Bureaucracy
05:22 Friday, 27 May 2022
Current Wx: Temp: 75.96°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 84% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 2413
My sixty-fifth birthday is coming up very soon, and so my healthcare insurance will be provided through Medicare, with my military retirement insurance, Tricare, becoming the supplemental coverage. This involves a certain amount of paperwork and credentials that one presents at a point of service. Which is a fancy way of saying my navy retired ID card expires next week, so I had to get a new one that somehow more graphically represents I'm over 65 or something.
Don't ask me, I just do what I'm told.
Anyway, did a little "research" (such a freighted term these days, what with everyone becoming a virologist, epidemiologist and electoral math expert), and found I'd be better served making an appointment online at the nearby naval air station, than just walking in and hoping someone can see me. Mitzi's card expired too, so I made one for her as well.
The day arrived, we drove to the base, which I hadn't been on in probably more than 20 years (yeesh!), we found the Personnel Support Detachment Building with little trouble, thanks to the clear directions on the appointment confirmation. I was worried that they might have changed the building a decade ago and nobody had gotten around to updating the directions. It happens.
Being retired military, we got there about 20 minutes early, because early is on time and if you miss your appointment, "Sorry, Jack. Time, tide and formation wait for no man." We checked in with the person who verifies you've arrived for your appointment, you actually have an appointment, and you've brought all the required documentation with you. All that being in order, we took a seat and stared at our phones.
I was pleasantly surprised when they called us to station six about 15 minutes before our appointment, five minutes after our arrival. I was worried it might be after, like at the doctor's office. They called us both up at the same time, since I'm the sponsor and I had to sign Mitzi's paperwork. Everything went swimmingly except for my fingerprint record. It seems the reader didn't think I was who I said I was because my fingerprint didn't match. Wasn't the young lady at the station's first rodeo, so she asked me to switch index fingers. Yep, whoever did this the last time, many years ago, switched fingers in the record.
The rest was easy-peasy and we were out of there right about the same time our appointment was supposed to start. I was impressed. And the young lady at the station was charming, polite, cheerful and efficient!
Which just tells me that bureaucracies can be run well. I need to send a note to the officer in charge over there.
Anyhow, that's just kind of a prelude to what this post is actually about, the bureaucracy of computers. A more clever man, or one with more time, would make a whole production of this; but it's early, I'm just waking up, and I have other things to do so this will have to suffice. It's the kind of mental commentary that goes on as I'm lying awake in bed, wondering if I'm going to fall back asleep or should I just get up and write a blog post?
I've been tidying up the place around here, trying to make the Marmot a little more efficient to create and maintain. Can't say I've done much. The most significant thing is I've cleaned up the export folder such that I can tell my FTP client just sync the contents of the export folder with the site folder on the server. Previously, I'd export the files locally, switch to my FTP client and drag and drop three files into two different folders. Wasn't a lot of work, but occasionally I'd miss a target and have to do it again and it's really the kind of thing computers are supposed to be good at. That is, if you know how to work them. I'm just barely dangerous with mine.
So, flushed with pride at my cleverness, I've decided to take on something new and more challenging, although I know this is just asking for trouble and it'll all end with rage, frustration and tears. Nevertheless, I press on.
I'd like to post more photos on the Marmot. I'd like said photos to reside on the server I, um, rent. I could just use some embed code from Flickr or something, but "real men" and all that...
To do this involves a lot of manual labor that computers are supposed to be good at. If you know what you're doing. So, research! You too can be a computer scientist! Or, at least, a "coder" as all the cool kids are calling it these days.
Posting a picture using Tinderbox involves the following actions. Create a note, give it a title. Tinderbox will kindly give it all the blog stuff like the $PermaFile, $PublicationDate (includes the time) and weather data because I learned how to create a prototype, and whenever I create a new note in the May 2022 container, it uses the pPost prototype, and fills in all the relevant attributes, which will be used by the export code in the html template when I export my latest compelling update. I'm using italics here to refer to terms that are specific to Tinderbox. I'm sure it may sound all very complicated and you're probably asking why not just use, I don't know, some hosted blogging service? Trust me, those have their own frustrations.
So, I create a new note, like this one, and all the relevant blog-like attributes are automagically filled in and the cursor blinks at me in the Text (or $Text if we wish to be formal) attribute where all the magic really happens. To make a blog post, like this one, I just pour my brilliant prose into this empty box, turn off the safety (Uncheck the $HTMLDontExport boolean attribute, which is kind of a prompt to myself, "Are you sure you know what you're doing, Rogers?") and hit Export as HTML from the file menu.
To post a photo, I create a note in the usual way by entering a $Name, which is the name of the note in Tinderbox, or title of the post in the Marmot. Then I have to put some HTML code that displays a picture into the $Text attribute, the big empty space where I usually pour deathless prose and brilliant insight. I might also add some text after the html which will appear below the photo offering some context or something.
That's not a big deal. It's mostly the same stuff and you can create a prototype that includes nearly all of that, or create a text expansion shortcut to type it in for you. And I have both. Then you have to do the manual stuff, like find the file name of the photo, enter that into the HTML code, enter the Alt-text for vision-impaired accessibility, which I confess I sometimes don't do, and write something pithy about the pic.
Anyway, not a big deal, but kind of a pain in the ass and really, shouldn't the computer be doing most of this stuff for me? After all, I'm the guy out there with the camera, making the edits, yada, yada, yada... Is it too much to ask for the computer to just wrap it all up in some nice html for me?
Well, yes. It apparently is.
So, back to adventures in coding...
Tinderbox is an app that lives in a house called Dave's Computer. It's just a temporary resident, though it's here most of the time. There's a butler or major domo that runs the house for me, and he's called Monterey, or just Monty for short. (He hates that.) He's very helpful, and he'll do a lot of extra stuff, if you know how to ask him in just the right way.
Monty knows everything that's going on in Dave's computer. When I import a photo from my camera into Photos, another guest, Monty knows. When I export that photo to a folder in the house, Monty knows everything about that photo. I swear to God, I think he even writes all this shit down in like, logs, or something. Doesn't share much of it with me, unless I ask him in just the right way, which usually involves talking to another guest like Finder, or some other program that can ask Monty about file attributes and tell me what they are.
Terminal is probably Monty's best friend, and you can do a lot cool things if you get to be friends with Terminal, but he's a little hard to get to know, so we don't talk much and I don't invite him over very often.
Monty runs a side-hustle where he kind of facilitates interactions between guests. For the security of everyone, Monty keeps a close eye on everybody and nobody is allowed to get too familiar, if you know what I mean. But, he'll allow different guests to talk to each other, mostly by passing notes I guess. This is "inter-application communication," or something like that.
Tinderbox, like many guests, has a facility that helps me talk to Monty in ways that supposedly I can understand. Hah! It's the special language that apps use to pass messages back and forth via Monty and these are called scripts, I guess. So it goes something like this, I write a script that tells Tinderbox to do some stuff without me clicking on menu items or ticking boxes or typing stuff into attributes.
Okay, a digression, it's all very complicated so bear with me.
Tinderbox is a powerhouse, a savant in many ways. You can tell Tinderbox what you want it to do in the usual pointy-clicky way, or you can tell it what you want it to do in, ugh, code. Tinderbox has a two internal languages you can tell it what to do in, one is action code, which is stuff that creates or manipulates notes and/or their attributes. I use a tiny little bit of that here in the Marmot to fill in the attributes of a new blog post from a pPost prototype. But it can do a lot more than that.
It also has another language called export code. This is the language that creates the html files that get sent to the server. It can do a lot more than that, and it can work with action code to create very fancy documents of almost any sort. Me, I'm just running a blog, man. But people write books and lay them out in Tinderbox.
And it learned a new language, not long ago, Applescript, which is how it talks to Monty for me. It normally talks to Monty in the ways that app residents talk to Monty that we never really see, though I'm sure Monty wrote all that shit down somewhere.
Digression ends.
So, I want to facilitate a negotiation whereby I get Monty to notice that I've exported a photo to a particular folder (nothing escapes Monty's notice). I want Monty to take a look at that photo and grab a few of its attributes, specifically its filename and IPTC Title and Caption. I want Monty to stash those attributes in little cubbyholes where Tinderbox can find them.
So, you may be wondering, how do I know I want the IPTC Title and Caption? Good question, because Photos is a horrible guest and doesn't tell you shit. So you kind of have to go at this thing sideways.
I have a folder that a Flickr app watches. When I export a photo to that folder, the Flickr app grabs it and sends it on its way to my Flickr account, where it appears with no title or anything. The filename is there, but that's it.
Photos lets you add a Title and a Caption to your photos in Photos. If you export that photo, the Title and Caption (and probably keywords or "tags", I haven't tried that) go along with it. How do I know? Because when you give it a Title and Caption, they appear in your Flickr account!
A clue!
Does Photos tell you these attributes are IPTC Title and IPTC Caption? Not that I can find. But that may be my fault. As I said, Photos is a very reticent guest.
But if you look at the exported photo with something that looks at file metadata (a fancy word for attributes, I guess), you can see the title and caption listed in IPTC Title and IPTC Caption. And I think I'm typing these wrong because I think all that stuff gets mashed together like IPTCTitle and IPTCCaption as attribute names. Which is important, so, note to self...
So I want Monty to notice the photo in the folder, grab the filename, the IPTCTitle and the IPTCCaption and stash all that in a series of cubbyholes at the front desk and notify Tinderbox it has a message from me at the front desk. And the message from me is, Tinderbox, create a new note with a prototype of pPhoto (which has the HTML boilerplate in the $Text) and set the $Name of the note to IPTCTitle, and add the IPTCCaption to the $Text after the html boilerplate. And, oh yeah, insert the filename in to the html boilerplate.
So, hypothetically, if all this worked and I haven't killed myself trying to make it work, I would see a photo I'd taken that I'd like to share in the Marmot, export it to a folder at the appropriate size, and then the magic happens.
I get a new note in the Marmot, with all the stuff filled in except the Alt text, which I would have to do manually, I guess. I'd click on the Preview tab and make sure it all looks sweet. Uncheck the safety and hit Export as HTML. Tinderbox and Monty do their thing, HTML files appear.
Then I tell Forklift "Sync the Bismarck! Er, folders!"
That magic happens, and the world is a better place.
✍️ Reply by emailHonor the Fallen
08:28 Monday, 27 May 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 77.74°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 85% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 222
I heard this report on NPR Morning Edition this morning. It brought to mind my own experience.
“There's this moment at a homecoming and a memorial or burial where the national and a local are entwined in this project of belonging,” said Wagner, the author of What Remains: Bringing America’s Missing Home from the Vietnam War.
Please listen to the audio report, which differs somewhat from the text version. It includes an additional quote from Sarah Wagner that I think is important, which speaks to the role of ceremony and tradition.
In a moment when it seems there is no common thread that unites us, perhaps this does. If only briefly, and episodically.
I'm just past Lincoln's inauguration in Erik Larson's Demon of Unrest, where I learned Seward inspired the better part of the close of Lincoln's first inaugural. It resonates today, perhaps as it did then:
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.✍️ Reply by email
Evolvulus alsinoides
Current Wx: Temp: 80.29°F Pressure: 1012hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 11.5mphWords: 70
A couple of moon shots up at Flickr from yesterday and this morning, but I wanted to post something different yesterday. I didn't get around to it, so here it is today. Took the XZ-1 out around the house after my walk. Mitzi calls these "Blue my mind" flowers. ("Blew my mind?" I don't know.)
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09:16 Monday, 27 May 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 80.29°F Pressure: 1012hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 11.5mph
Words: 71
Ray Spicer is a classmate of mine from the Naval Academy. I think he was also an ocean engineering major, but I know we took several classes together because I saw him often and enjoyed his company. Anyway, Ray went much farther in his career than I did, and he's now the CEO of the United States Naval Institute.
Today he posted a Memorial Day message that quotes Lincoln as well.
✍️ Reply by emailWabbit in Wepose
Current Wx: Temp: 78.87°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 89% Wind: 3.44mphWords: 251
I've been trying to photograph this little rabbit, but I've found that shooting through the window really messes with the image. So I quietly snuck out the front door and crept around to the corner where I could see it.
Then, of course, some large insect started buzzing around me! I figured it was a carpenter bee, but I couldn't see it so I wasn't sure. Anyway, I was able to kind of keep my composure and managed to get a couple of shots.
It's a rabbit. It's not like I'm on safari here or something! Big deal.
Gotta clear out the back of the utility closet for the water softener people. Trying to reorganize stuff to take up less space. This bed we bought has some fancy upholstered frame that makes it impossible to put anything under the bed, which wastes valuable storage space. I looked to see if I could easily remove them, but it doesn't seem like it. I'd have to lift the box spring to see if they're somehow an integral part of the metal frame. It may come to that eventually.
Of course, the real solution is to get rid of stuff!
Nice day yesterday, high got up to the mid-60s, and it was 50°F this morning, which is an improvement over the low to mid 40s it's been since I've been up here. But mostly it's just nice to not be cloudy. I actually love the cooler temperature.
Well, better get to it...
✍️ Reply by emailBold Jumper
Current Wx: Temp: 88.45°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 65% Wind: 11.5mphWords: 209
A lot of spiders in this place. I evacuated an eastern parson spider last week. This morning, I saw this guy between the kitchen window glass and the screen. It's such a nice day, I opened the sliding glass door, and there I noticed a large-ish spider that was very active and wouldn't pose for a pic, so I couldn't get an ID. It wasn't a wolf spider, or another parson, and so I regret to say I squished it.
Later, before I left the house, I went to close the door, and there was another one. This one got away, crawling back up into the frame of the door.
Before I left, I opened the kitchen window to get a little cross ventilation. The jumper isn't particularly problematic, so I wasn't too worried about it getting into the house. It has pretty much stayed right were it was, but now I'm worried about squishing it if I close the window.
I like jumping spiders, though I've never been especially successful at getting a good shot of one. The eyes are the big attraction, but in this shot the chelicerae are more eye-catching, since the two large front-facing eyes are kind of lost in the shadows.
✍️ Reply by emailWhy I Hate the NY Times
06:03 Wednesday, 27 May 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 59.63°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 83% Wind: 5.44mph
Words: 219
I unsubscribed from the Washington Post because of Bezos and their partisan editorial positions. (They're for partisan gerrymandering in Red states, but against it in Blue.) I subscribed to the NY Times last year because I felt that they still had a strong news-gathering core.
But things like this article just piss me right the fuck off. It's the Times putting its thumb on the scale in the Maine senate race because they don't like Gram Platner.
“It is in real trouble, and it should be,” said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who is known to oppose the most extreme parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda.
That is complete and utter bullshit. And you know they know it because of the passive voice construction. And they illustrate the piece with a picture of Collins with a caption making the same claim.
Collins has opposed none of the "most extreme parts of Mr. Trump's agenda."
It's not a credible claim. I don't know how much influence the NY Times holds in Maine, probably a lot less than they seem to think they do. So I wonder why they go out of their way to trash their own credibility and reputation to try and save the struggling campaign of a woman who has been a consistent doormat for Trump.
Bullshit.
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