another. There is no ideal platonic form of a chair, without knowing about upright bipeds who don't wish to stand on their feet all day.
Indeed, to the extent that "tools for thought" exist, their utility is in examining "structure."
We use "information" to shape ideas, test ideas. We perceive the world and we have ideas about it. To the extent that our perceptions have any "information," it's in the structure.
Thought, to the extent that it's not just a running commentary from an unreliable narrator residing between our ears, is about having ideas. We use information to test those ideas, to convey those thoughts, and we embed those ideas and thoughts in a structure, which is itself built on the structure of the information we use to try to illuminate our thoughts. The structure that was embedded in our consciousness by our culture, our education, our predispositions, interests and affinities.
What dimensions of structure do we privilege in our information? Which "points of view" do we consider most "meaningful"? Which dimensions are unavailable to us, because we don't speak the language? Can't relate to the experience? What parts of our ideas are unsupported, simply because we can't see what's missing?
What is "content"? What is the role of "truth" in "content"?
The map is not the territory.
Okay, back to bed.
✍️ Reply by emailIt Figures
16:45 Tuesday, 15 August 2023
Current Wx: Temp: 77.45°F Pressure: 1010hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 601
Calculators and handheld computers consumed what time I might have spent with the marmot yesterday and Sunday, though I did sit in on the Tinderbox meetup on Sunday.
I need to correct something I mentioned on Saturday. I had the impression that the TI-89 series used a Z-80 processor and that's not the case. It used the Motorola 68000, as did the TI-92. The 89 was basically the 92 without a QWERTY keyboard, which apparently made it acceptable in some classroom settings where the 92 wasn't permitted. I knew they are largely feature identical, (the 92 has a larger screen) but seemed to recall being somewhat surprised to learn the 89 had been supposedly developed using the Z-80. I don't know where I got that impression, but it's false and I wanted to correct my error.
In other news, I also mentioned NTDS on Saturday, and it seems much, if not all, of the text of a book on the history of NTDS, When Computers Went to Sea, is available online as a web site. Even if you're not interested in NTDS, chapter two (link at the bottom of chapter one), has a nice capsule history of computer development. It also offers a more nuanced view, crediting Eckert and Mauchly with the "stored program" design of a general purpose computer, something that has historically been credited exclusively to John Von Neumann.
And as a font of all wonders, the Internet Archive will serve up a Naval Postgraduate School paper on using handheld calculators and computers for Target Motion Analysis. I think this is a variation on existing programs in the tactical program library, as I was on shore duty in September 1983, and I think I had been introduced to the HP-67/97 and Sharp PC-1500 programs while on sea duty. It's not important, and I suppose I could dig out my service record and check the dates of my schools. I know I did not see either the HP-75 or the HP-71 as part of the tactical program library, possibly because I think the handheld programs were subsumed by a larger Navy computer effort called JOTS, the Joint Operational Tactical System (Jerry O. Tuttle System).
Parenthetically, with regard to the paper using target bearings accurate to a tenth of a degree, I'm skeptical. With an acoustic towed array, I suppose it's possible to resolve bearing to that precision, if the array is long enough; but I think the tactical towed arrays weren't that long and were probably capable of 1 degree of bearing resolution at best. I could be wrong. And the baseline for own-ship onboard high frequency radio direction finding is likewise not capable of bearing resolution to a tenth of a degree. Again, I could be wrong. But I was surprised to see the author using inputs of that precision. The idea behind TMA was to get an area of probability that was practical to search with a helo or other asset, or to place a Harpoon or Tomahawk missile with its own onboard sensor within an area that ensured a high enough probability of acquiring the target.
One thing leads to another in these spelunking expeditions and I found a guy who makes an arduino interface for the TI-74 and TI-95 to replace the cassette recorder interface, which is nearly impossible to find. $30 shipped, so...
Finally, as serendipity would have it, there's a book coming out on "the rise and reign of the pocket calculator," Empire of the Sum. I looking forward to reading it.
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17:58 Tuesday, 15 August 2023
Current Wx: Temp: 77.18°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 70
If you care to notice, the temperature recording for this post is somewhat less than the previous one, but both are below 80°F. (Speaking of precision...) My local reading is 76 point something. Yesterday was likewise around 77 and so yesterday's walk was far more pleasant.
It's really kind of amazing how much difference a few degrees can make in your perception of discomfort. The humidity is still ridiculous.
✍️ Reply by emailCattle Egret
Current Wx: Temp: 77.07°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 4.61mphWords: 40
With the slightly cooler temp, I walked later yesterday morning, with enough light to carry a telephoto zoom. Spotted this cattle egret looking a bit uncomfortable standing in front of a neighbor's garage. I don't see them often around here.
✍️ Reply by emailGetting Better
07:27 Thursday, 15 August 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 79.74°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 321
Used the sticks this morning. On the road at 0507, usual 5K route. Best walking (trekking) pace to date, 16'19"/mi, negative splits until the final quarter mile. Average heart rate was 142bpm, 502 calories expended.
Looking at the heart rate zones, the Fitness app reports I spent 19'46" in Zone 5 (152+bpm). Technically, I think "Zone 5" is supposed to be a level of effort you can only sustain for a very short period, not minutes. I think my maximum heart rate is above whatever iOS thinks it is. They seem to be using 220 minus my age (67). Ten or fifteen years ago I could hit 180-190bpm. My max is probably somewhere closer to 170 these days. 78°F, 94% humidity, shirt was soaked when I got home.
I didn't feel uncomfortable in terms of effort. My left calf and right arm itched because I think I got bit a couple of times on the walk. I knew I was pushing, but I wasn't at the very top end.
Part of it is getting better with the poles. I think I need to split these poles out into a left one and right one, and adjust the boot of the left pole. When they land squarely, there is no mechanical vibration or metallic rattle. With the pole in my left hand, I'll often hear and feel the vibration. I can move my hand a bit to get it to strike squarely, but in its natural position, I get more vibration. The boots are configured identically on both poles.
Only encountered one person and no cars. Clear sky, many stars, Jupiter and Mars still near conjunction.
So I guess I'll mix it up and use the sticks one day, the daypack and weight another day, just walking on other days. I haven't combined the daypack and the sticks yet. Variety, spice of life, something like that.
✍️ Reply by emailNostalgia
09:34 Thursday, 15 August 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 84.87°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 13.8mph
Words: 587
Kansasfest is a gathering of Apple II fans that's been going on for decades. I attended the one in 2017, which was a bucket-list item for me. It was everything I'd expected/hoped it would be. I haven't been since then, but I follow the virtual ones and watch the videos as they're made available.
This year's event wasn't in Kansas anymore, but that's another story. The keynote speaker was Rob Gemmell, the initial designer of the Apple //c. If you're into retro-computing, the Apple II, Steve Jobs or industrial design, it's worth seeing his presentation.
The years 1983-1987 were perhaps the peak years for my computer enthusiasm. I think the Apple //c, in many ways, represents the pinnacle achievement for the Apple II. And I did own a IIgs and that was our primary "family" computer until 1995, when we got our first Mac, the Performa 6200CD.
That was probably the second "peak" in terms of my interest/enthusiasm for computing, inasmuch as it was my introduction to photo-realistic, high resolution graphics. I couldn't/didn't do much more with the Mac than I did with the II series, but it looked a lot cooler. The on-screen, and printed output that is.
In terms of software, AppleWorks and ThinkTank (outliner) were the applications that really made me excited about computing. Fontrix, which used the 5.25" floppy drive as a form of virtual graphics memory so you could create full-page graphics with an Apple II was also a piece of software I truly loved. PublishIt! 3.0 brought desktop publishing to the Apple II, but I only used that when I was doing the newsletter for our user group, the Tidewater Apple Worms (groan).
When we got onto the Mac, there was a version of AppleWorks for the Mac and we were very productive with that. It wasn't exciting, but I could get stuff done. The piece of software that I recall that most excited me on the Mac was originally released as Arrange by Common Knowledge. It was kind of an object-oriented database with an outliner interface. I couldn't afford it when it first came on the market, I think it sold for $495 on release. But it didn't gain a lot of attraction and was later sold to another company who released it as WebArranger, as kind of a bookmark manager, PIM, note-taking app. That's when I got it.
But it failed to make the transition to OS X. Tinderbox then became the application that sort of defined what "personal computing," meant to me. But for many years, it remained kind of opaque. It's only been in the last few years, since I've been attending the Zoom meetups that I've developed any real facility with the application.
But in terms of having fond memories, or being able to recall genuine feelings of excitement and enthusiasm, it was the Apple //e and //c that were really the machines that I was genuinely passionate about. Nothing has exceeded the experience of those early years.
Today, I'm much more cynical and disappointed with information technology. Far from empowering individuals, it's become a tool for corporations and authoritarian states. Corporations for profits, and authoritarian states for control and chaos.
Apple used to be somewhat admirable as a company. Now it's just another corporate shareholder enrichment factory.
Anyway, I enjoyed listening to Rob Gemmell's recollection of the origins of the //c. There's an entertaining Steve Jobs story in there you probably haven't heard before.
✍️ Reply by emailNFA
08:06 Friday, 15 August 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 64.27°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 0.43mph
Words: 516
We had dinner at the Stonecat Cafe last night, and I noticed much of the staff wearing t-shirts with "NFA" printed on them, and there was merch at the entrance with "NFA" on it, so I asked the person at the register what it meant.
"Not fucking around."
This delighted me, so I bought a tin sign to put up in the garage.
It feels like this is a moment in time that demands such a TLA.
Pulling up stakes and abandoning Florida to make a new life in New York seems pretty hard core NFA.
I like our garage. It's pretty small, but it's insulated and the interior is finished with OSB, which makes it easy to hang things with screws and NFA with drywall anchors. Yesterday we bought a little package of hooks for hanging stuff up in the garage and I got nearly everything hung up on the walls. (Ladders, loppers, beach chairs, solar panels, weed-whackers, hedge trimmer, rake, shovel and some other crap.)
We also washed both cars, using a "foam cannon" I got for the pressure washer. Works well, but you still need to mechanically wash with a sponge to get all the grime and bird shit off.
As far as dealing with the weeds and vines at the side of the road, we've decided to NFA and we're hiring somebody to come in with a bush-hog and just lay waste to most of it.
I think I'm going to focus on "admin" next week and see if I can put together all the necessary paperwork to establish my New York residency, get my license and registration switched over, change the title to the Maverick and maybe find a new primary care physician, and a dentist. I've found a barber. (Baby steps.)
Our friends from Florida are up here this week, getting the foundation poured for their summer home over by Keuka Lake. We hope to meet up with them sometime over the weekend, maybe have them over here to see our place.
As something of a non sequitur, I've found that as digital photography has matured over the last decade or so, the signal to noise ration (SNR) at "hardware" forums like DP Review has become vanishingly small. The posts there are the helpless, "Please help me decide..." And the hopeless, "Micro four-thirds is dead..." And the pointless, "Full-frame is better than micro four-thirds, fight me." Mixed in with the usual "OM System sucks," and the Lumix inferiority complex.
You used to be able to find helpful tips about how to best employ some of the new or more esoteric functions of the latest models. Now it's just mostly crap and I really don't know why I keep returning to it, especially as the ads have become even more intrusive. My problem, I know.
I plan to spend more time in the garage today, trying to get things better organized so I can actually find things.
And hang my new metal sign.
The beat goes on... (Check out the movie The Life of Chuck.)
✍️ Reply by email"Support the troops"
06:03 Saturday, 15 August 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 55.63°F Pressure: 1023hPa Humidity: 96% Wind: 0.51mph
Words: 545
As a retired career officer in the United States Navy, I have strong opinions about what's going on in our nation's military today. In the past, I have often shared them here. Today, it's harder to do so.
Not because I worry about retribution or anything like that. It's because those opinions are accompanied by powerful emotions, and it's often difficult to write when there is a storm going on.
It is impossible to quantify the damage, physical, mental and moral, that this administration is doing to the men and women who serve our country in uniform. Not all of them, to be sure. I'm certain that there are more than a few of them who delight in what's taking place. These souls were lost long before Trump took office.
The problem is that the same moral rot that infects them will spread. And it's difficult to arrest once it's taken hold. Good people will leave the service rather than continue to serve with people like that. New members will be shaped and guided by the twisted, immoral, amoral and ambitious cretins that remain. It will become an embedded part of the culture.
"Rust never sleeps." We spend a lot of time in the navy chipping paint. When I say "we," I mean very young sailors, new recruits. It's hard, loud, hot, demanding work. But we have to do it because steel hulls rust in a salty environment, and if you don't stay on top of it, it spreads. It thins the hull, makes it weaker. You can always cover it with a layer of fresh paint, and it'll look pretty; but it's still there, corroding the hull.
Same thing with honor, integrity and courage. These things require effort to maintain. And it's not the effort of young sailors and new recruits. It's the effort of leadership, officers and enlisted.
It's also hard work, because it requires self-discipline and constant vigilance, and mental resources that are sorely challenged when you're deployed at sea, working eighteen hours a day without a break. Because those young sailors are always watching, looking for the example, the reason for how they should behave. What the meaning of their service and sacrifice is.
And that effort begins at the top. The very top. And we know what's up there.
People argue about the size of the defense budget. Whatever value you place on the material assets of the armed forces, whatever opportunity cost it represents in the larger scheme, it's nothing compared to value of the lives and the souls of the men and women who wear the uniform of this nation.
And we are wasting it. Squandering it. Pissing it away. Not through their deaths, though there have been plenty of those. Through the moral injury we're inflicting on them.
Republicans, "conservatives," always, always like to make a big show of "supporting the troops."
It's bullshit. It's performative bullshit by people who never served anyone but themselves. Republicans and conservatives and the MAGA crowd are unacquainted with the notion of honor. It's absent from their lives.
You reap what you sow.
I know people don't like comparisons with Nazi Germany, but you should study how Hitler and the Nazi leadership employed their troops.
We're doing the same things.
✍️ Reply by emailBlogging Like It's 1989
15:31 Saturday, 15 August 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 76.17°F Pressure: 1023hPa Humidity: 59% Wind: 7.58mph
Words: 530
I spent a little time this morning working with the IIc Plus with the MegaFlash installed. It's a different sort of beast than I recall if for no other reason than I never had more than one hard drive hanging off my Apple IIgs, the only II that I ever had with a hard drive.
I'm going to need to study the docs for the MegaFlash and Apple II Desktop, because I'm observing some things that don't make sense.
The first is that I can't seem to manually eject 3.5" disks from the internal drive. I don't know if I didn't connect something back up when I took the drive and the power supply out to photograph the motherboard, or if MegaFlash or Apple II Desktop deliberately disables the eject button to force you to use the Eject Disk menu in order to help the Desktop app keep track of which disks are mounted.
It's not a huge problem, just use the menu bar item. But since I don't know why it works that way, I need to find out if something is broken.
I also can't seem to use the Floppy Emu in SmartPort hard disk mode, or any mode, 3.5" or 5.25", for that matter. They don't appear even when I use the Check Disks menu item. That may have something to do with the number of virtual drives (8) MegaFlash has assigned to ProDOS.
I can use an external 3.5" drive, but that doesn't help me much since I can also use the internal 3.5" drive. What I need is a virtual disk on removable media that I can connect to my MBP so I can move disk images and software I've downloaded onto it, so I can move those onto one of the virtual drives.
The MegaFlash folks seem to have anticipated that issue, and have included a wifi application to transfer files by means of something called TFTP, so I need to figure that out. Alternatively, I can use ADTPro, which means using a serial cable with a USB connection. I believe I have that around here somewhere, but I don't think I can put my hands on it in a hurry. It may be in storage. I'm also pretty sure it doesn't connect to the kind of connections I have on the IIc Plus.
In the meantime, I do have copies of AppleWorks 3 and WordBench on 3.5" media and I've installed both of those. The copy of TimeOut Ultra Macros that I have on 3.5" disk isn't compatible with AW 3, according to the installer, so I'm going to have to study that issue.
My goal is to be able to create an RSS feed using the Apple IIc Plus. I think I can use the database function of AppleWorks for the basic post content, and then either a mail merge or database report format to generate the RSS text file.
When I get my secret underground laboratory (aka, The Dave Cave) established, I'm going to look into setting up a BBS of some kind. How? I don't know how. That's kind of the challenge.
Anyway, it's a diversion from the "real" world.
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