Cubs Took A Loss On Kyle Tucker Trade
Bleed Cubbie Blue has a survey asking Cubs fans whether the trade for Kyle Tucker last year as a success for the Cubs as GM Carter Hawkins claims. The writer of the post suggests that it was, and to do so he uses the results for each player involved in the trade.
I think the post misses one key point in the analysis, which is the value of the players at the time of the trade and take that in to account along with their actual performance. While the Cubs traded three players to the Astros for Tucker, the deal really came down to two players, Tucker and Cam Smith.
At the time of the trade Smith was the Cub’s top prospect in the farm system, which made him one of their most valuable young players. If Smith had stayed with the Cubs he likely does not make the major league roster whereas the Astros immediately put him on their roster. So I think the real comparison is another year of Smith developing for the Cubs versus Tucker’s performance for the Cubs this past season.
When a team trades away a top prospect they are giving away the potential future value of a player, usually in return for something needed now. Did the Cubs need another bat? Yes! Did that bat have to be Tucker in right field, particularly when you had a good hitting right fielder on your roster? Probably not.
In my opinion, when Tucker signs with a team other than the Cubs, the Cubs will have lost on the trade. Had the Cubs kept Smith they still had value in the bank for future years and they lose that future value no matter how you slice it. From a Cubs fan perspective, if you had told me we would only have Tucker for one year, which was very likely at the trade time, and the team did not advance to the NLCS I would have said that one year of making the playoffs was not worth losing Smith. From a Cubs ownership and management perspective, making the playoffs and the extra revenue that generated made the Tucker signing worth it.
E-ink Tablet Lock-in
In a YouTube video the developer of My Deep Guide, which is a robust PDF organizer template for e-ink devices, talked about the issue of e-ink device lock-in. The issue is that when you use a brand of device, say Remarkable or Boox, there is not a way to move your data from one device brand to another. The only file formats common to all device types are PDF and ePub but that does not provide for extraction of the information within those file types.
The problem is not just with moving from one vendor to another, but affects searching for one’s writing, which requires some form of indexing of the handwritten data such that a search can be run. I touch on this issue in my recent post in which I describe using Google NotebookLM to search for what I write on my Viwoods AIPaper Mini tablet.
As I understand it, what one writes on the Viwoods tablet is translated to vector graphics data that is stored in a file on the device. Viwoods, like Boox, uses a “.note” extension for these file names and those files even sync to my Google Drive. The problem is, there is no application provided by Viwoods to read those files and thus provide a way to search within the files.
The problem here is very similar to about 40 years ago when word processors like Microsoft Word and WordPerfect were developed and used proprietary file formats. Back then the only way to view and thus search within your writing was to open the files in their original application, you couldn’t read Word files in WordPerfect or vice versa. Years later this issue became moot as application vendors reverse engineered the file formats so that files could be moved between word processor brands. Many people vow to avoid any possible word processor vendor lock in by only storing their writing in plain text that may use markdown for formatting.
I think the ideal for tablets would be a standard data file format for handwritten notes that either the tablet providers used natively or at the very least provided for exporting. PDF exports are the equivalent to printing a document and saving that hardcopy as an archive/backup, it provides a bare minimum but quickly becomes unwieldy as the number of documents and pages within them increase. We really need fully searchable formats to allow us to retrieve information from our writing.
I wrote the previous post in Obsidian and used the micro.publish plugin to publish it to this site, however the graphic on the post was not uploaded. I had to manually upload the graphic and then insert the link to it in the post article here on micro.blog as a post publication step.
Also note that the cross posts, particularly to Day One, do not include the edit, which is a problem with cross posting from site to another. In my experience only the first version of a post is every cross posted no matter the source and destinations.
Use Google Drive And NotebookLM With Viwoods AIPaper Mini
I recently started using the Viwoods AIPaper Mini, which is an e-ink tablet with an 8-inch black and white display that is optimized for reading and writing. The reason I bought this device is that I wanted a smaller and more portable tablet for reading and writing than the Boox Note Air 3C I have been using.
The AIPaper Mini, like most e-ink tablets, is designed to provide the ability to write notes by hand in a manner that feels like writing on paper. The handwritten input is usually stored as vector graphics data in a format known to the software on the tablet. Unfortunately there isn’t a standard file format for this data and Viwoods does not provide a way to read those files, which have a .note extension, via a desktop or web application. Fortunately, Viwoods does generate PDFs of notes that reproduces the handwriting as seen on the device display, so exporting or syncing of the generated PDF files is primary means for archiving and retrieving information captured using the device.
Even The Wealthy Are Not On An Island
I am not going to lie, I am happy to be at the end of my career rather than at the beginning. I have no doubt that in the context of a greed driven United States that the wealthy/power class see AI as removing their greatest cost, which is the people they employ. The ends is ever more wealth no matter the means. How might this actually look like? Well I think Daniel Miessler’s description of AI Maturity is as good as any.
The biggest problem I see ahead of us in the United States is that because any thing that looks like “central planning” is deemed anathema, no serious consideration, let alone action, will be taken on the impact to us as a whole. In a society that expects every able person to have a job so that they can take care of themselves, what happens where there are no jobs to be had?
Further, I think the wealthy class should be thinking about this because for where that wealth actually comes from. All of their wealth accumulation is derived from us spending money on products and services they sell. What happens when there are no jobs for people to earn money to therefore spend money that makes them rich?
I’ve enjoyed watching all of the Chicago Cubs games I can watch using the MLB “At Bat App” since it’s beginning. For the number of games and the one year price, it has been a good deal. Sadly, it looks like that is not going to last because in a few years the “At Bat App” will go away in place for ESPN’s crappy app. And I bet they’ll double the price. Because greedy capitalism means we can’t have anything nice.
On Joy
I think the best advice I can give anyone is to learn the difference between happiness and joy. Most may think this is not good advice because they think happiness and joy are the same, but they are not.
Happiness is an emotion, joy is a state of being. Happiness relies on externalities, what makes us happy are those things outside of our self that trigger the emotion that we call happiness. Because happiness relies on things other than ourselves, our happiness and unhappiness is outside of our control.
How is it then that some people who are in situations most would consider unhappy such as poverty, starvation, or war, seem happy? It might be that what it is needed for them to be happy is much different than yourself, or what you think you see as happiness is really joy. People in joy choose to see the world differently, to practice gratitude (another choice) for what they have and for who they are, than to be unhappy for want.
Joy is a state of being.
Joy is what comes to mind when I read this blog post by Joan Westenberg that asks this question:
Imagine your 80-year-old self looking back at the day you’re having right now. What would they give to inhabit your body again, to have your knees that don’t ache, your schedule that seems so overwhelmingly full, your problems that feel so urgent?
Joan goes on the write:
We have pretty good data on what actually happens to people’s subjective wellbeing as they age. The U-shaped curve of happiness is one of the most robust findings in social science: people report being happiest in their twenties, hit a low point somewhere in their forties or fifties, and then happiness increases again in later life. The interpretation of this finding is contested - are older people actually happier or just better at regulating their emotions? Do they compare themselves to worse alternatives or have they genuinely figured something out?
And continues:
Does this mean the thought experiment is useless? Not quite. Its value is in what it reveals about your current priorities. When you imagine an elderly version of yourself looking back, you’re running a sort of values clarification exercise. You’re asking which parts of your current life would seem precious from a distance, which anxieties would seem trivial, which opportunities would seem worth taking.
I commend the entire post for your reading. I also recommend The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu.
Currently reading: The Notebook by Roland Allen 📚
I am really enjoying this book, it is a historical account of the development and usage of notebooks. I’ve come to realize that practice of using notebooks described in this book is the first instance of personal computing, which I think of more as process than product.
I’ve noticed this trend with hotel reservations in which you must cancel a reservation at least three days prior in order to avoid paying. I do have to wonder why it is legal to charge customers for something that a company does not provide.
Copying Blog Posts To Day One
Manton has added cross posting of what I write here to a Day One Journal. I also learned via his post about this feature that there is a way to export blog posts to a Journal using the Day One CLI, which I did. Unfortunately, it looks like the export function doesn’t handle post titles. I am hoping that by getting my posts in to Day One I can find a way to get a nice hard copy version for archival.
In a country in which greed rules, is pedophilia the line that cannot be crossed? (Probably not) We all know the real problem in our country is that greed for wealth and power, an idol, drives us to not accept constraints on anything, but most of us in the United States are conditioned to not address, let alone recognize, the problem. Heck, we allow people elected to Congress to get wealthy by trading stocks no matter the clear conflicts of interest and likely insider trading that sends the likes of Martha Stewart to jail. The idea that any person can have too much money is heresy of the American religion, which itself is a heresy of the teachings of Jesus. And some dare to claim that the United States is a Christian nation?
I now see the source:markdownitems in the rss feed for my main blog. I am wondering if this can be used to provide a better import in to DayOne.
A while back in search for different coffee to drink I found Angelino’s and I have been drinking their bold coffees for a little more than a year. My favorite is their Italian Roast, though I also like their Expresso roast, but in my most recent order I added a new coffee, the Mad Professor that might be my new favorite. I am not a coffee connoisseur so I can not properly describe the taste, but I find it bold enough for my palate while being different. Here is a video on YouTube that has more information about the origins of this roast.
Kyle Hendricks is retiring from pitching in Major League Baseball, he played a critical role in the Cubs winning the World Series in 2016. He is now on the MLB coaching clock.
Last night was the 50th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I was in middle school at the time and don’t recall the event when it happened but I do recall hearing Gordon Lightfoot’s ballad about it for the first time a year later on the school bus one morning.
Meaning and understanding are two different things.
It gets worse…when I got downstairs this morning and looked at the outdoor thermometer it said 26 degrees! While I am ready for it to be colder, I am not ready for sub-freezing temps. The weather app says the high for today is expected to be 31, which is 17 degrees below the average high for this time of the year.
First snow fall of the season and the chili is cooking.
In a recent article for the New York Times, David Brooks writes that MAGA has taken ownership of what was once “radical left” ideas to challenge the cultural elite. Brooks writes:
If you want a one-sentence description of where politics is right now here’s my nominee: We now have a group of revolutionary rightists who have no constructive ideology confronting a group of progressives who let their movement be captured by a revolutionary left-wing ideology that failed.
Manton says he made changes to the RSS feeds of this site. I am curious to see how that looks.