BWT: 10,000 Hours of Futzing
08:04 Tuesday, 20 February 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 44.46°F Pressure: 1004hPa Humidity: 89% Wind: 7.31mph
Words: 1098
I had another blog post in mind, but I couldn't find the quote I was looking for, so this will do.
Once again, Jack Baty provides the inspiration. Perhaps because this upcoming meetup is on the top of my mental stack for the moment. Not to worry, we're not going to exhaust the set of possible things to talk about during the meetup.
They all depend on a pile of custom templates, scripts, and sloppily-documented setup. They work, but what if they don't? I'm not always in the mood for fixing things that break when I touch them wrong.
This resonated with me, because I have two ideas I want to implement in the marmot, and I've been finding ways to not do it because I'm not looking forward to the futzing part. And that feeling of "not looking forward," is part of a deeper feeling that is one of, if not "failure," then perhaps just "inadequacy."
Now, it'd be easy to get the wrong idea. I love Tinderbox, and I love blogging, ergo I love blogging with Tinderbox. But there is the attraction of the seemingly limitless toolset at my disposal within the app. And I should be able to figure this stuff out. But it does take a certain kind of mental energy to summon the courage to "break stuff."
And I've broken the marmot before.
"I've always wanted to learn to play the piano."
No, in fact, you didn't. If you did, you'd have done so. These superficial, unfulfilled desires seem to be a part of our "imagined" self.
Things that you genuinely want to do are the things that you spend your time on. I've probably spent more than 10,000 hours taking pictures. I can't find it now, but there was this curve that described the interior experience many people have when undertaking a new thing. They learn a bunch of new stuff early on and are filled with a profound sense of competence and confidence, which they are all too eager to share with anyone who'll listen.
If they stick with the thing, they eventually learn that they don't know nearly what they thought they knew, and that their practice of the thing is really not very good.
This is the valley of depression. "I suck."
But if they stick with it, the gradually learn more and get better and if they're really committed, 10,000 hours later, they don't suck.
I don't call myself a photographer because I feel as though that establishes a set of expectations in someone that I probably can't, or don't want to, meet. I ran into a neighbor the other day who was the past president of the photography club. We chatted for a while and I offered this disclaimer when I gave him the link to my flickr account. He texted me back later and kindly said, "I'd say you are a Photographer." Nice of him to say so, but the nature of ignorance is that we don't know what we don't know, and what I don't know about photography could fill volumes.
That said, I'm happy to think that sometimes I don't suck.
I've been fascinated by computers, and by programming, since the Apple II. I had a bad experience at the Naval Academy in a freshman course, "Calculus With Computers." Two five-hour D's will do that to you. But ever since the advent of personal computing, I've had this attraction to computing or programming. But I suck at it. It's hard.
Part of the problem with mastering it has been the dynamic nature of the field. If we were all still using Apple IIs, I'd probably be a whiz. The principles are all the same, mostly. But the implementations differ, and in programming, details matter. And I'm not very good at mastering details.
When I've broken the marmot, it's often because of a detail. Sometimes it was because I fundamentally misunderstood something, but mostly it's a detail. Especially in html, but often in action code and export code.
Now, I know that the way to master those details is to just work with them a lot. Break the marmot and fix it, over and over again. And there are plenty of resources for help. I have emailed Mark Bernstein many times, and more than once sent him either the marmot or its predecessor, Groundhog Day, and had him resuscitate it. So there should be little fear in undertaking an effort like this.
But there's this little feeling of failure, or inadequacy, when it breaks or doesn't work the way I thought it would. That's a personal problem. And part of the energy budget must go to overcoming this internal friction or inertia. (Pick an analogy already, Rogers!)
But, I want to kind of illustrate or demonstrate how wonderful Tinderbox is for creating and maintain a weblog, so I guess I'm just going to have to go ahead and break stuff. I know there are people who will help me put it back together. And if I do this often enough, maybe I'll master those details one day and it'll be less like futzing and more like dancing.
I should probably stop there, but I'll make another comparison to photography. It's not the camera, it's the person behind the camera. Gear-heads love the artifact. I've been shooting with one brand of camera for 16 years, and that's because details matter. And different camera manufacturers implement those details in different ways. It's easier to stay within one brand of camera so you can pay attention to what you're seeing instead of operating the camera.
But if you just like to play with cameras, that's cool. No judgment from me. But I'm not sure it's photography. Photography may provide the context, or the justification; but the reward isn't the image, it's playing with the gear. And that's fine too. People experience joy in many different ways, and tools offer tactile experiences, visual appeal, novel features that can offer joy in their discovery. I get that. There's a reason I own an absurd number of cameras, all but two of which are from Olympus or its successor OM Digital Solutions. I like playing with the gear too.
But I like taking pictures more.
And I guess I'd say I like blogging more than I like playing with Tinderbox. But blogging gives me the reason to play with Tinderbox too. If I can master Tinderbox through blogging, then maybe I'll use Tinderbox for more than just blogging. A virtuous cycle.
Anyway, Blogging With Tinderbox. Check it out.
✍️ Reply by emailSchedule Conflict
14:21 Tuesday, 20 February 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 65.46°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 97
One of the things I look forward to each weekend is the Tinderbox Meetup. I've gotten to know a little about many of the participants over the past couple of years, and it's a pleasure to see and hear from them each week.
Today, however, I'll be at an event for the North Florida Land Trust. The sun has come out again, after a night and early morning of thunderstorms, so the weather should be nice. (Part of the event may be outside.)
Anyway, just a shout-out to the TBX crew in case anyone misses me!
✍️ Reply by emailShallow Dive
07:46 Thursday, 20 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 46.89°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 93% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 511
I probably overreacted to the Kindle content kerfuffle, at least to the extent of recommending Epubor. Got a nice note from Ay who blogs at Pup On Tech, mentioning that calibre works and is free. I landed on Epubor from whatever site I read that first mentioned the issue.
Truthfully, I haven't obsessed over DRM in a very long time. I worry about my Apple digital movie collection just disappearing one day, so we've stopped getting rid of our physical DVDs. (May need to buy another player though.) I had a friend who borrowed DVDs from a public library and ripped them all. I still have a USB external DVD drive, but that feels exhausting just thinking about it.
I digress.
The whole thing did get me looking at my Kindle and trying to find out what's new in that space. To make a not terribly long story a bit shorter, I spent a fair amount of time on the-ebook-reader.com, and this page in particular. I watched a few YouTube videos as well.
I have a 10th generation Kindle Paperwhite. I've read from it a fair amount, particularly when I was away, because it's so light. But I generally don't care for the experience. It's very slow, and whenever I turn a page I get this annoying flash as the screen goes through this inversion process from whatever mode I'm in until it settles on either the Dark or Light Mode, which I selected. That is, if I'm in Light Mode, the page will first appear in Dark Mode, then switch to Light Mode. If I'm in Dark Mode and turn the page, the page first appears in Light Mode, then switches to dark. Very annoying.
Well, watching a YouTube comparison of the 10th, 11th and 12th generations, I didn't see that behavior on the 10th generation Paperwhite in the video. It seemed like it did happen on screens with a lot of images, like the library, but page swiping didn't exhibit that flashing behavior.
I thought that was weird, so I looked a little more closely at my Kindle. It has the latest firmware. I'm sure it has to restart whenever a new firmware version is installed, but I tried a restart anyway. Takes forever, but that didn't change the page flashing behavior.
So I ended up holding my nose and buying a new 12th generation Kindle, stuffing some more non-essential, elective spending dollars into Jeff Bezos already grotesquely over-stuffed pockets. (Please don't lecture me about buying another e-reader. Not being by Amazon isn't enough of a feature.) It's charging behind me.
I probably should have restored my 10th generation Kindle to a factory-reset condition and checked to see if that resolved the flashing. But I'm lazy. And I know Amazon periodically offers discounts on Kindles, and I probably should have waited for one of those. What can I say? I'm a bit discombobulated here, what with the systematic destruction of the federal government going on. Should probably start meditating again.
Or drinking.
✍️ Reply by emailAnnoying
08:49 Thursday, 20 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 46.8°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 12.66mph
Words: 194
Got the Kindle set up. That was a pain in the ass.
It said I could use my iPhone to make setup "easier." Got to the point where the setup process from the iPhone was to tell the Kindle what wifi network to use. I gave permission to the Kindle app to discover other devices on the network. Well, my wifi network would never appear in the list of available networks.
Canceled setup and did it from the Kindle. Pretty easy until I tried to take advantage of three free months of Kindle Unlimited (which I cancelled earlier this year). The setup screen for that is horribly ugly and confusing. It appears as though it has my saved payment method, but it wouldn't just proceed no matter how much I touched "Continue." So, skipped that. No Kindle Unlimited for free for me. Skipped the free Audible offer. Skipped the GoodReads thing. Jeez, how much of this shit is there?
Then had to step through the onboarding guide. Kept appearing everywhere no matter what. Finally got to load a book and turn a page.
No flashing.
Overall, I'd grade the setup process a D, "unsatisfactory."
✍️ Reply by emaileBooks and AI
09:46 Thursday, 20 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 47.1°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 11.5mph
Words: 452
Some people extol the virtues of capitalism for being the fount of all good things. That is, if by "things," you mean "stuff," inequality and billionaires.
Anyway, I rather suspect that it is capitalism, and its concomitant axiom, "property rights," which is keeping us from some nice things in the ebook space.
I want an AI-enhanced version of a book. I don't need the AI to "summarize" the book, just distill and reconfigure its content.
I want a "Big Board."
On the Big Board, we can display a map at various scales. Or we can display a timeline with time on the horizontal axis, and people or places and events on the vertical axis. Or we can display a dramatis personae, faces and names of all the individuals mentioned in the book.
On the map view, we zoom in to various scales, and using a timeline, move forward and backward in time, displaying people and events and their locations on the map. At small scales, many faces may overlap on a particular location at a particular moment, so we can zoom in. Similarly, we can zoom in on time. We can spread things out to see where events took place.
On the DP display, we can bring a figure into focus, and have links drawn to all the other figures according to the timeline, which can be controlled. Click on FDR, ask for links to people on 6 December 1941, slide the time control forward through 8 December and watch the links change. We can ask for a display of all persons who never interacted with any other individual in the book. We can ask for a six degrees of separation display. (or two, three, four or five).
We might wish to include entities along with people. Corporations, military units and the like. Faces on the DP view could be adorned with small indications of nationality, or party affiliation, or some other relevant data.
I think AI has the capacity to do something like this today. I think Apple or Amazon have the developer talent to fashion something like this for the reader/"user". But I also happen to think that publishers won't let that happen, without some exorbitant licensing scheme for "repurposing content" or some such.
I want my Big Board, dammit!
The Big Board may be able to access resources outside the content of the book. If I'm looking at Dead Wake by Erik Larson, I may ask the AI to display any other known vessels within 100 nautical miles of the Lusitania on a particular date. Or the weather or sea state on that date. Which vessels were equipped with wireless?
Probably won't see it in my lifetime.
✍️ Reply by emailMapQuest
10:33 Thursday, 20 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 48.79°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 89% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 29
Since further staining my immortal soul by buying a device made by Amazon, allow me to make a tiny gesture toward amends by linking to this clever little thing.
✍️ Reply by emailI Don't Know What I'm Talking About
10:41 Thursday, 20 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 49.33°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 87% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 56
As always, I'm an authority on nothing, and I make all this shit up. You're encouraged to do your own thinking. (For all the good that will do.)
Anyway, I read this today and I'm struck by the parallels between the Newtonian/deterministic view and the quantum/statistical or probabilistic view.
It's all a bit fuzzy.
✍️ Reply by emailFurther to the Foregoing
10:52 Thursday, 20 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 50.22°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 82
In the 1930s, the world was seeing tremendous advances in our understanding of the atom. We were also seeing the rise of authoritarian regimes, and the decline of liberal democracies (Spain, Italy, Germany, Hungary, others).
Fast forward nearly a century and we're seeing tremendous advances in AI and maybe even quantum computing. I don't need to mention the political stuff.
"All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again."
"So say we all."
(YMMV on the "profound" claim above.)
✍️ Reply by emailGod's Eye View
11:02 Thursday, 20 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 50.72°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 84% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 315
Think of the "Big Board," as a kind of God's eye view.
I think one of the limitations of hypertext is that it remains essentially one-dimensional, if not strictly "linear."
We need to be able to view pieces of information in relation to each other in more than one dimension. The "graph" is a two-dimensional view, but we need to be able to see how that changes over time, or some other dimension I can't name just now. "Relationships" maybe?
Anyway, I'm just killing time until I go for my workout.
I'll be moving to 3x/wk sessions in March until I leave here, which is looking like about mid-May. That's about 32 sessions. Hopefully I'll have built a pretty solid foundation by then, and understand enough about the various types of exercises and what muscles they work.
I'm only just beginning to recall by name what a move is. I know what a "goblet squat" is, and how that differs from a "Romanian deadlift." "Rows" versus "kick-backs." I need to know enough so that if I can't find (or afford) a personal trainer, I can continue to train.
I've been adding a couple of reps to the last set of some exercises, or asking him to bump up the weight or resistance on others. I was a little sore yesterday morning. But I feel great after the workout, and the day after. It begins to fade by the second day after, but I can still feel something of a difference as I walk. Everything feels more "together," for lack of a better term.
I was never a big believer in strength training. It didn't appeal to me the way running did. But I think that was a mistake. Had I started with a trainer much early, I think I would have found out I enjoyed it much earlier as well.
✍️ Reply by emailThursday Afternoon
13:47 Thursday, 20 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 57.02°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 67% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 198
Just needed a title. I could set this up so I don't (kinda did once), but maybe later.
Anyway, good workout. Germaine says he'll give me a workout plan to follow when I leave in May, so that's cool.
Came back and watched some YouTube. I struggle with David Brooks. Sometimes I like what he has to say and agree with him, sometimes I don't like what he has to say and disagree with him. Sometimes I don't like what he has to say, but I agree with him. I often find him kind of hard to take, but I want to like him. Or, at least, I don't want to hate him.
Anyway, here's a 14-minute talk that he gave recently. I liked it enough to commend it to your attention.
Seriously.
In other news, I got an email from the Internet Archive asking for a donation. I've donated before, but not regularly, or not often. I like the Internet Archive, and I think it's a valuable resource. They were asking for $10, or $5 monthly. I donated $100 as a single donation.
It's not much, but it's not nothing either.
Now I need a shower.
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