Research
00:00 Monday, 26 February 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 69.01°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 89% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 349
I'm kinda diggin' this 14" MacBook Pro and so I want to be able to move back and forth between the iMac and the laptop without a lot of futzing around with open files and so on. So I'm trying a little experiment.
I duplicated Captain's Log and renamed it iCloud Test copy on the iMac. The AppleScript automations won't work, but that's not important for this test. I wanted to see what happens when I have the same document open on two instances of Tinderbox on different machines.
I repaired to the recliner and launched Tinderbox which had been closed with all windows closed at quitting. I opened iCloud Test copy and made three entries. Then I closed the MBP and went and watched Jeopardy!
I got the Final Jeopardy question about Ephesus right, only because BAINBRIDGE (CGN-25) made a port visit to Antalya, Turkey in like, 1989(?), and we had a Navy chaplain on board who was also the tours coordinator and we shared a stateroom. He went to Ephesus. I vaguely recall him telling me why he went to Ephesus, something about an apostle or something. It took me the whole jingle time to dredge that memory up from the mists of time, but I was quite pleased with myself.
Anyway, came back to the iMac to see what might be up with iCloud Test copy.
I was surprised to find that my Tinderbox window had shrunk in size and moved to the bottom left corner of my iMac's screen. But there in the iCloud Test copy tab was the document I'd edited on the MBP, and there were the three entries I'd made!
I'll leave both versions open tonight and see what kind of contention arises when both create a Saturday container, and each Saturday creates a Midwatch entry. I'm guessing things will get pretty fouled up at that point, but we shall see.
I recall a Bloom County comic with that really smart kid doing something the others didn't understand, and the punchline was "You can't argue with research!"
Words to live by.
✍️ Reply by emailIn My "Mind's Eye"
09:41 Monday, 26 February 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 60.6°F Pressure: 1021hPa Humidity: 72% Wind: 4mph
Words: 321
Garret mentions he doesn't have an "inner voice." I've only learned of this fairly recently, within the past few years, I think. Bix Frankonis is also not "neuro-typical." It's very interesting to me to learn of the varieties of internal experience people have.
The Guardian piece Garret linked to, likewise linked to a test to evaluate the "vividness" of your "mind's eye." I took it.
I was "hyperphantasic." I can picture all of those scenes, in great detail. It's always frustrated me, greatly, that I can't draw them on a piece of paper!
Likewise my "inner voice" is a virtual chatterbox, though I've learned not to take everything it says seriously.
May go some way toward explaining why I like photography and writing so much?
Now, I don't have a "photographic" memory. I can picture scenes or things I'm familiar with in great detail. If I've only seen something once, I can only recall specific things if those things are characteristics I've seen before. A "blue" car, or a "Ford." If it was a "blue Mustang," I could recall that, picture that. But I couldn't recall enough details at a glance to identify the year, or what type of wheels it had.
And my experience is such that it seems almost impossible to me to conceive of an internal experience without them. I don't know what particular use there might be to be able to picture things vividly, other than to recall things that were pleasant or welcome. Or if I had any artistic ability, perhaps to render them in some way.
That said, I "hear" myself writing as I write and I'm aware that I have no idea where the words are actually coming from. That is, "hearing myself" is integral to my writing process, but it's the "still, small voice" that is the actual author.
Anyway, one of the cool things about blogging. Finding out about other people.
✍️ Reply by emailOn The Small Screen
10:28 Monday, 26 February 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 64.6°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 62% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 70
Now I get to watch the YouTube video of our Blogging With Tinderbox meetup, and see how much I may have embarrassed myself.
Probably better at YouTube to see all the shared screen data.
✍️ Reply by emailGives Me GAS
11:03 Monday, 26 February 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 71.26°F Pressure: 1007hPa Humidity: 93% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 63
OMDS recently released a 150-600mm/f5-6.3 IS zoom lens. It's only $2600!
Normally, the weight and the price would combine to prevent any GAS ("gear acquisition syndrome") pains.
Then I read a blog post like this, and click on all the pics.
It's still in the "very unlikely" realm, but we'll see how I feel toward the end of the year.
✍️ Reply by emailCedar Waxwings
13:18 Monday, 26 February 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 74.93°F Pressure: 1008hPa Humidity: 88% Wind: 14.97mphWords: 185
I went out this morning with the E-M1X and the 40-150mm/f2.8 Pro with the MC14 1.4x teleconverter mounted. There was one swallow tailed kite, but it was pretty far away. It seems like the teleconverter adds a bit of chromatic aberration. Shot wasn't compelling enough to share it.
Thought I'd be shut out when I saw these cedar waxwings flock to this tree. Had kind of hoped I'd get a shot of them all going airborne, but they didn't seem like they were in any hurry and I wanted to get home.
It's a much heavier rig than I normally carry, so I used the Cotton Carrier G3 vest. At least I got more of a workout. I couldn't have carried this setup for 3.3 miles on a sling without getting a painful knot between my shoulder blades. As it was, I felt it a bit in my quads, and toward the end in my calves. I wasn't booking along by any means, but I wasn't sauntering either.
✍️ Reply by emailUnderthinking
18:10 Monday, 26 February 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 83.77°F Pressure: 1003hPa Humidity: 70% Wind: 4mph
Words: 598
So the "Midwatch" entry didn't work. Rather, it worked as intended within Tinderbox, I just didn't fully understand that intention.
A quick trip the forum got a prompt reply from Mark Anderson. The Create command will only create a uniquely named note. All of my Year, Month and Day notes are uniquely named, but to create a note with the name "Midwatch," in every Day note requires a little finesse.
If you add the $Path of the note to the name, and it's unique within that path, as Midwatch is intended to be, then Create will oblige. And to do that we construct it with a bit of Action Code thus:
$MyString=$Path+"/Midwatch";
create($MyString);
Since the Edict had worked yesterday when I first implemented it, it declined to do it today. Once I revised the Edict as above, it worked in Saturday. Of course, it appeared at 10:21 a.m. when I revised the Edict. I'll be interested to see what time it creates it tomorrow!
As regards Research, I'm uncertain and troubled. As I was playing around this morning with the Edict, trying to understand what was happening, I had both the iMac and the MBP awake. The Inspector window was open in both machines, though not necessarily on the same note. On the iMac, I witnessed the contents of the Inspector window change without any interaction from me.
I'm working now with Tinderbox shut down on the MBP. I'm going to create a very small test file and do some more testing. But I think it may be problematic in some way to keep the same document open on two machines at the same time. Maybe not, if I'm not working on both machines within seconds or minutes of each other, which is what I was doing this morning. But a smaller file should be simpler to help understand the behavior.
Jack is worried that perhaps I may be creating "complicated workflows." I think there's little chance of that, relatively speaking. First, I'm not that smart.
Second, I think the automation I'm creating is rather straightforward, certain particulars notwithstanding. And, for now, it's mostly just doing basic infrastructure.
I will be playing with the "run command" action to see if I can reach out to other services from Tinderbox to do something useful. Mostly this is intended to help me learn how to do it, something I've never done in Tinderbox before. And the only way to learn Tinderbox is to use it.
And use it.
And use it.
After that, I plan to build some Agents to gather related notes, if only the "Change:" entries to create a Change Log. But probably something for healthcare or medical and something for travel too. But Agents are usually pretty straightforward.
I also hope to learn more about linking notes within Tinderbox to see what advantages there may be to exploiting that facility.
For now, this is just baby steps. But even at this early stage, I'm quite excited about what document affords me in terms of recall. I used to have a pretty good memory. I'm not leaning into dementia at this point (yet), but it isn't quite as reliable as it once was. This is giving me greater confidence that I'll be able to recall things with some ease when the need requires, and that gives me a little peace of mind.
I am having fun. But I also feel as though this is time well spent. Invested, really.
And it was great chatting with Phil Nunnally in the meetup this afternoon too.
✍️ Reply by emailThis Morning's Sky 2-26-25
06:39 Wednesday, 26 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 75.9°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 38% Wind: 5.75mphWords: 17
Put the OM-1 outside with the 17mm/f1.2 mounted. A couple of aircraft and several satellites.
✍️ Reply by emailIt's Done
12:21 Wednesday, 26 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 75.9°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 38% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 231
I got the iMac erased and reformatted. Harder than it should have been, but it's done. It's one of those things you seldom do, so it's a learning curve, getting signed out of iCloud and so on.
One really great thing about this will be the end of the problem with iCloud Documents and Tinderbox. I posted the previous post this morning. As I was booting the iMac, long before it completed, I recalled I had Tinderbox open on the MBP. So I hustled back to my office to quit Tinderbox.
When Tinderbox opened on the iMac, it opened the last version saved on the iMac, not the one from iCloud. I force-quit Tinderbox, hoping that the version I saved this morning on the MBP would be the one that opened when I launched Tinderbox in the MBP.
Nope.
God I hate iCloud.
Anyway, I think I'm just going to use one computer from now on. I mostly did that from 2012 to 2019, when I was running on a 13" MacBook Pro (Retina), and connected it to a 27" Thunderbolt Display when it wasn't on the road. So much simpler.
Charging up the bluetooth keyboard, and then I'll top off the trackpad and put it all back in the box. Took some photos so Mitzi can get it up on FB Marketplace. One more thing out of the house.
✍️ Reply by emailIdentity in the Marketplace
10:30 Thursday, 26 February 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 24.94°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 7.58mph
Words: 1144
A long time ago, in a blogosphere far, far away there was a rag-tag group of internet triumphalists who proclaimed that the internet changed everything.
They were right, just not in the way that they thought.
These internet triumphalists, "small pieces, loosely joined," were not the first to make the claim that a particular piece of technology "changed everything." Personal computers were supposed to "change everything."
They did. Just not in the way those visionaries and prophets predicted.
The MacOSX Guru [sic] laments,
It occurs to me that I was the sucker. I imputed values on to the company which were not real. Apple was never different. It was a marketing ploy. Microsoft/IBM were the big bad ogres while Apple was the caring, design-focused revolutionaries who were fighting the ogres. That was great positioning strategy. That protected Apple from getting their ass kicked by faster, cheaper, alternatives. When the market situation changed and Apple became the behemoth, the masks fell off.
The guru is in good company. We were all suckers. It's the water we swim in, the air that we breathe.
There was a video/podcast recently from the Bulwark, which I did not bookmark at the time, where Sarah Longwell mentioned something interesting she observed in a focus group she conducted. I don't recall the specific question/issue she was investigating, but it had something to do with Christianity and politics. What she observed, and found noteworthy, was that Christian voters on the right often made statements beginning, "I am...", while those on the left often made statements beginning "I believe..."
Perhaps it's an artifact, or an illusion, but if it's real, I think it's profoundly interesting. I'll see if I can find the video somewhere.
As consumers, because that is our primary role in our economy, we often identify with our product choices. "I'm a Ford guy." Or, "I'm a Mac user." (Exhibit A: See the entire collection of Apple ads here.) Marketing convinced us that our product choices were a way of signifying something about our identity, often our superiority over others who made a different choice.
I'm reminded of Jon Gruber's frequent reference to taste, with regard to the differences between Apple products and other, inferior, products. If not in technical terms, at least in terms of aesthetic sophistication, which is the hallmark of the refined individual, or so I've heard.
Back in the day, a group of marketers led by Doc Searls, put together something called The Cluetrain Manifesto. I never embraced it, and many of the things I wrote about in my old Groundhog Day blog were pushing back and mocking the manifesto. I glanced at it just now, and while I haven't made an exhaustive study, I suspect it has not aged well:
31. Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own "downsizing initiatives" taught us to ask the question: "Loyalty? What's that?"
How's that working out?
But the one I despised most was the first one, "Markets are conversations."
I don't know that I ever convinced anyone of what a pernicious lie that was (More generously, what a profound category error it represented.), but I hammered away it relentlessly.
Fundamentally, the assertion conflates the social with the commercial. These two human activities, or fields of activity, are orthogonal to one another. That what takes place in the social sphere has little nothing to do with what takes place in the commercial sphere.
And when we try to understand activities in one sphere in the context of the other sphere, we fundamentally misunderstand both.
But what do I know? I'm just a guy who went to a trade school with zero experience in commerce, marketing and who probably isn't so adept in the social sphere either.
The misconception is understandable. It arose from people saturated in the concepts of branding, which probably informed their conception of identity. The notion that identity is located in signification, because that is what marketing has taught our society.
Indeed, even the "counter-culture," was probably at least 75% signifying — hair and clothing styles, vernacular and idiom, performative lifestyle choices.
Because we inhabit a world that has become an attention marketplace. Our visual landscape is filled with signifiers. Virtually all forms of media, to include the people who extol the virtues of "plain text," and make an elaborate display of their embrace of markdown.
Irony. It's the fifth fundamental force of the universe. I'm still waiting for my call from the Nobel committee.
Markets are NOT conversations!
Conversations are the mutual exchange of attention between two individuals. To the extent that signifying intrudes into the content of conversations is merely a symptom of our sick society, infected as it is by the disease of capitalism and commerce.
Anyway, the guru is in good company. The marketers won. Even the whole Cluetrain™ bullshit manifesto was a branding exercise, because it has no meaning in a social context.
Blogs can be conversations. The mutual exchange of attention between two individuals for the inherent social reward of receiving attention. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm just here sharing what's on my mind, hoping that some of you may find it interesting from time to time.
And given the recent veritable deluge of email I've received, I guess some of you do. And that's very gratifying. Seriously. Won't make me rich, but I'm rich enough I guess. More than I deserve probably.
But identity isn't something you can buy, and I'm pretty sure it isn't even something you can signify. Sure, I can wear an old Navy ball cap and you might reasonably infer that I'm a navy veteran. But I'm more than that. And I sometimes choose to wear that signifier because I know how some people will react to it.
Conservatives are often surprised and disappointed that I'm not on their "team," often sharing an odious opinion believing that I would be receptive and validating. I don't find this particularly amusing; but it can serve to let me hear or observe someone's candid views and behavior as they're less guarded in the moment.
The irony of Sarah's observation, in case it didn't hit you over the head, is that those on the right often criticize or object to "identity politics." They bought what the right was selling, paid for with their endless attention, and they've embraced it as their identity. Because we have no real idea of what identity is anymore. It's something the government gives you on a card, or a document. It gives you permission to be welcome in certain circles, or on certain platforms. That's not what identity is, but it is what it has become, if that's not too much of a contradiction.
I think, therefore I am.
Connect the dots.
The beat goes on...
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