Essays on Routine Revelations

Retirement First Quarter Report

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:15:40 -0400

At the beginning of April I passed the first three month milestone of retirement and I want to write down some thoughts about this new phase of life. Am I glad that I retired? Absolutely, but I would be lying if I did not admit feeling some fear caused by the fact that our retirement income is tied to the market that reacts to the whims of the President of the United States.

The market, and my reaction to it, is emotional and so the challenge is in managing those emotions. Uncertainty is a reality that always exists and my technique for living with uncertainty is to focus on, to the extent possible, what I know. For example, if all of our savings were to disappear, which is a very unlikely scenario, I have had these three months of life lived to my schedule whereas I could be still working, still have the savings disappear, and not have had that time.

Retirement for me is about savoring the most precious gift of time, which always passing and often only appreciated via hindsight. The best way to face uncertainty is in gratitude for the current moment. I have reasons to be grateful simply to be alive to experience this moment, but I confess that in the later years of my career I grew frustrated with having the precious time of my life controlled by a corporation that simply did not know nor care about me.

I’ve been working since I was 12 years old. When I define work in the context of my life, I broadly include in it all the requirements placed on my time by others, school and employers. Forty seven years, almost non-stop, of waking up to an alarm clock dictated by somebody else, and when I became more aware that my remaining time in life is shorter than the past life I have lived I grew more irritated with having to share that remaining time with a lifeless corporate entity.

Had you asked me what I planned to do in my retirement I would have simply answered, not work! Loveboy’s Working For The Weekend has been on loop in the soundtrack of my life these past 47 years. I retired so that there were no more stressful Sunday nights as my mind and body gave up the brief bit of relaxation it started experiencing the prior Friday evening.

Mission accomplished! I have even found on a few occasions that I forgot the day of the week, feeling as though it were a weekend.

Same Ole Cubs

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 11:24:22 -0400

Every year it seems the problems with the Chicago Cubs is the same, they struggle to hit with runners in scoring position because they have poor hitters. When the same issues keep appearing that indicates to me there is a systemic problem, which is not something fixable through signing one or two players. The evaluation of talent and construction of the roster is producing the same results we see year after year.

Getting the Cubs to the World Series after a century of losing is turning out to be easier than getting them back a decade after. It’s easy to get a talented team when you tank seasons and trade away what experienced players you have for prospects. The core of the 2016 team were those prospects lead by experienced veterans, but veterans who were in the later half of their careers.

Obviously, fans are not going to allow such a heavy rebuild. Seems to me that if you aren’t able to load up on prospects you have change your approach to obtaining MLB players. Every free agent signing the Cubs have made since 2016 are of players who are in the back end of their careers. Signing Alex Bregman this year is no different than signing Dansby Swanson, players who have won championships but who are not in their prime and therefore seem less capable of hitting consistently over a season.

Stay Awake

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:02:18 -0400

The intended effects of social networks for the sake of wealth ought to be the lens through which we look at AI. At their beginning we were told of all the good things social networks provide, and they did do that for a while, but then the wealth generation went in to hyper drive. We have no reason to believe the motivations towards more and more AI is not the same wealth generation. And since there can only be one most wealthiest person on earth, that leads to not caring about the negative impacts on the rest of the world.

A potentially helpful question to ponder when thinking about where all this AI “stuff” is going. Think of the songs that you have heard in your life, do those songs stand out because they sound good and are entertaining or do they stand out because you connect to the lyrics and relate what they convey? Perhaps that connection has also leads to feeling like you know the song writer, or better yet that the song writer knows you.

Bob Nystrom’s blog post, The Value of Things, inspired the question. Perhaps a way to combat the nihilism of AI is consciousness. Most times we are unconscious, which is like hearing music and simply enjoying the sound, while times we are conscious enough to hear and relate to the words. The risk of AI is the decrease in the amount of time that we are conscious, so perhaps working on our own consciousness is a method to combating the affects of AI.

Seeking Purity Denies The Cross

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 17:25:49 -0400

Today, on Holy Saturday, Christians are in the between times of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, and for those so inclined a time such as this can be a good time to wonder, just what is this all about and where is it that we are going.

As a life long Christian I can’t help but feel a sense of deja vu, here we are once again at Easter and then days and months will pass and the liturgical calendar will start all over again. And I wonder some times, what is the point? Is humanity evolving in any way through this repetition?

If I may be so bold, I would like to propose that perhaps, just perhaps, the prevailing view of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection as a transaction to appease God or Satan causes us to have a wrong view on sin and thus ourselves.

If Easter is simply a transaction for sin, then sin is a thing we can either avoid or eliminate and purity becomes that of which we all strive for. The consequences of purity being the goal is evident in the segregation of Jesus' own people, the more pure or sinless one was the better they were treated and the further inside (closer to God) they could be in the Temple.

The desire for purity seems to naturally lead to humans putting themselves in roles of looking for and labeling actions as pure or impure and inevitably this results in our scapegoating of others to make ourselves feel better. Seeking purity prevents us from achieving any form of real peace between people and ourselves.

Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, put himself right in the midst of those in his society considered impure. Jesus' life and what he taught of how close God actually is to us and how His rule, his polity (peace through love), is opposite to empire (peace through force), which humans believe is the norm.

What if the Cross exposes scapegoating and the related desire for purity as opposite to how God intends us to live rather than being simply a price paid? What if the Resurrection is God saying “Jesus is right and Caesar is wrong”? What if the purpose of Easter is for at-one-ment between us and the Triune God rather than the scapegoating act of atonement?

Peace amongst all the peoples of the earth does not yet exist, and we Christians have to be honest in our complicity in preventing such peace. Today leaders of the United States who claim christianity are waging war against peoples who they deem less than themselves.

Had Jesus been a king like Caesar there would have been no crucifixion and no resurrection. The question posed by the cross to those who claim the adjective christian is, who do you follow, Jesus or Caesar? Your answer defines the meaning of the cross and the validity of the resurrection and determines whether the violent cycle of the civilization that may lead to human extinction keeps repeating or finally diverges.

Contrasting Between What Is And What Intended

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 11:47:59 -0400

Tomorrow is the start of the Christian Holy Week. For those wondering whether Christianity is relevant to our current time, the stories about this week ought to provide the answer, but one may only see that with the help of leaders who connect the dots.

For me one of the best descriptions that sets the scene was written by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in their 2006 book The Last Week. It begins:

“Two processions entered Jerusalem on a spring day in the year 30. . . One a peasant procession, the other an imperial procession. From the east, Jesus rode a donkey down the Mount of Olives, cheered by his followers. On the opposite side of the city, from the west, Pontius Pilate, entered Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial cavalry and soldiers. Jesus’ procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire.”

While this is not a report on what literally happened, it’s plausible contrasts the differences between what we all consider the norm of civilization, peace through violence, and the alternative rule of God of peace through love.

Palm Sunday is about hope, yes, but that is only appreciated in contrast to what is going all around us. If you get caught up in the hoopla then you are missing the point.

Fitbit On Pixel Watch Update 1

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:18:03 -0400

My Reddit post about the Fitbit app on my Pixel Watch is the source of an article on 9to5Google this morning as many people have replied to the post stating they are experiencing the same issue.

As an update, since I disconnected my watch from the Fitbit app on my phone, restarted both watch and phone, deleted yesterday’s step and distance data and then re-connected the watch to the Fitbit app the step count appears to be within expectations.

The problem now is I am not confident that the step count will remain accurate, so the whole situation is requiring more attention that I would like. One needs to be able to rely on data like this or there is no point in even collecting the data.

I have noticed through observations while sitting here at my desk that steps are added slowly over time while they shouldn’t be added at all. I have the felling the sensors on the watch are not being used properly right now, for steps and distance the watch should only increase when one is moving forward and not while sitting at a desk typing.

Fitbit On Pixel Watch Broken

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:28:09 -0400

The March 5, 2026 Wear OS update that Google released has broken the Fitbit app. The Fitbit app of my Pixel Watch 3 is significantly over counting/doubling my steps, mileage, and calories consumed. It looks like it is doubling the counts. As an example, I have taken two walks today and the workout details appear correct, one 12 minute, 0.69 mile walk of 1,515 steps and a second 24 minute, 1.35 mile, 2,967 steps walk, but the overview shown on my phone and watch shows a total of 9,827 steps and 4.7 miles.

As an experiment, I shut off my phone and watch then started my watch. After first start up the watch shows the correct step count, but eventually it connects to the Fitbit servers and is then updated with the higher step count.

I am seeing a recommendation on Reddit of a fix involving resetting the watch, which I think means that I will have to re-install apps, but before doing that I decided to try disconnecting the watch from the Fitbit app on the phone.

After I did the disconnect I deleted the day’s step and distance data from the Fitbit app and the backend server so that it displayed 0 steps. I then restarted my watch, observed that it displayed the correct step count, and then reconnected the watch to the Fitbit app, and after a short period of time the watch and the app on the phone showed 5,462 steps.

Next, I went for another walk of 2,662 steps and afterword it showed the correct sum of about 8,124 steps. I am not ready to declare the situation is fixed with my watch but it’s looking positive.

Computer Industry Pricing

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:47:20 -0400

My opinion is that $599 is a lot of money, and I cannot call anything that costs $599 as cheap. It is not surprising to me that the computer industry that thinks that $1,000 phones, monthly subscriptions for software, and that $20 per month is alright for access to cloud-base AI is out of sync on the definition of prices seems to think $599 is “low cost.”

Because I think $599 is a lot of money, I don’t think the decision to buy a MacBook Neo is a no-brainer. Consequently, if I were deciding whether to buy one for my wife or recommend one for a friend I find myself with the question, will it be a good computer a year or two from now?

Christina Warren in this week’s MacBreak Weekly makes this point about the Neo, that it will likely not be a good computer five years from now. From what I see, it looks like the Neo is comparable in performance to the first MacBook Air that Apple started selling in November, 2020. While it is remarkable that the performance of a computer holds up over six years, just how much longer can that last?

And for those writing reviews who seem to not be giving a second thought about the constraint I ask, will you ask Apple to release a lower cost MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM? You accepted the baseline Apple created of 16 GB seemingly with no complaint that it was too much. Yes, I know the Neo isn’t for you, but should we be asking people to replace their laptop every two years?

Like nearly all other things that Apple sells, I don’t doubt that Apple will sell plenty of Neos, particuarly in this hype cycle. The Neo looks like a nice first release of the product, but I expect next year their will be a new model with more RAM and storage that will provide more for your money. If you want a Neo I recommend waiting to see whether the price comes down later this year. Also, keep an eye on Apple’s competitors who I would expect to answer with competing products at that price point.

How I Use RSS

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 12:00:24 -0400

As I have observed earlier, right now there is a lot of good energy around RSS with new feed readers popping up nearly every week. Yesterday Manton Reece released is take on an RSS app called Inkwell that is a companion to his micro.blog service/app that I use to host this blog. Because Inkwell integrates with the blogging platform that I use, I find there are reasons to consider using it while I have resisted looking at other apps.

I have been using RSS since I first learned about it in the early 2000s. Like many, I used Google Reader mostly because it was a web app that I could use on any device. Over the years I tried desktop and phone apps like NetNewsWire, but in the end found myself back to the simple web apps that Dave Winer wrote over the years.

River5 is a simple RSS aggregator that displays the latest updates in a reverse chronological order. It is simple and I host it in a LXC container on one of my Proxmox hosts. The main thing River5 lacks is a way to maintain RSS feeds that I want it to monitor. Dave’s Feedland solved that problem as it is centered around maintaining and sharing RSS feeds while providing both river and mailbox presentations of the feeds.

I find that Feedland presents the latest updates slightly different than River5 in that it seems to batch the updates by source site so not a strict reverse chronological presentation of items. Because of this, I use both, starting with Feedland first thing in the morning to catch up and then use River5 to check in on the latest updates during the day.

The key thing is, I use Feedland and River5 to triage what I want to read, when I see a article I want to read I click the title to open it then save the item in Readwise Reader to read later. I also don’t worry about missing something, if I don’t see an item I don’t care.

If when I am reading an article in Readwise Reader I want to write a blog post about that item and perhaps quote text from it, I copy the article URL to the clipboard then switch to Drafts or Obsidian to write the post. I select any text to quote and copy it in to the draft of the blog post. Inkwell seems well suited for this part of the cycle assuming that it gets the full content of the article.

So, I am dabbling with when I read something I want to write a blog post about, using Inkwell to do that. It might find that this will be more work than worth it but I think I will give it a try for a while.

More Experimentation With Android Desktop

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 15:18:17 -0400

I have paired the Nillkin folding Bluetooth keyboard to my Pixel 10, connected the phone to the BenQ monitor and enabled Android Desktop mode, thus providing me a desktop computing device. The keyboard has a built in trackpad to enable me to move the mouse on the desktop and I have figured out how to run multiple (virtual) desktops at the same time. I have ordered a portable, 15-inch monitor that I have been meaning to buy for some time as a backup display and to experiment further with this idea of really portable computing. For blogging, I am writing this in Obsidian running on the phone and I will post this item to the blog later from my MacBook.

What Is Low Cost?

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 12:44:40 -0400

Do you think $599 is a low price? One cannot answer this question without knowing for what and in how that what compares to others in the market. Today Apple announced the MacBook Neo, which as Wired tells us is the most affordable laptop the company has ever made. In other words, Wired says that $599 relative to other Apple laptops is a low cost.

My first reaction while reading the headlines and before reading the articles is that $599 is too expensive, and reading the articles further convinces me that this is true. My advice is to hold off on buying the Neo and let’s see how much lower you can buy one say later this summer or during the Christmas buying period.

What is behind my reaction is that I think “low cost” isn’t just about the amount of money but also about value. For $599 the MacBook Neo enables you to run MacOS apps in 8GB of RAM and store them and their data on 256 GB of storage, and I think both of those amounts are too low for $599. You can get more of both provided you are willing to run Windows and not MacOS.

Apple itself has established that 16 GB of RAM is the starting point in 2026, as every other laptop it sells starts at that amount. The higher cost of RAM may be a legit reason why Neo only has 8 GB, but I wonder if that lower RAM constraint is also tied to selling Apple’s services. The latest AI technology is not going to run well in 8 GB of RAM, so that means using AI in the cloud, and I am sure the Neo will do that very well at a cost of $20 per month.

My current laptop usage indicates to me that 256 GB of storage is just not enough. I have a 512 GB disk in my MacBook that is 70% full. I find it curious that Apple is not including Touch ID in the $599/256 GB model, for that you need to pay $699 for the 512 GB model, which I strongly suspect is the real version of the Neo that Apple expects to sell. Maybe $599 for 512 GB of storage and Touch ID would be good enough, but I still don’t like that 8 GB of RAM constraint.

You will hear that Apple is targeting the Neo at those who would buy a Chromebook, or perhaps a low cost Windows, but I got to ask, if a person is really concerned about price what exactly is Apple offering here that is better than either option? Go find some articles about the latest version of MacOS and you will find unhappy users.

So, you are going to see a lot of articles saying how wonderful it is that Apple has come out with this low cost model. In the end I think you have to determine whether $599 is low cost or not, for me low cost starts at below $500 but even then that requires some minimum specs. I won’t be surprised at some time in the future this entry Neo will get to below $500, but even then a fair question is whether the device is worth that price. (Note that right now students can buy one for $499, but I ask again, is 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage good enough for students?)

My Thoughts About Android Desktop

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 15:19:08 -0400

I watched XDA’s presentation of the Android desktop mode available in the Android 17 beta. Desktop mode is available with Android 16 too and I’ve tried it out and it’s not bad. I’ve long been intrigued by the idea of using a smartphone as my only computing device, and I honestly think this is best applied to foldables.

As I see it, the main impediment to such an all-in-one device is the lack of wireless connectivity to monitors, keyboards and mice. Imagine being able to use the desktop mode of your phone while the phone is still in your pocket.

It does appear that while desktop mode is available with all Android devices, it’s primary purpose is as a replacement to Chrome OS. For Google, Android desktop mode is a consolidation of operating systems. Google seems convinced that it’s worth it for them to offer a desktop computing user interface for their operating system, even though Chrome OS only has a small percentage of the desktop market, per Wikipedia.

I am not convinced that Android Desktop offers anything for the desktop market, and rumors are Apple may be soon announcing a low cost Macbook built on their A-series processors that will be hard to compete against.

The one scenario I can think of that might be interesting is Google pitching the idea of the Pixel Fold being the computing device that is all one will need, and therefore try to justify the greater than $1,000 price tag for the Fold. The math works when compared to the sum cost of a phone, tablet and desktop if the device fits all these use cases. However, I think for this to work there must be wireless connectivity to keyboard, video, and mouse or at the very least an easy to use drop-in docking station.

The State Of The Union

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 13:06:03 -0400

The President’s State Of the Union speech historically began as the means for the executive to report to the legislature on the current state of affairs for the country and the government. It’s an administrative act that city managers and corporate executives make on a more frequent basis, but because it is broadcasted for the world today it is now entirely a political event.

I think the recent words of the President, the reaction by the U.S. Men’s hockey team, and the reactions to both over the last several days presents the current state of the union. One third of the nation does not want to face the fact that everything is abnormal, think that no U.S. Olympian ought say anything disparaging about and respect the President. One third of the nation is opposed to everything being done by the President and the U.S. government, and the remaining one third is entirely in agreement with and supports the President and the U.S. government.

My description of the United States right now is that it is an elementary school playground, the one of cliques and those of who are “made fun of” or in today’s terms bullied. Middle and high school locker rooms are just a different location for the playground. This description is meaningful to me because when I grew up in elementary, middle, and high school I was the one being “made fun of.”

The playground bully structure includes more than just the bully and the person being bullied, it includes those who laugh with the bully because they see the act as funny and those who laugh with the bully because they are afraid to stand out. Some may just watch or look away, and a few, a very, very few, might even speak out and or defend the bullied.

What this teaches many boys and girls is that it is ok to have a laugh at the expense of another. It is better to be the one laughing than the one being laughed at. When the lesson carries over in to adulthood it translates to it being ok for one to profit off the suffering of another. The lesson is the hierarchy that one can call the norm of civilization, some people are better than other people, and therefore it’s ok, expected even, to laugh at the other. The norm of civilization is so a part of our psyche that it is accepted and expressed habitually and without question.

The pyramids in Egypt, a triangle, depicts the hierarchy of the norm of civilization. We learn that what we should want is to be as high up that triangle as possible. The problem not realized is that there is only one tip to a triangle with room only for one person. Historically we have called that person emperor or king and more recently dictator or executive. In the norm of civilization only the one person at the top is free from exploitation from those above.

Our acceptance of the norm of civilization is what allows for the exploitation of others without consequences such as we learn seemingly daily in the actions of those in government and as we see more and more evidence of such as from the Epstein files. It is what allows all that you see happening around you.

There is another way that cannot be lived nor taught by an imperial religion such as the Christianity known by most of the world. We are called to change our minds and to love others and escape the from the pyramid.

Decouple Meaning From Employment

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 18:00:45 -0400

In his blog post, The End of the Office, Andrew Yang paints a very dire picture but one that I think must be seriously considered. I think Yang’s fifth point is most important:

Pessimism and anger will rise up. I saw a note on social media that said, “Do you really think politicians will let millions lose their jobs? They’ll ban AI first.” Has this person been paying attention? Go talk to the manufacturing workers or the journalists and see how it worked out. Hundreds of billions of dollars have not been spent on this technology for corporate juggernauts to stop now, and most officials have been cheerleading what they see as progress. The genie is out of the bottle.

The social contract of ‘study hard, go to school, get a good job, live a decent life’ is about to be vaporized to smithereens. Upward mobility for most will be a thing of the past. People are not going to take it well. Particularly educated people who think that they deserve better. That’s an ingredient for revolt.

What Yang describes has been happening for the last several decades and the wealthy class embrace of AI will accelerate the process. I fear the consequences significant. A society built on consumption is really built on employment because one must be employed to earn the money to spend on the products to be consumed. Worse is that how we define people has good or bad, successful or unsuccessful is defined by employment. Think of Ronald Reagan and the “welfare queen." Think of the ongoing war between the wealthy class and wealth redistribution put in place under FDR that contributed to forming the middle class in the United States.

We will need to redefine employment in the United States, such as less than a 40 hour work week, decouple fundamental necessity of healthcare from employment, and change how we define and measure success.

Two Way RSS

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 14:12:50 -0400

Yesterday I wrote a draft post about RSS Feeds and I wrote this:

A lot of pixels are being dedicated to writing about Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, which I think of as a “broadcast medium” for text and files.

It dawned on me later that what I wrote I think gets to the root of an issue with using RSS for two-way communication/messaging on the web. RSS is, like the web in general, a broadcast technology, by which I mean it enables one-to-many communication. Broadcasting to whomever what is new on a web site is why writers benefit from RSS, and having new writing appear in a river/timeline or inbox is the benefit of RSS to readers.

The problem as I see it is that RSS wasn’t natively designed for two-way communication. It might be that one can make it do so but that I think that’s the classic case of seeing all problems as a nail to be solved with a hammer. You can pound a screw in to a wall, but the right tool to get that screw in the wall is a screwdriver.

My experience with network communication pre-dates the Internet. Before the Internet became popular there were Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and online services like Compuserve that created and provided online threaded messaging. The experience was, you had areas dedicated to a topic called forums or boards, and users created new “posts” to the forums in which they could ask questions or share information. People replied to those “posts” that appeared in chronological order creating a coherent thread of messages.

Compare the threaded messaging I describe above to what you see on X/Twitter in which a person can reply to something that I post but that reply is just part of the social network timeline and not presented to the reader in any association to the original post, so there is no context and no coherence to the messaging without the user having to dig.

Micro.blog uses the same “mentions” method for associating a reply to a post, and I as a user can either be notified that someone mentioned me or I go to the mentions section of Micro.blog but what see there are only replies, I as a user have to click Conversation to see the entire thread and therefore the context.

I am inclined to think that the evolution of the non-threaded mentions approach is due to starting with the web and HTML rather than the prior art of BBS and its Internet sibling Usenet. There are web sites, like Discord, that you access via a web browser but in design function more like Usenet than the web.

For me, the river/timeline approach is not useful for messaging because it doesn’t provided context. One can’t even assume a topic as one could when accessing a Usenet group or a BBS board and you don’t see a chronological thread of the messages without digging.

As a writer, I see value in readers having an ability to comment/respond to a post but as that writer, what I need is simply to know that someone has responded to a specific post and I need to know which post so that I can read the feedback. Honestly, the best approach I have seen for this use case is pingbacks as implemented by Wordpress that was developed by bloggers and predates the social network timelines.

Oceans Rise, Empires Fall

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 13:21:24 -0400

Title inspiration: You’ll Be Back

Joan Westernberg uses the failure of empires as a metaphor for why current predictions about AI are likely not to be completely realized. She equates empires with corporations and says this:

We haven’t seen the first great AI collapse. We haven’t seen a foundation model company make the BlackBerry mistake or the Nokia mistake, or the Roman mistake, or the Ottoman mistake or reach their Bunker-in-Berlin mistake. But we will, and we’ll see it multiple times, because these mistakes = features of power concentration. The hubris that makes a company or an empire dominant in one era is frequently the quality that blinds it to the next one. If you could ask Lazaridis in 2006, or a British colonial administrator in 1900, whether their model of the world was permanent, each would’ve given you a very convincing explanation for why it in fact was.

The interesting thing is that while she is applying the fall of empires to AI, she could actually be describing what is happening right now in the United States. We are living in a period of time in which the fall of the U.S. empire is accelerating. I think AI is a contributor to the fall of the U.S. empire because employment is a pillar of the empire that has been built using economic might.

Those of us who have been raised on the privileges of the U.S. empire are being told that the source of our pain is the “other,” however that is defined (race, nationality, gender) by each one of us. The purpose is self preservation for the people in power who created and maintained the U.S. empire for their personal benefit, but as Joan points out history shows they too will ultimately fail.

That anxiety you are feeling is being caused by the stones of the U.S. empire starting to fall around you. All you have known is the life the empire has provided to you and you know your life is going to change. We know this in our bones because change is a cosmic truth.

Da da da dat da dat da da da da ya da

Down The Drummer Rabbit Hole

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 18:30:42 -0400

Earlier today I noted that Dave had posted about the issue I encountered on January 30 preventing me from publishing my Daynotes using the “default” blogging tool in Drummer referred to as “Old School,” which is descriptive of a day based blogging format.

I started the process of making and testing the changes that Dave suggested, finding them to be more involved, but the net result is that the Daynotes site is now served by HTTPS rather than only being accessible via HTTP.

When the ability to build the blog from within Drummer broke I did my own work around by creating a new OPML file that is served by my instance of PagePark, which is Dave’s web server app that knows how to render OPML files for web browsers. For now I am going to continue using my “new” Daynotes outline file while using the Drummer blog for longer articles. My simple forwarding url for daynotes (daynotes.frankm.info) will go to single outline page while I have created a new forwarder for the Old School site (oldschool.frankm.info).

Analyze Oil Consumption Using NotebookLM

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 17:22:58 -0400

Of all the AI tools currently available I use Google’s NotebookLM the most. My best way to describe NotebookLM is that one can use it to apply Google’s Large Language Models toward a topic based on sources for information that one provides. For example, when we were researching health insurance plans last fall I created a notebook in NotebookLM and uploaded to it as sources PDFs provided by the insurance providers. I then used the chat in the notebook to ask questions about the different plans, which I then saved for future reference.

I have a 2013 GMC Terrain and a few years past I learned that this make and model SUV has a history of burning oil, so I have been diligently checking the oil level once a week and after long drives during trips. I log the date, odometer reading, and oil level in a note in Google Keep using my phone and I wish Gemini were integrated in Keep so that I could directly ask questions like how many miles have been driven and when is the last time I added oil.

Google has not added Keep as a source for NotebookLM, which I think would be logical, but what I can do is send (export) a note in Keep to a Google Doc which I can then add as source for NotebookLM. Today I exported each of my three log notes to a Google Doc, created a notebook in NotebookLM and add these docs as sources. NotebookLM correctly identified the sources as a maintenance log for a vehicle but it didn’t know which type of vehicle nor did it know the year the entries started because I only recorded the month and date. I created a README note that I added as a source in which I specified that the first date was in 2024 and that the logs are for a 2013 GMC Terrain. I also added some information about the dipstick markings.

With the oil logs in NotebookLM I am able to ask simple questions like, how many miles were driven between the last oil check and the prior check? I asked NotebookLM how many miles were driven in 2025, and it then offered to make an infographic that broke down the 2025 mileage by month. NotebookLM also created a detailed vehicle usage and oil consumption analysis report.

NotebookLM provides me with a simple and powerful way to analyze this data, but the fact that Google Keep cannot be a source means that as I update the current log note I will have to re-export it to the Google Doc and refresh that doc source in NotebookLM. I hope that in the future Google will add Keep as a source to either Gemini on my phone or to NotebookLM.

Expectations For The Pixel 10

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 14:11:35 -0400

I got the Pixel 10 for Christmas. We ordered it from Best Buy during their “Black Friday” sale at a cost of $549, when launched this phone cost $799. With an $80 trade-in of a Pixel 6a the total cost to me is $469, which is a very good price for a “flagship” phone.

Before I received the Pixel 10 I wrote this expecting it to be a blog post but I never published it, so now I am going back and I am going to put in quote format my original expectation and then my current point of view after one month of use.

I expect this to be a very worthy upgrade from the Pixel 7a that has been my every day carry for the last 2+ years. The Pixel 10 is slightly smaller than the Pixel 7a but has a larger display (6.3-inch vs. 6.1-inch) that can refresh as fast as 120 Hz; the Pixel 7a max refresh is 60 Hz. The Pixel 10 display can be significantly brighter going up 3,000 nits versus 1,000 nits, which means it will be easier for me to see the screen outdoors in sunlight.

The Pixel 10 battery has more capacity (4,970 mAh vs. 4,385 mAh), charges faster, and includes Pixelsnap wireless charging. Pixelsnap is Google’s magnetic wireless charging that is spec equivalent to Apple’s Magsafe wireless charging, and that means the Pixel 10 can use all of the Magsafe accessories that have been developed for the Apple phones over the last couple of years. For me Pixelsnap is the main feature that makes it worth moving from the lower cost “A” series Pixels to the flagship line.

For the price that I paid, I feel safe in saying the Pixel 10 is in fact a worthy upgrade, but I don’t think that would be the case at the original $799 price. If I am being honest, the most significant difference has been Pixelsnap having bought a Belkin charger and discovering Standby Mode Pro but I don’t think this feature alone is worth $200. It’s nice to have, but not necessary. The battery life is longer in so far as I have yet to have a situation in which the battery is at risk of being depleted; this is in part due to the larger size, but also due to using the Belkin wireless charger.

Another important difference between the two phones is that the Pixel 10 has 12 GB of RAM, which is needed to use all of the new AI functions that Google has been developing for phones. The 8 GB in the Pixel 7a and newer Pixel 9a means using the AI features may require sending data to the cloud, if you are able to use them at all.

So far I am not a big user of AI and so the greater AI capability of the Pixel 10 has not yet been realized. That said, I think I had my first experience with Magic Cue last week when I added a reminder to pick up a prescription at Wallgreens using Gemini and when it confirmed adding the reminder for the next it, without prompting, told me about when the Pharmacy was closed for lunch in the early afternoon.

The Pixel 10 has three camera lenses, adding a 10.8 megapixel telephoto lens to the main and ultrawide lenses of the “A” series line. The telephoto lens provides 5x optical zoom versus the 2x optical zoom in the main lens of the Pixel 7a. Google’s digital zoom software can go up to 20x on the Pixel 10 versus the 5x max on the Pixel 7a. I occasionally zoom in on objects when taking pictures so I think I will really like the telephoto lens.

As I alluded to, in comparison to the Pixel 10, the Pixel 7a is significantly limited in running the latest Google Pixel AI and camera software. There are a bunch of new photo editing capabilities with the Pixel 10 for me to learn, but I think I am most looking forward to “Edit with Ask Photos” that I think will enable me to tell the phone how I want a photo to be edited rather than figuring out how to manually do the edit.

I am not a photography snob, and so I probably have a low threshold for what I consider to be a good camera. I’ve felt that all of my phones have taken good pictures. With this being said, I will admit that I really like the 5x optical zoom that is a clear improvement over the Pixel 7a, and this is my second most used new feature next to Pixelsnap.

When I watched the Pixel 10 announcements I was immediately drawn to Pixelsnap. All of my gadget purchases are driven by utility and access to all of the different Magsafe stands, chargers, and wallets enables me to do more with the device. The problem is, I’ve historically avoided the flagship Pixels because I do not want to pay more than $500 for my phones.

Obviously, the price at launch is not going to be the only price for the phone forever. Google started selling the Pixel 10 in late August for $799 and by late November I was able to buy it at $250 less. Trade-ins bring the price down even more. I can buy last year’s flagship, the Pixel 9 now for $300 less.

To get the Pixel phones at the best price you do not want to buy at launch but wait for holiday sales, which I think results in a more realistic pricing of the Pixel line of phones. Right now one can buy from Google the Pixel 9a, which launched in the spring of 2025 for $399, the Pixel 9, which is the late summer 2024 flagship for $499, and the Pixel 10 (late summer 2025) for $599. Of course, other stores may have lower prices.

I have also noticed recently that Best Buy has started selling “returned/open box” Pixel 10s for as low as $250, which is a great price if you are lucky to snag one.

Avoiding Dead Links

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 13:33:19 -0400

I currently subscribe to the basic micro.blog plan and I have been monitoring the features that Manton adds to premium for any that I might find useful. Today Manton posted a video demonstrating a feature he is experimenting with that could be added to premium that would help prevent dead links.

A problem that exists with adding links to other sites in my blog posts is that over time the pages I link to disappear. Chances are good that if you click a link on a post that I wrote five years ago the link no longer exists, which is a bit of a pain.

The new feature that Manton is experimenting with enhances the Bookmarks feature of micro.blog that creates an archive copy of a web page. Booksmarks is similar to Archivebox. The enhancement associates the original source URL of a archived page that one may use in a blog post and provides a “single click” way to convert the URL to the archived copy of the page on micro.blog and then you can update the post.

Of course, the problem with the current approach is that one has to know that the source URL is no longer available and make the change. For this to really be useful there needs to be some form of automation, which I can imagine could increase the costs of running micro.blog.

Perhaps a compromise is providing micro.blog users a method to initiate a scan of archived posts for dead links, check for the ones that are dead, see if there is an archived version and offer to convert the link. Such ad hoc scans might result in lower compute costs.

Another thing that would useful, if this becomes a real feature, is provide a way for the micro.blog user to an archived copy of the linked to page at the time of writing the post. I don’t know if Manton would want to automatically create an archive of all destination pages of blog posts, but that would be useful for people like me who often write posts using an editor other than micro.blog’s.

A final thought…. I wonder whether this could be integrated with the Internet archive is some way? It seems the purpose of the Internet archive is to do this type of web page archival and their storage may be a way minimum the costs to micro.blog.

Empire Falling

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 13:23:44 -0400

It can be said that much of our problems today started with what the United States did after World War II. I remember in high school history being told that the U.S. decided after WWII that it couldn’t return to it’s isolationist past, what the history teacher did not teach is how the U.S. became an empire. Today our consumption economy depends on the low cost of goods made outside the U.S., and reason why that cost is low depends on the overvalued U.S. dollar. The dollar is overvalued because it is needed by countries for trade.

Empires don’t last forever. Life in the United States is going to be very different in the future, and I fear it will be painful because Americans have been living off the privilege of this empire for so long they don’t even know how or why.

I strongly suspect that people in power, the political backers, the corporate CEOs, and the people whom they helped elect into office all know how bad things are going to get, which is why they are working so hard to get U.S. citizens fighting amongst ourselves and blaming anybody but those in power. In my opinion, this is what Trump’s efforts around crypto are truly all about.

Accountability

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 14:06:21 -0400

Turns out that when you arm a group of men who has no accountability, and the people who do the arming have no accountability, you get anarchy. The first rule of supremacy is there is no accountability of the ruling class, just appeasement. The Supreme Court institutionalized our current state in declaring Presidents have “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.” In other words, the President is above the law.

I am sure SCOTUS would say that Presidents are accountable to Congress who can impeach them and ultimately to the citizens who cannot vote for them. These are a form of accountability, but I ask, is an act that can only occur three years in to the future truly accountability? Seems to me that for true accountability it must occur in time of closer proximity to the event at which they are to be held accountable, which I would think is the purpose of criminal courts!

To really fix what is wrong in the United States there needs to be an overturn of several Supreme Court rulings through additional amendments to the Constitution.

My First Mechnical Keyboard

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:39:46 -0400

I just received my first mechanical keyboard, the Keychron C3 Pro, and this is the first blog post that I am writing with it. It is a relatively inexpensive keyboard, so a good first one to try out. This Keychron has brown switches and what comes to mind when I press them is they feel like I am pressing on rows of blocks.

I have been using the Logitech MX Keys keyboard, which has a much lower profile than this Keychron keyboard and I am starting to notice the difference in my arms. I’ve raised my chair to better position my arms and wrists over the keyboard.

I think I have to give this keyboard a period of time before making a decision about whether I like it or not. It is certainly different, but not sure whether this is a good or bad difference.

Using Obsidian With Viwoods AI Paper Mini

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:48:37 -0400

Ever since I got the Viwoods AI Paper Mini I have been developing processes for using it with Obsidian, which I use for my second brain. At present I have Obsidian installed on the tablet but I do not use it for writing on the tablet. I do have Obsidian Sync running on the tablet but not syncing all of my oldest notes imported from Evernote.

Have three Papers (notebooks) that I am exporting from the tablet in to Obsidian and I am doing this in two ways. I am using a Viwoods Sync Obsidian plugin, which is currently in development, to import PNG images of the notebook pages in to Obsidian which I can then view and link to from other Obsidian notes. The plugin uses the Viwoods native .note file as input, creates PNG image files of the pages, and then creates an Obsidian note (markdown) page with the image embedded.

For the second export method I am using the AI Text Conversion function of the Viwoods Papers app to create ASCII text of my handwriting. The AI feature uses the Gemini Pro Version 3 model and I manually select one more more pages for conversion. I find the Gemini Pro does the best job of converting my handwriting. I copy the result to the clipboard, switch to Obsidian on the tablet, open the note in which I am storing the text version of the notebook and paste the text in. After the updated note syncs to my desktop computer I then edit what I pasted to correct what is usually a small number of errors.

Finally, in the correct areas of the text version of the note I insert links to the image file, created by the Viwoods Sync plugin, that is the source of the text. I can then open image side-by-side with the text with a right-click of the link and Split Pane right.

In feedback I provided to the developers of the Viwoods Sync plugin I asked if they could do OCR of the notes as part of the sync process, which they suggest might be a feature they add in the future. The issue for that part of the plugin might be the quality of the handwriting recognition.

Raspberry Pi USB Gadget

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:37:54 -0400

Back in 2019 I learned about and testing using a Raspberry Pi as an accessory to an iPad. The idea is useful for people who want a local Linux terminal on an iPad rather than making a remote connection to one on a server. People who use terminal apps like vi or emacs and developer tools are the ones who find this the most useful.

The process involves connecting a Raspberry Pi to an iPad via USB-C cable, and software on the Raspberry Pi make the USB-C connection function like an ethernet network connection. You get an IP address that you can use to login to the Pi using SSH, at which point then have access to all the tools available in the Raspberry Pi OS. If a VNC Server is running on the Pi you can even get a desktop connect using a VNC Viewer.

The instructions for setting this all up,, in which is called USB Gadget Mode, are not daunting but take a little bit of work. Today I learned that the functionality for USB Gadget Mode is now available directly in the Raspberry PI OS.

Productively Retired

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 15:18:53 -0400

I am less than a month in to my retirement and I am still feeling my way around. One thing I am noticing about myself are changes in some of my interests online. Over the years, like many people in tech, I have had an interest in productivity apps, particularly ones built around processes like Getting Things Done or PARA. Inevitably that leads me to installing an app or two and checking them out. Over the years I have tried so many todo apps!

Now that I am retired I think that my definition of productivity is not consistent with how most people on the Internet define it. Right now I am thinking retirement is less about getting things done and more about the best ways to spend my time, and none of the apps I’ve seen has this focus.

Since I started using an e-Ink tablet a couple of years ago, my primary todo app has actually been a PDF that has been a digitized version of the Franklin Planners I used when I started my career. Unfortunately, the PDF planners have a problem with finding information because there is not an embedded index that enables one to search for handwritten words. For example, I can search for handwriting on the Boox Note Air 3C but when I export my notebooks as PDFs to my laptop computer I cannot do that same search. On the laptop I am left to flipping through pages just I did back in the day with the Franklin Planner.

I did not purchase the 2026 version of the PDF planner that I had used the last two years because I don’t think I need it, although I still find myself checking out free versions shared by developers who post about them on Reddit.

Right now to the extent that I do planning, I am using the Daily app on my Viwoods AIPaper Mini. Events (appointments) sync from Google Calendar, Tasks is a simple checklist template on which I write whatever I might want to do on a given day, I check off those I complete and manually copy/paste any items I write from one day to the next. Any notes I want to jot down go on the Notes tab.

To keep track of things I think I want to do at some time in the future I use Google Tasks, which is really a kanban. I have some topical lists like Home Lab, Home, Blog and Want To Watch. The benefit of using Google Tasks is that it integrates with my Pixel phone so if I want a reminder about an item I simply give the entry a due date.

Getting Things Done aficionados will note that am violating it’s recommendation for a single trusted source for information. I am spreading things between two “apps” and two devices although both are on Android. It gets worse, because I am also putting things in Obsidian.

I view Obsidian as my second brain as many others do, but I am not forcing myself to only use it. However, it is where I have nearly all of my digital information I have accumulated over the years: notes from Evernote, notes from Roam, and all of my ebook and article highlights gathered by Readwise. Obsidian is where I go to search for information. Ideally, I could paste searchable versions of PDFs with my handwriting in to Obsidian, but for now I can at least attach the files and I am monitoring the development of a plugin that just might provide the search function I seek.

I think that over time how I use these tools as a retiree will likely change and I am still keeping an eye out for the tools that will help me make the best use of my time rather than be designed to produce most “things” during my time. It might be the case that I have to build the tool for myself.

We Know The Problem

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 14:23:24 -0400

I think unrestrained capitalism is what is destroying the United States. One way is by corporate ownership of “the press,” often referred to as the “fourth estate” for its role in the U.S. as enshrined by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, because the capitalistic profit motive overrides reporting. We are seeing how threats made by the U.S. government toward the corporations that own “the press” results in either non-existent or bad reporting.

A Supreme Court that fulfills its responsibility for preventing tyranny would rule that threats made by the government to the press and their owners violates the First Amendment, but unfortunately our current Supreme Court sees its role as preserving/establishing the unitive executive theory as its prime directive.

Capitalism is also behind the money in PACS and lobbying resulting in Congress only representing a minority that provides its members with money. The corrosion of Congress is the ultimate problem because its law making role will ultimately need to be made to correct our current state, and those laws would work against politician’s self interests. What I think needs to happen is the classification of large financial donations, which would have to be defined, as the emoluments they are and not an act of free speech.

The Constitution has two emoluments clauses because the founders knew that quid pro quo was bad for democracy. Quid pro quo is the reason why Congress in reality only represents a minority of the United States and not the citizens as intended.

A society of no restraints, which is what we are becoming, is not a free society because vices become virtues. The greed that drives one for more and more wealth and power is seen by too many as the virtue of a successful American, but that greed expressed in our unrestrained capitalism leads to a zero sum game. Zero sum games cannot be won when democracy, freedom for all, is the prime directive. Democracy and unrestrained capitalism cannot co-exist.

Bumbling Cubs Front Office

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 12:53:06 -0400

Kyle Tucker signed a 4 year, $240m contract with the Dodgers. In my opinion the Cubs trading for Tucker last year and giving up a top prospect is one of the worst decisions made by Jed Hoyer. The mistake the Cubs keep making is that they seem unwilling to pay for the positions of need and then to appease the fans just sign whatever player regardless of the position, and that is a bad way to run a team.

Last season the Cubs need was at third base and Alex Bregman was available, but the Cubs were not aggressive in filling their need and for some reason settled on renting Tucker for a year. The only way the trade for Tucker made sense is if the Cubs had extended him before the season started, once the season started with no extension it was obvious the Cubs had made a mistake. Redemption for the front office would have been a deep playoff run, but instead Tucker was injured for most of the second half of the season and the Cubs lost to the Brewers in the divisional round.

Now the Cubs have signed Bregman to finally fill their need, but they could have done that last year and not given up any prospects in the process. It would have been much smarter for them to have taken the money they gave to Tucker and spent it on Bregman. All around, these were bad decisions and even bad business decisions by the owner. Of course, Ownership showed their bad business skills by extending Hoyer last year before the trade deadline, effectively rewarding Hoyer for mediocre work.

Military Not Law Enforcement

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 14:20:53 -0400

The killing of Renee Nicole Good by that ICE agent is bad enough, but the words of people in government, particularly J.D. Vance is what I am most troubled by.

Law Enforcement in the United States is vested by the state with the ability to take a life. The social contract between citizens and the state in this matter is that Law Enforcement is held to high standard.

What I see in the video is a man who got pissed off at the person in the car and reacted by shooting the person dead. The shot was to kill. J.D. Vance and others reinforce this accounting by stating this same person was injured in Chicago in an incident involving a vehicle and thus Vance is saying that justifies what was done. It does not. In fact, Vances statements is evidence this man should not have been in active duty. (By the way that angry ICE agent could have easily killed one of their other ICE agents on the scene, if I were one of the guys on the side of that vehicle I would have been pissed.)

The administration’s actions in response to this incident are not to hold ICE to the high standard of law enforcement and I think that is because no matter ICE’s placement within the administration or government ICE is not law enforcement instead it is military. The high standard of law enforcement is why some citizens are willing to provide officers with immunity. If ICE is not going to operate to the same high standard as law enforcement its offers do not deserve that same degree of immunity.

There is no real social contract between the citizens of the United States and the military of the United States because the military is not expected to deployed on U.S. soil. People in the military are trained to be killers, to defend themselves and their colleagues by killing the enemy. An important question in this matter is, how many ICE agents are ex military? How many of those might have PTSD from service in countries like Iraq?

The military kills “the enemy,” law enforcement arrests people who it charges have broken the law. Members of the military decide who is the enemy, law enforcement only makes a charge of a law being broken, the state provides evidence and a judge or jury decides whether that law was broken beyond a reasonable doubt. The military conceals their identity and hides their faces, law enforcement does not conceal their identities, does not hide their faces, wears a badge and clear identity markers.

There are clear and obvious differences between law enforcement and the military in the United States for the reasons above. The purpose and the training of its members are fundamentally different and that is why the military is not to be deployed on U.S. soil for law enforcement purposes.

Law enforcement exists to “serve and protect” citizens, the military exists to carry out the legal orders of its commanders. Citizens and the media need to be calling ICE a military organization. Congress needs to pass a law that classifies ICE by their action as military and determines whether it is lawful for them to be deployed on U.S. soil. If ICE is to be considered law enforcement it needs to act like law enforcement, and held to the same high standards.

What Is The Purpose Law?

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 12:46:20 -0400

Police in the United States have a blank check to kill because people in power have convinced citizens that if an officer feels threatened there is no consequences for their actions. Feelings cannot be proven or disproven so the result is immunity. The combination of fast, mass hiring of officers to fill law enforcement positions with a likely low threshold of evaluation on the hiring, is a threat to all citizens in the United States.

A government for the people must treat the use of lethal force against citizens with the utmost care. Any person given a gun, bullets, a badge, and the blank check to kill citizens must be throughly vetted.

Why should it be acceptable that disobedience of an officer’s orders be grounds for killing?

Further, why if you are telling a person in a car to move, does one stand in front of that car to “block it?”

Is shoot first ask questions later by officers justice? Or is this really a show of force to create a state of fear? And if the answers are yes, then how is the United States different from any of the “socialist” or “communist” or “dictatorships” of any other country in our past or current times? Isn’t shoot first ask questions later how the military works? While ICE may be organizationally apart from the military, I think their actions are of the military and should be treated accordingly.

You may think you are creating order through enforcement of law, but that is not justice and it is certainly not freedom. What we have right now in the United States is a standing army on U.S. soil killing citizens.

Who Can Be Accountable?

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 13:39:27 -0400

I think most people trying to interpret Trumps actions in Venezuela are making a mistake of doing so through a lens of what is thought to be normal, or how or why things were done in the past.

The same formula seems to be repeated: “Trump claims the reason why he did this is because X but here is an instance of Y that is completely opposite of X.” The implication is, Trump’s claim cannot be true because it’s inconsistent. I think the real problem is paying any attention to any claim made by Trump.

Everything that Trump does appears to be in the moment, his actions are mostly emotional and whoever has access to him last greatly influences what he does. In my opinion the real root problem is that Trump believes he can do whatever he wants and doesn’t need to convince anyone, neither Congress, the Supreme Court, nor citizens, that what he is doing is good or right or just. Sure, he very much wants us all to like him, but in the end nothing matters, the only thing that matters to Trump is what is in his head at any given moment.

I think we need to spend much less time on Trump and much more time on his enablers. Why is all this happening? It’s happening because the Supreme Court ruled Trump is above the law and made him king and the majority in Congress is only there for the LOLs and not there do their job, and a wealthy class of people willing to pay and participate in tearing it all down for the sake of keeping what they imagine to be their wonderful life.

The response to every action Trump takes should be a push to remove any enabler and make them accountable. All this has to start with us not reacting to anything Trump does from what we think to be normal. Making claims that what he did is illegal does not matter because there is no accountability of him. Pointing out Trump’s hypocrisy does not matter. Nothing you can do or say about Trump matters. What does matter is how we view and consider those people who enable him now and work to replace them.

For Most, Christianity Is A Religion

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 12:34:34 -0400

The problem of Christianity is that like an onion, there are many layers of understanding about it. What started as an adjective associating the way people lived to who they followed became an institution, a religion, a church, and a set of beliefs some equate to being faith.

The Christianity known to perhaps 90% of the world is a religion and the institution founded by the Roman emperor Constantine. A hallmark of religions and institutions is that one can be kicked out of them.

If you have spent any time studying what Jesus taught, does it make sense to you that he would create something from which you could be kicked out from?

Religion is a necessity for and a product of man’s ego, in fact it may be one of the most dangerous things ever created by man. It is often used by Powers and Principalities to control people and to gain wealth.

I think the most enlightened part of the founding of the United States was the recognition through experience by the founders of just how religion is used by people in power, and attempted to wall off the threat of religion in the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The first amendment does not just exist to protect religions from the government but also, and I think most importantly, to protect us from the government using religion to take away liberty.

The Clicks Communicator

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 13:44:03 -0400

I noticed some entries in my RSS feeds this morning making reference to the Blackberry, and I suspect they were in reference to the Clicks Communicator, a new Android-based phone to launch later this year. This is from the company that has been selling a physical keyboard case for the iPhone. The Clicks Communicator has a built-in physical keyboard, hence the reference to Blackberry.

The device software is built on Android 16 with a customized launcher that is optimized for communications. What it looks to me like is the Android notification shade made front and center to the device. It has hardware buttons to initiate voice to text input, if one prefers and has an LED around the primary button that will flash different colors one configures for different notifications. The color LED reminds me of the roller ball of the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1.

The negatives start with the price, while one can reserve one now for a $399 total price by paying $199 to reserve it, the Communicator will retail for $499, which I think is too much for a device being promoted as a second phone. The intro video compares the Communicator to a Kindle as it compares to the iPad, but Kindles cost much less than $499.

Another big miss in my opinion is not providing a removable battery nor Magsafe support, although I imagine this might be something that could be provided via special “cover.” The device includes the things smartphones lost over the years like the physical buttons, storage card slots, and 3.5mm audio adapter, so why not go all the way and provide removable batteries?

The Clicks Communicator is going to be a niche device, it’s not going to take over the smartphone leaders. I got to think that $499 starting price will have to come down to the $300 to $400 range to justify the purchase as an “accessory” to an every day carry smartphone. The question then is, will enough sell for the device to last long enough for the price to come down? The answer depends on whether there is truly a demand for this type of device.

At The Start Of 2026

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 15:14:13 -0400

Mother Nature set the scene today by providing freshly fallen snow, sunshine, and frigid temperatures, which I take as a sign for a fresh start. Today is not only the start of a new year, but for me it is the start of the fifth chapter of my life, now as a retiree. My most specific plan for now is to savor more of life, to take it in fully and continue to learn and grow.

I have long followed people who seem to be able to spend most of their time on whatever they find to be most fulfilling in the moment and dreamed of that for myself. My intentions for this year are to read more, to write more, to listen to more music, to spend more time with people I love, and to be grateful for every minute.

Year in books for 2025

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 14:37:08 -0400

Here are the books I finished reading in 2025. I fell short of my goal to read 20 books this year, and I am committed to meeting and exceeding that goal in 2026.

Testing Android Desktop Mode

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 15:23:10 -0400

I enabled the Android Desktop Mode on the Pixel 10 then connected the phone to my BenQ Monitor via the USB-C port, selected the Desktop Experience as the option in the notification that appeared on the phone and behold this desktop. To complete the picture I paired the Logitech MX Keys keyboard and mouse to the phone using Bluetooth so that I can fully use the desktop experience. I am typing this right now in Google Keep and then I will copy and paste this into the micro.blog app to post to my blog.

All of the Android apps installed on the phone are available for use in desktop mode. Google apps like Gmail and Keep are working in tablet landscape mode with dual panes. Tabs that I had open in Chrome are retained in the desktop mode.

It looks like apps start in a default sized window.. When I start the Calculator the app window size is way too large. I can resize the window to something more reasonable but when I shutdown the app and restart it starts back at the larger size. When I run Radarscope the resolution of the radar is too low and doesn’t change even when the window is made smaller. Obviously, these are instances where the apps are not developed for a large display.

YouTube video playback is good but the audio playback is on the phone speakers and not the monitor. I think the USB-C connection should be able to support audio.

The final test was to enable the Linux Terminal mode which then on the first run downloaded the virtual machine which takes up a little over 600 Mb. The font size is too small for me to read but I found instructions at the following web page to increase it and the font family to make it easier to read. The main benefit to me for having this Linux terminal would be to SSH into a Linux server running on my home network, and for that task this worked perfectly.

Beginnings And Endings

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 15:33:44 -0400

As I wind down my 36 year career in information technology I feel that I am in a nostalgic loop, which is probably inevitable particularly when I am closing down my career 37 years to the dates when it started. I find myself thinking all the way back to high school and reasons why I decided to go to Michigan Technological University (MTU) for a degree in Computer Science.

In the early 80s computer science was just becoming a thing, in fact Computer Science was a part of the Mathematics department at MTU and not the separate college that it is today. If when I was starting college I was asked what it was that I was studying to become I would have answered “a programmer.” Of course, over the course of my five years at MTU I learned Computer Science was more than programming, but that was still its core competency.

I think nearly everyone who I may have told I was going to be a programmer would have had an appreciation for my career choice because while they may not have understood exactly what that meant they likely knew that computers were the “hot thing” and programming was done on computers.

The irony is, of my 36 year career programming turned out to be the least of what I did, what programming I did was done during the first three years and then fate moved me on to more broader topics like the SEI Capability Maturity Model and technology architecture. Turns out my learning to program a computer was merely a foot in the door.

In 1984 nobody would have questioned my choice to be a computer programmer, nor my choice to become employed by an information technology services provider in 1989. At the beginning of my career it seems I made the right choices, however, now at the end of my career I also think that a choice to be a computer programmer would be a bad choice. It might be that the programming “career path” itself is winding down, seeming to be replaced by Artificial Intelligence, or put another way, computers programming themselves. If that sounds ominous to you, I agree, it sounds like the story line of The Terminator coming to life.

The Internet was the key disruption during my career because it enabled the work of programming to be done from anywhere. In particular, companies like the one I worked for determined they could move work from the United States, where the cost of labor was expensive, to lower cost labor areas around the world. The chase for higher profits driven by lower costs of labor that managers of U.S. companies never even saw face to face lead to a change in how people who were programmers were viewed. The offshore programmers became “task rabbits” known by a cost rate rather than an experienced, skilled human being.

All of this brings me to today. Every manager and CEO of every company, particularly information technology companies, are planning to wring out even more profit by replacing the bulk of their remaining labor costs with Artificial Intelligence. It is obvious to these people that this can be done because they had long ago started viewing employees as replaceable widgets, if any person can simply be replaced by another person they hire off the street then surely those same people can also be replaced by an AI bot.

Consequences are not a consideration because the people who make the decisions face no consequences. Every CEO who was fired from the companies I worked for left with large, multi-million dollar “golden parachutes.” If the biggest consequence of doing a bad job and being fired is millions of dollars, then there is simply no reason to think about the long term implications of your decisions.

I honestly don’t think I could recommend a job in the I.T. industry at this point in time. If it is something one wishes to do, I recommend seeking jobs from small businesses and avoid corporations. Seek working for companies led by people who value human experience and abilities. We are moving toward a world where human interaction will be a premium service. For example, if you want to talk to a real human at a bank or an insurance company, not to mention any company that makes the products you use every day, you will have to pay extra money. Have you noticed how nearly every time you now use a credit card you pay the fee for using it? That is what we are going to see in the future any time you want to talk with a human in hopes of getting something we used to call customer service.

It's Not AI That I Fear

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 11:30:07 -0400

It’s people. I think there are similarities in how people make claims about guns in the United States and the claims about AI.

More often than not whenever you encounter a person who opposes any form of restrictions on access to or use of guns they tend to make the claim that “guns don’t kill people,” which is obviously true. Guns are inanimate objects, they don’t just on their own fire and kill. The real problem are the people who have access to guns and what they do with them. In reality, all gun regulation laws apply to people, what they can access, how qualified to use them, etc.

Most promoters of AI go to great lengths to try and persuade us that there is nothing to fear about AI. My response when I hear this is that I don’t fear AI, I fear the people behind AI and I fear the people who will use AI. My fear is driven by the reality that greed drives everything in the United States, if not the world.

Giving greedy people access to AI is equivalent to giving a person who has nothing but contempt for others or does not have hope or can’t control their emotions and wants to go out in a blaze of glory access to guns.

The lengths to which I see people in power in the United States are going to try and convince me there is nothing to fear about AI does nothing more than increase my skepticism and fear. You have not earned my trust and you cannot earn my trust until you demonstrate the maturity of self restraint.

Cubs Took A Loss On Kyle Tucker Trade

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 11:53:29 -0400

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

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 17:24:43 -0400

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.

Use Google Drive And NotebookLM With Viwoods AIPaper Mini

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 13:45:34 -0400

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.

Nearly all tablets today can work with the popular cloud storage providers like Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox. Apple iPads default to Apple’s iCloud but also work with other providers while Android tablets tend to default to Google Drive. The PDF files generated are the only way you can view on other devices what you write on the Viwoods tablet, so they provide a small degree of backup by being able to open and view the files. Unfortunately, in order to search the files you need an app that can do handwriting recognition and I discovered that Google Drive search can and will search through PDFs, including those that contain handwriting. I enabled Google Drive as the default sync account to and tested search and found it will list the files that contain the search term but it does not jump to the location of that term within the file.

Gaining the ability to search within the PDF files the Viwoods tablets generate is reason enough to use Google Drive as the tablet’s Cloud Drive, but I think NotebookLM is the real reason why Viwoods users should use this setup. NotebookLM is a web app from Google that enables you to use Google’s AI tools against a narrow set of sources that you specify and those sources can be one ore more files in your Google Drive. I created a new notebook in NotebookLM and added ten of the PDF files (each corresponding to a Viwoods Paper) generated from my tablet as sources. As each source is added character recognition runs and you can click the file names to see the results.

I use the chat in NotebookLM to ask whether I have written anything about an item or topic, here is an example:

Have I written anything about the Day One app? Yes, the sources contain a specific entry regarding the Day One app.

On 11-16-2025, you documented testing a feature related to the application:

You were testing email to Day One Journal.

The condition for success was noted: “If I see this in Day One then it worked”.

The answers include links to the source files that contain the information. You can save the answers to a note for future reference. For example, at the end of October I merged all of the Daily app PDF files in to one monthly file using Sterling PDF and added that file as a source to my Viwoods NotebookLM notebook, then I asked what were my accomplishments for the month of October and the response included a run down of the completed tasks for each day, which I can then save as a note. (tip: On the first task line on each day write down the date)

The final benefit of using NotebookLM that I want to highlight is that it will generate a mind map based on what it finds in all of the source files, which provides a structured way to see and drill down in to the information. Here is the high level view of my source files, which I can click to expand each node.

While I am referring in this article to my use of the Viwoods AIPaper Mini tablet, I believe almost all other tablets provide the ability to sync files with Google Drive and most likely produce PDF files or perhaps a graphic file of your handwriting which you can also use as a source for Google NotebookLM. So my recommendation, if you are willing to sync your handwritten notebooks to a cloud provider, is to use Google Drive as it provides an easy path to use them in NotebookLM. I have Auto sync configured for every 24 hours and for now you have manually update the synced files in NotebookLM, which gives control over which version of the file is being used as a source.

Even The Wealthy Are Not On An Island

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 12:43:55 -0400

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?

On Joy

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 12:38:32 -0400

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.

Copying Blog Posts To Day One

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 16:12:52 -0400

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.

Really Solving Problems Means Knowing Root Causes

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 14:21:09 -0400

I was born in 1966 and thus part of Generation X. The primary norm that I was taught to be in good standing within the U.S. social order can be summed up in the phrase, “get a job!” It is that phrase, and all of the expectations around it, that I think is at the root of our problems in the United States today.

The obvious reason why society wants one to “get a job” is so that others in society do not have to provide for me. We not only glorify the self made man, we demand it! Another, unspoken reason why society demands I “get a job” is that having a job provides me the money to buy things that make others in society wealthy. Nearly all of the wealth in the United States is because someone else has spent, and thus given them, money. (Think about the real reason why Trump gave us those stimulus checks at the beginning of the COVID Pandemic.)

And of course, this also means that those who have a job are superior over those who do not have a job.

Today the United States government is “shut down” because no Democrat Senators will vote yes on the Continuing Resolution law that approves the money needed to keep the government running. Democrats are voting no on the CR because they want the government subsidies that lower the cost of health care people buy via the Affordable Care Act extended. The subsidies are expiring at the end of the year and if not extended the resulting monthly health care premiums people will have to pay in 2026 can be double what they paid this year.

Republicans who oppose the ACA generally do so because they do not want to help pay for healthcare for those people who do not “get a job.” Of course, they assume that anyone who has a job can pay for their own healthcare, which itself is not necessarily true. Many people who get healthcare via the ACA do have jobs. (As do many people who get food stamps.)

So, “get a job” dogma is at the root of our current government shutdown. I would also say that dogma is also the kindle for the wildfire set by Trump and his supporters.

The thinking that those who do not have a job are just lazy, that anyone who has a job has enough to money to live on, and that healthcare (and thus the right to live) is only a privilege for those who have a job is the root cause of the problems of our times. How can this be for a so called Christian nation? We might say Christ is King in the United States, forgetting how Jesus answered Pilate when he asked whether Jesus was king of the Jews. And if Christ is King then shouldn’t we be following his commandments?

If you think the problems we have are bad now, consider what is going to happen when “get a job” clashes with the elimination of jobs by Artificial Intelligence. Further consider that many of the jobs AI is going to eliminate are the very white collar jobs that so many are told are needed for them to be wealthy.

Jesus does have the answer, but many in the United States do not like it.

Translating Handwriting To Text

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 18:46:00 -0400

I learned this weekend that I can use a LLM running on my Macbook Pro to translate notes that I write by hand on a tablet to a markdown text file that I can import in to Obsidian. The benefit is that allows me to securely produce the translation that I can then later use to search for the notes.

My first experience with handwriting on a computer was with the Newton MessagePad, which translated handwriting to text near instantly. The handwriting translation technology in the early 90s was not very good and the Newton’s translation failures earned it ridicule and appearance in the Dilbert comic strip, but I found it did a good job with my fairly neat printing.

Ever since Steve Jobs canceled the Newton upon his return to Apple, there has been no other computing device that defaults to translating handwriting to text. Today most of us who hand write on tablets see their writing stored in its original form, although the graphics is translated to data to be reproduced by the tablet whenever the document opens rather storing the writing in relatively larger bitmap graphics files.

A reason why the Newton translated handwriting to text is that made it possible to search for what was written. Ironically, it seems current tablet makers don’t think it necessary to provide one with ways to search for what they have written. Either the search capability is not provided at all, such is the case of my Viwoods AIPaper Mini, or the on-device search is painfully slow such as on my Boox Note Air 3C.

Microsoft provides an ability to search for handwriting in OneNote on certain platforms. I’ve written hundreds of pages of notes using OneNote on my iPad that that I can search for when the notebooks sync with my notebook computer running OneNote for Windows. It appears that OneNote for iPadOS translates the handwriting and creates a searchable index of the words behinds the scenes but that feature does not exist in the version of OneNote that runs on Android and which I can run on the AIPaper Mini and the Note Air 3C.

Both the AIPaper Mini and the Note Air 3C provide a way to export handwriting in their notebooks to PDF files you can copy to other computers that serve as a simple form of backup, but there is no way to search within those files without having an index generated. I have been on the lookout for any third party tools that I could install on MacOS or Windows that I could use to either convert the “flat” PDFs to searchable forms or at least do a good job of translating the handwriting to text files that I can store in Obsidian.

I recently came across an article written by Jorge Arango titled Transcribe Handwriting Using a Local LLM that describes the steps for performing the translation of handwriting in PDFs to text files using a LLM running on a local computer. If you have personal information in your notes you might not want to send that information to a third party cloud service, which makes this process appealing. This past weekend I tried out the steps in the article on my Macbook Pro M4 with 16 GB of RAM.

My test file was a ten page PDF created on the Viwoods AIPaper Mini that I exported to my Macbook. Arango describes a nearly completely automated workflow of which I manually executed the key steps of splitting the ten page PDF file into ten PNG graphics files and then using the recommended mistral-small3.1 LLM to do the translation into ten markdown files.

The translation of my handwriting to text was pretty accurate but did need some light editing. It took about 70 minutes for the LLM to translate each page. Keep in mind that the VIwoods AI Paper Mini is a smaller, 8-inch tablet so each PDF page is about half the size of a what one considers to be a standard 8.5 x 11-inch sheet of paper that would probably take longer to translate. Arango noted that he uses a 32 GB M2 Max Macbook Pro for the translation and I think RAM was the primary cause of the my longer processing time because the model running under Ollama on my Macbook used 21 GB; more than the 16 GB of RAM it has thus requiring a fair amount of disk swap usage.

The goal of this experiment was to produce a markdown text file copy of my handwriting in a multi-page PDF that I could then add to my Obsidian vault where I could search on it in the future. After I edited each page I used the Unix cat command to produce the single markdown file that I then imported to Obsidian. Finally, I attached the source PDF to the bottom of the file.

I think the benefit of securely translating my writing on my own computer is worth the longer processing time. Now that I have the first ten pages translated, I can go forward by just translating additional pages and concatenating them to the end of the markdown file that I had previously produced. I am certain that if I had used cloud-based version of the LLM that the translation would happen much faster, as no doubt a local computer with more RAM would also perform faster, but I wonder whether the mistral-small3.1 model is the best one for this task and if I could find another LLM with lower RAM requirements that could do as good a job of translation.

Betting On Dependencies

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:02:22 -0400

Earlier this week a chunk of the Internet went offline, which should be a surprise for those who know the history of the Internet.

During the COVID pandemic just a few years ago prices of nearly everything in the United States increased because most products that we depend upon are manufactured in countries outside the U.S. and the shipping of those products was disrupted.

Both of these events exposed how fragile normal functions have become, and they should be lessons learned about the risks of depending upon an external entity. I think those who have long been warning us about these risks have been drowned out by the strong emphasis on open source and Internet application development that demands the use of external libraries. The culture says that one should not re-create the wheel and instead use the code already written by others as building blocks for your own application, thereby speeding up development in a race to toward making money.

The 21st Century is being built on blind faith of dependencies, with seemingly little thought on their risks, which is why all of the AI hype I see sets off nothing but alarm bells in my head. I see companies betting their future of the AI developed by a handful of other companies. I see the U.S. stock market driven up by the inflated value of those handful of companies even though most of those companies have not made any money.

What happens when capitalists stop throwing money at these companies when they realize there is no return? We saw this in the dot.com boom, as fast as those companies ran up they went out of business. So, if you are CEO of a company and you are “all in” on AI as the future for the products or services your company produces, realize you are “all in” on a handful of companies that might be gone tomorrow and ask yourself to which direction you are leading your company towards.

Physical and Metaphorical Demolition of America

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 09:15:46 -0400

While I thought that civil war could happen again in the United States, I never thought I would live to experience democracy die. I find the pictures of portions of the White House being demolished on the whim of a single person to be breathtaking. Unimaginable only a few years ago, now seemingly barely a blip on the news.

For years it became generally accepted to bitch about the U.S. government’s failures and inefficiencies. Government is too slow, they say, not knowing that was the very point. Dictatorships are more efficient but at the price of being enslaved to the whims of the dictator. Dictators being human are as prone to horrific acts in response to greed and anger as the human who decides to burst in to an elementary school and kill everyone inside. Worse still is the fact that the U.S. dictator has access to weapons of mass destruction far worse than AR-15s.

Freedom For Whom

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 11:23:03 -0400

I am reading Thomas Zimmer’s essay about Russell Vought that I think correctly states what is happening in the United States. The MAGA project is the destruction of the United States that they view as already been destroyed. In their view this is the third American Revolution, the second American Revolution started with the New Deal and culminated in Obama’s election. I think in order to fight against this I think more attention needs to be put on the question of what comes after the U.S. government is entirely destroyed.

Rooted in this question is the reality that these people only place value in freedom for themselves, freedom is not for their opponents. Democracy, including the U.S. Republican one, allows the possibility of one’s opponents gaining power and therefore impeding upon their freedom. Consequently, Democracy is flawed and the only way to assure their freedom is a dictator. The form of what is in place may have the appearance all one thinks of about the United States, a Congress, President, Supreme Court, but for that structure to remain there must be guarantee the opposition can never gain power.

Consider the current government shutdown, doesn’t it feel different to you? The difference is that the current Republicans behind the shutdown do not fear the voters, they don’t fear not being re-elected, because they believe so long as the fall in line with the MAGA project they will continue to have a share of power.

Of course, anyone who understands what is going on ought to be sober enough to know that when everything relies on human feelings rather than laws sooner or later you can, and likely will, become the opposition to that person. Marjorie Taylor Green might being finding this out right now.

The Viwoods AIPaper Mini

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 08:12:00 -0400

I recently bought a new e-ink tablet, the Viwoods AIPaper Mini and it is the inspiration for my recent essay, Personal Computing Using Tablets. I am working on writing my impressions about this device but felt that to start I should write about what it is, why I bought it, and level set expectations.

What Is It?

The Viwoods AIPaper Mini is an e-ink tablet with an 8-inch black and white, front lit, screen. The screen supports handwriting by using a Wacom EMR stylus and the combination of screen coating and the stylus tip provides a “feels like writing on paper” experience. The bezels around the left, top, and right of the display are about .25 of an inch and there is a larger, nearly 1 inch bezel at the bottom that has three integrated buttons that are not back lit, not stenciled in black, and therefore hard to see. Two of the buttons provide navigation, back and home, while the third launches the AI chat function.

The AI Paper runs Android 13 that can run the Google Play store and therefore other Android apps. The AIPaper Mini has a home screen and a bundle of apps developed by Viwoods that reflects their opinions about how an e-ink tablet is used. My understanding is that there are similarities between the software experience of the AIPaper and the Remarkable tablets. The applications that provide the core functionality of the tablet are:

Paper for writing notes in notebooks with pages that are created from one of many templates provided on the device.
Learning for reading and annotating PDFs and ePub documents
Daily for a calendar and writing tasks and daily notes. You can sync Google and Outlook calendars to the device and add events that sync back to those services

The AIPaper also has a file manager and the ability to view and transfer files to cloud storage services including Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox. You can also sync pre-defined folders, which are where one’s notes are stored, to one of the cloud storage services and also specify whether to sync the writing files in PDF and the Viwoods own note file format. Also included is the ability to transfer between a computer attached to the same local network as the tablet via a web service that runs on the tablet by entering the IP address and port into a web browser address bar.

Viwoods is a relatively new competitor to the e-ink tablet market and their software and hardware is a work in progress. The AIPaper comes in two sizes, a 10.3-inch known simply as the AIPaper and the AIPaper Mini that has an 8-inch screen. Both tablets run the same software and Viwoods has been releasing software upgrades nearly monthly. Each upgrade has added new features reflecting prioritization of effort balanced against feature requests made by users. One coming to the AIPaper from using other tablets will find features expected to be fundamental parts of a tablet missing. Anyone buying a Viwoods tablet needs to be aware of and patient with it’s work in progress status.

Why Did I Buy It?

The reason why I buy tablets is to read and write and I use them as replacements for paper books and notepads. A good reading experience means being able to read for several hours without hurting my wrists and eyes, and I want to be able to hand write on a tablet just as I would on a pad of paper.

I have owned Apple iPads ever since the first one in 2010 but I found it too large and heavy to read for several hours. I bought the first iPad Mini in 2012 and used it to read many books, but it wasn’t until 2015 that Apple made it possible to write with handwriting using the Apple Pencil. Despite improvements Apple has made, writing with the Apple Pencil is a slippery, plastic on glass experience that is not at all like writing on paper.

I have also bought and use e-ink readers from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, which provide good reading experience but are specialized only for that purpose and do not provide a way for handwriting. When I first read about the Remarkable tablet, which was the first e-ink tablet optimized for handwriting, I found it too expensive for only writing and not being able to read my Kindle books.

A few years ago I bought the Onyx Boox Note Air 3C that has the same handwriting experience as the Remarkable and can run any Android app and therefore can be used to read Kindle books. The 10.3-inch screen makes the Note Air 3C equivalent to a pad of paper and I use it write meeting notes when I am at work. While the Note Air 3C is light enough to hold, I think it is too large for reading books while it is perfect for reading PDFs.

When I was considering buying the Note Air 3C I also considered the Supernote Nomad, but while it is smaller in some ways better for writing, it does not have the Google Play store and thus is limited in the number of third party apps it runs. I also think because you have to buy a stylus and folio cover separately the total cost of the Supernode is high.

At the end of the year my need for meeting notes will go away and I determined that a smaller e-ink tablet would be my best option going forward so when I learned about the Viwoods AIPaper Mini I bought it. It costs a little over $400, includes a stylus and folio cover, and can run Android apps. In short, the AIPaper Mini checks all the boxes of my requirements for an e-ink tablet.

What Is In A Name?

We are in a time when Artificial Intelligence (AI) is drawing tremendous attention in tech and therefore almost every company seems to be bolting on those two letters to their product names and in their software feature set. Many hardware vendors, including Viwoods, are including buttons dedicated to launching an AI chat app. The chat app Viwoods provides works with six different LLM models, two OpenAI, two Google, and two Sentient AI.

For now the AIPaper does not require an account to use these LLM models, it appears that they are relying on free API access and I haven’t really used it much to see any time outs that I have encountered when using “free” versions of Google Gemni and ChatGPT.

AI features exist in nearly all of the apps that are included with the device. I have mostly used AI in Paper to translate handwriting to text, which is done using the GPT-4o model. You can select up to five pages of writing to be translated to text but I am told that the translation quality diminishes after a couple of pages. I have selected on page of a notebook at a time to translate to text then copy and paste that text to Obsidian after which I made edits to correct errors.

I have not used all of the AI capabilities Viwoods provides with the AIPaper and I wouldn’t consider them to be the primary reason for one to buy this tablet. It does make sense to me for Viwoods to try and take advantage of them for translating handwriting to text rather than trying to do that on their own. I personally would not have included the “AI” in the product name, Viwoods Paper Mini would be good enough, but I understand their reasoning.

Reading The Web

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 18:02:08 -0400

Today I finished reading Stephanie Booth’s three series posts on “Rebooting The Blogosphere” cited by others who I follow. In general I agree with Stephanie’s points and her description of a web reading tool that easily provides a way to create blog posts based on another post being read, create new blog posts from scratch, and convert a comment you are writing on another’s blog into a full post for your own blog. Her suggestion assumes one is reading within a RSS reader app like NetNewsWire.

Like Stephanie I would prefer less friction between reading and posting about what I am reading to my blog. The problem, however, is that most RSS feeds that I follow do not include the full content of a post. The sites that rely on advertising usually include just a link to their site or a snippet only so that you must end up going to the site to read the entire post.

I use either Feedland or River5 for two purposes, to provide me a central site to see new items published by the feeds I follow, and to triage the items I want to read at a later time. When I see something that I want to read I either right-click the title link and “send it” to Readwise Reader or I open the item in a new browser tab and then send it to Readwise, depending on whether the source site is behind a paywall.

My point is that the “reading interface” that Stephanie describes might not be an RSS aggregator like FeedLand but rather a “read it later” app like Readwise Reader. I would need Readwise to add the writing tools that would be needed to easily integrate a post that I read with a new blog post that I write.

My web reading-to-writing workflow is the following. If while I read an article I see something that I want to use for a blog post, I highlight that text in Readwise Reader and give the highlight a “blog-post” tag. All of my highlights in Readwise Reader get downloaded to Obsidian and a blog-post page shows all the tagged items and linked mentions.

When I have time I open the original post in a browser tab, my highlights in a Obsidian tab, and create a new post in a second Obsidian tab. I use the micro.publish Obsidian community plugin to publish the post to my blog.

Some times I do quickly react to something that I read on the web by writing a post using Drummer or micro.blog’s posting page, and these posts tend to be only a paragraph or two and would be the type that would benefit from the reading and writing tool Stephanie describes and what WordLand may become.

Anti-social Web?

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 15:23:56 -0400

I know there is a lot of writing lately about blogging and rebooting the “social web.” The core of this thought has to do with breaking free from the corporate silos, and I get that and agree with that idea. However, at least for me, I think the situation might be a bit more nuanced than one might think and that is driven by what motivates people to do any of this stuff.

What exactly does “social” mean in the context of the web? For example, does “social” require comments? Likes? Follows? What if “social” simply means sharing?

I don’t think of blogging as a social thing. When I think of blogging I first think of writing, my blog is where I publish my writing which is often reflects my thinking at the time. The reason why I bother to care to publish my writing on a web site on the Internet is to share it with others. I am sharing my writing or I am sharing something, usually another web site, I find interesting.

The thing is, I don’t care who reads my writing or whether others find it interesting. I hope they do, but I am honestly doing this for myself and I don’t look at any metrics. Perhaps this makes me a bit of a narcissist, but if my ego was in the front of all this I think I would be much more concerned about the metrics.

I do not think the vast majority of people who use the “social sites” think of it as writing, nor care about it as writing. The majority of people don’t care about a 200 word limit or that they can’t use bold face. The majority of people who use the “socials” are not the content creators, they are simply scrolling to fill time and to the extent they do write what they write are a few words or emojis.

I know there are people who do care about all the constraints put on them by the “social sites.” For these people I personally recommend trying out micro.blog because I think it already has all the things the proponents of the “social web” seek. I like the small community that is micro.blog and hope it never gets to the size of the corporate “social sites.” I am not too worried though because I highly doubt that the millions who use the “social sites” want to spend the time or energy to write a 400+ word blog post such as this!

Wild Card Game 1

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 22:07:25 -0400

The Cubs won the first wild card game today against the San Diego Padres. I do believe it might be their first ever wild card game win. The 3-1 win was due to the pitching staff, in fact as I watch the other games played today, the old adage of good pitching beating good hitting seems to hold. The sharpest example was in Cleveland where the hottest team in baseball the Cleveland Guardians was beat by the coldest Detroit Tigers thanks to the game’s best pitcher, the Tiger’s Tarik Skull.

I see the Cub’s have announced they are starting tomorrow’s game with an opener as recent closer Andrew Kittredge will start the game. My guess is that Shota Imanga will follow Kittredge but I wouldn’t be surprised if Shota only pitches one time through the Padres line up. Counsell can’t blow out pitching because there might be a game three if they don’t win, but the Cub’s want to win this next one while they have the advantage of elimination game pressure on their opponent.

Foldable Phone Or Tablet

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 12:59:00 -0400

In my essay Personal Computing Using Tablets I make the claim that we should think of foldables as tablets rather than phones. I think a new article in 9to8mac.com reporting that the iPhone Fold could be thinner than the iPhone Air supports my claim.

First off, I think the title of the article is misleading while consistent with the foldable as phone thinking. It is misleading because the speculated dimensions of the foldable are only thinner than the iPhone Air when it is folded out, in other words when it is a tablet.

Further down in the article is a table that shows that at the projected 9-9.5mm thickness the “iPhone Fold” will be thicker than all previous generation iPhones. The size and weight matters when one thinks about carrying the device in a pocket. The only reason why one will carry that large and heavy a device is because of the benefit of using the foldable when it is folded out, or when it is a tablet.

How do you make a sales pitch for one to spend more than $1,000 to carry a thicker, heavier phone? Wouldn’t the sales pitch work better if you say that the foldable is the most portable iPad ever, one that can even be carried in a front pant pocket?

Of course the dimensions of a possible foldable from Apple, particularly in light of the iPhone Air, is going to draw the most attention, but I propose what is a more interesting question is, which operating system UI will Apple put on the device? When you open the Apple foldable, is that iOS 27 or iPad OS 27? And if that is iPad OS 27 when folded out, what is it when closed?

And if Apple decides to go with iOS 27 inside and out of the foldable, how soon will those who want the iPad OS 27 experience, such as windowing or at least side by side windows, start complaining? Will users want to be able to use their Apple Pencil with the foldable?

I have no doubt that Apple will nail the foldable hardware and that it will be expensive, but the software experience of foldables matters and at a price north of $1,000 users will expect a premium experience.

Personal Computing Using Tablets

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 13:55:00 -0400

I think that tablets are the most interesting of all the current styles of personal computers because unlike smartphones and notebooks there is no widely accepted use case for them. Opponents of tablets say they are not needed because either one can use a large screen smartphone or a light weight notebook for ho/wever one may use a tablet.

The opponents make a valid point if one settles on the most widely understood use case of the tablet as a media consumption device. Honestly, up until this year the most successful tablet, Apple’s iPad, was probably most used by people to watch video than anything else even if the iPad can do much more. Apple has sold many iPads despite it being labeled as only a media consumption device.

Apple clearly believes the iPad is useful for much more than watching video and the changes it has made to the software in iPad OS 26 are intended for people who want to do more. The latest changes to the iPad software is Apple’s claim that the tablet can be the most utilitarian personal computer because it has the hardware and software capable of performing all personal computing use cases. I think iPad OS 26 is the latest evidence for why tablets are so interesting.

You might think that the iPads are the only tablets that exist, but that is far from the truth. True, if you look at Apple’s primary competitor, Google, you find a very underwhelming Pixel tablet in their store. What you might not know is that there are many other tablets available that run Google’s Android, and in particular there are interesting e-ink tablets from Remarkable, Boox, Viwoods, and more.

The majority of all personal computers, be they notebooks, smartphones, and tablets have a backlit LCD or OLED display. E-ink is a reflective display technology with no backlight intended to mimic paper, which is why it is used in the Kindle eReaders so that eBooks look like paper books.

E-ink displays have a lower refresh rate than LCD and OLED, and when they first became available in 2004 there was a very noticeable refresh of the display as one changed pages. Today, the technology has improved such that the refresh of text is instantaneous though still too slow for video.

E-ink tablets are optimized for reading and writing. The Remarkable tablet was not the first e-ink tablet but it was the first to appear to a broad consumer market. Remarkable focuses on replicating the experience of writing on a paper pad while taking full advantage of technology. If Remarkable is on the “most specialized” end of the e-ink tablet spectrum then Boox is on the “most general” end by providing access to all the apps in Google’s store while also providing the same, feels like paper, writing experience of the Remarkable.

Other e-ink tablet companies provide products that fall toward one end of the spectrum or the other. For example, Supernote is most like Remarkable in mainly providing a writing experience whereas Viwoods is more like Boox because it provides the Google Play app store. None of the different e-ink tablets are exactly the same, unlike the different model iPads or for that matter “traditional” tablets running Android, and it is these different ideas about how an e-ink tablet works and does that I find so appealing and further evidence of why tablets are interesting.

If you are interested in seeing what I am describing, I recommend you watch some YouTube video reviews of the different products produced by Jeffrey Moss and Kit Betts-Master.

The final way that tablets are interesting is in foldable phones. Now, the name implies that these foldables are smartphones, but I think foldables are better thought of as tablets that fold in to a smartphone size rather than as a phone that folds out to a tablet size. My reasoning is simple, one does not spend the money nor carry the additional weight if they don’t want the larger display that requires application tablet UI design for the best experience.

Foldables will never be small or light enough to replace smartphones. As evidence I point to the new iPhone Air, which I claim is about as thin and lite a smartphone as one can get, plainly a foldable of two iPhone Airs is larger than one iPhone Air.

The screen size that a a foldable folds out to will always be larger than the largest size smartphone because there is a point at which, and I will say it is 7-inches, that screen turns the device from a smartphone to a tablet. Some people might put a 7-inch tablet in a front or back pant pocket but not the majority, and “pocket-ability” may be the defining trait of a smartphone.

In my opinion what Apple has done with iPad OS 26 and the different available e-ink tablets alone make tablets the most interesting of the personal computer styles, but foldables seal the deal. Apple may release their own foldable in the upcoming year and they may even call their foldable an iPhone, but may be, just maybe, they will call it the iPad Mini or the iPad foldable. Regardless, I recommend thinking of Apple’s foldable more like an iPad rather than an iPhone.

Smartphones and notebooks are proven, users now have entrenched expectations about them and therefore they will stay the same while improving over time. Tablets are not yet completely defined and there are many companies with different ideas about what one can do with a tablet. Perhaps some time soon the clear use case for tablets will be settled, in the mean time I think they are what to watch for changes in personal computing.

Engineers and Lawyers

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 11:42:15 -0400

I am reading this interview of Dan Wang by Russ Douthat of the New York Times and find it fascinating how Wang describes the difference between China in terms of engineers and lawyers. Wang says the current China is founded by engineers, who in my experience put great value on efficiency. I think Elon Musk’s DODGE was/is very much a rise of engineers in the United States who believe they know better about running a country than lawyers. Whenever you have a group of people who are dominated by ego to think they alone are the smart people and therefore know all the answers to all the problems, you have a high potential for tyranny. Democracy and liberty is not about efficiency, it’s about peaceful co-existence. If one insists upon efficiency you end up being like the other countries, such as the old USSR and China, who likewise make efficiency a prime directive.

Here is the money quote of Dan Wang in the article:

The game goes to he who outlasts the adversary. But what the Chinese want to do is to just keep things really, really stable and just wait for the Western countries to collapse.

China plays the long game while the U.S. plays the short game.

Will WordLand Be A Posting Switchboard?

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 10:38:09 -0400

I listened to Dave’s podcast in which he starts to describe what he is doing with WordLand and FeedLand, and that sounds a lot like what I said that I want in practically my first post on micro.blog. Right now I am writing this using Drummer and it will be published to my Daynotes blog. If I want to also publish this on my micro.blog I need to copy and paste it in to another outline from which posts to micro.blog are published.

Copy and paste is a lot of work, what if for every post I could specify which publishing destination that post goes to simply by selecting the destination locations via a checkbox? What if I could later add a destination by simply going back to that post and checking another box, or clear a checkbox and it is removed. When I edit the item the changes are automatically re-published. BTW, the last item probably won’t work to social network destinations because they generally don’t allow editing.

The key is the per item control over the publishing destination and continual ability to edit the item. For now micro.blog’s ability to cross post items I publish to it to Mastodon and Bluesky come closest to my vision, but that is not on a per post basis, it’s all items published to my micro.blog that are published to those other destinations.

Accidental Middle Class

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 11:49:12 -0400

A question came to mind last night. Was the middle class in the United States intentionally created or simply the happy result of the post World War 2 reconstruction? I was raised in what I consider to be middle class and as Gen X I was taught how good the middle class was, but for all its importance I don’t think it was something intentionally created.

A problem today in the United States is that the middle class is eroding, and I think that is because it was never really intended to exist and thus there has been no real effort to retain it. The middle class is a target of our politics but not our policies.

I think the destruction of the middle class matters because it provides for two important societal concepts. One is the idea of enough, but which I mean having the means for a good life. The second is a reason for hope that one can have as good a life as their parents if not better. An important corollary to the idea of enough is that one does not have to be the wealthiest person in terms of money to have a good life.

Without realistic hope of a good life, everything feels pointless to the point that life doesn’t matter. If then in a search for an answer to why one’s life is pointless a person becomes convinced it is because of the other now there is a target for their rage that is amplified by the Internet.

Liberty Is The Prime Directive

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 10:33:46 -0400

Yesterday I wrote that I think we need to have serious discussion about what is liberty, and here is what I mean. I believe the fundamental purpose of the U.S. Constitution and thus the fundamental purpose of all branches of the Federal government, and in particular the Supreme Court is to preserve liberty.

For liberty to be preserved there needs to be agreement on how liberty is preserved, what conditions must exist or how to we determine there is liberty. For example, I think individual privacy is required for liberty to exist and I think personal autonomy (control over one’s body) is required for liberty to exist. Neither privacy or autonomy are enumerated in the Constitution, but amendments such as the fourth amendment function in maintaining privacy and autonomy. Furthermore, liberty cannot exist in a country where people are at risk of being killed, so viewing the second amendment in the context of preserving liberty also means the government has the obligation to create and enforce laws about weapons.

Consequently, it is wrong for SCOTUS to go hunting for literal references to privacy and autonomy in the Constitution, they are not there and it does not matter because the prime directive of liberty is what above all matters. The ninth amendment states that the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution should not be understood to mean that other rights retained by the people should be denied. In my opinion the use of originalism by SCOTUS is a violation of the ninth amendment.

I think the real reason why politicians and Supreme Court Justices avoid the fundamentals of liberty is that most do not agree with the idea of liberty applies to all citizens. They do not accept that women and blacks are equal to white men. Keep in mind that if one wants to think the only valid form of the Constitution is the original document and the Bill of Rights then women and black people are not citizens and therefore politicians and Supreme Court Justices do not need to preserve liberty for non-white men.

We literally fought a Civil War over this topic. The only people who want to live within the literal constraints of the rules and societal norms of 100 years or more ago are those for who doing so provides an advantage over everyone else. The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution says:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The preamble states why the Constitution was written, it was done to preserve liberty for the current and future generations. Liberty is the prime directive, but I also think the key word within the preamble is the word more. Clearly the authors of this document did not believe that how they had been living was perfect, and thus I believe they expected we would all strive to continue making a more perfect Union. I do not accept that the authors of the Constitution would think of it as a dead document, they provided an amendment process for its change and a Congress to pass laws to make the Union more perfect in securing the Blessings of Liberty.

Escalatory Violence

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 11:29:30 -0400

I am sad about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I lament how in our society a non trivial number of people see violence as the means to react to their grievances. The only way such violence can be rationalized is through a self centered and intolerant world view. All of this violence in the Unites States is a symptom of and a reaction to much deeper problems. Putting the military on the streets or even putting more cops on the streets is just managing the symptoms and not addressing the root cause. I am not entirely sure of what is the root cause, there likely is no single thing to which there is a silver bullet, but from my personal theological perspective I think it might be idolatry. We are worshiping many idols in the United States: the second amendment, capitalism, power, wealth, and Western Christianity to name a few.

I think a step, not the only step, towards understanding the root cause of this violence in the United States is a serious discussion about liberty for the purpose of increasing a shared understanding of what it is. The enduring debate since the founding of the United States seems to be liberty versus equality and which is more important. I believe there are many in the United States who believe liberty cannot coexist in a world that prioritizes equality. Again, from my theological perspective the default view of liberty in the United States is “either/or” and the default view of equality is “both/and.”

We probably will never fully resolve the debate about liberty versus equality, but I think it would be helpful to at least agree on what is liberty and what is necessary for liberty. For me liberty comes down to personal autonomy, do I have complete control over what happens to my body? Do I have a choice on where my body goes, what goes in and what goes out? A test case of liberty is whether I can speak my mind without my body being put in jail or killed. For the test case to pass there must be a desire to co-exist and to not view other autonomous humans with contempt. It seems for the sake of liberty, liberty in the United State is being taken away because in the eyes of many liberty for me cannot mean liberty for all.

Ultimately, we need to decide what is the United States because in difference to what has been said, the United State truly is more about ideas than land. Ninety percent of us who inhabit the land of the United States are not ethnically native to the land, colonialism does not make one native. I learned in the government classes I took in my public education middle and high school, the teaching of which is the fundamental purpose of public education in the United States, that the United States is a melting pot. The original motto of the United States, which is still on seal of the United States and on our coins is E pluribus unum, Out Of Many, One. For the motto to be true we must not only co-exist with the other, we much see the other as a part of ourselves.

In all of the reading I have done of what Jesus taught and commanded, I never once come across him teaching about liberty. The idea of rights never exists at the time of Jesus. However, Jesus did speak about oneness and equality, and most importantly, love. Wouldn’t a nation that is supposed to be built upon the teaching of Jesus reflect such teaching? What of the fruits of the United States? Oh, you meant we are a Christian nation, you didn’t say anything about Jesus, to which I respond, your are absolutely correct and you make my point.

Current Thoughts About Tablets

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 15:08:00 -0400

Last week the Remarkable Pro Move was released; it’s a 7.3-inch eInk tablet. An eInk tablet has an eInk display that also supports input via a stylus and Remarkable made the first eInk tablet that earned success. It’s advertised writing experience that is as good as writing on paper is what first caught my eye, but I always felt the Remarkable too expensive for only being an electronic equivalent to a pad of paper. Last year I bought a Boox Note Air 3C that I am very happy with, it has the same writing experience but comes with the Google Play store so that one can install and run any Android app.

The problem with the Note Air 3C is that while it’s larger size works very well for replacing paper notepads to write, it is too large for reading books. When it comes to reading I prefer the size of the iPad Mini, and I like eInk so I have been using the Boox Go 7 as my primary reading device. The physical size of the Remarkable Pro Move looks perfect for my needs but it does not have the ability to run the Kindle or Readwise apps that I need for reading. I am not going to pay $500 for a single function device, at that price I expect to device to have more ultility, but I would pay $300 for it.

The Boox Go 7 does support stylus input but it’s not the same writing experience as the Note Air 3C, the capacitive stylus has a plastic nib so it has the “writing on glass” feel of the Apple Pencil and iPad. I also think the screen size is a tad too small for notetaking, at best the equivalent paper experience is post-it notes. The best thing about the Go 7 is that it only costs $249 and comes with the Google Play store so you can install whichever Android reading app you prefer. If it had the same Wacom EMR stylus support as the Note Air 3C it would be nearly perfect and worth $100 more in price. I think Boox sees the Go 7 as an alternate to a Kindle that can do more and it fulfills that description perfectly.

The Remarkable Pro Move looks like the perfect size for a portable electronic notepad that has the best writing experience. I probably would be all in on it if it at least had the Kindle app.

My most current tablet is the iPad Mini 6, which is an N-1 generation device. I also have the fourth generation iPad Air that for the most part has been replaced by the Note Air 3C. I don’t plan to replace the iPad Air, I expect my needs for large sheets of “paper” to write notes will diminish greatly after the beginning of the year so I am thinking my future tablets will be smaller in size. I expect to replace the iPad Mini 6 with a new iPad Mini, I just don’t know when, mostly to be able to run iPad OS apps, and I am also thinking about replacing the Boox Note Air 3C and the Books Go 7 with a single smaller screen tablet. Right now that might be the iFlyTek AINOTE Air 2 or the VIWOODS AIPaper Mini, the AIPaper Mini is the front runner due to price. I wonder whether Boox will make tablet equivalent to the Remarkable Pro Move given that the Go 10.3 is clearly intended to compete with the Remarkable 2.

Happy iPhone Day!

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 13:53:35 -0400

Today is iPhone announcement day, which I really don’t care directly about, but my fear is that Apple will someday replace the iPad Mini with an iPhone, perhaps a foldable. As I think about my personal tablet usage and needs going forward, I think the iPad Mini size is ideal. If I were to replace a notebook with a tablet then I would want the 12-inch size screens. For me the only use case for a 10.3 - 11 inch screen is as an alternate to a 8.5 x 11 inch pad of paper such as for writing notes during meetings but after the first of the year I expect that use case need to diminish.

Actually, I would really like using a foldable phone but I am not going to pay north of $700 for such a device. All of the current model year iPhones cost north of $700, which makes them less desirable to me.

The iPhone Air (note no version number) looks very nice but it seems to me the thinner the phone the more obvious the camera bump (plateau?) and that to my eye detracts from how thin the iPhone Air looks. Still, I imagine the iPhone Air is going to be new status symbol phone.

The two-tone back of the iPhone Pro 17 looks funky…or unappealing. Google and now Apple have added “vapor chambers” to their phones to address heat, but how long can those chambers be effective?

Most important from all of the announcements from Apple today is that Apple is releasing the latest version of their operating systems on September 15, which affects both of my iPads and my Macbook.

Finally, a reminder to myself. Last year Apple announced / released the iPad Mini 7 in a mid October press release, the most notable part of that was the upgrade to the A17 Pro processor, otherwise the physical design is all the same. Apple could skip a new Mini this year though I think it is due for some physical design changes. I think it would be ideal if the bezel shrunk while keeping the physical dimensions. A thinner Mini would also be cool, but it seems clear that Apple wants to feature the “Air” line as the thin line worth a higher price.

Christian Nationalism Did Not Save Rome

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 12:32:23 -0400

For me the fact that “Christian Nationalism” exposes is that so few people know the history of Christianity nor really try to understand it. All of Christian doctrine relies on freedom. Whether it is to repent, to say the “sinners prayer,” or to open our eyes and change our mind we think we have to be free to choose because we do not know love. Even if Christianity is seen through the lens of love, true love is not forced, it is fallen in to. Therefore, using laws to enforce any part of Christianity upon anyone is to take away freedom and antithetical to Jesus. It’s a denial of Christ crucified and to resurrection.

Christian Nationalism exposes Christianity to what it is, a religion founded on empire. Jesus did not establish a religion, for religion is a part of the norm of civilization for which Jesus told us to change our minds about. (Repent, metanoia).

The Roman Empire fell even after the Christian religion was created to become the religion of the empire for the sake of saving the empire. Likewise the Christian religion, “Christian Nationalism,” will not save the United States.

Same Old Cubs Ownership

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 10:59:22 -0400

Hoyer can rationalize his trade deadline decisions all he wants the bottom line is he did not get the job done, and no improvement to the starting pitching rotation has been done. Assad better perform when he makes it back to the team after being out all season. I don’t doubt that the additions that he made will help, but it was not enough.

Truth is, the real failure was made during the off-season by not signing more high quality players. I doubt that Tucker wants to stay in Chicago, in fact if I were him the lack of signings sealed the deal of going to another team; the Cubs can and will be outbid for his services . The consequences of Hoyer’s failures is he lost one of his top prospects while getting no closer to the World Series just to make the playoffs.

Yes, the Cubs likely will make the playoffs as a wildcard team, but they probably will not advance out of the divisional round and winning championships is the measurement. Why Ricketts extended Hoyer before seeing how the team ends up this season tells me that he is more concerned about making money than winning a World Series. An owner expecting nor less than championships would not reward mediocrity.

Nillkin Bluetooth Keyboard Touchpad

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 11:07:18 -0400

A while back I decided that I needed a new, portable Bluetooth keyboard to use with my mobile devices. I saw an ad in Instagram for the Nillkin keyboard that is a tri-fold that when folds us a little smaller than the iPad Mini. You aren’t going to carry this in your pocket, but it fits nicely in a back and it is a full size keyboard with a number row and a numeric keypad that doubles as a touchpad. It pairs with three devices that you can easily switch between.

Having just installed the public beta of iPadOS 26 on my 4th generation iPad Air, I first paired the new keyboard to that iPad and found everything to work except that I couldn’t get mouse clicks to work.

The touchpad is a 2.5 x 2.5 inch square that doubles as a numeric keypad. The keys of the pad are touch points on the pad, for example you tap the upper left of the pad for the equal key. Normally the pad is locked in touchpad mode and I can easily slide my fingertips over it to move the cursor and make gestures. To do a mouse clicks I was tapping in the center of the pad as I do with every other notebook touchpad and it did not work.

Turns out that the space at the lower right corner of the pad that is labeled Enter is and actual button and where I have to tap for mouse clicks. I just discovered it this morning and this is not in any of the documentation.

On The Death Of A Sports Legend

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 11:11:10 -0400

Hall of Fame Chicago Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg died yesterday after surviving cancer and the treatments of it for several years. As a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan Ryne is cemented in my memories of the turn around of the Cubs that started in 1984. He became known to the nation on June 23, 1984 when he hit home runs off Bruce Sutter in the 9th and 10th innings of the nationally televised game against the St. Louis Cardinals. Sutter, himself a former Cubs hero, was the best relief pitcher in baseball at the time, featuring a nearly unhittable split-finger fastball. Having defected to the hated Cardinals, Sutter was the villain of the game that made Sandberg’s home runs all that much sweeter.

Prior to 1984 the Cubs had not been in the playoffs for 39 years. Back then only four teams made the playoffs, the winners of the NL East and West and AL East and West, so the champions in each league faced each other in the World Series. Further, the league championship series were five games whereas the World Series was seven games. The 1984 Cubs won the first two games against the Padres, meaning they only need to win 1 of 3 games in San Diego to advance to the World Series, but was unable to get the job done. The Cubs would advance to the NL Championship again in 1989 with Sandberg on the team and again fail to advance.

Due to Cubs decades history of losing the 1984 team was pivotal to their eventual World Series championship in 2016. Nearly all transformations of losing sports franchises to winning sports franchises lies on the cornerstone of one or two super start athletes and it is safe to say that Ryne Sandberg is the cornerstone of the Cubs current success. I watched Ryne’s entire career with the Cubs and grew to understand his cold hitting in the spring months that always warmed to peak performance in late May. As a fan you expected every ball hit toward second base to be an out and every big moment that found Ryne at the plate to be big hit.

It’s a privilege to grow old and a consequence of time is the seeing the death of your childhood sports heroes and so the news of his death during the Cubs/Brewers game last night hit hard. I am so happy that he, like I, got to see the Cubs win the World Series in 2016 and I hope he took some satisfaction in knowing his part in that moment. The path from lovable losers to World Champions rides on the shoulders of legends. Farewell Ryno, say hi to Harry!

Doc Searls On Education

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 11:26:53 -0400

Doc Searls has a blog post that both demonstrates an effective use of ChatGPT and has insights on education in the United States. I added this comment:

I think there is one important part missed here regarding thoughts on learning. Society in the United States establishes intelligence (IQ) as a constraint on learning, but is not and one might argue that intelligence isn’t a real thing. The constraint on learning in the United States, which I think is implicit in all of the above but not explicit is motivation. Children motivated to learn will learn and likely will see learning as fun. Highly motivated children will route around the problems of the current system. Unmotivated children will not learn and will not see the value in learning.

Motivation comes from parents, which makes good parenting so important to society. Problem is the United States society is basically in opposition to parents mostly because those who influence our society want a narrow definition of good parenting and support only that definition.

Being A Comcast Customer

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 14:56:12 -0400

Last week I learned that Comcast/Xfinity had announced new Internet plans that eliminates the data caps that I have complained about frequently over the years. The data caps have always been a way for Comcast to make more money through fees and never anything to do with a technological limitation. In other words, the caps have always been arbitrary. Comcast executives claimed they are concerned about recent losses of customers and were addressing this with price certainty (the data plan prices are supposedly guaranteed for up to five years) and making it easier for their customers to do business with them. In my experience today Comcast is still failing on both points.

When I first learned about the plans, which the articles claim ranged from 300 Mbps to 2 Gbps, I logged in to the Xfinity web site and could not find any information about the plans. Today, for the first time I saw the new options. Problem is, it was not clear to me how to change my current plan because all the options were to “add a plan.” If Xfinity wants to be easier to do business with, they should plan for existing customers and their software should know that I have a plan and offer to change it.

So, I started an online chat and was happy to find that I was sent to a person (allegedly) rather than a bot. In the process of asking to change my plan I was told that my TV package was old and needed to be changed. I immediately felt this was a bait and switch tactic but was willing to play along. I told the person I wasn’t interested in more channels, in fact all we use cable TV for is to watch sports and they have a News & Sports package that looked like a good fit except that it doesn’t have NFL Red Zone. Still, I proceeded to the point of reviewing the changes but not finding a clear statement that the Internet was unlimited data. Instead under the Internet service was a bullet saying “Data usage plan applies,” which sounds to me like a data cap!

At this point I asked if I could talk with a person and was given a toll free number. I was surprised that I got through to a human right away and began again the process. I told the person on the phone that my goal was to change to an Internet plan that had unlimited data and I wanted to keep my Xfinity bill the same or lower. I also told him about my prior chat and that I was told I had to change the TV package which he said was not the case, although in the end I see that while it appears my TV package is the same in terms of channels the package name is different, from “Digital Starter” to “Popular.” So it’s possible the person on the chat was right at least as far as the name is concerned and the issue here might be with the format of an online chat.

I proceeded through the process but again saw in the Internet section of the plan the statement “Data usage plan applies” and I asked the person on the phone what that meant. He didn’t really know but assured me the plan does not have a data cap. At this point I took his word, and I won’t know for sure until at least tomorrow as I am told it will take 24 hours for the switch over. I won’t be surprised if the cap is still there.

Even if I do in fact get the unlimited Internet data that started all this my message to the Comcast executives is that you are failing to meet your intended outcome. As for the price certainty, no where in the new plan do I see any mention that the price is guaranteed for any amount of time, you would think that would be upfront in bold if that is what you are trying to assure customers. Next, I spent probably an hour trying to make this change that really I should have been able to do by myself using the portal. You need to be sure all your public facing employees, those physical stores, online chat, and answer phones are on the same page about what it is you are selling. When you start publicity for new plans you should make sure that the new plans are available on your web site at the same time. Comcast has a long way to go to be easy to do business with, you only have my business because I really have no other comparable provider choice.

We The People

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 11:41:45 -0400

Read this really good article about Bill Moyers upon the occurrence if his passing. Those of us unwilling to close our eyes to what is happening in the United States know why it is happening, it’s because the hierarchical/supremacy basis of the norm of civilization demands exclusivity over inclusion. In other words from the founding citizens of the United States have been in a struggle over the definition of “We The People.”

The article tells the story of Moyers' first act of journalism, a series of stories about a group of women in Texas who argued that Social Security was unconstitutional. The key point is this made by Moyers upon reflection about the women in his reporting.

“It came to me one day many years later,” he continued. “Fiercely loyal to their families, to their clubs, charities and congregations — fiercely loyal, in other words, to their own kind — they narrowly defined democracy to include only people like themselves.” Many of their own neighbors, he realized, were, to these Social Security skeptics, not as much a part of the democracy as they were. “We the people,” narrowly defined.

All aspects of society, including Christianity, is driven by exclusivity and its sibling, scarcity. Christianity in particular has failed us because its associated institutions were best positioned to prevent what is happening had they actually taught the theology of Jesus rather than of empire, to practice inclusion and thus be the light for the nations that the Jewish prophets said was Israel’s calling. Christianity failed when it was tempted, providing evidence of its disconnect from the body of Christ.

All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 12:01:19 -0400

This outcome was something the Constitution was designed to prevent. “The Framers of the Constitution were clear that only Congress is empowered to commence offensive military hostilities,” former Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.) wrote on X. “But there are people on the left and right who reject divided powers and fundamentally hate America. They’re working deliberately and methodically to destroy it.”

Reason.com, “Trump Shreds the Constitution By Bombing Iran”

The 8th Inning Game

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 12:14:17 -0400

It was my birthday yesterday (I’ve entered my late 50s) and the Cubs were playing in Wrigley. Some day I will be in Wrigley on my birthday to watch the Cubs, but yesterday I was at home. The Cubs won with a final score of 13-11 and that alone is surprising in a Mike Schmidt/Dave Kingman sort of way but only tells half the story.

The Cubs had a one run lead (2-1) going in to the bottom of the 7th inning. The bases were loaded when Ian Happ came up and hit a grand slam to extend the lead to 6-1 with only one out. Kyle Tucker tripled and after Suzuki struck out Michael Busch hit a single to score Tucker and the Cubs led 7-1 going in to the 8th inning.

Cubs fans should be comfortable at this point, but the bullpen is not reliable so anything can happen, and happen it did! Recent call up Jordan Wicks went to the mound to start the inning and promptly gave up three hits in a row to load the bases. Porter Hodge was put in to face Cubs killer Eugenio Suárez who hit a grand slam to cut the lead to 7-5.

The Diamondbacks were not done scoring and after a walk and two singles they took the lead 8-7 when Hodge was lifted for Ethan Roberts who gave up a three run homer to give the Diamondbacks a 11-7 lead. Going in to bottom of the 8th inning the Cubs went from a six run lead to a four run deficit.

At this point in time my buddy Ray texted that he was done watching, having better things to do than watch the bullpen implode again. The first two Cub batters in the 8th got on and then Carson Kelly hit his second home run of the day to cut the deficit to 11-10. I texted Ray that the rally was on and to keep not watching!

After Justin Tucker struck out Ian Happ got a single and then Kyle Tucker came up and hit a home run to put the Cubs back in from 12-11. Seiya Suzuki followed Tucker with a home run of his own to extend the Cubs lead back to two runs going in the 9th inning.

From the bottom of the seventh to the top of the ninth inning the Cubs and Diamondbacks scored 21 runs on 21 hits, which I think is a major league record. A classic Wrigley Field game that instantly became famous, but the game is not over!

New Cubs closer Ryan Pressly was brought in and we are still nervous because again the bullpen is terrible. Pressly induced a popup for the first out and then first baseman Michael Busch made a great play on a hot grounder up the foul line and raced to the bag for the second out. Of course, there had to be some drama as the next hitter got a two out double before Pressly got a game ending pop out to short left caught be Dansby Swanson. Cubs win! Cubs win! Cubs win! Fly the W and sing the song!

Obvious Shirts has already memorialized the game with a shirt dubbing it The 8th Inning Game and of course put in an order for it as soon as I saw it as it was on my 59th birthday even if I wasn’t in Wrigley to see it.

Early Results

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 11:18:28 -0400

A MLB team cannot win their division in April, but they can lose it. Going in to the middle of April we are seeing positive results from the Chicago Cubs, although they suffered the first set back of the season when Justin Steele was put on the 15 day IL. Right now they are at the top of the NL Central with a half game lead but that doesn’t matter as much as the +28 run differential that is the best in the league. The runs they scored during this last home stand in cold April weather is a very positive sign.

On Friday the Cubs start a 6 game road trip in Los Angeles and then San Diego, and I think these games are a good early test for the Cubs. I want to see them win at least two games in LA and win one in San Diego. The Dodgers have actually fallen back to earth going 6-4 over the last ten while the Padres has jumped up to the top of the NL West over the Dodgers and Giants. I will feel good about a split on this road trip.

You Become The God You Love

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 11:44:41 -0400

The Purpose Of Government

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 13:04:45 -0400

Without due process, a claim of guilt is simply one man’s word over another. Without due process we are simply being asked to believe the claims that the humans they labeled as terrorists and thus deserving of deportation and imprisonment are in fact deserving of that label and loss of liberty. Due process is how governments insure that the right to liberty endowed by our creator is preserved.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. – Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

The Declaration Of Independence is important because it defines the values of the United States of America. It says the rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is not only secured for citizens but for all people because we all have the same creator. Due process for everyone is how we live out our values in the United States and denying that to anyone makes us hypocrites at best.

And Then What?

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 11:21:36 -0400

During the 1990s American Society, driven by capitalism, developed an obsession of short term thinking and what we are now experiencing is the logical result. Consequentially, while it may be that the majority of Americans actually approve the current destruction of the United States government, the question of what comes next isn’t even being considered beyond hopes that Trump or Musk or whoever will be a benevolent dictator. Most are hanging on hope that their future will be better.

From what I can tell, the current Presidential administration does not have a plan beyond destroying everything that is in place because all of it, in it’s judgement, is corrupt. The destruction is not the means, it’s the end. Smart people, like Elon Musk, have recognized the opportunity, but by the time we fully understand what end he has in mind it will be too late.

On Being America

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 11:19:42 -0400

What makes liberty, which I define as personal autonomy, real in America are two fundamental things:

When one is accused of a crime they are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Whether one is guilty of a crime needs to be proven by the state beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of one’s peers, or a judge if the accused prefers.

We usually refer to these two items as due process and without it there is no liberty. Further, in our Declaration of Independence we stated that all people, not just U.S. Citizens, are endowed by their creator the right to liberty. Liberty is not provided by the state, it is inherent to who we are as humans. Further, we declared that we create governments for the purposes of preserving these rights.

What are crimes is defined by laws. With the aim of protecting our liberty from individuals and groups who would take it away, which we declared is the purpose of government, our founders created a government that rules by laws, laws written and passed by legislatures made up of people who are voted in to office by citizens to be their representative. This is our form of self government that made America unique in the world at it’s founding, and I do not understand how anyone can honestly say the words “Make America Great Again” without accepting and respecting this fundamental tenant.

When one talks about the rule of law they are talking about how people in the United States are ruled. Neither the President nor Congress rule in the United States, the laws are what rule us, and if this rule of law is not respected and upheld by our government the United States of America no longer exists as defined by the U.S. Constitution.

All members of Congress, the President, the Vice President, and Supreme Court Justices take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Not respecting, acknowledging or binding oneself to due process and the rule of law is a violation of that oath, which should be an impeachable offense.

Checking In On Wordland

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 09:07:47 -0400

Time to check in on Wordland to see what is new. Funny, whenever I want to type Wordland my fingers default to Worldland. If I am going to be paying attention to this site I will need to change the feed as the font is just too small for my eyes. I have created a new category for just these items that I enter using Wordland.

Hello From Worldland

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 10:04:48 -0400

I wrote this post using Wordland, which is a new app developed by Dave Winer. It appears to focus on writing posts to Wordpress. Just made an edit, need to remember to push the post button. Like the little editing popup that appears when I select text.

The Republic Has Failed; Why Does It Matter?

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:11:45 -0400

Much of what I am seeing written about the state of the United States seems to be in the context of “Democracy is failing” or a “Constitutional Crisis” is imminent or present. The correct description of the United States as defined by the Constitution is a republic with self rule by a representative democracy.

The reality is that the republic, the one for which our flag stands (remember the pledge of allegiance) has failed. It failed when citizens and our representatives forgot or no longer valued the form of self government that has been in place. Our attitudes and inaction about the insurrection on January 6 is the clearest sign that the Republic has failed. Today we the citizens of the United States value power over liberty and our liberty exists to the extent it aligns to dictates of those in power.

Our conversations and writing on this topic need to transition to, why does it matter that the Republic has failed? The reality is, most people don’t think it matters because they have not yet recognized or acknowledged how their life has been impacted. Particularly Republicans and particularly those who support Trump.

My answer for why it matters is ironic. It matters because without the representative democracy of the Constitution the MAGA movement (or conservative movement) could not exist. Tyranny allows no opposition, thus had it been in place MAGA could not have done what it is currently doing. The Republic is what has allowed you to have your day, enjoy it but know that without it there will be no other opposition.

When the time comes that the “new” U.S. Government does something you do not like there will be nothing that you can do about it. The “elites” have determined Democracy is too inefficient and they think a more efficient government is controlled by a dictator, and they would be right. Freedom has been the purpose of the Republic, and inefficiency is a feature not a bug. However, the elites and their corporate/startup world view know what is best for them and have convinced you its better for you, and this will all work so long as you accept and comply with their dictates, their interpretation of current laws and their new laws.

Digital Colonialism

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 18:56:59 -0400

Tripp Fuller has written an essay titled “The New Colonialism: Power, Data, and the Transformation of Human Experience” that I commend for your reading (shared highlighted link from Readwise.)

Trip writes:

Let me take you back to a moment in history that illuminates our present situation. In its early days, the internet was envisioned as something radically different from what it has become. It emerged from a unique fusion of military pragmatism and countercultural idealism – a publicly funded network imagined as a tool for human freedom and cognitive enhancement. Those early pioneers dreamed of a decentralized space where information could flow freely, uncontrolled by any single authority.

But over three decades, we’ve witnessed what scholars call a “triple revolution”: the commercialization of the internet, the rise of mobile devices that keep us constantly connected, and the emergence of social media platforms that mediate our relationships. This transformation has fundamentally altered the nature of digital space in ways that undermine genuine human connection.

Tripp goes on to note that there has been a systematic pattern employed by the social networks that “eerily mirrors historical conquest.” Later he writes:

But perhaps the most telling parallel lies in how this new colonial class views its own power. In 1899, Rudyard Kipling wrote of the “white man’s burden” – the supposed moral duty of colonizers to “civilize” the colonized. Today, we hear echoes of this same patronizing ideology when tech leaders speak of “connecting the world” or “making the world more open and transparent.” The language has changed, but the underlying assumption remains: that a small, privileged class has the right – even the duty – to reshape how billions of humans live and connect.

Most concerning is a loss of our autonomy, instead how we see the world is being shaped by our digital overlords:

This erosion of autonomy is particularly evident in how platforms shape our understanding of the world. The algorithms that determine what news we see, what perspectives we encounter, and what information we consider credible are optimized not for truth or understanding, but for engagement. This creates what tech critics call “reality tunnels” – personalized versions of the world that can differ dramatically from person to person, making shared understanding increasingly difficult. There’s a reason so many of us think family and friends live in a different world - they do and it is a feature, not a bug in the system.

What to do? Tripp reminds us that what we have is not how the Internet was intended to be:

To understand how we might resist digital colonialism, we must first remember that the internet wasn’t always a colonized space. Those early pioneers, many steeped in the revolutionary spirit of 1960s California, envisioned something radically different from what we have today: a decentralized space where information could flow freely, uncontrolled by any single authority.

Tripp’s conclusion starts:

The challenge we face isn’t simply technical or political – it’s fundamentally about what it means to be human in an age of algorithmic governance. When platforms reduce our complex social lives to data points, when algorithms shape our perceptions and choices, when our most intimate moments become resources for extraction, we lose something essential to human flourishing: our capacity for genuine autonomy and authentic connection.

The path forward requires us to develop digital wisdom – a way of engaging with technology that preserves our essential humanity while benefiting from digital tools. This means creating rituals and practices that help us maintain our autonomy while participating in digital life. It means building platforms and networks that serve human flourishing rather than corporate profit. Most importantly, it means remembering that we are not passive subjects in this new colonial regime, but active agents capable of shaping its future.

Laws Only Apply To Those Under Authority

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 12:25:03 -0400

I keep reading articles about how the things Musk and Trump are doing are illegal, which applies under a democracy with rule of law. Democracy is no more in the United States once the Supreme Court ruled the President is above the law. Trump can’t be touched and neither can Musk (or anyone working for Musk) because Trump will simply pardon them.

In their decision SCOTUS reserved the right to decide what is a Presidential act, implying that it could still decide whether the President broke “the law.” If they do such rule who will enforce it? If Congress impeached and convicted Trump, who will enforce it?

So my advice is to stop thinking about whether or not something Trump does is illegal. of course it’s all illegal, but that does not matter. I think he welcomes any confrontation with Congress or the Supreme Court.

The Senate could have convicted Trump twice, but Republican Senators were too scared to do it. The Supreme Court could have concurred with Colorado in that the 14th Amendment prevented Trump from holding office, but was too scared to do so. Both branches failed in their role as a check against tyranny as the founders intended.

Laws now only apply to those with whom Trump and Musk have a grudge against.

Post Obsidian Notes To Microblog

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 14:39:49 -0400

The essay that I wrote earlier today was written in Obsidian. I copied and pasted the content to lillihub.com and then published it to this blog. I looked for and found a community plugin that suggests I can post notes directly from Obsidian and if I have it configured correctly this note should appear on my blog.

That worked as expected, not this sentence is an edit, can I publish this edit back to the same post? Yes I can! Now, I need to check whether I can do this across other devices.

Alright, I installed the plugin on my Macbook Pro and so let us see whether I can post this update. Final test to see how this works from the iPad Mini.

Do We Get Him?

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 13:09:05 -0400

Most American White Christians do not have an appreciation for the society, rules, and cultural norms during Jesus' life. Consequently, I don’t think we really understand most of what he teaches. Jesus lived under imperial occupation. The religious leaders of Israel collaborated with the Romans to rule society mostly for their own safety, and that collaboration lead to the crucifixion of Jesus.

I believe many, if not most, American White Christians don’t really read or understand scripture because they are not the heroes of that story. Most of us align to the ruling classes at the time of Jesus, which has been our privilege within American society, but this appears to be coming to an end.

In today’s daily meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation, there is this:

Over two millennia ago, these biblical prophets envisioned a different world, a world pressing to be born. In place of imperial culture, the prophets articulated another way of living in God’s Creation. Countering extraction, force, and separation, the prophets lifted up trust, right relationship, and becoming. In prophetic understanding, these three qualities embodied the way of faithfulness to Living Presence, the way of aliveness.

Trust in life itself is essential to aliveness. The prophets repeatedly admonished the people for trusting in wealth and influence, for seeking security in power and possessions—trusting in extraction. Instead, they called people to trust Living Presence by trusting the gift of life, the God-given gift of unfolding, unexpected, ever-creating life. Rather than seeking more things, the prophets called for seeking the more in life. Rather than seeking to be in maximal control of life, the prophets called people to participate in the fullness of life. This is the response to the desire to extract: receive and appreciate the more within life itself.

May American Christians now know what it means to say and have the courage to say, Jesus Is Lord!

Good Teams Have Painful Loses

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 11:58:17 -0400

There is no consolation today for lifelong Detroit Lions fans. A loss in the first playoff game after having the best regular season record is particularly painful. Detroit fans can look back to the Detroit Red Wings, who had similar heartbreaking losses to the Devils in the 94-95 Stanley Cup finals and to the Oilers in 2005-06. The loss to the Devils was particularly hard because the Wings had not been in the finals for so long, had the best regular season record, and got swept. The next year the Wings again had the best regular season record and then lost to the Avalanche in the conference finals. Finally, the Wings won the Stanley Cup in 96-97.

Being a lifelong Cubs fan, I know the feeling of rooting for a team that were perennial losers to finally become a good team. I learned I would much rather feel the pain of a playoff loss than the feel the frustration of the Cubs being out of contention after the first month of the regular season. Painful loses are part of the consequences of being a good team, otherwise you are never in position to have such loses.

The Lions have built a firm foundation and there is no reason to not believe that Holmes and Campbell will learn from this and continue building upon that foundation. There are no guarantees next year will be just as good as this year, but there is every reason to look forward to next.

NFL On Christmas Day

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 16:48:23 -0400

Yesterday (Christmas day) is the first time that Netflix streamed live NFL games and I was happy to have a sports alternative to the NBA, which historically has been the only professional league playing on Christmas. Netflix’s production did not go without a hitch for me using an Apple TV. I went in to the app and selected “Watch Live” which I expected would take me to whatever was the current place of the stream, but instead it started at the beginning of the stream an hour earlier. Worse, for some reason it got to a point where it just kept showing non-stop commercials, like it was stuck in a loop. I was screaming in frustration/anger because I knew the game had started and I was not able to watch it. It then dawned on me to look at the progress indicator at the bottom of the display and I noticed it mostly at the beginning on the left rather than the right, so I tried fast forwarding and that enabled me to catch up. I don’t know what happened, I searched to see whether anyone else had the same experience and I did not find any reports.

Major League Hypocrisy

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 12:26:21 -0400

I have a reflexive reaction to hypocrisy and that reflex is often triggered by Major League Baseball. Ever since Sammy Sosa left the Cubs in 2004 he has been not welcomed by the Chicago Cubs, mostly because of ownership’s “holier than thou” attitude toward Sammy’s use of performance enhancing drugs. Sammy’s place in Cubs history and his alumni status were not to be recognized until he apologized. The hypocrisy is that every part of MLB, from ownership, the commissioner, the media, and the players knew who was taking PEDs and looked the other way for sake of all the money rolling in from the coverage of Sammy and Mark McGwire’s season home run race in 1998. The fact that race re-engaged a pissed off fan base due to the players strike during 1994-95, which lead to millions of more dollars for all involved, seems lost on everyone.

So, Ricketts got his apology yesterday, and so all is forgiven and they look forward to seeing Sammy at the upcoming Cubs convention. Sure they would, like the “incident” itself, Sammy’s participation in that convention will result in more money for all involved. Question, when is Mr. Ricketts going to apologize to Cubs fans for the poor product he has been putting on the field the last seven years?

As a fellow human being, Sammy Sosa deserves forgiveness and grace given to him for mistakes he made in the past, but is forgiveness only “given” upon condition truly forgiveness? Sosa, McGwire, Bonds and all the others could have been “better” humans, but like so many of us they gave in to the temptations and expectations put upon them. But, all of these players were and are being scapegoated by a corrupted system that wants our attention on them while the powers of the system put more money in their pocket.

Let’s see an apology from the MLB baseball commissioner on behalf of the league and ownership for the culture they nurtured during the “PED era.” As reconciliation, they can figure out how the hall of fame can recognize the good and the bad of these players as well as what was done to them. Further, a league that has gone all in on gambling really has no high ground to keep Pete Rose out of the hall of fame.

New Photo Collections

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 11:09:13 -0400

A new feature has been added to micro.blog that automatically generates pages of photos that one groups together in to a collection. I found the instructions for creating my first collection did not work, as I had to create a new page and embed the shortcode. Looks like after creating that first page I can then create new collections as per the instructions, but you still have to create a page with the collections shortcode in order to make them available.

I have created a Photo Collections page that will be the index to my collections. I wish that the Photos page automatically listed the collections rather than making me create and maintain a page.

Debate That Leads Toward Progress

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 18:32:50 -0400

This blog post by Alan Jacobs on the conservative disposition is similar to a book by George Will titled The Conservative Sensibility. I think both do a good job of describing the conservative world view. What I don’t understand from reading these pieces is how conservatives imagine progress is made.

Will has a pretty strong disdain for progressives. Most conservatives I encounter seem to wear their knee-jerk reaction against progress as a badge of honor.

Now, I imagine an answer that Will might provide is it should be incumbent upon one to convince him that whatever one might claim is progress is that in fact. For that to work, it must also be incumbent on conservatives to listen and be open to being convinced. What I see in practice more often than not is an unwillingness to listen to an opponent, often tainted with contempt, coupled with an inability to make a persuasive argument. In short, a lack in what I would say are the skills of debate.

What might even be worse than the lack of true debate in politics today is a seeming disagreement that progress is in fact a goal. We can’t even seem to agree that shootings in schools in the United States is a problem worthy enough to actually strive to prevent. If we can agree that a child’s life might actually be more important than a constitutional amendment, then how can any progress be made?

A Lack Of Meaning And Dualism

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 11:55:44 -0400

Just read a great blog post by Dave Rogers on the importance of meaning, which includes a referral to a TED talk on the topic. He writes:

But as children, we were exposed, constantly and relentlessly to messages about achievement, about desire and acquisition, about competition and rank. We were saturated in these messages, and children today still are. We relentlessly observe each other, in part I suppose, in the traditional sense of getting to know other people. To make friends, or to learn who our enemies are. But mostly, I think, to compare ourselves with others.

I particularly agree with this description of how dualism is implanted in children by emphasizing achievement and merit that can only be determined through comparison.

In my opinion, one way to read Genesis 3 is as description for how all of us grow up. Our parents teach us right from wrong and in that we all eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Dualism becomes our default, evolutionary, mode of operation, which requires us to see everything and everyone apart from ourselves. Dualism prevents us from seeing ourselves as a part of something else, connected to everything and everyone around us.

What I find even worse, is that almost everyone’s experience with what is known as Christianity, reinforces this dualism. Whether it’s described as bible believing or not bible believing, protestant or catholic, saved or not, sinner or not a sinner, and we believe these things because we believe this is how God intends us to view things. All of this defines a hierarchical world with supremacy as the natural order, and that leads to all the “isms” that ills us.

It’s as if we convinced ourselves that the story of Genesis 3 is exactly how God intended, but is that true? Go back and read it. What if the whole purpose of what Jesus taught was to for us to change our minds about how we think of God?

Collapsing Recliner

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 11:56:49 -0400

Every now and then I have an experience that reminds me of just how much technology, in this case smartphones and their cameras, have changed our lives.

I have a La-Z-Boy recliner that is the center of my “man cave.” The man cave is the basement of our condo, which also happens to be my home office during work days. Sunday night I sat down on the recliner and started falling backward, if I hadn’t reacted I probably would have flipped myself and the chair over. Obviously, something broke, and my diagnosis found a part that looks like a clamp that attaches to a rod that runs across both sides of the chair had “ripped” and thus disconnecting what I assume looks like an arm that holds up the right back of the recliner when it’s not reclined. When reclined the chair is perfectly stable.

Yesterday I called the service department of the La-Z-Boy store from which we bought the chair seven years ago. Yes, they service chairs, and it would cost $160 for the first hour they are at my home. Another option, she said, was that I could schedule a virtual visit with a technician for free, which I went ahead and scheduled.

At the appointed time today I got a text message with a URL link to a web page with an embedded video camera. I did have to figure out how to switch the settings from the default for microphone and audio to speaker phone, but then was good to go. A switch of the camera to the rear facing one, a flip of the chair and pointing of the camera to the part I saw broken confirmed my diagnosis. All was left was to snap a picture of the label on the bottom of the chair and the replacement part will be ordered.

I now wait for another text to schedule the technician to come to the house to make the repair, once they have the replacement part, but right now I do not know how long we will have to wait. The virtual visit saved me the expense to have a technician come and diagnose the problem but not be able to fix it due to not having the correct part. I will still end up paying $160 to get the chair fixed, but I now am insured it will be fixed.

Detroit Skyline To Change

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 17:07:46 -0400

General Motors and Bedrock have announced the conceptual changes they propose of the Renaissance Center in Detroit. The changes involve removing two of the four office towers along with the current ground floors at the base of the complex. The ground floors will be replaced with a similar design that has glass walls rather than concrete.

Earlier this year General Motors announced they were moving their world headquarters from the Renaissance Center, which they bought in 1996, to the New Hudsons site built by Bedrock. GM’s move brought speculation about the future of the Renaissance Center, whether it be completely torn down or repurposed in some way. The conceptual design is a middle solution between the two.

As stated , GM bought the Renaissance Center in 1996, and my speculation is one of the reasons why it could is that it gained extra money in that year when EDS was spun out of GM and was provided a multi-million dollar payment.

I worked at the Renaissance Center from 2004 to 2015. In 2004 EDS, which was the company I worked for, consolidated their Detroit office space into one of the two smaller towers on the east side of the complex. Through work force reductions and acquisition of EDS by Hewett Packard, the company slowly vacated floors and eventually entire tower it was in and by 2015 only occupied one floor in the north east tower (Tower 100).

While I disliked the morning and evening commutes, I very much enjoyed working at the Renaissance Center. It was the center of all of the major events in Detroit, including Super Bowl XL in 2006, Detroit Red Wings and Pistons championship parades, the Final Four, and Red Bull aerial races, not to mention the yearly Fireworks. I am happy that GM and Bedrock have found a way to keep a good portion of the original complex.

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 13:06:11 -0400

I am reading “How the Ivy League Broke America” by David Brooks, published in The Atlantic (gifted link), and agreeing almost entirely with the points that Brooks is making.

Looking back, I know that my grandmother’s (who raised me) strongest desire for me was a college degree that lead to achieving “the American Dream.” Her desire was influenced by the meritocracy Brooks describes, even if the arc of her life started before the meritocracy view of the world was instituted.

So, I fit in the college educated category, except that my grandmother was not wealthy and my education was paid for mostly by Pell Grants and student loans. The grants sufficiently covered my credits, so I only needed a relatively small amount of loans for things like books.

I feel as though if I were born just ten years later I probably would not have the life I have today, because I probably would not have afforded that college degree or I would have been hugely in debt.

Like most of her generation, my grandmother wanted me to partake in the American Dream and she believed that would only happen if I had a college degree. She wasn’t wrong, but the problem is that if you can boil down the achievement of a better life to one thing it becomes very easy to put a dollar value on that thing and when that happens a barrier is created.

What Brooks describes in this article is a cultural problem that government itself cannot fix. Yet, government made up of people who see the problem can make government an enabler of a fix rather than a barrier. Does eliminating the Department of Education help or hinder? Honestly, I am not entirely sure.

Android 15 Private Space

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 11:01:39 -0400

I upgraded my Pixel 7a to Android 15 yesterday and so far the two new features that I have enabled are Theft Protection and Private Space. The key to discovering both of these features is to go in to Settings and enter these feature names in the search box. Theft Protection is basically something you just turn on and not really use, whereas Private Space is something one actually uses.

The first thing to know about Private Space is that you need a second Google account that is not the primary one that you use with your phone so that what you store in the Private Space is not co-mingled. It appears that Private space is not just a set of hidden and secured file directories that stays on the phone, so be aware that some information you put it in syncs to Google. I already have a “second” Google account associated to my own domain so that is the one that I used.

The second thing I discovered is that there is not way to move an application and it’s data that is already on your phone in to the private space. To move an app you have to install it in the private space, which you do using the second private space Google account and the Play store, then somehow move the data. A problem might be that an app you move may only be associated with your primary account. In thinking about Private Space, I am not sure whether it even makes sense as a place to store banking apps that already have its own authentication, Private Space is just an extra hop in that case. It seems really intended to be a separate area for Google’s own apps, for example, I installed Gmail and this effectively provides a way for me to access my two Gmail accounts on the phone.

One thing I don’t understand about Private Space are notifications. Every Android app seems to request notifications to be allowed, so for example, will I see any notifications for new email that comes in the mailbox tied to the Private Space? The information in the Private Space settings say that it is not suitable for apps that get critical notifications or need to run in the background because they are closed when the Space locks, which happens when the phone locks. I might have expected the notifications to queue and appear when I open the Private Space but so far that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Ironic Indeed

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 10:48:54 -0400

I’ve been thinking about the contexts within which the United States was founded, specifically Holy Roman Empire and protestantism. The Holy Roman Empire produces the Doctrine of Discovery that authorizes the colonization of the Americas because white Christian men are superior to non-Christian indigenous men. Today the Tipsy Teetotaler shared a quote of Matthew Crawford that says the following about a consequence of protestantism.

But this brings with it a certain anxiety: if I have to stand on my own two feet, epistemically, this provokes me to wonder, how can I be sure that my knowledge really is knowledge? An intransigent stance against the testimony of tradition, and a fundamentally Protestant stance toward religious authority, leads to the problem of skepticism. Tocqueville��s great observation is that the way Americans resolve the anxiety that comes from a lack of settled authority is to look around to see what their contemporaries think. The individualist turns out to be a conformist.

The subhead that the Tipsy Teetotaler wrote for the above quote is, “Individualism, ironically, creates lemmings.” I think these contexts are important in understanding the current state of the United States of America.

The land upon which I as a citizen of the United States now live was stolen because of a belief in the supremacy of one group of people over another, which allows for slavery and the contempt of one human for another. The majority of the people who ultimately settled on that stolen land were raised in a theology that taught scripture alone and scripture apart from anyone other than oneself was authoritative. Consequently we have a pyramid of people who think they are naturally better than others and know more than others, and the “others” are beneath them.

What may be truly ironic, no actually traumatically sad, is that these two forks of Western Christianity claim to follow Jesus, who taught a very different theology of relationship, a view that sees the world as a circle rather than the pyramid of hierarchy. On the other hand, how is this not the result of a religion founded by an emperor? Jesus did not start a religion, he started something more like yeast and weeds.

Looking To Next Season

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 11:22:31 -0400

The Cubs did not meet their expectation to win the NL Central division this year and they will not be in the playoffs this year. Last year I wrote that during the off-season the Cubs needed to sign two reliable starting pitchers and retain Merryweather in the bullpen; they only signed one reliable pitcher and Merryweather was injured all season.

Assad has earned the right to be in the starting rotation next year along with Imanaga, Steele and Taillon, but Hendricks should be gone so they will need one more starter and it is uncertain whether that starter is currently in the Cubs system.

Before deciding whether the Cubs need to sign a starter, there needs to be consideration that the bullpen in today’s game may be more important than starting pitching. Working with a slate of new bullpen pitchers is not a good strategy for how pitchers are now used, so I would focus more on keeping the bullpen pitchers you can count on and replacing those you cannot with people who you expect to be on the team for several years. I don’t think enough consideration has been made on the consequence of the three hitter minimum on relief pitchers.

Finally, it should be clear by now that the Cubs batting line up is too easy to shut down. It looks to me like every hitter has the same profile such that if a pitcher has success against one person they likely will succeed against all. Because nobody gets one or more hits in every game, there needs to be diversity such that when one player gets 0 hits another gets 2 or more hits.

The Cubs line up is a result of a system of evaluating hitters and that system, for which the Cubs front office is responsible, is clearly flawed. Exhibit A of this is the mid-season signing of Paredes this year and Candelario last year, both were no different than the other Cubs hitters and did not much help once inserted in to the lineup. The 2024 Cubs had the same results of the prior team and every team since 2017. If we want a different result then the system needs to change.

It’s time for a turnover in the front office, a new approach is needed in evaluating hitters. I am convinced that despite the new, cool metrics, team batting average still matters. A high team average exists with a good ratio of good, consistent hitters who have a high individual average, to unreliable low average hitters. Home runs might win games, but it doesn’t look like an entire line up of 20 home run hitters will win championships. The 2024 Cubs hitters excelled against poor pitching, but was not competitive against good pitching.

My Point Of View On Voting

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 14:09:51 -0400

I understand people’s reasons for why they do not like either Trump or Harris, in fact those reasons are obvious, either vote to put a person in office who only thinks of himself or vote for the person who is part of an administration supporting ongoing war and killing in Gaza and Ukraine. The Biden administration that Harris is part of is not doing all of what I want it to do, but in making my decision for whom to vote I also ask myself, of these two candidates which one is more likely to be influenced by public outcry or activism after being elected? Which party in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches is more likely to produce change that I want?

I see a better chance for what I want happening if Harris is President rather than Donald Trump because my values align better to Harris than Trump. Further, I do not see either not voting or voting for a third party or write-in candidate as furthering my cause and I feel no satisfaction in declaring that I did not support either as if that washes my hands of any responsibility.

These are my views on this election and they do not matter except in the possibility that they are a point of view you are open to considering. Perhaps you disagree and that is ok, that is the purpose of non-compulsive elections, private and split-ticket voting.

Gruber On Apple Past And Present

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 13:30:15 -0400

I think John Gruber’s description of the differences between Apple led by Steve Jobs and Tim Cook is right on. Just today I was in a meeting in which the presenter used Apple an example of a lack of innovation, but even if that is true Apple is doing very well. I also like this idea, even if I don’t think the differences between the two are as stark as Gruber is suggesting:

Jobs was driven to improve the way computers work. Cook is driven to improve the way humans live.

Techsploder Pixel 9 Overview

Sat, 24 Aug 2024 11:58:16 -0400

Today I watched Jason Howell’s video overview of the new Pixel 9 phone. Rather than being an opinionated review, this overview does a good job of showing the features of the new phone, and I particularly like the walkthru Jason does of the AI features.

You see a good demonstration of the dialog a user can have with Gemini Live, it’s impressive if not a little creepy. You also see how Add Me works, the resulting photos Jason show looks a bit obvious to me that they were “edited.” The use case for the screenshots/OCR/AI Pixel feature of the Google Pixel 9 series sounds like how I use archivebox to capture and save web pages that have information that I may need to reference in the future. I probably will use the screenshots feature, but I honestly don’t know whether any of them are attractive/useful enough to compel me to buy the Pixel 9 in order to use them.

Reviewers and Influencers

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 14:34:19 -0400

Because of the Google #TeamPixel kerfuffle this past week, I had great interest in reading the reviews of the Pixel 9 series posted by 9to5Google, The Verge, and Wired. The gist of the kerfuffle is, can one trust reviews when associated with a “#GiftFromGoogle” tag in light of leaked text of the latest agreement with influencers that sets an expectation that non-Google devices are not “preferred” over Google devices? Google’s later clarification is, they don’t consider #TeamPixel as a reviewers program, and I think implied in that statement is an expectation that participating influencers are influencing on behalf of the brand. I personally wonder why anyone thinks this is news, it should be obvious that brands, Google or any other, see influencers as extension of their marketing. What is an influencer anyway?

Back to the original question about trust, I think a related question is about value. When I read official reviews I can’t help but feel the writers feel obligated to write something, anything, negative about the product being reviewed, which makes some sense because what product is perfect. Except, is what one writer think a negative really a negative? I think what you see in “tech reviews” invariably amount to biases. What happens is that products are reviewed against a writers preferences and not against some form of industry, or even publication, standard.

So, I think one needs to take tech reviews with a grain of salt. Tech reviewers of “recognized” publications are not necessarily any better or ethical than influencers. Many reviewers put high value in access to products and people of these companies. Like nearly every other piece of journalism, reviews are a mashup of facts and opinions otherwise the reviews would be nothing more than a print out of product specifications. At one time, publications like PC Magazine had labs to do performance testing and published the results against an established baseline and their reviews tended to provide explanation of what the deviations from the baseline mean. Of course opinions crept in to the explanations, they weren’t nearly 100% opinions. Most tech reviews you read today are not a report of a product measured against a baseline, but rather a report of a person’s experience about using the device and whether that experience met their expectations. (More like Chaos Manor and less like Byte Labs) The value of these reviews then depend on the degree to which the reader and the writer’s expectations align.

In Hindsight

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 09:54:24 -0400

I am a lifelong fan of the Chicago Cubs and feel blessed to have lived long enough to see them win the 2016 World Series. The players on that 2016 Cubs team will always be special and so when it came time for those players to part ways from the team I, like many, were disappointed, but I now have to admit they were the right decisions.

Last night Javier Baez, one of those on that 2016 who now plays for the Detroit Tigers, returned to Wrigley Field for the first time since he was traded to the New York Mets. Even when Baez played for the Cubs he was not considered a good hitter, he chased most pitches out of the strike zone, but some time had the good fortune of making a big hit. I always felt Baez’s value was most defined by his fielding at shortstop, and in his prime I thought him the best shortstop in baseball. I am old enough to remember that the shortstop position was not usually fielded by the best hitters (remember Shawn Dunston?), but considered the most important in field position and Baez fit that mold.

Even though I did not like the fact that the Cubs seemingly unceremoniously dumped those players from the 2016 roster, I have to admit that looking back now nearly all were the right decisions, except for one, the first one letting Kyle Schwarber go as he went on to win another Word Series with the Nationals and play in another with the Phillies.

Kris Bryant has not played a full season since he was traded to San Francisco. Anthony Rizzo has been alright but often injured with the Yankeess. Baez has never figured out the plate. It’s clear to me now that even if they had kept these players the Cubs would not be any better of a team than they are today.

So, the front office was right in letting these players go for as many prospects they could get. Some, like Pete Crow-Armstrong, who they got in the trade to the Mets for Baez, has potential to be stars in their own right. My fear though is that the current Cubs front office has a profile for players that seem to be one hit wonders over long term producers. In short, the new guys they get are like the old guys they had and that seems to produce the same results of not being good, nor clutch, hitters. You combine this hitting profile with a tendency turn over the bullpen every single off season and you get the mediocrity that is the current adjective for the Chicago Cubs.

Composed Pictures

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 09:15:53 -0400

Thinking about the debate between AI and photography. I’ve heard the question, “what is a photo?” being raised, implying the definition of a photo as a graphical capture of a real moment is in danger. The introduction of AI tools that allow one to alter photos from something that really “happened” to something that didn’t is what is being considered a problem. Except, what about how Photoshop has been used all these years? Presumably, people see editing a photo to improve it is different, but that editing can turn into a photo of something that did not happen. What about Google’s Magic Eraser?

Perhaps there ought to be a definition of what is produced when one uses AI to alter a photo. I would suggest calling them composed pictures. In my mind a photo that is “re-imagined” into something else is more like a painting than a photo and I think I would refer to them as something other than a photo. I think we are seeing the development of a new art form, the ability to craft the right words to generate a picture.

While I personally would never present a “re-imagined” picture as a photo, I think there needs to be at least a best practice where these AI tools include some type of watermark indicating they were produced by AI. The whole idea of discerning that which is real (news, photos, videos) and that which is fake is a problem because humans are lazy. I personally want to trust people and think living in a world in which everything has to be verified is exhausting.

Google Is A Monopoly, But What Is The Remedy?

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 10:47:36 -0400

Finding that a company is a monopoly matters less than determining a proper remedy, which is not the same as punishment. The purpose of the remedy in antitrust law should be restoration of competition in the market in which a company is deemed to monopolize.

The judge has found Google to be a monopoly in a very specific market, and so the remedies that ought to be decided on should be intended to restore competition in that market. My interpretation of the ruling is that Google is a monopolist of the market of selling text ads as part of web search results and it gained that monopoly by paying Apple and Mozilla to be the default search engine of their products.

In my opinion the remedy in the context of the market above is specific and what Ben Thompson suggests, prohibit Google from entering contracts to make Google Search the default search engine for other products and dissolve existing contracts. I do not think breaking up Google would have any affect of restoring competition in the text ad in web search results market. Note that such a remedy would not prevent a company like Apple to continue to use Google as the default they just wouldn’t get paid by Google to do so, and I wonder whether not allowing Google to be selected as the default for a period of time would be more harmful to Apple or Mozilla than Google. In fact, Apple and Mozilla stands to lose a lot money from such a remedy.

Some will suggest that Android should be split of as a separate company, but does Android have a significant amount of share of the smartphone market for that to matter? I don’t think so, and consequently the more meaningful remedy is tied to Apple. If Apple is not paid by Google to be the default search engine on Apple products, would Apple choose Bing or DuckDuckGo?

We learned from the Microsoft Antitrust case in the 90s that final resolution of antitrust law takes a long time and markets will change during that time. What is more likely to happen is that by the time the case moves through the appeals process to the Supreme Court users may be using AI-based tools in place of Google search.

After The 2024 Trade Deadline

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 09:23:00 -0400

Officially the All-Star game is considered to be the half-way mark of a MLB season, but the real mid-season milestone that matters is the trade deadline. The actions taken by a team by the trade deadline indicate whether the team management thinks it can make the playoffs, if they do then they will try to make trades that help the team win in the current season, otherwise they start work on the next season. Jed Hoyer’s comments that he was focusing on 2025 was indication that Cub’s management doesn’t expect to make the playoffs this year.

Last season the Chicago Cubs were surprising buyers at the deadline, having gone on a winning streak that convinced Jed Hoyer the team had the shot at a wildcard spot, but that didn’t happen and David Ross the scapegoat. Now this season, after signing Craig Counsell to the highest salary of any MLB manager the Cubs are last in the NL Central with a 51-58 record and they are seven games out of the last wild card spot. In short, the Cubs are likely not making the playoffs this year. Are they going to fire Counsell?

Even though the playoff positioning is different between last year and this year, a fair assessment is that the team is really no better than the year before, nor the year before that or any other year up to 2016. What we have is the same problems of unreliable hitting and pitching from the bullpen. The fact that the 2024 team’s starting pitching has been so good is as much an indicator of how much MLB has changed since 2016 than anything. It used to be that teams with strong starting pitching were winners, but the game now does not rely so much on starting pitching to win games.

The sole purpose of starting pitching in the game today is to not lose the game in the first five innings by not giving up more than three runs, the bullpen is expected to now win every game by not giving up any runs. If that weren’t bad enough, hitting is a completely lost art in baseball, with hitters needing only a .244 batting average to be considered good. The game has come down to this, pitching keeping the opponents from hitting home runs until your own batters hit two or more home runs.

The Chicago Cubs line up has been made up of the similar type of unreliable hitters for nearly a decade now, which is a clear indicator to me that the front office’s idea of what is a major league hitter is out of sync with reality. As long as Hoyer is running the Cubs they will not be any different, and so it’s on ownership to recognize the insanity of continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.

If I were the owner of the Chicago Cubs, now that the trade deadline has past, I would fire Hoyer immediately to signal that it’s time for a change. Take the time to review and interview people over the remainder of the season to find the right replacement to have your new front office in place before the off season begins in earnest.

Too Much Religion

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 10:21:30 -0400

I am convinced that a problem, may be even “the” problem, is that there is too much religion in America, and people do not recognize this problem because they have a too narrow definition of religion. Religion is anything, usually a group of people or an institution, to which one identifies themselves with and is loyal to because they derive meaning from that group. For example, complete this sentence, “I am….”.

If you are like me you will find yourself making many “I am …” statements that not only include faith-based groups like “I am Christian” or “I am Muslim” but also, “I am a father,” and “I am a woman”, and also “I am a Green Bay Packer fan,” and “I am a NASCAR fan”. For too many today, their answers are also “I am a Republican” or “I am a liberal” or “I am a conservative.”

So many groups to which we bind our selves to and that which demand our loyalty. I think all of these religions, yes even the faith-based ones, tend to be practices of idolatry. My understanding of religion explains how Donald Trump has managed to change what it means to be an evangelical Christian to a person who supports Donald Trump rather than a person who believes in the divinity of Christ.

Jesus is not the founder of the religion known by 90% of the world as Christianity, that religion was founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine. Jesus founded a movement, a way from religion that demands our loyalty toward our true selves as kin of of the divine, the divine that simply is “I am”.

A People's AI

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 10:24:37 -0400

Over the last year we’ve seen Microsoft, Google, and now Apple demonstrate what they are doing with AI. As a somewhat casual observer, it seems to me all of these announcements fall in what I will call a “me too” category. Microsoft added a ChatGPT bot to Bing so Google had to add Gemini chat to Search. Microsoft added AI features to Office and Google did the same to Gmail and Docs. The problem with this matching of functionality is that both companies are focused on each other rather than their customers.

The main challenges to broad use of the latest AI tools are how easy they are to use and explaining what specifically they do and why a person should want to use them. So far the most publicized uses are enhanced search, writing, and creating pictures. In a way not unlike how the handwriting recognition of the Apple Newton Messagepad was treated, there is more attention put on how these AI tools are doing things wrong and often times with hilarious results. Personally, my use of GPTs has been as an enhanced search, and I prefer to do my own writing.

How Microsoft and Google have handled AI as response to each other is not surprising because honestly that is how these companies operate as they are competing against each other for corporate customers. Microsoft and Google both have retail consumer products but these are layers on top of a corporate DNA, and frankly it shows. Apple’s DNA has consumers woven from top to bottom and we see and feel this in their actual products and how they talk about them, and frankly that makes them more relatable and trustworthy to consumers.

While I find it hokey, the “branding” of these features as “Apple Intelligence” is consistent with Apple’s opinionated approach to all technology. Apple’s message is clear, they are not going to use AI in the same way as others, so much so that they call it something similar to but not the same was what others call it. Apple is saying AI is not Artificial Intelligence, it’s Apple Intelligence.

Of course, Apple is doing the same thing as Microsoft and Google in adding AI features to their first party products, but there is a key differentiation between Apple and these others, Apple is a hardware company and AI might be the biggest gift to Apple’s long term prospects since the mobile phone. The biggest question at Microsoft and Google right now is, how can they make money from AI, and it turns out that for them the AI revenue flow looks the same as advertising and search, but that is not how AI generates revenue.

The hottest company on the planet right now is Nvidia, who manufacture the processing chips (GPUs) AI needs to quickly provide results. Ever since Apple announced they put their M1 processors in iPads and similar high end processors in the iPhone, there have been questions about why Apple is putting all this processing horse power in these products when it will never be fully used. The answer to that question should be obvious now, that processing power is needed to run these new AI tools with performance similar to Nvidia. People expect Apple to keep their data on their iPhones, iPads, and Macs and their processors allow them to do that.

I own the Macbook Air that has Apple’s first M-series processor, and its going to be three years old in November. The Macbook Air M1 does everything I normally do, web browsing, checking email, some writing, crunching numbers, so fast I can’t imagine when I will need to replace it for these purposes. Last week I installed Ollama on this Macbook Air so that I can run AI models like llama3 locally and for the first time since I’ve owned it the Macbook was slow! Before this I imagined the reason why I would replace this Macbook Air is that Apple no longer supported it in the latest release of OS X, which could be ten years from now, but now I know that if I want to run future models locally I will want a newer Macbook.

Cloud-based AI has it’s place in providing widely available information in a comprehensible manner, but when it comes to actually doing things for people, that AI processing will need to be on the edge and near the people. The people behind the Rabbit R1 and the Humane AI Pin recognize this, but both are physically small and thus constrained. The perfect AI edge device is the smartphone, and so AI fits “glove-in-hand” with Apple’s core consumer product, while neither Microsoft or Google have such product. For Apple AI is not the “thing” and it will never be the “thing,” their “thing” is Apple silicon put in iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and AI makes the best case for the need of that “thing” than anything that has come before.

Google Updates NotebookLM

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 10:33:55 -0400

Google has released an update to NotebookLM that allows one to provide specific sources to Google’s Gemini LLM, store the results from questions about those sources, and write and store your own notes. I first learned about NotebookLM from Steven Johnson who advised Google in its development of this product. Johnson is the author of several books such as “How We Got To Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World” and has used DEVONThink for is research and writing. Johnson describes NotebookLM as the type of tool he would find useful in his research and writing, suggesting that NotebookLM is intended to fill scholarly and writing type use cases.

I am following the development of and trying out NotebookLM because the use cases Johnson describes align with my interests. Right now Google is focusing on input of content and there are no formal methods for producing output beyond copy and paste. I assume at some point in time Google will allow creation of documents in Google Docs.

Prior releases of NotebookLM allowed me to upload a small number of PDFs or Google Docs from Google Drive as sources, and the new update allows me to specify web sites. It does not crawl an entire domain, it appears to GET the HTML page for the URL you provide. I have found that Dave Winer’s Old School CMS that publishes my Daynotes structures the writing in a way that works well with NotebookLM.

As you can see from my Monthly Index, Old School creates a page for each month of the year for all of the posts published in that month, for example here are all of the blog posts I wrote in February, 2024. To have NotebookLM use my Daynotes as the source for answers all I have to do is provide it the URL for each of the monthly pages. I am surprised that so far I haven’t reached a limit to the number of web site URLs I can provide as sources because there is a limit in how many files (PDFs or Google Docs) one can provide.

I have entered all of the monthly URLs for 2021 through May, 2024 and then asked it to summarize what I wrote about in each year. You can save responses to the notebook, but sources are not included in what is saved, although you can get to them from the chat. When you click a source link from chat a pane opens with the source content that you can highlight and then save verbatim to the notebook or have Gemini summarize the highlighted content and save the summarization to a note.

One can copy and paste the content of a note, and I did that with the 2022 Summary of my daynotes, pasting it in to Drummer. I lightly edited the result in Drummer for formatting. My recommendation to Google would be to create the notes in markdown so that formatting will also carry over.

The State Of Sports

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 09:17:30 -0400

In the Atlantic there is an article (subscription required) that is an ode to the one-hand backhand, which is how I was taught to play tennis, but is rarely used today because tennis, like most sports, has devolved into all power. The author extends this point to basketball and the three point shot and he could have also made the point with pitching in Major League Baseball. All are examples, in an innocuous topic as sports, of how the ends now justify the means.

Even an unguardable move such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s iconic ��skyhook” would lose its luster in today’s money-balled NBA, where the statisticians have proved that the smartest way to play involves enormous quantities of three-point shots. There have perhaps never been more talented athletes and marksmen and less variety of gameplay. Everyone leverages the same generic (if often impressive) step-back three.

The Debate Never Resolved.

Tue, 28 May 2024 11:09:58 -0400

Currently reading: Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean 📚

Yesterday I read an article about James Buchanan that is inspired by this book, which I remembered I had in my Amazon library but not yet started reading. Consequently, I started reading and once again reminded of how the United States was founded.

The narrative taught when I was in school is that most people who immigrated to the new world did so to escape persecution, which was true for many people who came to the continent AFTER it was discovered. The motives behind the discovery of the continent was driven by wealth, whether through a shorter trade route to the east or the appropriation of land or gold.

Common folks who left Europe for a better life where not too much involved with the government or the decision to declare independence from England. The people who formed the United States did so to preserve their wealth, much of which starting to be generated from the plantations of the south.

Once the revolutionary war was over the people who sought independence had to decide how the new world was to be governed. Eventually what we know as the U.S. Constitution was drafted, but there was strong debate over whether there should be a single entity and a strong federal government or a federation of sovereign states. Advocates of a federation, who became known as anti-federalists, were fearful of a central government impinging upon individual rights, which honestly had much to do with the right to become as wealthy was one wishes in whatever manner one wishes, including enslaving others.

History says a compromise was reached with the Bill of Rights and the Federalists won the day, but the Federalists/Anti-Federalist debate, which was about power, continues. It lead to the Civil War and it is the root of the Dobbs Decision, and as this book chronicles, the Anti-Federalist cause has been systemically been carried out over the last five decades. I am convinced their success is in large part due to the profound lack of knowledge about history.

Remembering Sacrifice

Mon, 27 May 2024 14:30:55 -0400

As I reflect upon what I wrote earlier today about Memorial Day, it occurs to me that my thoughts about the meaning and purpose of this day are consistent with how I was always taught. Memorial Day is a day of remembering those who died in service for our country, yes, and because of those sacrifices I enjoy freedom. What an individualistic point of view to think of how I benefited from the sacrifice others! What is lost in narrowing the view down to myself is seeing the good in the sacrifice.

We live in an extremely cynical world that teaches humanity only seeks personal advantage, that we are primarily driven by self-interest. The concept of sacrifice pushes against this cynicism. People who run into a burning building and sign up to serve in the military do not want to die but they understand the possibility and and do anyway because they are not driven by self-interest.

It is good to remember those who died in service to our country, and it is even better to remember why they died, which was less for our individual freedom and more for something beyond themselves, something good that they themselves would not enjoy. Cynicism and contempt of others is not the lesson of Memorial Day. Cynicism teaches us why there is evil, but in a such a worldview the far more interesting and important questions is, why is there any good?

New iPads: Deja vu All Over Again

Thu, 16 May 2024 10:32:24 -0400

I was mostly offline the last week as I on the road visiting family and friends. Catching up on my feeds, I see the reactions to the reviews of the new iPads that are predictable because they have been the same for the last five years or so now. All new iPad hardware is fantastic but hampered by the operating system software. The real problem with these observations is that they are redundant and pointless unless one is reviewing a new release of iPad OS.

All technical reviews are opinion pieces. Ultimately, the author of the review is expressing an opinion about whether the product being reviewed is good or bad and whether the reader should buy the product or not, and I think it is the later point some people are reacting to. Two types of readers/potential buyers exist, a small group of whom have never owned an iPad and another group that will considering upgrading from an older model to a new model.

The decision to upgrade is the tougher one because there are really few reasons to upgrade. The iPad Air I bought in 2020 runs everything I need it to run and will get the latest version of iPad OS when it is released. When I read in a review that iPad OS does not take full advantage of the hardware capability my simple translation is, it’s not worth the money to upgrade. (Ironic side note, the iPad seems to be opposite of planned obsolescence and there seems to be a negative reaction, which makes me wonder whether we are too condition for planned obsolescence. )

Should a person who does not own an IPad buy the latest one? The answer to that question is easier, if they have a need or desire for an iPad they should buy whichever model they can afford. None of the reviews I have read even consider recommending their readers buy an Android, Chrome OS, or Windows (Surface) tablet because it is generally accepted that the iPad is best tablet on the market.

Finally, some of the reviews are really not reviews but instead editorials expressing ways in which Apple could improve the iPad or iPad OS. Editorials usually invite disagreement and so it is surprising when the authors of these articles are surprised by the disagreement as if they don’t know they wrote an editorial rather than a review. If the same story is being written after every release of a new iPad, perhaps it’s time for a different story.

1984 Is In The Past

Wed, 01 May 2024 09:34:13 -0400

Dave Winer recently wrote that we in the United States are already living in an authoritarian state. He cites as evidence the probability that SCOTUS will say the President of the United States is in fact above the law and notes that the Supreme Court has always been above the law. If one takes a honest look back at the history of the United States you will see that it has always been an oligarchy rather than a democracy.

The founders intended our government to be a republic, a representative democracy, rather than a pure democracy, that would prevent tyranny, but their intentions were thwarted as soon as political parties arose to control/influence our representatives. Go back and look at the definition of oligarchy and consider whether political parties are nothing but classes of people who see the power of government vested in themselves.

Political parties are to democracy what monopolies are to capitalism, both corrupt the founding principles of their institutions, and those who enjoy the privileges of the power these oligarchies provide do everything they can to preserve those privileges.

Consider the wealth of the founding fathers, most of whom were white, male, property owners. Washington and Jefferson owned plantations. When they wrote that all men were created equal, they assumed it understood that meant white, male, property owners and not others. The American Revolution was a war for white, male property owners to keep their wealth from the King of England.

The Federalists vs Anti-Federalists debates, the Three-Fifths Compromise and associated Electoral College, the Civil War, Women’s Suffrage, and the Jim Crow Laws were all moments when the true nature of the founding of the Unites States was exposed. What we are experiencing in the United States today is a continuation of how it has always been in the United States, the difference now is that the oligarchs have become so confident that they no longer care to continue pretending that there is actual democracy. The oligarchs have been able to convince a majority of the citizens of the United States that their aims align with the oligarchs, it is the realization of the “trickle down” ideology that Ronald Reagan preached.

The Declaration of Independence has always hidden the prime question of civilization in plain sight. When Jefferson wrote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The question is, liberty for whom?

Truth is, the norm of civilization on the Earth, which over time has been called different things but which can be simply stated as empire, has never allowed for liberty of everyone. Over the course of history different forms of government have existed and even those that claim to be democracies institute class hierarchies that provide liberty for some at the expense of others. Governments are institutions of humans and reflect our human dualistic view of the world. Governments are necessary and not particularly bad, but humans need to be self aware of our instincts and vigilant at guarding against them.

I believe the form of democracy in the United States as intended to exist through purpose, not the literal words, of the U.S. Constitution is as good a government that can provide liberty for everyone as any in the world, so long as citizens push back against our habit of seeing ourselves as better than and apart from our neighbor. I think such vigilance takes the form of placing core values above all others.

One such core value is what does liberty mean? You can look up the word liberty in a dictionary and you will find several descriptions of what one may think of as freedom, but for me liberty boils down to my control over my body, which is exercised in many different ways such as to do as I please, to be free from restraint, and to decide what does and does not happen to my body. A Supreme Court that is unwilling to recognize that liberty, which is intended to be enshrined by our founding documents, extends to women’s right to decide what happens to their body is violating the core value of liberty.

The Bill of Rights defines other core values, but perhaps one most overlooked but closely related to liberty is the Ninth Amendment that states that it is the citizens who claim our rights and not only the Constitution.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The Constitution does not deny the rights retained by the people. Is a Supreme Court, or for that matter any member of Congress or President of the United States, that does not seem to know the definition of liberty or seeks to deny rights retained by the people acting in the best interests of the people as their representatives or are they acting in the best interests of their oligarch class?

It is true that the founders, like Plato, were not fond of pure democracy and thus created a republic as a representative form of democracy. The founders were also not fond of the authority of the monarchy they just fought a war against, and so they created a system of government intended to preserve the best features of democracy while preventing against tyrannies be they of individuals or classes. Among but not limited to these features are the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (Note the similarity between the Declaration and the Ninth Amendment) Beware of attempts to throw out democracy in the bathwater for that is language the political party oligarchs use to claim liberty for themselves at the expense of others. Let us be vigilant for that more perfect union that Madison wrote in the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution.

SCOTUS Can Push The Republic Over the Edge

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 14:57:47 -0400

In my opinion the Presidential Immunity case before the Supreme Court could be the most consequential to the future of the United States of any case in my life time. The case raises the question of whether Richard Nixon was right in his claims that a President of the United States can never go before the court, that they are not really bound by the rule of law. Had Gerald Ford not given Nixon a pardon it is likely that the Supreme Court in that day would have heard a case similar to the one before them now for Trump.

I can see a Supreme Court of justices who claim to be originalists proclaim that the President is above the law because the U.S. Constitution has holes as it is made of words. When fundamentalists only look for words and ignore meaning or intent that enables them to promote an ideology. The originalist ideology seems intent on returning us to past centuries in which white men held all the power and for which liberty only applied.

If the United States is a nation based on the rule of law, and the Supreme Court says that rule of law does not apply to the President, how can the republic remain based on the rule of law?

Change To How I Make Summary Posts

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 12:12:23 -0400

I upgraded the theme to this site and now the summary posts function stopped working. I had not read an update that with the release of Version 2.7 of the Tiny Theme, which I use, the summary plugin is no longer supported. I now have to manually insert the more tag to indicate where I want the summary truncation to occur.

The lazy writer in me is torn by this change, I think I preferred the “set it and forget it” functionality the plugin provided. It looks like I have to to and insert the tag in past articles that I wrote. Fortunately, I am able to write a script in Drummer to insert the tag into a post, so the result is that I have control over where the summary cutoff occurs.

Rolling Through The Blogs

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 10:49:29 -0400

Dave Winer is putting much effort into rebooting blogrolls, which traditionally are a list of other blog sites shown on the right side of a main blog page. Back when blogging was more social than commercial blogrolls where a method of helping readers to find other blogs to read. You might recognize how on the right side of many blogs there are lists like Recent Posts and Archives such as on one of my WordPress sites, the placement of a blogroll is consistent with that layout.

When I compare the layout of my WordPress site to my Daynotes site the column to the right in WordPress appears to be a part of the page whereas the blogroll on the Daynotes page is obviously a different part. It’s a nit I know, but I prefer how it looks in WordPress when I compare the two.

Shortly after Dave began posting about his work, Manton added blogroll support to micro.blog, albeit with some differences. The blogroll support in micro.blog, which is being called Recommendations, is not connected to Feedland, which means the list of blog sites is stored and maintained separately and that is unfortunate. You can import an OPML file of the sites to micro.blog, but then have to maintain the items in micro.blog rather than in Feedland. One can delete and re-create a Recommendation, however.

Another difference is that micro.blog produces a static list, which is consistent with how blogrolls originally function, but doesn’t take advantage of Dave’s latest work that shows which of the sites have new posts to read. On the other hand, the links to the sites in the list is much more obvious to the reader than with the blogroll widget that Dave created. Compare the list on my Daynotes page to the new blogroll page I have created here. On the Daynotes page I can tell which blog has been recently updated, then a user has to click to expand to see the entries of the site and then know to click the date/time to the right of an entry to read the item. On the blogroll page all you see is the hyperlink to the site, which is more obvious to a reader, but one then has to go to each site to discover and read new entries. Tradeoffs.

The blogroll of my main blog is part of a page of the site that the reader needs to navigate to, which is due to my choice of template rather than a limitation of micro.blog. Manton’s blog shows the list of Recommended Blogs on its main page. I am personally torn on which is better because I like having just my writing appearing on the blog pages rather than the right side items you see on some sites. On the other hand, if the blogroll is not on the main page what is the probability that a reader will ever see it? I guess this begs the question, do readers actually click through to any of the sites on the blogroll?

From Buildings To Floors

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 09:20:38 -0400

Yesterday GM announced that it is moving its headquarters from the Renaissance Center to the new Hudson building next year. The announcement has me feeling sad. I moved to the Detroit area in 1989 to start my career with Electronic Data Systems (EDS), which then was a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors. I could have worked at any one of dozens of offices in the Detroit area that EDS or GM occupied, but my job was located at the General Motors Building, now known as Cadillac Place, a beautiful building designed by architect Albert Kahn and constructed in the early 1920s. Every work day for two years I walked through the architectural marvels that are the Fisher and GM Buildings.

In 1995 GM spun off EDS into an independent company and to complete that spin off EDS paid GM $500 million. A year later GM announced it was buying the Renaissance Center for $73 million and moving their headquarters to that building. I remember watching the announcement GM made to their employees that featured an animation of a helicopter placing the GM logo on the top of the RenCen tower. Six years later EDS announced it was consolidating some of its Detroit offices, all used in support of GM, into Tower 500 of the Renaissance Center, and a few years after that I moved into a brand new cube in the newly renovated tower.

Detroit today looks very different than it did back in 1996, back then the Detroit riverfront as mostly discarded properly with piles of dirt or dirt parking lots. Today a beautiful walking path stretches from Belle Isle south by about five miles, connecting a few new parks along the way. The difference one sees in Detroit today can be traced back to GM’s purchase of the Renaissance Center and the millions of dollars it spent to revitalize the riverfront area. I am certain that without the investment that GM made Dan Gilbert would not have been as interested to make the investments in Detroit that lead to the new tower on the Hudson site.

I very much enjoyed my years working at the Renaissance Center, although the commute that could stretch for more than an hour if there were an accident, not so much. Whenever there was an event, like the Super Bowl, or the Red Bull air races, or when there were parades for the Detroit Red Wings or Pistons championships, the RenCen was energetic.

The announcement yesterday did not include any information about the future of the RenCen. While GM and its subsidiaries occupied nearly the whole of all four office towers, that began to decrease over time either through head count reductions or by GM’s sale/spinoff of GMAC/Ally Finanicial that moved to another office building in Detroit. During my time working at the RenCen EDS went from occupying all 13 floors of Tower 500 to slowing emptying out floors of that building and ultimately ending up in two floors of Tower 100, and at that time EDS was again acquired, this time by Hewlett Packard. We eventually moved from the Renaissance Center to an entire office building in Pontiac until 2018 when the landlord of that build sold it and the now DXC Technology moved to two floors in building in Auburn Hills.

It is hard to imagine the Renaissance Center being torn down because it is so iconic, but at the same time it is hard to imagine that much office space being occupied. Perhaps the center (tallest) tower can be renovated into a mix of hotel and loft/condos, but it is hard to imagine all four towers being occupied in such a manner. During the announcement yesterday it was said that GM, the city of Detroit, Wayne County, and Bedrock (Gilbert’s company) will be working together to plan the future for the site. I will not be surprised if the four office towers are torn down with the tallest middle one remaining to make room for some new development.

We Need An Emoluments Amendment

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 09:59:12 -0400

I don’t think it controversial to say that much of what ills the government of the United States is caused by money. What may be controversial is that I do not think giving money is an expression of free speech, rather I think the act of giving money is an emolument. Limiting the amount of money a corporation, committee, or individual gives to an elected official is not an infringement on free speech. Common sense tells us this and yet in 1990 SCOTUS in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission said otherwise. In order to make a more perfect union, as Madison wrote in the preamble to the Constitution, I think we need clear definition that giving of money to elected officials in our republic is an emolument rather than an express of free speech.

The difference between money and speech lies in how much the person receiving either needs what is offered. Today elected officials, particularly federal officials, need a lot of money. The amounts of money needed by a person to be elected to office makes it something more than speech because it enables a smaller number of people to influence the person elected. One’s need of money and the receipt of that money is a quid pro quo; the giver of the money expects something in return and that expectation makes the giving of money an emolument.

In Federalist 39 James Madison wrote, “If we resort for a criterion to the different principles on which different forms of government are established, we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior. It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.”

The founders knew how emoluments could lead to corruption because they lived in a time when it was common practice for foreign countries to gain favor from monarchs by gift giving. Emoluments are not given as an act of generosity, they are given with the expectation of something in return. If you think about it, you could say that emoluments, the giving of gifts of large sums of money, is simply capitalism at work, and here in lies the circumstances we find ourselves in today.

We in the United States, so accustomed to our highly capitalistic society, have become numb to the corrosive nature of money and thus think little of emoluments. If we were to write the Constitution today we might not even include emolument clauses in it because they have become such a part of everyday life. The other side of that coin, however, is that everyone in our capitalistic society knows full well that when one person or one committee or one corporation writes a check for thousands, hundreds of thousands or more dollars to a politician it is done with the expectation of something in return. Enough money from a small group of people gains more influence than a citizen could ever hope to gain through exercising their right to free speech. Isn’t this how elected officials pretty much ignore what their constituents say?

Why is it that emoluments from “any King, Prince, or foreign State” is worse than emoluments from citizens, corporations, or Political Action Committees?

Today, like many things, many tend to take a literal view of corruption and emoluments. Huge election donations and lobbying come with expectations that effectively buy votes, but we don’t think of this as corruption, at least not legally. However, I don’t know how anyone can deny that huge part of our lack of trust in the institutions of government, or media (journalism), or medicine, is due in large part to an awareness of how much influence on decisions is being bought. The growing lack of trust in government is the corrosion (corruption) of the Republic in plain sight. (Further, if you think about it, much of the lack of trust in Biden or Trump is due to money!)

The founders of the United States knew full well the affect emoluments can have on a republic, which is why they included clauses in the Constitution to limit that affect. Unfortunately, the ideology of originalism says that literal words, not the meaning or intent, only matters. (Taken to its logical conclusion, originalism can mean that Supreme Court Justices could be replaced by AI.) Originalists will say, Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 only has the words “from any King, Prince, or foreign State” and there is no such prohibition of emoluments given from citizens of the United States, even if the very thing that clause was intended to prevent, which is the corruption of the government through quid pro quo, is what is happening.

Pugnosticating The 2024 Chicago Cubs

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 13:48:47 -0400

The Chicago Cubs have completed the 2024 Cactus League spring training “season” and will start the 2024 MLB season tomorrow at the Texas Rangers. As many questions exist about the 2024 team as did for the 2023 team, so it is hard for me to expect them to be too much better than last year. Will Greg Counsell as the new manager make a difference? Perhaps that is the main question going in to this season.

One cannot read much into what happens at spring training, although I attended spring training games in 2016, which is when the Cubs won the World Series, and have not attended a spring training game since nor have the Cubs returned to the World Series. Read in to that what you will.

For me what stood out most during spring training is that Seiya Suzuki continued hitting as well as he did in the second half of the 2023 season, and hopefully that will translate to a hot start for him in this season. Most Cub fans will say that Suzuki has not yet lived up to his potential, but we saw signs of that at the end of last year. I think it interesting that Suzuki may be hitting second to start the season so that he and Bellinger get as many at bats as possible during games. (Bellinger must bat no lower than third all season so he gets as many at bats as possible, something that David Ross refused to do last year.)

The two biggest (or three biggest depending on how you count) questions for the Cubs going in to this season are, will Morel and Busch succeed at third and first base and how will the starting pitching perform? Morel will get his best chance to prove he can be a reliable third baseman and Busch will get a chance to prove that he can produce at the plate. The Cubs have been searching for the next players at third and first ever since they traded away Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo, and from fans' perspective that search has taken too long.

Many more questions exist about the pitching staff, but I think they start with will Jameson Taillon live up to expectations? Taillon was the Cubs big pitching pick up before the 2023 season and he did not pitch well and had several injuries. The fact that Taillon is starting the 2024 season on the injury list does not bode well. I think the Cubs need Taillon to meet expectations for them to have a chance to win the N.L. Central.

Will Justin Steele and Kyle Hendricks repeat their performances in 2023? We will find out soon given that Steele will pitch against the defending World Series champions on Thursday night and then Hendricks will follow him on Saturday. Finally, will Shota Imanaga meet expectations in his first season or falter as many players do when moving from Japan to the United States?

Finally will the youngsters, Jordan Wicks and Javier Assad, improve upon their performances in 2023? The long term view for the Cubs relies heavily on their ability to promote pitching from within, and while Steele is a success story the MLB teams most successful over long periods of time have nearly their entire pitching staff come up from their farm system.

The 2016 World Series team had an established pitching staff so going in to that season there were more questions about their hitting and fielding than pitching. The 2024 team has significant questions in all three areas, which means the probability for them to have playoff success, if they make the playoffs, is lower than in 2016. Given that the Cubs have a new manager it might be more fair to compare this team to the 2015 team that made it to the NL championship, which is the first year Joe Maddon managed the team.

Despite the first year manager comparisons, I think it might be better to compare this team, or rather the entire Cubs organization, to the 2014 team. Back in 2014 many of their future stars were still in the minor leagues but on the brink of making it to the majors. During the 2024 spring training we saw many of the Cubs' future stars like Matt Shaw and Pete Crow-Armstrong perform well but sent back to the minors for further development. We probably will see some of those young players this season, but expect them to really push to start the 2025 season with the big team.

The 2014 team finished with a 73-89 record but the 2024 team has better players and a better manager, so I do expect them to compete for the NL Central division championship in September. On paper the Cubs should take control of the division, but I am not confident the Cubs have enough consistent batters to prevent the team from having long losing streaks. I therefore expect the 2024 team to be about the same as last year’s team. The main problem with how David Ross managed the team last year is that he kept players who were not hitting in the line up too long. I am not sure whether Counsell will have less patience than Ross had, but his impatience may be what leads the team to win the division. What I do know is that I am going to have fun watching to see how they do. Let’s play ball!

Markets and Ecosystems

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 10:46:38 -0400

Based on what I’ve read so far, it seems to me the biggest challenge the DOJ has in its lawsuit against Apple is convincing a court that there is such a thing as a premium smartphone market. In my opinion what the DOJ really means by a “premium smartphone market” is an iPhone market, in fact I think DOJ would have been smart to actually call it the iPhone market.

What defines a market? From a traditional lense, one may say there is no such thing as an iPhone market. However, the iPhone is not just a product, it also includes the App Store and accessories like the Apple Watch that are exclusive to the iPhone. Apple and most of the tech industry refers to this as the Apple or iPhone ecosystem and that ecosystem functions in ways that most will recognize as a market. Apple clearly uses monopoly power in its control of the iPhone ecosystem.

If one accepts the iPhone ecosystem is a market then I think Apple most clearly has a monopoly. While I am not even close to being a lawyer, I would think the next step is to convince a court that the iPhone ecosystem/market is large enough to cause harm to a significant number of U.S. citizens to justify government action. Unlike in Europe, antitrust in the U.S. is about harm to consumers and not harm to competitors.

So, if I am right, I think the big question being raised by the DOJ is a question about whether a product ecosystem is a market. The product ecosystem is fundamental to Apple’s business model, and frankly many people benefit from that ecosystem. In some ways the issue of product ecosystems and antitrust has occurred before. At the time when phones were only landlines one could only buy a phone from AT&T and a DOJ lawsuit forced AT&T to allow consumers to buy phones from other manufacturers. I am sure at the time AT&T considered the phones as part of their product ecosystem and AT&T did claim security and quality reasons for why they should be the exclusive providers of phones.

Despite what Apple says, they will fight this suit because the App Store and exclusive accessories like the Apple Watch are competitive advantages. Both are big revenue streams and Apple takes actions to protect those revenue streams. Apple has stated this approach is a fundamental part of their business model.

Consequently another big question being raised here is, if a company makes a product that is a platform for selling other products, is the owner of that platform allowed to be the exclusive store front for those products and require a portion of each sale of that product? HP makes more money selling ink for their printers than in selling printers; Gillette makes money selling razor blades and practically gives away their shavers. Should a manufacturer of a computer platform be allowed to have an exclusive app store that is the only way for one to install apps on that platform? The EU has said no, now the United States is attempting to say the same thing.

To Be Disturbed By Ideas Is O.K.

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 15:08:06 -0400

From “The Problem with Defining Antisemitism” by the New Yorker

Stern tells this story in “The Conflict Over the Conflict,” a work that is unlikely to please partisans. The book makes the case for bridging differences and recognizing nuance. It also describes Israeli-Palestinian history as an “ideal subject” to teach at universities, precisely because it is so divisive. At the West End Temple, Stern reiterated this belief. “On college campuses, students have an absolute right to expect they’re not going to be harassed, they��re not going to be bullied,” he said. “But to be disturbed by ideas is O.K.: we want students to be disturbed by ideas and to figure out how to think about them.”

When I read what is written about campuses today I find it hard to relate to my own experience between 1984 and 1989. I think an in-depth study of what has happened to U.S. universities since the mid-80s may be illuminating. One aspect that I recall from my experience that may be related is a focus on getting a degree in order to get a job. Even back then going to college was becoming less about growing up and becoming a more complete person but rather most students I knew were focused on the goal of obtaining a high paying job. In such a climate I can see where college not being a place where one is disturbed by ideas might be expected because that climate put no value on such a thing.

Site Changes

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 16:31:14 -0400

It started with a post that Manton Reece wrote about long form content publishing in a microblog format and before I knew it I had completely overhauled the appearance of this site. I wrote a reply to that post about my one wish for micro.blog is that it would not publish the full content of a titled post on the main page of the blog. In my opinion posts with titles are essays that are best published in full on their own page. I said that I would rather have a link to essays along with a lede.

Manton replied suggesting that I try the Tiny theme and that sent me down an unexpected rabbit hole of testing the theme and different fonts before deciding to apply that theme to this site. If you are a regular reader of this site you should have notice I made several changes, starting with the title of the site.

Before I go in to how I came to the new title for this site I want to acknowledge Matt Langford who developed the Tiny Theme for micro.blog. I’ve not crossed paths with Matt, but I appreciate his work in developing the theme and the associated summary plugin. Right now I am using the basic functionality of the theme but there are features that I plan to check out more in the future.

The post you are reading right now provides an example of what started me off trying Tiny Theme. If you came to this post via the main page of this blog you saw the title of the post followed by the first paragraph followed by a Read More button. I think not publishing the full, multi paragraph post enables the main page to maintain a “news feed” like appearance. I expect it to also make loading the site faster because the pages are smaller. To read the full titled post you can click either the title of the post or the Read More button.

Having changed the appearance of this site I felt it made sense to change the tagline and the title of the site. Rather than the tagline referring to me, I wanted it to refer to the theme of my writing and found that a sentence from the Thomas Merton quote on my home page did the job nicely. I then used Microsoft Co-Pilot to brainstorm titles that related to the tagline and settled on Routine Revelations.

So welcome to my new, old blog where I write posts and share information about my extraordinary ordinary routine revelations!

Smart Monitors On Faces

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 11:53:06 -0400

Despite reading more about the Apple Vision Pro, I have yet to warm up to the idea of strapping a headset on to my face, no matter the potential cost of the headset and the utility. I think back to the idea of one using notebook computers in meetings, many think that is rude or at the least too intrusive. While one can clearly take more detailed notes, there is a physical screen between oneself and other meeting participants. In this case tablets are more favorable because they can lie flat on table and be no more intrusive than a pad of paper.

While the Vision Pro does have a pass through mode that enables the wearer to see what is in front of them, it is obvious to others in the room that the wearer’s attention is not fully on them. Anything physically larger than regular glasses is going to send signals to others, just like the use of notebook computers in meetings and classrooms. Consequently in it’s current incarnation the Vision Pro is a very private device.

It’s true that over time the use of notebook computers has become more accepted and it happens now in nearly every meeting and probably every class in college, but that still doesn’t make it right. When Google first released Glass the debates about the social norms for their use started but never ended because the product really never gained acceptance, these social discussions, and probably laws, will need to restart. For example, I think it is worth serious discussion about whether one should ever be allowed to wear the Vision Pro on a plane, which is a place in which ones attention can mean life or death. Most expect Vision Pro to succeed mostly because it is from Apple, but even Apple is not immune to flops.

So, then, the question is at what price point and for what utility will the Vision Pro gain acceptance? Do you spend $1,000 or more on monitor on you desk? Some do, most do not. I think the price is going to have to be closer to $500 in order to generating real sales. I have no doubt that will happen, just like how 4K desktop monitors are affordable and thus dominant in sales. How long will it take for the price to come down, and might that be too long for the Vision Pro to gain acceptance? Money may be on Apple’s side, but we will see whether time is too.

Parting Ways With Evernote

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:17:05 -0400

Today I canceled my subscription and closed by account with Evernote, which most will think a trivial event. People stop using software all the time, except I’ve been using Evernote from the beginning that it first became available for Windows in 2008. In fact, I am pretty sure that I first used a beta version of the product perhaps as early as 2005. At the time it was introduced no company was really developing notetaking software, at least not for Windows. When first introduced the UI of EverNote had the form of a continual scroll of information “flagged” by date, in fact it could be my first experience with the newsfeed/stream UI now commonly used by social networking applications.

The closest resemblance EverNote had to any other product was the UI of the Newton OS that ran on Apple’s Newton Messagepad. The resemblance may have been intentional because EverNote was founded by Stepan Pachikov who with his company Paragraph International, lead the development of the handwriting recognition engine known as CalliGrapher, which was licensed by Apple for use with the Newton OS. EverNote’s resemblance to Newton definitely drew my attention to the product.

Pachikov brought Phil Libin onboard as CEO of Evernote (originally the product name had a capitalized N that was changed to lowercase by 2008) and Libin grew the company and the product into the well recognized, multi-platform product that most people know of it today. In my opinion what made Evernote attractive is that it centrally stored data (perhaps one of the first commercial client/server applications) that is accessible to client applications running on nearly every computing platform that I use. At a time when it was common to see applications that ran only on Mac or Windows, or iOS, Evernote ran any every single one of these platforms.

Of course, developing and then maintaining separate code bases for each platform is daunting, particularly if the application architecture was not explicitly developed for that use, and so over time bugs crept up that caused problems. The relatively fast growth of the product also lead to performance issues, and for some data loss. For me Evernote jumped the shark around 2013 when the company began licensing/selling products with Evernote branding, like socks, that had no relationship to the core product, while there were significant problems with the Evernote app. One year after Libin left Evernote the company stopped selling these products.

It might be said that Evernote began its path of decent soon after Libin left the company in 2015. Key developers started to leave the company and soon there seemed to be yearly rumors of the company going under. While many who I associated with stopped using it, by 2015 I had accumulated seven years of information in the application and I felt the yearly $60 subscription was worth my continued access to that information from all the devices I use. The Evernote web clipper had become my most valued tool of all the software I use and it is still the best browser web clipping application available particularly on mobile devices. Unlike most other apps, sharing to Evernote on iOS and Android captures the entire web page rather than just the link to the page.

So, despite the dismal outlook for the company and the app, I stayed committed to it, but last year it was acquired by Bending Spoons and they changed the subscription cost to $15 per month, which I decided was too expensive in light of what I pay in other software subscriptions. When the rumors of the demise of Evernote started appearing I began testing ways to export my information out of the application and import it into others. Two years ago I exported everything from Evernote to OneNote, which wasn’t perfect but good enough for me to find information should I need to. Last year I found I could also import my Evernote archive into Obsidian, which I completed last fall and from that point stopped storing new information in Evernote.

My yearly subscription with Evernote renews at the end of January, so my deadline to delete my data from Evernote and close my account was this past weekend. Deleting my notes was much more laborious than I would have preferred, as a deleted note is moved to Trash and then one has to empty the Trash in order to completely delete the note and I found that Trash emptying seemed to only handle about 100 notes or so at a time, particularly with the web application. The problem seems to be with the synchronization performance, even the web app syncs data with the browser local storage, and I suspect there is Javasript handling all of the API calls to tell Evernote’s servers to move and delete data.

I am obviously much more brand loyal than most other people, so it’s really a big deal for me personally to stop using a product after having used it for more than ten years. Obviously, my issue is not with the product itself but the subscription cost that most likely is driven by a decreasing number of subscribers. I do expect Evernote to eventually disappear within the next year or two. Going forward I am using Joplin to capture web clippings from Mac and Linux, tolerating the fact that sharing to Joplin with iPad only captures the link and not the web content. I have also started using Archivebox on my home network. I am using end to end encryption with Joplin and using OneDrive as the “hub” for storing/syncing the data in Joplin between my desktops and iPad. Unfortunately the Android version of Joplin does not synchronize well and I gave up even trying to use it on my Pixel 7a.

Football Fun

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 16:06:17 -0400

Yesterday was fun for me as a football fan. I am a life long Green Bay Packer fan and really enjoyed watching the Packers pummel the Dallas Cowboys. The enjoyment not so much because I dislike Dallas but more so because Packer’s performance was so unexpected. Jordan Love had a perfect passer rating in large part because the receivers caught every ball thrown their way. The offensive line did a fantastic job of opening up holes for Aaron Jones to run through, and the defensive secondary had two interceptions and made it hard on Dak and CeeDee. I don’t expect the Packers to have the same success in San Francisco, but they could make the game interesting. My respect for coach Matt LaFleur has gone up tremendously for how the term has performed.

Next came the night cap. I’ve lived in metro Detroit for more than half my life, and when Packers play the Lions, I am all cheesehead, otherwise I am rooting for the Lions to win. Those who have grown up a Lions fan have experienced more downs than ups, which I relate to as a Chicago Cubs fan. (Although my Packers were awful during my childhood and teen years during the 70s and 80s.) So, I really wanted to see the Lions win last night, and they hung on to do it, never trailing in their game. The Lions will have another game this season in Ford Field, and have a good chance to getting in the NFC Championship game.

I’ll just put it out there. If the Lions win and the Packers beat the 49ers then these two NFC North Division foes would play each other in Ford Field for the right to play in the Super Bowl. Possible, but not probable, but on any given day anything can happen.

Personal Computing Continues To Get Real

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 12:01:31 -0400

Back in 2011 when Apple announced the iPad I believed it marked the real beginning of the personal computing era rather than the beginning of the Post-PC Era as was being pronounced at the time. As I argued then, and think it is still the case, we have historically thought of a personal computer as a device that one person uses. In other words, “personal” meant one. My argument back then is that “personal” really should mean what everyone knows it to mean, which is computing specific to you, the user. I imagine personal computing as the mashup of hardware + software + Internet + intelligence.

Today I learned via manton about Rabbit Inc. and a mobile device and operating system it has introduced built around a Large Language Model and what the company calls a Large Action Model to provide a user interface based on natural language processing and execute actions rather than generate text and pictures. I don’t know whether the NLP works as well is demoed, but the demo at least shows exactly how I imagined how personal computing should work. Speech is our primary mode of interaction and typing is really abnormal and frankly unknown to the majority of people in the world.

I think the software is the most important part of what Rabbit Inc. has made, the purpose of the device is to prove the software’s functioning and capability. If it does perform as well as shown, I expect the company and product to be acquired by one of the big tech firms.

Intentional Trusting

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 12:17:47 -0400

This article in The Atlantic, We’ve Been Thinking About America’s Trust Collapse All Wrong by Jedediah Britton-Purdy is very good. Too bad it’s behind a paywall, but worth trying to read. Here is one of the many important points:

Another distinction between personal and political trust that we need to learn involves living with sharp moral disagreement. In our own lives, we may refuse to enter close and lasting relationships with people who, say, disagree with us about questions as fundamental as how we should raise our children or what gender roles mean in our family. (I don’t mean that this is necessarily the right approach, and we may lose something when we cut ourselves off from challenge in this way, but the decision is an intelligible one.) But politics is about coexistence with disagreement around issues as fundamental as these, such as abortion. If we treat moral disagreement as proof of moral badness and as a reason, effectively, to cut off civic as well as personal relationships, then politics is done. Politics is a relationship we cannot escape, for better or worse. We can poison it, though, and confusing it with personal relationships that we can refuse or leave is one way of poisoning it.

Year in books for 2023

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 23:46:35 -0400

I doubled the number of books that I read in 2022. Here are the books I finished reading in 2023.

When Feeling Better Trumps Being Better

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 11:28:35 -0400

I am reading Jonathan Haidt’s article in The Atlantic, The Coddling of the American Mind, and I am wondering whether the hypersensitivity to emotional wellbeing Haidt describes can be somewhat attributed to our associating gun violence to mental illness over the last several decades. Mental illnesses are real but I think are diminished when we start tossing out the term as being the cause to all our ills. Perhaps it would not be an issue if we actually did something about mental illness, but I think we mostly talk about it. Our unwillingness to actually address problems and instead simply focus on symptoms is teaching generations of people that symptoms are actually the problems when they are not.

What Haidt does not address in the article is how hypercapitalism, which is the practice in the United States of prioritizing wealth over everything, contributes to the problem. We have many religions in the United States, but I think capitalism is the one that rules them all. The religion of capitalism preaches that there are to be no restraints on one’s ability to be wealthy and thus it teaches that the ends justify the means.

Manipulating emotions may be the number one tool of generating wealth in the United States. Marketing and advertising is emotional manipulation for the purpose of selling products, the buying of which produces wealth. Advertising is all about coveting that which another has and thus has existed ever since humans became aware of their surroundings. Technology continually optimizes advertising and today’s targeted and viral ads are extremely effective at making us covet.

No popular church nor religion in the United States truly teaches the dangers of wealth. Who preaches and teaches enough is better than more? Heck, the “ministers” of many of the most well known churches in the United States are themselves extremely wealthy. Yet, Christianity claims association to Jesus who plainly taught of these dangers. The consequence is that we live in a society that actually encourages the practice of one profiting off the suffering of another.

Children are immersed practically from the moment of birth in emotions, and our religions teach them how to feel better. The pursuit of happiness is a treadmill for the more and the idea that there is enough for all to be happy is considered un-American. We are frogs floating in warm pot of water and the temperature is increasing toward death.

My Praise for Micro.blog

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 11:54:29 -0400

The posts that I write here are hosted on a platform known as micro.blog that hosts my feed (in RSS format) and a network of feeds to which members of the platform contribute. The feeds are rendered in a timeline format accessible via web and mobile applications developed and maintained by the platform founder Manton Reece and his colleagues. Micro.blog hosts each member’s feeds rendered in a web site that can be accessed by a domain name owned by the member, such as mine at https://frankmcpherson.blog. The feeds are open such that other people like Loura can write their own web applications to render the feeds in a timeline format and make it usable by other members. Alternate mobile applications are also available. Finally, one can write and publish posts from alternate applications like Drummer, which I am currently using. In summary, micro.blog is an example of a successful, open platform built and maintained by a handful of people, enhanced by a community of members, and is affordable.

Another Chicago Cubs Scapegoat

Mon, 06 Nov 2023 17:04:20 -0400

Whenever a general manager/front office of a professional sports team fires a good coach, or in baseball manager, I am suspicious of the true motivations behind the decision. I tend to think such decisions are often deflections of attention away from the front office. Today the Chicago Cubs dismissed David Ross and hired Gregg Counsell and many will note similarities in this decision with how they dismissed Ricky Renteria in 2014 to hire Joe Maddon who unexpectedly become available. I personally do not think the two situations are the same.

Renteria had been on the job for only one year, had not really proven himself as a manager, and did not have any history with the Cubs. Ross is one of the heros of the 2016 world championship team and had taken the Cubs to the playoffs as a manager. Counsell is a good manager and had taken the Brewers to the playoffs five of his six seasons with them, but did not have success in the playoffs. I do not think Counsell is as good a manager today as Joe Maddon was in 2014.

More important, David Ross was not the reason why the Cubs did not make the playoffs this season. The Cubs did not make the playoffs because of a depleted bullpen and in my opinion bad offseason acquisitions that were eventually released during the season, and those decisions were made by the general manager and president of baseball operations.

Ricketts might have bought Hoyer’s argument that jumping on the opportunity to get Counsell is similar to when Epstein jumped on the opportunity to get Maddon, but if Ricketts really wants to address the root cause for why Cubs did not meet expectations this season he ought to be questioning the decisions made by Hoyer and hold him accountable. If the Cubs have decided to completely move on from 2016 that means moving on from Jed Hoyer. In my opinion, the Cubs released the wrong person from their team.

Oh, and by the way, if the Cubs make this move of stabbing one of their own in the back, they darn well better be aggressive at signing free agents during the off season.

Just Looking In The Rear View Mirror

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 10:28:37 -0400

From the perspective of my life time of 1966 to present, I think the most consequential change on society has been the rise of conservatism. Today many people claim themselves to be conservative while not being clear what they mean. Wikipedia defines conservatism as “a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values.” How conservatism is practiced varies among societies.

At the risk of over simplifying, I think Americans who claim to be conservatives mean they are for smaller government, translated to mean lower taxes, lower government spending, and less government involvement in their daily lives. Recently I think the label has simplified to just mean, not liberal, or “Trump supporter.” While some want simply to be left alone and have more agency over their lives, many want to return to some time in the past, such as during the 1950s, when they believed life was better.

I believe conservatives and liberals have an unhealthy obsession with the past. Conservatives want to return to the past, liberals want to correct the past and it seems neither understand that the value of history is to learn from the past for the purpose of not repeating mistakes in the future. I think it is ironic that conservatives and liberals are seen as polar opposites while in reality both are obsessed with the past and neither side has a healthy perspective on progress. In short, you can’t really make progress when you are constantly looking in the rear view mirror.

Don’t believe me? Can you think of any area of politics that is not about the past? From the age of our government leaders, to how the U.S. constitution is currently used, to why there are wars, to why we cannot decrease the number of mass shootings, work to improve the climate and become healthier, every one of these are only really viewed from the perspective of the past. If most people agree that we should do something about these things, why can’t we?

The current obsession with polarization means more interest is in the argument rather than progress. I am not sure either side really wants progress because whenever either one has the ability to make progress disagreements within their ranks prevents it from happening. Polarization is focused on getting one’s way and beating the other and lost is any amount progress that in past times was born out of debate between the two points of view.

It’s one thing to have different ideas for how progress is to be made, or even what is progress, and another to not want to progress at all. Right now the United States has no desire for progress, we see this in how everything of significance is being handled in the world. I think how we got here is born out of a belief, more shared than we like to realize, that humanity cannot really improve itself. Too many now think the world cannot be better for future generations so it’s not even worth trying. So long American dream. No wonder why Gen Z is pissed of at all older generations and considers everything they say as b.s., and we are seeing the consequences playing out.

Consequently, why bother with empathy? I don’t need to consider how events affect you, the other, when I know how they affect me. Without empathy there is no way to love my neighbor, nor see my neighbor as a part of myself, I only need to know the world through my own feelings and state of being. In fact, they aren’t neighbors, most are enemies. No need to imagine a better world and the hope that inspires, rather one’s imagination only produces nightmares.

Humanity is driving itself toward extinction, what only seems open to debate is how, destruction incrementally via climate change, or suddenly via nuclear war? It always has taken work and the desire to co-exist with and even love the other with whom we share space with on this planet. What is certain is destruction will happen while we are only looking in the rear view mirror and not through the windshield toward the future. Humanity is so diverse that there will never be agreement on which turns to take along the road, but surely we can agree it is desirable to move forward!

World Series Starts Tonight

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 09:01:26 -0400

Two wildcard teams, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Texas Rangers, will play each other in the 2023 MLB World Series. Before the playoffs began I alluded to how wildcard teams have an advantage from being forced to play playoff level games for longer. I expected the Diamondbacks to do well and I am not surprised that they made it to the World Series. The Rangers should have won their division but lost it on the last day of the regular season to the Houston Astros. Now that the Diamondbacks are in the Series, I think they are going to win.

My 2023 MLB Playoff Preferences

Tue, 03 Oct 2023 17:21:43 -0400

I am not as crazy as to pretend that I can predict what will happen in this year’s Major League Baseball playoffs, but I did want to go down on record about what are my preferences given that the Chicago Cubs are not in the tournament.

Given I closely follow the Cubs, I am more emotionally invested in the National League games, so I will start with the easy part, which is that my preference for the American League champion is any team other than Houston. Houston has won it recently, most of the others have not, and that is the bottom line. For some reason I find myself drawn to the Baltimore Orioles, so I will prefer they play in the Word Series for the American League.

Wild card teams seem to excel in the tournament and do so at the expense of the higher seeds who are division winners. I think the wild card teams have the advantage of actually having played under playoff pressure for weeks up to the tournament just to make it in to the postseason. Of the the wild card teams, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Arizona Diamondbacks made it to the NLCS, and I think a championship between them and Atlanta would be very fun to watch.

My emotional preference is for Philadelphia to represent the NL in the World Series because of Kyle Schwarber, but I expect Atlanta to make it to the World Series and win it all because they are the best team in all of baseball. A big part of me likes the idea of Schwarber having the most success of the former Cub players after the 2016 World Series given how the Cubs front office gave up on him waaaay too soon.

Why The Cubs Are Fading

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 10:49:08 -0400

The World Series, like most major sports championships, is won by defense. In baseball that mainly translates to pitching, but also fielding. When you play the same team in a playoff series your hitters usually face the opponent’s best pitching, consequently you should plan for 3 or fewer runs scored and that means you want your pitching to hold the opponent to 3 or fewer runs.

Since the beginning of September the Cubs have been in playoff games. Nearly all of the teams they faced need to beat them to move ahead of the Cubs in the Wild Card playoff standings. By my count the Cubs have played 17 games so far in September and in 7 of them their opponent scored 3 or fewer runs. My conclusion is that the Cubs pitching is simply not good enough to win in the playoffs.

I think my conclusion holds if you look at the larger body of work over the season. I expect that in a high percentage of the games the Cubs won they scored 4 or more runs, too many of those they needed to score 4 or more runs. During the regular season it is not surprising that your hitters will have more success because they will be in many situations where they face poor pitching.

A team built to win in the MLB playoffs has the pitching that more often than not can hold their opponent to 3 or fewer runs. Truth is the Cubs got through the 2023 season with only one reliable starting pitcher, maybe two (Steele for sure, and possibly Hendricks). Stroman and Taillon have not been consistent and Taillon has been aweful. Javier Assad joined the starting rotation too late in to the season so it is really hard to assess his reliability. The bullpen is no better, only Merrywather and Alzolay has been reliable, though Leiter is borderline.

The fact that the Cubs are in a playoff race is much more important this year than they actually make the playoffs, and the goal long term is be winning division championships and not gain a playoff berth via the wild card. While at the beginning of the season there was some hope the Cubs could compete with the Brewers for the NL Central division championship, I think it was evident early on through head to head games with the Brewers that this Cubs team is not as good or better than the Brewers. Sure, the Cubs can win any game, but can they win a series?

Bottom line, the Chicago Cubs are on schedule for their long term goals of winning division titles and the World Series in upcoming years. Clearly, the Cubs need to improve their pitching. Jordan Wicks has shown he is a piece of the puzzle for next year, and we can hope Taillon will return to the how he pitched in the past. Stroman might be back, but with Hendricks being another year older I think the Cubs need to sign at least two reliable starting pitchers during the off season as well as keep Merryweather.

From the lineup perspective, I think the Cubs should be aggressive in their attempt to sign Bellinger, but I doubt he stays and his departure will create a big gap in their lineup. Maybe youngsters Morel, Mervis, or Crow-Armstrong can help fill that gap but all are too inexperienced with MLB pitching. Consequently, the Cubs need to sign at least one big-name hitter to maintain their current starting lineup performance.

Finally, the biggest question of the off season might be whether David Ross has what it takes to manage a championship caliber baseball team. Every manager makes questionable lineup and in-game decisions, and this is Ross' first manager job so we need to keep in mind that he is learning on the job. I personally can’t pin the current Cubs situation on Ross, the bottom line is that the players have to perform and they are not performing. Ross has made lineup changes and pitching changes, as far as I can tell he is doing everything he can to try and have the Cubs win games. I would not be in a hurry to replace Ross unless there is a championship experienced person to replace him. So, David Ross' fate, like Rick Renteria’s was in 2015, may be decided more by who is available rather than by his own performance.

I am frustrated by and mad about the Cub’s performance this month, but I am mostly mad at the Cubs veterans who have under performed with the pressure on. Frankly, if it weren’t for Suzuki the Cubs would probably would have a longer losing streak. Swanson, Bellinger, and Happ have not met expectations as the veteran leaders. In the big picture I am happy about where the Cubs are, they met my expectations for this season and look to be on track of near year and beyond. All of the younger Cub players who have never been in this position of a playoff race in September are gaining valuable experience of how to deal with the pressure, and in my opinion experience matters most.

Welcome To September Baseball

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 09:15:02 -0400

As of this morning the Chicago Cubs are 3 games behind the Milwaukee Brewers for the N.L. Central lead and have a 2 game lead in the N.L. Wildcard. Nearly all MLB teams are not playing today. On Friday (September 1) the Cubs will have a chance to gain more ground on the Brewers by virtue of a double header, whereas the Brewers play the Phillies. The double header is in Cincinnati and the Reds are chasing the Cubs for the Wildcard, so both teams have playoff positions to play for and therefore the games will be tense.

Time For The Chicago Cubs To Embrace The Pressure

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 16:57:40 -0400

The 162 game schedule is a big part of what makes Major League Baseball unique among professional sports in the United States because it tends to force differences in how games are approached throughout the season. No team is ever going to be undefeated, the current best team, the Atlanta Braves, has won a little over 65% of their games. The MLB season is a marathon meaning that in most cases a game is not treated as “must win.”

Oddly, while a long schedule means most games are not “must win,” for some teams, earlier than they would like, the season transitions to “it doesn’t matter whether they win or lose” because they are out of playoff contention. As a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan it has been my experience more often than not that the Cubs are out of playoff contention by the end of May or early June. Further, as a lifelong Cubs fan, I have learned it is much more fun watching games year after year when the team is playing meaningful games in September. I would much rather have the team lose in the playoffs every year than have the team out the playoffs by June in the majority of seasons.

So, in baseball, a transition occurs over the course of a season where teams move from playing to win games to playing to must win games. The benefit of expanding the number of playoff teams is that more teams start playing more “must win” games in September than in years past. In my experience, teams with players who have the most experience winning “must win” games are best positioned for long term success.

As an aside, it should be obvious why wild card teams, which have worse records than division winners, have had so much success in the playoffs, it’s because they usually play more “must win” games during the last month of the season and through that gain valuable experience and confidence. Turns out there is a big difference between “wanting to win” and “needing to win.”

At this point of a long 2023 season, the Chicago Cubs are starting the transition in to “must win” territory. Nobody associated with the Cubs is going to admit publicly that the games they are playing this week and next are must win, but it’s a mistake if they don’t start viewing the games as such, in fact they ought to embrace the transition. As Billy Jean King is often quoted as saying, “Pressure is a privilege.” The pressure of being in “must win” mode as the calendar flips from August to September is a badge of success.

The unpredictable nature of sports mean should the Cubs make the playoffs they could win the World Series. The probability of the 2023 Cubs winning the World Series is not high, not like it was for the 2016 team. However, the experience of playing as many “must win” games as possible over the course of the final month of the season is huge! The Cubs are exactly where they hoped to be at this time of the season and now players who have not had the experience with this type of pressure gain the experience that will provide dividends for years beyond.

I was mad the Cubs were crushed by the Brewers last night because I desire the immediate gratification of winning the N.L. Central this year, but I am happy that the young Cubs players such as their current best starting pitcher, Justin Steele, are getting this experience playing these games. However, the full value of that experience will not be realized if the team, from top to bottom, doesn’t consider these games “must win.”

The 2023 MLB Season is transitioning from “would like to win” to “must win” for the Cubs, and I am looking for the team to embrace the pressure.

Cubs vs. Tigers at Comerica Park, Detroit, Michigan

Wed, 23 Aug 2023 09:08:59 -0400

The Chicago Cubs are playing the Detroit Tigers in Detroit this week, and I went to the Monday and Tuesday night games. The Cubs won 7-6 Monday night in a game when the Cubs gained and gave up a four run lead but hung on to win. The Tigers won Tuesday night 8-6, but the Cubs had a 4-3 run lead after the top of the fourth inning and then gave up 4 runs to the Tigers in the bottom of the inning. The Cubs scored 2 runs in the top of the fifth inning to pull within one run, but scored no more while the Tigers added an insurance run in the bottom of the eighth inning. As of today the Cubs record is 65-60 and they are 3.5 games behind the Brewers in the NL Central division and have the second wild card for the NL playoffs.

Highlights of the games include seeing Cody Bellinger, former NL MVP, playing for the Cubs, he will likely not re-sign with the Cubs at the end of the season. Future Hall of Famer Miguel Cabrera was the DH for the Tigers in Tuesday’s game, possibly his last game ever against the Chicago Cubs. Click to see the pictures I took during the games on Monday and Tuesday.

Finally, I captured a foul ball during the game on Tuesday. It was fumbled by the guy in front of me and I grabbed after it landed on the steps next to me.

Hope Is Not A Strategy

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 10:53:51 -0400

I am resigned to the fact that Chicago Cubs are not going to be a playoff team this year, which makes them sellers for the upcoming trade deadline, and it is this idea of “selling” that makes me mad. We knew that Cody Bellinger was only going to be with the Cubs for a year and if he played to any amount of his capability would be a mid season trade, so his leaving is not a problem. What I don’t want to see is the Cubs trading Marcus Stroman.

Starting pitching is the foundation of a MLB team and the Cubs have no real pitching prospects in their farm system. Every free agent pitcher not on their team that the Cubs sign is an unknown. Jameson Taillon is the most recent case in point, the Cubs didn’t really know what they were getting when they signed Taillon but they hoped he would be as good as he was in previous seasons. When you sign a player not on your team you hope they will perform as you expect, but hope is not a strategy!

Stroman has been the best Cubs pitcher the last two years. You can make the claim he is one of the best pitchers in baseball and the Cubs should know best about his health, his mental make up, and his skills. In other words, Stroman is a known asset, and when you are building a team I think general managers should bias what they know about the players on their team.

If the Cubs trade Stroman, to me that not only means this season (2023) is down the drain, it is also that they are not closer to making the playoffs in 2024. What such a trade tells me is that the Cubs continue to tread mediocrity and have no real plan for returning to the playoffs. Further, if the Cubs trade Stroman and thus are sellers at the deadline ownership must make a change in the front office and the manager. I don’t think Hoyer has any real idea how to build the team, he is just hoping to improve, and hope is not a plan.

The “buyers and sellers” phenomenon is not good for Major League Baseball. The way teams treat free agency is destroying how they build their teams and farm systems for continued success. Now, because most teams in baseball are not very good, most teams are unloading their best players mid season for prospects that might never make it to the majors or at best won’t be on their team until 3 years down the road. Every off season teams buy a bunch of free agents (basically creating new rosters every year), all who are unknowns, and hope they perform well enough to form a competitive team. Most teams find their hopes were ill conceived and they rinse and repeat.

Put it another way, nearly all MLB general managers are doing their job no differently than fantasy baseball managers. Problem is, fantasy baseball is not the real world. MLB does not build rosters based on a draft of the entire pool of available players. Right now the Cubs, and most MLB teams, are building new rosters each year from a small pool of unknowns. I am looking for leadership from the Cubs with a real plan and the funding from ownership to stick to the plan. It is looking more to me that Hoyer does not have a real plan and Ricketts has to find another person to run team who has a plan, otherwise he is no better than all prior owners of the Chicago Cubs.

Smokey Eye Not Good

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 09:55:05 -0400

I watched the Air Quality Index for my home showing on the Nest Hub creeping up all yesterday afternoon to as high as 193, due to the wildfires in Canada. Right now it is 187 and I am planning on not going on my normal walks. It’s troubling to me for it not to be raining or incredibly hot yet avoid being outdoors. Last night I watched the Cubs play in Chicago, somewhat surprised they were even playing the game with the AQI over 200. I would have expected the teams and Major League Baseball to be concerned about the health of players and the fans. As far as I know, there is no change coming soon.

We have an Airthings Wave Mini in the basement to track humidity and temperature, but it also tracks what they call Volatile Organic Compounds, which are airborne chemicals emitted by every day items. The biggest influence I see on VOC in our house is the furnace and air conditioning and the good thing is that the AC was not running as much as it could so the VOC number has stayed in the good range. VOC is not the same as Particulate Matter pollution caused by the wildfires and currently affecting the outdoor air quality, I would need a different sensor for that reading.

Generational Expectations On Time For Change

Fri, 23 Jun 2023 09:44:34 -0400

Lately I have been ruminating on generational differences in relationship to technology. Like all things, technology changes over time. I remember a time before cell phones, when the only way to make a phone call was to by using a handset in our home, but I don’t remember a time when there were no phones. Generations younger than mine do not know of a time when cell phones did not exist. Today Dave Winer writes of a similar technology change, between black and white and color television.

The differences between those who lived during “before and after” periods and “never knew anything else” periods of technology can have significant societal consequences. I think the Internet is one such case, with those who have never lived without the Internet expecting all matters related to time happening much faster than my generation and older who grew up without the Internet. The “Internet” generation will not tolerate society changes needing to take tens or hundreds of years of time (civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, etc..) to complete, they expect such change to happen in months if not days!

First Impressions Of The Google Pixel 7a

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 16:58:03 -0400

Google announced and began selling the Pixel 7a earlier last month, and I ordered a Sea colored version from Amazon about a week later. The Pixel 7a is replacing the Pixel 4a that has been my everyday carry phone for the last three years. I really like the size and feel of the Pixel 4a and so I was not eager to up-size to the newer phone, but it has come to the end of the road with Android and there are features the 7a has that make the upgrade a “no-brainer.”

My main concern about the Pixel 7a has been its size and glossy back. The Pixel 7a is taller than the Pixel 4a and because of that I find it harder to operate with one hand. The weight, however, is the most noticeable difference. I am finding that due to the weight it is more comfortable holding the phone in my left hand, but in a position where I can’t scroll apps with that same hand and as a result this phone requires more two hand operation than the Pixel 4a. The weight and size difference is also noticeable when I put the Pixel 7a in a front pant pocket. Fortunately, the size do not make these use cases impossible, just different and I suspect the difference will become less noticeable over time.

The back of the Pixel 7a is more “polished” than the Pixel 4a, but it doesn’t feel so slippery that I fear it is going to quickly slip out of my hand. I purchased a really nice Latercase that does not add much weight or bulk and gives a more matte like feel to the back of the phone.

Battery life appears to be better, but I don’t know whether that is simply because the battery is larger or the Google Tensor G2 is that much more efficient. Accubattery is showing that screen of battery consumption is at 2% or less, which is definitely better than the Pixel 4a that is closer to 3%. Battery life is an item that requires a longer duration to evaluate.

I don’t know if it is just me, but I think pictures using the wide angle lens have a bit of a fish eye affect. (See the last picture on this page for an example.) I don’t think the camera app clearly indicates how to switch between cameras.

I really like the under screen fingerprint scanner, although that may be more due to the fact that scanner is on the front of the phone rather than on the back. Now I know exactly where to put my finger and therefore the scanner works more accurately. The face unlock also works ok, but doesn’t seem to trigger fast enough. People complain about the speed of the finger print scanner, but I find it plenty fast.

As I expected, it was a real pain to move the Pixel Watch from the Pixel 4a to the 7a. Google really does not understand what is a technology ecosystem, it’s not just a suite of products that have the same appearance, it’s products that work together with little effort by the user. The fact that one has to factory reset a WearOS watch to move it from one Pixel phone to another is the clearest evidence of Google’s cluelessness when it comes to tech ecosystems. At least the Pixel Buds were automatically recognized and work.

Of the new features I get with the Pixel 7a, I like the wireless charging the best, although I am still working on how often to do the charging. I bought the Pixel Stand and have it on my desk where I could put my phone during the work day, but what is the impact on battery health from keeping the phone on the charger for extended periods of time? Articles on lithium batteries say it’s best to keep the phones between 20% to 80% charged given that each full cycle has an impact on the life time of the battery. Seems to me though that Google intends users to keep the phone on the stand, so you would think they would incorporate programming to help with the battery health.

Over all I am happy with the Pixel 7a. It’s larger than the Pixel 4a but it is the smallest Pixel, and I definitely think it is better to buy it than the cheaper and older Pixel 6a. Rumor is that the 7a may be the last of the “A Series” pixel phones, but it’s not clear exactly what that means. It could mean that Google will stop staggering the release of phones in the spring/summer and fall/winter like they have over the last several years but keep the “small, medium, and large” sizes, or it could be they drop the phone all together. Given that the Pixel 7a has nearly all the same specs as the Pixel 7, it seems the only reason one would buy the “flagship” phone is to get a larger screen. I really hope that Google keeps a phone that is no larger than 6-inches tall.

Detroit Grand Prix

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 16:15:26 -0400

I am watching the IndyCar practice of the Detroit Grand Prix, which is racing around the Renaissance Center where I worked for nearly nine years. At one time or another I’ve driven parts the entire circuit, and I made turns 4, 5, 6, and 7 nearly every week day. I am seeing them going 70 mph on stretches I wouldn’t dare drive more than 30. The pits are in a parking lot where I used to park when we first started working at that location.

As much as I disliked the 40 minute commute (on good days), I really enjoyed working at the Renaissance Center, particularly when there were events like the Super Bowl and this Grand Prix because at those times it is the center of activity.

The IndyCar car race is on Sunday at 3:45 PM, but if you have Peacock you can watch the practice and qualifying right now and Saturday.

With AI, Focus On The People

Wed, 31 May 2023 09:01:33 -0400

When I read something about the dangers of AI I can’t help but fear the writers are missing an important point. Saying that AI is bad is like saying the Internet is bad or guns are bad. In truth none of these items are bad. What is bad, and what we need to focus on, is that there are bad people who can and will use these items to amplify what they can do and thus inflict harm on others.

Back before the Internet was known by most of the world those who supported it advocated for all of the good it can do, but we failed to take in to account how it can be used for harm. What is common among AI, the Internet, and guns, particularly automatic guns, is the scale and speed at which harm can be done.

So, my advice is, focus a bit less on the technology and more on the ways in which people want and might use that technology for harm and then craft policies aimed at constraining the the people who may do that harm. It might be making a nuanced argument, but I think it is an important one when encountering those who see themselves as needing to defend/protect the items.

Does screen refresh really matter on smartphones?

Tue, 23 May 2023 11:29:21 -0400

One of the unwritten rules of tech is the idea that more is better, the purpose of which is to have us continually buy the latest generation of a product. The rule began with the model year releases of automobiles and became adopted by the tech industry. Unfortunately, we consumers don’t often enough question whether the latest features really do matter. We aren’t helped by tech reviewers who often seem to advocate more for the tech industry than consumers. An example that I am thinking about is the push for faster refresh rates on smartphones.

If you have read smartphone reviews over the last year or so you have probably been convinced that phones with 60Hz refresh screens are bad and really should be avoided. We all should be clamoring for 120Hz or at least 90Hz screens so that we get the fastest, smoothest screen scrolling. Do we, really, need smartphone screens faster than 60Hz?

Up until last week I have been using the Pixel 4a, and it’s “limited,” 60Hz screen as my daily driver. When I got the new Pixel 7a I dutifully changed the setting, as prescribed by nearly all tech reviewers, to turn on Smooth Display so that it displays at 90Hz. Every reviewer who directs one to make this change intones something to the affect, “why is Smooth Display not enabled by default?”

While I can say, yes, after turning on Smooth Display scrolling text up/down on the Pixel 7a is faster, what nobody seems to ask is, on a 6-inch display, does one really need that scrolling to be faster? I am skeptical. I am thinking we are being convinced that faster smartphone refresh rates are needed, but they really are not. Increase the size of the screen to perhaps the 11-inch standard tablet, or larger, and I can see how faster refresh can really matter, but on a 6-inch screen?

Another example, at least to me, is the “insistence” that we all need 5G wireless data on our phones. Of course, I ran a speed test using the Pixel 7a as soon as I could and observed the fact that the 86 Mbps download feature is faster than the “plain” LTE transfer speed of my Pixel 4a. Ok, but in what way am I really going to notice or even need that faster transfer speed on a smartphone with a 6-inch screen? For example, I streamed video on the Pixel 7a and it looked no better to me than on the Pixel 4a. Again, if I were on a tablet or certainly a PC then I would likely benefit by the faster transfer rate, but I doubt that 5G is really going to make difference on the Pixel 7a.

To be fair, I do gain some benefits in the upgrade from the Pixel 4a to the 7a. I am finding the front, under-screen finger print scanner is much better than the back scanner of the 4a. The camera is much better and thus I am getting better pictures. Battery life seems to be better, probably thanks to a larger battery and the Tensor G2 chip, and I am happy to finally have the convenience of wireless charging.

Truth is, we likely reached peak smartphone many years ago, therefore there are really fewer needed new features that really matter, and consequently there is a need for more marketing to get people to buy phones. If you are wondering why Google will be selling the Pixel Fold, the reason why is because the smartphone “industry” is convinced such foldables are needed in order to keep selling phones over the next ten years. (The main case for foldables is people want to carry smaller devices, but ironically that could be served by selling phones with smaller screens!) In my opinion, the only change in smartphones that we really need is in battery life, and the technical problem of gaining more battery life from the same size batteries appears to be impossible to overcome. Ironically, one way to improve battery life is to set the screen refresh to 60Hz and use slower file transfer speeds, but then we could get by with last year’s phone.

Google's Tech Ecosystem Failure

Sun, 21 May 2023 17:31:13 -0400

I have now replaced two Pixel phones with a newer model and each time I do I am astounded by how little Google understands technology ecosystems. Not only does Google require physically connecting the two phones together with a cable to transfer data, but to transfer a WearOS watch, like the Pixel Watch, from one phone to another you have to factory reset the watch. Seriously! Does anyone at Google ever even try moving from one generation phone to another?

Google seems to think that when one buys a new Pixel phone they are going to buy a new watch too. The factory reset of the watch would not be so bad if one could restore the watch like one can with a Pixel phone, but Google does not provide a backup of WearOS watches to their cloud.

Here is the process for one who owns a Pixel Watch paired with a Pixel 4a to replace the phone with a Pixel 7a. You transfer the SIM from the old phone to the new, then connect a USB-C cable between the 4a and the 7a to transfer your phone settings (ring tones, etc..) and SMS messages. During the transfer the icons for your apps are added to the new phone, but then all of the apps have to be installed. In many cases app settings, particularly logins, do not transfer, so after the apps install you spend a considerable amount of time going through each app to be sure it works as on the “old” phone.

Over the years I have replaced several iPads with newer models and never once have I ever had to physically connect a cable to move settings and apps between the tablets. Apple has been doing this for many years, and honestly, I do not understand why Google, with all of its technical brilliance cannot figure out how to make this process of transfering from one model Pixel phone to another as pain free as possible.

So, once you have the phone set it comes time to pair the Pixel Watch to the new phone. The process requires doing a factory reset of the watch as if you just took it out of the box, and worse, after you pair it with the new phone there is no transfer of app icons, settings, or anything. Oh, and neither the Google Play store nor the Google Watch app keep track of what apps or watch faces you install on the watch, so you have figure out what to install! Anyone at Google who does such a transfer finds this acceptable ought to be embarrased, it might be the most brain dead process of all of technology!

It’s not like nobody at Google has figured it out. Transferring the Pixel Buds Pro from the Pixel 4a to the 7a works exactly how one expects, and how transferring a watch should work. No reset, no pairing, no manual configuration, just take the buds out of the case, put them in my ear, and they just work on the new phone!

Like the Pixel Buds, the Pixel Watch is an accessory to Pixel Phones, but the WearOS, Android, and Pixel teams seem to think the Pixel Watch is a standalone device. Sure, one can buy a watch with an LTE radio and with it and the built-in GPS the watch can function apart from the phone, but honestly, most users are not buying watches with LTE radios. Even if they do, the process of using the Play Store app on the watch to find and install apps is best described as tedious.

The worst part of the WearOS apps process is that Google actually had it right the first time it released their smartwatch operating system. When Google first released a smartwatch there was no way to install apps directly on the watch, you had to use the phone, and the companion app on the phone made it easy to manage the apps to install. Back then while recovering from a factory reset did not automatically restore the watch, it at least put all the apps you had installed in one spot so that you could manually trigger the installation.

For all the progress Google has made over the years to improve Android, Pixel phones, and develop the Pixel Watch, the lack of emphasis on making the products work together seamlessly is a huge let down. Given there have been now been several iterations of Android, WearOS, and Pixel phones, there is no excuse for why the transfer process so brain dead. What I see is a lack of diligence and a willingness to accept things that are not good enough, and I have to question whether such a company unwilling to do things right ought to be trusted playing with technology such as Artificial Intelligence that could be dangerous.

Straight Jacket Voting

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 14:51:22 -0400

We frequently fall in to the trap of thinking that how things work today is how they have always worked. Take for example voting in the United States. The whole concept of an “independent voter” is driven by the fact that today one can vote for people of different parties rather than all representatives from a single party. For example, you might vote for a Democrat for President and a Republican as your Senator.

What I learned while reading The Age of Acrimony is that in the 19th century there was only straight party ballots. The ballots may have been nothing more than a card of one of two different colors. Voting was not in private, one put their colored ballot in the ballot box while everyone else was watching. Elections could and often did become violent affairs. The invention of the ballot booth, with it’s privacy curtain and the ability vote for people running for different offices rather than a party’s representatives cooled the temperature of politics. It also created the idea of the “independent” voter.

You might have noticed that the temperature of politics has definitely risen to higher temperatures over the years, highlighted by the insurrection on January 6, 2021. My theory is that the idea of voting for one’s party, no matter who is running, has become more in vogue ever since Ronald Reagan, when I think the Republican party learned during Reagan’s second term that what letter was next to the name of the candidate was more important than the actual person. The thinking is that what is most important is the party elected to office and not the person because the party’s ideology is what is most important for leading toward the desired outcome. It doesn’t matter whether the President has dementia if the decisions are really made by his handlers.

I think we will see this played out most vividly during the 2024 election. Neither Biden nor Trump are popular among Democrats or Republicans, but they will vote for either the Democrat or Republican candidate. The question will be how the so-called “independents” will vote, and that becomes more difficult when the campaigns become nothing more than don’t vote for the other crazy old person.

Politics is broken because the system is gamed towards the status quo for the benefit of those people who gain from the status quo. Today this is not only the military industrial complex, but nearly every corporation in the United States. How else can you explain why all the candidate we can seem to elect are always of the same generation? Both parties rig it so that the anointed ones are the only options, hence incumbents never are challenged from within, and the non-incumbent pool of candidates are tightly controlled.

Freedom Versus The Internet

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 12:04:07 -0400

The most dangerous affect of bans on books and teaching by government is its erosion on the culture of free speech. While the United States has the first amendment that prohibits government censorship of nearly all speech, a culture of “this is how we do it here” is more important. One way that culture is expressed is when one says, “I don’t agree with what you are saying, but I will fight for your right to say it.”

This article does a great job of explaining why free speech, and thus the freedom of expression of ideas, is so important to liberty and progress. One thing the article does not address is the consequences of time. The time it took for the national mind to change its views on smoking and gay rights was long, and in today’s Internet time, most will now say too long.

What happens in a society when more citizens lived after the Internet and the compression of time that it creates? I think you see this being played out right now with the issue of trans rights, many will not tolerate change taking as long as gay rights did because the have always lived in a world of instant gratification thanks to the Internet.

I think the current tug of war between nearly all dualism is become so intense due to the Internet’s affect on the expectations of change. Half of society demands fast change, the other half prefers slower change and sees the only way to achieve it is by digging in their heels so they can be comfortable. The extremes demand an all or nothing approach, either all change right now, or no change now or maybe never. Both sides are so obsessed with the outcome they cannot see the consequences of the fight.

R.I.P. Computer Magazine

Mon, 17 Apr 2023 11:06:29 -0400

Ironically, I read about the last print publication of Maximum PC and MacLife via RSS and the web, which long ago for me replaced computer magazines. Harry McCracken writes something like an obituary for the computer magazine.

Last week my wife told me the amazing news of a new brick and mortar book store opening within a mile of our house. The news brought back memories of spending hours in Borders and Barnes and Noble, both which were within a mile of our house and long since gone. (Sadly the Barnes and Noble building still sits empty more than a decade after it closed.) One of the main things I did in these stores was thumb through, and often buy, computer magazines, sometimes I would just read them while sitting in their cafe.

At one time I payed for subscriptions to several magazines, but over time as the web grew, there was little point in buying them. The web, and more specifically my blogs, even enabled me to live out the fantasy of being a writer like Jerry Pournelle.

And, so the excitement of the news about the new book store near me faded fast. Why would I shop there? Today I only buy ebooks and I get my computing news and do product research online. I know for many the medium is the message, and I truly hope there are enough such people living near me to keep the new book store open. Yes, I spent many hours browsing book stores and reading magazines but I’ve never once missed the glossy print magazines nor the heft of Computer Shopper.

Googe Nest Hub Disappoints

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 13:09:20 -0400

The Google Nest Hub is frustrating to use because I want to use it as an Android display, as I think I should, but instead it only provides a very narrow set of functions. The most obvious use for me is displaying a local weather radar, which is useful during weather events. A simple way Google could provide this is by enabling Radarscope to run on it.

Today there is an ice storm moving through my area. An option I found is a Michigan weather live stream on YouTube, which I figured I could view on the Nest Hub because it has a YouTube app. Problem is, the YouTube app on the Nest Hub only displays a list of Recommended videos and does not provide me away to select a specific video on YouTube that I can watch. How come Google didn’t provide the FULL YouTube app on the Nest Hub.

I can cast the video from my Pixel 4a to the Nest Hub, but it does not make sense to me that I should have to. I couldn’t even get Google Assistant to display the video I want. some reason why I asked it to display a video from YouTube it wants to cast it to my TV rather than on the display itself!

Updating My Now Page

Mon, 20 Feb 2023 18:58:02 -0400

In 2015 Derek Sivers proposed the idea of sharing one’s status by creating a /now page off of one’s web site. The intent of the page is simply sharing what one is doing. The idea caught on and today many sites, some more current than others, have a now page.

I decided to create and maintain my /now page using Dave Winer’s Little Outliner because I felt it was a good editor for this type of writing, and it worked particularly well with another piece of software by Dave called pagePark. PagePark is a HTTP server that renders the OPML files that Little Outliner creates into HTML. Dave hosts an instance of pagePark that is integrated with Little Outliner such that as soon as an outline is saved, the HTML version of that outline is nearly instantly available. Consequently, the process of editing and publishing changes to my /now page was as simple and quick as loading Little Outliner and writing. Low friction increases the possibility of keeping the page current.

Connecting my /now page to my blog was straightforward because the hosting provider makes it easy to create pages that redirect to other pages. Therefore, when you type https://frankmcpherson.blog/now you end up at my /now page. I took the idea of the page redirect off my blog a step further by purchasing a domain, frankm.info, that I configured to forward to the site. If anyone asked me online, what am I doing, I can tell them to simply go to frankm.info to find out.

Over time I expanded beyond the single /now page to add pages that listed the technology that I use and the books that I have read, each with their own alias URL. Using a forwarding URL enables me to move the actual location of the files, update the forwarding destination in DNS, and instances of the alias URL that I have in my writing will point to the current location.

Since the time that I set all this up using Little Outliner, Dave created a new “version” of it called Drummer. I’ve used Drummer since its beginning and always knew that it would some day replace Little Outliner. I didn’t move my informational outlines to Drummer until recently when Twitter made changes to its API that Dave has been using for user identity management and login. Dave announced he would be updating Drummer with a new login process and also move access of it to HTTPS. He stated he did not intend to make changes to Little Outliner, and advised anyone using it to move to Drummer as soon as possible, and at that time I migrated my files over so that I can edit them in Drummer, and I updated the alias URLs accordingly.

Dave had to make the changes quickly because Twitter had not stated a clear deadline by which it would cut off access to its API, and that means prioritizing what he works on first. For example, the blogging capability Drummer provides currently does not work. I am sure that capability will be restored, and Dave will get to it when he gets to it. The “publishing” of OPML files via an instance of pagePark is also lower on the list. Consequently, I started thinking about what I can do to restore my ability to publish updates to my /now page.

One option was to stop using Drummer to edit these pages, but that would create a lot of work moving the content and formattting it. The option that I took was to build my own instance of pagePark. First I tried using an instance of pagePark that I built under a free account at Render. Render only allows HTTPS access and the free account takes the site offline after 30 minutes. When you request the site, it’s brought online but there is a noticable delay. Consequently, I built a new virtual machine using free resources provided by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

I’ve updated my projects outline with the details about how I set this up, it was pretty straightforward after I figured out how to get around firewall issues. What I have is not integrated with Drummer, so there is now a publishing step that involves downloading the files to my computer and syncing them to my instance of pagePark. I can edit at any time with any computer, but publishing is restricted to few computers I’ve set up.

Right now access to these pages is only via HTTP. I’ve looked at the page source for Drummer to see how Dave has changed the includes and I think I should be able to edit the templates pagePark uses with the right form of those includes to eliminate the mixed content errors. I intend to use the instance of pagePark I have on Render to test that work when I have time. If I get access to these files working on Render I will then have to decided how to handle the SSL certificates if I move off Render, which I would probably do by using Caddy.

Look In The Mirror, There Is a Gun In Your Hands

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 12:04:00 -0400

If one is a child, a teenager, a college student in the United States, aware of the realities of the society that they currently live in, how can you possibily conclude anything other than the fact that the generations older, now Millenials through Baby Boomers, don’t care about them at all? It’s seems we have all forgotten the desire for providing our children a better life than our own. Better should be safer. Instead we do absolutely nothing.

I am Gen-X, and to my recollection the last time enough people in power were shocked enough by a shooting was in 1993 when the Brady Bill was passed. Looking back from today, it seems that only the attempted murder of an old white man who happens to be President lead to action. Not murders of elementary, high school, and college students.

I see people of my generation ripping on younger generations as “entitled” and “lazy” and don’t seem to really care why. Might it be that in the United States the probability of a kindergartener experiencing an in-school shooting before graduating high school is greater than zero? I don’t know this is a fact, but I know it’s true, but the fact is that truth does not piss off enough people to take action.

Parents and grandparents need to stop convincing themselves their child will never face a shooting. It’s time to stop numbing ourselves hoping that it will never happen. It’s time to face the reality that it will happen, to your child, someone you love, maybe tomorrow.

Writing Microblog Posts Using Drummer

Fri, 03 Feb 2023 11:08:31 -0400

The three posts below were intended to be part of one post. I wrote them using Drummer, forgetting that the publish script I use treats each node as a separate post.

I suspect if I want everything in one post I need to write them as a child of a parent node in Drummer. This is a quick test. Confirmed.

United States Empire

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 11:30:55 -0400

Dave is pointing out the relationship between the United States paying its bills, the value of the U.S. dollar as the the world’s reserve currency, and how that all translates to life as we know it in the United States. What Dave does not point out is that the the U.S. dollar being the world’s reserve currency is a fundamental part of the United States Empire. It’s how we can punish other nations like Russia and Iran with “economic” sanctions or why cutting Russia off from SWIFT (which is the network that all banks, including national banks use to move money around) is in fact punishing.

While (like the Roman empire) we have built U.S. Armed forces bases all around the world, U.S. citizens, let alone the world, will not accept frequent military intervention, so the bases are mostly for show of power and rapid deployment capability. Consequently, the economic tools, like the reserve currency, are the tools of choice that we use to flex U.S. might.

I think most nations know exactly how the U.S. uses the reserve currency status to imposes its will upon them and that is why some of them are considering using something other than the dollar. The U.S. missing payment on its bills will provide good reason for the nations to pull the trigger and that could start the fall of the U.S. empire. If this happens we will find out quickly just how much our way of life has grown to depend on empire.

P.S. The United States is the only country in the world to have dropped nuclear weapons on another country. The fact that we were willing then to do such a thing and the fact that we use our economic muscle to enforce our empire makes us the bad guys for most of the world. The good life we enjoy keeps us from seeing our shadow self.

It's All By Design

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 12:18:15 -0400

Much that is wrong in the United States can be traced back to Milton Friedman, because he created and taught the doctrine in place in corporate America that everything, absolutely everything, is about making the wealthy class wealthier. Corporations exist to make wealth, and labor is simply the disposable batteries needed to fuel their wealth.

And, of course, the wealthy class fears the labor class, which is why they own those bunkers and houses on islands as far away from civilization as possible. For some, Mars or the moon may not be far enough. (And definitely do not allow labor to organize against us!)

The United States was founded upon and institutionalized class structure. White men ruled and controled Europe in the seventeenth century, how could anyone think that was not how America was structured? Madison, Jefferson, Washington, and Hamilton knew no different, it was and has been the “norm of society.” (By the way, this structure goes back well before the time of Jesus and he was killed by the state and the religious ruling class for preaching an alternative to the structure. Consequently, the U.S. might be called a christian nation by the defintion of institutionalzied christianity, but would not be called so by Jesus.)

Ours in the United States has been a more than 200 year struggle over the question of liberty for whom? Explicity at the founding liberty was only for white male property owners. Over the years laws and Constitutional ammendments have been passed to try and expand liberty to more people, but really, the class structure remains. The people at the top benefit so much from the way things are there is no real incentive to change. How else can the right hand of the U.S. institution, the Supreme Court, think that structural racism is no longer an issue, thus voting rights are not longer needed, or that anti-abortion laws are not a infringment on the liberty of nearly half the country, or that corporations (which is THE insitution of the wealthy class) have the same rights as citizens and should thus be allowed so spend as much money to buy politicians as they wish?

Mass layoffs are the dopamine of the wealthy class. No CEO is ever going to be fired for announcing such a layoff because it is exactly what the wealthy class demands. Any CEO and board of a U.S. corporation knows that the quickest way to boost their stock price is by announcing a round of layoffs or buy announcing stock buy backs. Few CEOs know how to build anything, they only know the financial engineering they were taught in business school and what they see done all around them.

P.S. If you are invested in a 401k, you are being told that your interests align with the wealthy class. Assimilation is a very powerful tool of those in power.

Building Versus Buying

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 12:31:52 -0400

I’ve finished reading a fantastic three part series about the history of ARM written by Jeremy Reimer for Ars Technica. Here is a quote from the end of the series:

But the key to Saxby’s management approach was simple yet uncommon in the business world: ARM grew because it helped others grow. It treated its employees more like people and less like human resources, giving them chances to learn and succeed along with the company. “I’m a great believer that in any team,” he told me, “any member is better at something than somebody else, so to get the team to perform you want everyone to perform on their best axis. Teams that work well together work better.” He emphasized the importance of being honest with employees and not overpromising what the company had to offer.

The above resonates with me because the company I hired in to out of college, Electronic Data Systems, had the same business model, treat employees in a similar manner, and had success. Unlike ARM, EDS went through several different owners (GM, HP, HPE, CSC/DXC) and CEOs and each change moved further from the founding vision to the point at which it no-longer really exists.

The story also calls to mind The Infinite Game by Steve Sinek. Using Reimer’s comparison of ARM and Commodore, ARM was playing the infinite game, Commodore the finite game. In the book Sinek describes the reletively few businesses playing the “infinite game” versus the vast majority playing the “finite” game. He writes:

Infinite games have infinite time horizons. And because there is no finish line, no practical end to the game, there is no such thing as “winning” an infinite game. In an infinite game, the primary objective is to keep playing, to perpetuate the game.

Having been hired by EDS and surviving through the multitude of transitions that has occurred, I have seen first hand the differences a building a company, which usually has a founder, and buying a company, which usually has a manager. In most cases bought companies are separated from their founding, has no leadership and thus no culture.

It amazes me that given all the evidence of how to achieve long term success, such as ARM’s, that so few U.S. companies are interested in the infinite game. The finite game rules business, thus it rules capitalism, and given relationship of capitalism to the United States, the finite game rules the U.S. I don’t think prospects will change in the United States until we find leaders who are builders, right now our political, economic, and religions cultures appear to all be playing the finite game.

Profits Above All

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 11:31:07 -0400

Nobody should be surprised that big oil has long known the impact of carbon on the the climate, just as big tobacco long knew about the relationship of nicotine on cancer. Likewise, I am certain Facebook, Twitter, and Google all know the impact of social networks on mental health.

In my opinion the root cause to this behavior is the acceptance in the United States that it’s ok for one to profit from the misery of another. Any means toward the ends of more and more profits to the oligarchs is accepted by everyone, even for whom are the most affected.

If you truly read the history of the United States you will learn that from the discovery of the content through to present time the United States has existed to make one class of people rich at the expense of anyone and anything that would be in the way of that class becoming more rich. This fact has made the United States, and many other countries in the Western Hempisphere very different from other countries in the world.

The history of the United States is very much a fight, back and forth, between the oligarchs and everyone else. Everyone else won over the oligarchs in the U.S. Civil War, but the oligarchs clawed their way back up until FDR and the New Deal. Ever since the end of WW II the oligarchs have been fighting back and gained great ground during the Reagan years, and their accendancy has continued ever since no matter which poliitcal party has been in power.

Today it appears that everything is in place for the oligarchs to completely assume control over nearly everything in the United States. Trump pretty much sealed the deal by placing the oligarch’s choice of justices to the Supreme Court, under the disguise of overturning Roe v. Wade. More consequential rulings are coming to remove the New Deal, Civil Rights, and election laws that were put in place as guardrails against the oligarchs.

On the eve of the Civl War everyone else rose up against the oligarchs by forming a new political party (Republicans), and electing Abraham Lincoln, which lead to the Civl War and the oligarch’s defeat. Unfortunately, the oligarchs appear to have closed that risk to them by changing election laws and the amont of money it takes to be elected President to insure no party that they don’t control can possibly be a threat. At the moment it seems to me the only real possible equally dramatic act would be for enough states to open a Constitutional Convention that would fundamentally re-form the United States for good or ill.

Will The 2023 Chicago Cubs Be Trade Deadline Buyers?

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 10:59:18 -0400

BleedCubbieBlue.com puts the Dansby Swanson contract in context:

“This is the largest deal that Jed Hoyer’s front office has inked during his time in charge, and it’s just really not that big of a contract relative to the rest of the league or the Cubs monetary might. It doesn’t crack the top ten in MLB in years or AAV. It is the second largest deal in the history of the Cubs franchise, and it is nowhere near the top 20 contracts as of 2021, let alone ever.”

What I see in Hoyer is a baseball executive afraid to make a mistake. Under the rubric of sustaining success one may never have the chance to win championships. What we appear to have here is a plan of waiting to see how the season goes, and if half way through they have a real chance, then make trades to sign players you need, which is what happened in 2016.

The question then is whether the Cubs have enough talent going in to the season to have a good first half and be buyers at the trade deadline. With the players they have signed and the young talent they have, the 2023 Chicago Cubs on paper are better than the 2022 Chicago Cubs, the problem though is that the Cardinals have also gotten better, and they added Wilson Contreras to a team with the reigning MVP.

Chicago Cubs Already Five Games Behind in NL Central

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 12:39:16 -0400

No matter how frustrated and angry I am with the Chicago Cubs front office for not signing any free agents of consequence, it doesn’t matter. The only real thing that matters is how Ricketts (the owner) feels about the result. If I am the owner of a team and I give the people running the team the greenlight to spend money to improve the team and they don’t do it, I am not happy with their results and I will come to the conclusion that changes are needed.

Hoyer has been a big part of the decision making since after the Cubs won the World Series. Since 2017 the Cubs have regressed in their effort to return to the World Series. Looking for changes from the same people making decisions is insane, you need to change the decision makers to get a different result.

The bottom line is that the Chicago Cub’s division competitors have become much better this off season than the Cubs, and so they are losing the offseason. It might be that the Cubs surprise with their own talent, but I think that Ricketts has to start losing patience with Hoyer. If the Cubs are at the bottom of the division and out of the running by June, I think Hoyer must go. If Hoyer continues to stay then I can only conclude that he is performing to the level Ricketts expects and therefore all the talent decisions are on him.

Using IFTTT To Send Blog Posts To Day One

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 13:13:08 -0400

I am testing sending what I write in my blogs to Day One via an IFTTT applet that is monitoring their RSS feeds. There are two problems. First, the IFTTT applet doesn’t do a good job of handling titleless posts, second, hyperlinks in the posts are stripped, seemingly even if I create the links using markdown.

The applet simply creates new entries to Day One in an order and it appears that if the title is blank then the next entry in the item content is used for the title, which by default that is the item link. I moved the item link to below the item content, but my temporary work around is to configure the applet to create a “default” title for every post, with the actual title, it it exists, on the following line. but this is not optimal.

It looks like I could add some Javascript logic to the applet so I am wondering if I could simply write some code to inspect the feed title and skip it, but that may take some time to figure it out. I wonder whether anyone else has already done this?

User Hostile Apps

Sun, 27 Nov 2022 18:26:39 -0400

I play in two fantasy football leagues, one that uses the ESPN app and the other that uses Yahoo. I find it interesting how opinionated both apps are in terms of how they are used on tablets and phones. On iPads the apps only work in landscape orientation no matter which way one is holding the iPad, which I find frustrating because they are literally the only apps on my iPad that does this. On my smartphones the apps only work in portrait, again no matter how you actually hold the phone.

The smartphone behavior is even more interesting on the Microsoft Surface Duo. I have the two apps in a group so they both launched, one on each screen, and they look fine when I am holding the Duo in “book” or landscape orientation, but when I rotate the Duo into portrait orientation the apps rotate to maintain portrait while the individual screens are landscape.

Regardless of the platform, I find it very hostile to me as a user that the app only works in one way as this is completely unlike any other app. It’s as if the developers don’t actually use the platforms for which they are developing.

How I Use RSS

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 18:15:18 -0400

We tend to think about RSS in terms of web sites and web applications and what gets over looked is how you can use it personally. For example, I send items from FeedLand to Radio3 to add to my linkblog. I have an IFTTT applet monitoring the linkblog RSS file that takes new items and adds them to Pocket, which retrieves and stores the full article content that I read later.

As I read articles in Pocket I might highlight parts that I want to remember. The highlights in Pocket are grabbed by Readwise, where I can read through them and have them presented to me daily. Finally, Readwise exports the article highlights to Roam and Evernote.

In this example RSS is the backbone to my personal knowledge collection and refinement. It glues together for me hundreds of web sites and six applications.

RSS To OPML

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 17:54:00 -0400

Daytona is effectively a personal search engine that indexes the OPML files stored with my Drummer account. I am able to use it to search through a good chunk of my writing that I have published to the web over the last decade.

What I would like is to get what I add to my linkblog feed, which is RSS/XML, in to Daytona. What I need is a way to copy new entries of an RSS file to an OPML file that could be stored in Drummer and indexed by Daytona. I don’t need this to happen in real time, I could live with producing the file once a month. Note that you can see my linkblog feed in the Links tab of my daynotes site.

I imagine a nodejs script that takes as input a RSS xml file, reads each item and creates a new OPML node with the content and link to the article. The output would be a corresponding OPML file written in the same directory that I could import in to Drummer. The OPML structure could be based on the date. For example, the top level node is the month, and the child nodes would be date. Pretty much the Drummer blog structure. The RSS items on a date would be children of the date nodes.

If I had such a RSS to OPML script I would use it to make OPML versions of my Radio3 linkblog feed, my FeedLand Feed, and maybe even my micro.blog RSS file. The result would index all the content I publish to the web in Daytona that I could then search for when desired.

Rebooting RSS

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 10:11:43 -0400

It’s clear to me how FeedLand is a reboot of RSS because it makes building and managing a list RSS feeds real easy. Ever since he released Radio Userland I have been using Dave Winer’s blog and RSS products, and I have been using River5 for many years. Radio Userland was unlike any other RSS product I have used because it fused reading (RSS) and writing (blogging) in one product, River5 and Radio3 is the split of those two functions, and I still use Radio3 for my linkblogging and adding items to read later to Pocket.

River5 is a Nodejs application that you can clone to your own server, which I have running in Google Cloud. The main difficulty with River5 is in maintaining one’s RSS subscription list because it ultimately has to be accessed via a file that is stored locally on the server running River5. My solution has been to add an include node in the local subscription file, and store the file that is included in AWS where I can edit using Little Outliner via nodeStorage. FeedLand removes the hassle of figuring out where to put and how to edit my RSS subscriptions at the price of the app being hosted by Dave rather than on one of my own servers.

If your remember Google Reader and wish it still exists, I strongly encourge you to check out FeedLand because in my opinion it does what Google Reader provided, but more!

Education Is More Important Now Than Ever

Sat, 27 Aug 2022 11:29:50 -0400

Part of the backlash against Biden’s plan to forgive federal student loans is really a backlash against education. College education has become stereotyped into identities that some dislike. The fact that American society has pushed the necessity of a college degree for one to get a good job and have a good life is also problematic and wrong.

Scary thing is, true education in which one practices critical thinking and decision making is more critical now than ever. The United States is not and was not ever intended to be a pure democracy. Our government is a representative democracy, which by definition means there are gatekeepers, some voted in to positions (Congress, the President), some appointed by those we voted for (Supreme Court, Attorney General, Secretary of State), and some defacto (political parties, the Press).

Technology is eroding away the whole idea of gatekeepers upon whom our country was built, which slides us towards pure democracy. At first this might seem like a good thing, but what it really means is that more responsibility is with citizens. From within democracy tyranny can easily emerge, all it takes is to convince enough people that the tyrant’s cause is virtuous.

The guardrails against tyranny is education and free speech, and liberty to practice both. Critical thinking and systemic decision making. If we are left to not trust politicians, journalists, or anybody else for that matter, then we need to be able to trust ourselves. Education does not necessarily mean a college degree, but it does mean an openness to idea that one might be wrong, the desire to understand why, and the willingness to change one’s mind.

Drowning In The Sea Of Religion

Sat, 13 Aug 2022 11:39:45 -0400

“Our religion can “hell-ify” us by inspiring in us an impenetrable sense of rightness or even superiority. That sense of rightness can inoculate us against humility, infusing in us an excessive confidence or addiction to certainty that keeps us from seeing our mistakes until after the harm has been done—to others (including our children) and to ourselves. Our religion is right, we believe, which makes us right. As a result, the more devoted we are, the more stubborn and unteachable we become. And everyone can see it but us, because we’re blinded by our sincerity and zeal.”

— Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned by Brian D. McLaren

A big problem in American society, perhaps the problem, is too much religion. The reason why is because most people do not know what religion is, that it is more than agreeing to a set of beliefs or attending a church. Re-ligio means to re-bind, but “re” anything infers we do it already. What we bind ourselves to is how we see ourselves, it becomes our very identity, our idolatry. Everything we bind ourselves to is a layer of our false self, put in place from the outside.

As an exercise, complete this question. I am….

What Is Liberty?

Sat, 06 Aug 2022 20:34:39 -0400

The Kansas State Supreme Court, in their decision that the Kansas state constitution provided the right to abortion by borrowing from the language of the Declaration of Independence: “All men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” They wrote:

Included in that limited category is the right of personal autonomy, which includes the ability to control one’s own body, to assert bodily integrity, and to exercise self-determination. This right allows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life—decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy.

I am glad to see someone other than me define liberty as including the ability to have control over one’s own body. Unfortunately, SCOTUS does not agree with the Kansas State Supreme Court about that same language. The fact that the U.S. Supreme Court is attacking liberty for all for the sake of a perceived infringement on religious liberty is very dangerous, although sadly no unprecedented, SCOTUS has been attacking liberty practically since its beginning.

When Greed Prevails Liberty Is Lost

Sat, 06 Aug 2022 12:34:46 -0400

Greed drives most of the capitalism in the United States with little thought about the consequences. We are currently living through the consequences of a war a world away between Russia and Ukraine, imagine what happens if war breaks out in the Far East where everything we buy and use in the United States is manufactured. Have you tried to buy a car lately? Greed has put us in this bad place where China has a vice grip on our economy.

In the 1920s greed drove the United States and the world over a financial cliff toward a Depression. It took a World War and the New Deal laws to get the country back on its feet, but the wealthy minority, which has a lot of power because everything including votes and court decisions can be bought in the U.S., has been waging war against the majority, what we once knew as the middle class, ever since. Everything going on in the U.S. is a consequence if this war.

At the root of the issue is the claims on the definition of liberty. On one side, that includes the wealthy, is the claim liberty means one can do whatever one wants. On the other side is the claim that one’s claim to their personal liberty ends when it infringes on the liberties of others. The extreme libertarian side pushes toward anarchy, the extreme other side pushes toward over regulation, and in the middle is supposed to be the idea of the rule of law.

If Only One Actually Followed Jesus

Fri, 22 Jul 2022 10:53:10 -0400

Serendipity….first I read,

When you love people, you see all the good in them, all the Christ in them. God sees Christ, His Son, in us and loves us. And so we should see Christ in others, and nothing else, and love them. There can never be enough of it. There can never be enough thinking about it. St. John of the Cross said that where there was no love, put love and you would take out love. The principle certainly works.

Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up. If we love each other enough, we will bear with each other’s faults and burdens. If we love enough, we are going to light that fire in the hearts of others. And it is love that will burn out the sins and hatreds that sadden us. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other. No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much. – Dorothy Day

And then I read…

Basically the lesson is this – we all suck. Judge us on what we’ve done, our actions. Inside we all have ugly thoughts, the question is how much do you act on them. If you think I’ve created something interesting, consider that perhaps I could do it again. If I’ve been generous maybe I am generous. Maybe you have prejudices. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been dismissed as too old to do what I actually did. Like the time, at a conference, a young person asked if I knew what a podcast was, with a doubtful look on her face as if oh god I can’t believe I’m actually talking to someone this ignorant. – Dave Winer

After I read about how a Walgreens employee refused to sell condoms and felt the need to embarass the people trying to buy them.

I continue to be shocked by how people who claim to be Christians make no effort to live out what Jesus taught and thus actually follow him. Richard Rohr says that a Christian is someone who sees Christ in everyone and everything. It is how we love God, by loving what God loves. We all sin, we all have imperfections, and never once did Jesus teach us to refuse to serve or cast out someone who we think might be sinning. Jesus didn’t teach to do whatever we want to prevent sin to happen, because frankly, that is not possible. Jesus taught us to do one thing, follow him, mirror him by loving God through loving what God loves, which is everything!

Honestly, we in the United States must stop using the claim of “religious liberty” in the name of not doing things one does not want to do. Freedom of religion does not make one superior over another, and the first amendment is more about preventing government (power) from using religion to take freedom away for citizens, as was common practice in the 17th and 18th centuries leading up to the founding of the United States. It is thinking that that the U.S. Constitution is all just about us as individuals that will lead to all of us losing freedom because forget the Constitution’s true purpose of restraining government.

Stop With the Opinion Polls

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 11:25:24 -0400

Dear world, or at least anyone who cares, particularly the media. In the United States based on how the Constitution is structured, and how the political parties take advantage of its deficiencies through gerrymandering, lobbying, and campaign financing, majority opinions do not matter.

The United States is effectively under authoritarian Republican rule overseen by six Supreme Court justices, and it is obviouse the Republicans don’t care about any polls that report anything about majority opinion. It only matters what those in power in the Republican party want because they only need Republican votes to stay in power.

Right now what you need to pay attention to is, how are state legislatures structured and are voting districts gerrymandered to favor on particular party over another. If gerrymandering exists, what is being done about it, either through the courts or the existing legistlatures? Citizens need to know their state constitutions and what power they have for referendums, etc.. to overcome the games being played by the parties, particularly Republicans.

In short everyone, in particular the media, need to pay attention to and put bright light on what is going on within the state legistlatures and courts. Every since the last Presidential election Republicans have gamed the systems to gain even more power to basically nullify the will of the people. In many cases, gerrymandering means it won’t matter how much this pisses off Democrats and Independents.

Where we are heading toward, as will likely be supported by the current Supeme Court, are state legistlatures having near absolute power to override the citizens of the state to select Presidents. We will need an equivalent to the 17th amendment to prevent this from happening because this Supreme Court is going to say it is powerless to do anything about it.

Still Enduring For Now

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 10:36:40 -0400

Heather Cox Richardson:

“For all the fact that the congressmen got around the sticky little problem of Black and Indigenous slavery by defining “men” as “white men,” and for all that it never crossed their minds that women might also have rights, the Declaration of Independence was an astonishingly radical document. In a world that had been dominated by a small class of rich men for so long that most people simply accepted that they should be forever tied to their status at birth, a group of upstart legislators on the edges of a continent declared that no man was born better than any other.”

Except that far too many in the United States, some who even call themselves Christian, do not believe this. For them there is a natural, divine order that places particular white men above other white men, women, people of color, and everything else on this planet. You find these men in Russia, in the Vatican, and in the United States.

“Four score and seven years ago,” Abraham Lincoln reminded Americans, “our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” In 1863, Lincoln explained, the Civil War was “testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Truth is, the test Lincoln describes began the moment it started on July 4, 1776 and has never ended since, particularly after the Civil War. During the 20th century the test expanded beyond the shores of the United States to the entire world. Those who think World War II decisively ended the test are sadly mistaken. The U.S. has been lucky the two world wars were not started or fought within the continent, but I fear the next one will start right here and by our own who cannot abide the disorder that freedom demands.

How Evil Persists

Sun, 26 Jun 2022 11:23:00 -0400

The way of Jesus is not a direct confrontation with evil. Why? It is because when you directly confront evil one becomes evil. We have seen this in modern times with the bombing of abortion clinics, and we will likely see it now in attacks on churches and other “pro-life” institutions. Instead, the way of Jesus, which he called the kingdom of God, is an alternative to evil. In reaction to the bad, it is a practice of the better. One resists evil by loving everyone and seeing them as a part of themselves they do not yet know.

Making abortion illegal will not stop abortion. Why? Because laws are reactive. Laws are not an alternative path rather they are a way for society to hold one accountable. Laws do not stop evil. Nearly all of Paul’s teaching is about this shortcoming of laws. Christianity would know this best if it truly had the mind of Christ and followed Jesus as a movement rather than be a reflection of the human empire that assimilated it into an institution.

Jesus would not be impressed by the overturning of Roe for he would recognize it for what it is, putting new wine in to old wine skins. Jesus would have the church focus on the kingdom, the alternative to evil, a reality on earth as it is in heaven. Today Christian churches may feel victorious, not realizing that while they may have won the battle, they are losing the war as more and more people see it for what is, no different than all the other institutions of man.

What is liberty?

Sat, 25 Jun 2022 12:02:38 -0400

What is liberty? It seems to me that at this time the fundamental ideas that birthed the United States is not known or being outright ignored. For me, at it’s core liberty is the right to control what happens to me. The Bill of Rights enumerates certain rights that allow me to speak and practice religion without personal consequences like being put in jail.

The Bill of Rights protects me from the government, but it does not give me the right to harm others or take away the rights of others because I disagree, even if the practice of those rights conflicts with my beliefs. The first amendment does NOT give a Christian the right to enforce their beliefs on a Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, or atheist. (I do not see how one can make the argument of life beginning at conception without using religious belief.)

The ninth amendment of the Bill of Rights clearly states that it is not the intent of the Constitution to enumerate all rights of citizens, in fact it says if the right is not enumerated it is retained by the citizens.

I thought that the ninth amendment and the inalienable, natural, rights declared in the Declaration of Independence were core beliefs of conservatives, but I guess that is not true for that which they do not like.

The Dobbs decision puts men and women at risk. Not only by what Clarence Thomas wrote but also because of the fact that it seems to go out of its way to say there is no right to control what happens to your body. Don’t like vaccines? To bad, that don’t matter that vaccine is for the greater good. Yes you have to wear that mask. Need welfare? Not going to give it to you until you get that vasectomy because we can’t afford paying for more kids.

If we truly held to what liberty means and fully agreed to equal protection under the law, we shouldn’t need to have an amendment that gives all citizens the right to choose what happens to and inside their body. It is the amendment we now need it seems and something that everyone should be able to support.

Does liberty truly exist in the United States? Is it really the land of the free? Unfortunately it appears that until this is enumerated in the Constitution certain Supreme Court justices and politicians will not abide nor defend that for which we stand.

Setting Up A New iPad

Fri, 15 Apr 2022 14:08:58 -0400

I’ve received my new iPad Mini 6 and I am working through setting it up. I opted to transfer apps, settings and data directly from the iPad Mini 5. First hoop I had to jump is getting through the update to iPadOS 15.4.1, which took several minutes to download and update.

Next thing I notice is that all of widgets on the home screen are all blank white boxes with no obvious fix. First I restarted the iPad, but that didn’t fix the problem. I then realized that while I see all the app icons, the apps are not installed so I need to start up each of the apps associated with the widgets.

I basically have to reinstall every app I use which is a really painful process that I cannot believe Apple foists upon users. And the process is made worse by the spotty nature of the App Store that right now is refusing to install apps.

So, it is going to probably take several days for me to get this Mini fully up to speed.

Profiting From Addiction

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 13:47:00 -0400

I’ve read Jonathan Haidt’s essay, Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid. I can summarize Haidt by saying the algorithms in social media are destroying our democratic society. We have devolved in to the very things that James Madison feared when writing the Constitution.

While Haidt makes many good points I don’t think he gets to the root cause, which I think is our acceptance that it is ok for corporations to make money from addiction.

In the United States we want to put all the blame of one’s problem on themselves. Thus, the only problem with addiction is the addict and the consequences they bring upon themselves. Too many industries like technology, food, service/fast food, alcohol, health, and pharamceutical all profit from addiction. You should note the fundamental nature of these industries.

Even after lawsuits and public trials against the tobacco industry that exposed it knew nicotine is addictive and knew it causes cancer and yet still made money off of selling cigarettes, we give every industry with a business model that uses addiction to maximize profit and wealth a free pass. In the United States it is ok for someone to make a buck off the death of another, and somehow there are even “leaders” in this country who consider themselves pro-life.

In the beginning Facebook and Twitter did not make money, it wasn’t until they introduced algorithms to force content in front of users that they began making money. Research is showing the algorithms are optimized for addiction. And still I think you will find many people in the United States point the finger at people who use these networks as solely to blame and unwilling to restrict Facebook or Twitter from making money because we believe nobody should be restricted from making money.

The United States was founded upon the basic concept of freedom, and frankly that concept is no longer the prime directive of the United States. Today the United States is entirely driven by capitalism and the prime directive is to make a few people very rich, and a few rich people don’t need nor really want democracy, they just want the citiizens to be free to spend more and more money on their products.

Everybody knows money is the problem, but like an addict that just can’t do what is in their best interests, nobody is going to do anything about it. Sadly, like most addicts we know, I don’t think our country will seriously address our problems until we hit rock bottom, and I fear for what such a bottom will look like for a country that has accepted children being killed in schools and people in power acting to overthrow the government.

Javy Being Javy

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 08:50:00 -0400

I am enjoying watching Detroit sports learn how great a player Javier Baez is, as a Cubs fan I appreciate his unique talent and was disappointed the Cubs didn’t sign him.

I remember a time when shortstops were considered the worst batter in the lineup and that didn’t matter because shortstops were considered the best athlete and most important defensive player on the team. Ozzie Smith didn’t make is his mark at the plate, he was known as the Wizard because of his defense. I always felt too much attention is paid to Baez’s inconsistency at the plate and not enough value placed on his defense, which I think is worth enough to absorb his bat.

Baez was not the problem in the Cubs lineup, the problem was that everyone else in the lineup was not much better. Put Baez in a lineup with other players who make contact and get on base and you can live with his strikeouts, and revel in his ability in the big moments. I think in some ways Baez is like Brett Farve, high risk and high reward. The defense, and in particular Reggie White, made Farve who he was for the Packers because it could overcome his interceptions. Put Farve on the Detroit Lions and he is not a hall of fame player.

I am happy that even though Javier is no longer playing for the Cubs, he is playing for a team in my area that is on TV every day. Baez is the type of player you tune in just to watch, regardless of your interest in the team, much like Cabrera was in his prime. Tiger fans need to remember the incredible plays that he has already made in four games when he strikes out in that crticial moment in July because it will happen and he will still be worth every bit of money he is paid.

On War

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 12:56:14 -0400

War should not be watched or consumed as entertainment. One ought to consider how it is that one or a few people can make the decision to start a war with seemingly little to no regard for loss of human life and the suffering it causes. I think at the heart of it is the sin of supremacy that convinces that the other’s life is not valuable nor legitimate.

Even in democracies, as we know all too well in the United States, one man or woman has the power to wage war. We have decided that expediency is so important we must empower one human to such power, a power that frankly we should never allow to just one human.

The power to wage war and it’s consequences is why character matters so much when deciding which human should be elected President of the United States. Anyone who treats the power to wage war as a political tool should never be allowed to hold the office.

Forming A More Perfect Union

Sat, 08 Jan 2022 19:17:19 -0400

In the United States, democracy is less about the form of government and more about an aspiration. The idea of true equality of all people, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation was simply not comprehensible to the U.S. founders or their contemporaries. Interestingly, I think James Madison recognized the imperfections of the United States when he wrote these words in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

To me a “more perfect union” is not a declaration of an end state but rather a recognition that we can continue to become better. In other words, Madison expected the United States in 2022 to be more perfect than the United States in 1780 because the Constitution provides the framework for that improvement. It does this by providing for amendments that improve upon the original work.

Liberty Needs Equality

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 10:21:00 -0400

In my opinion too many U.S. citizens do not have an understanding of the country’s foundational documents, particularly the Declaration of Independence. For most the Declaration and Constitution boil down to one word, liberty. Indeed, the Declaration layed out the case for why the colonies were declaring their freedom (independence) from England. However, to me the most important part of the Declaration is the statement of why we had the right to declare our freedom and create our own government: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

We can do this, we said, because we are created the same as you, King George. Citizens of the United States consider liberty precious, but true liberty is built upon our equality, and true equality is something not yet fully attained in the United States. The extent of which we fight equality, we put the liberty of one group of citizens over the liberty of other citizens. Liberty does not co-exist within supremacy.

On The Death Of Desmond Tutu

Tue, 28 Dec 2021 12:43:20 -0400

I am only aware of one country in the world that took conscious steps to address the cancer of supremacy, that country is South Africa. It’s path toward the task of overcoming supremacy was long and likely incomplete but would probably not have been taken up at all if not for Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.

News of Tutu’s death makes me wonder how he saw the United States. Tutu had the wisdom to know that the antidote to supremacy is oneness, ubuntu. Supremacy cannot be shunned as it will simply continue lurking in the shadows. The only way to eliminate contempt is to see everyone as a part of me I do not yet know.

I feel as though the entire United States needs to be in a 12 step program. We cannot begin to overcome that which we don’t even acknowledge. We hide our addiction with our liberties. The amount of death that we have grown to accept, the amount of senseless loss of life we tolerate are not signs of a great nation or society.

The United States is leading the world into a third year of a pandemic that will continue to take more lives unnecessarily, and United States continues to lead the world in gun violence. All we are doing is managing to get by for just one more day. Apparently we have not yet hit bottom even after children are gun down in schools.

South Africa did not start to overcome the addiction of supremacy known as apartheid until it consciously did something about it. Any expert on addiction will tell you that no person can be made to overcome their addiction, the addict must decide for themselves they want to live. We, the citizens of the United States of America need to decide whether this republic handed down to us is something we want to keep, and that takes all of us to take a long look at ourselves and see us as we are rather than as how we keep telling ourselves.

Micro.blog Bookshelves Issue

Mon, 22 Nov 2021 11:35:00 -0400

Update: The issue below has been resolved.

Today I tried to move a book listed in micro.blog bookshelves that I was currently reading to finished, but when I clicked “Move To Finished” the book was removed from the currently reading list and not added to finished. I do notice that the book title still appears in the rendered version of the reading list on my blog. I then tried to manually add the book to Finished and it doesn’t appear. I also tried re-adding to Current Reading and it is not adding their either. Something appears to fundamentally not be working for the moment. Reported to help@micro.blog.

Live With Or Remove Corruption?

Sun, 14 Nov 2021 13:17:19 -0400

While I am sympathetic to Dave Winer’s critique of journalism in the United States, I am skeptical that his recommended improvements will make a difference. In my opinion the root cause problem of journalism is that it is beholden to the doctrine of capitalism. Everyone, regardless of party affiliation, believes that the prime objective of journalism in the United States is to make money and will bias what they publish towards that goal. Consider why it is that the titles for newspaper articles are usually not created by the person who wrote the article. Until the root cause is addressed I don’t see how there will be improvements.

The sad fact is, everyone is well aware of how money has corrupted every part of our lives. Our skepticism toward industry such as medical and media, and our skepticism of politicians is all rooted in our awareness of this corruption. We are at a danger level now because people have very little trust in anyone not themselves, and yet our society requires the ability to trust.

The Spiritual Experience of Microcenter

Wed, 10 Nov 2021 22:22:50 -0400

I was in an actual computer store yesterday, which was momentous for two reasons. First is that I have not really spent much time in stores other than grocery stories since the pandemic began. Second is that it has been way too long since I had been in a real computer store.

One of my favorite stores of my childhood is Radioshack, which was an electronics store from before personal computers were a thing that you could find in just about any town in the United States.

Radioshack on a larger scale describes Fry’s and CompUSA. In its prime you could probably find a CompUSA in most all metropolitan areas and I spent much time and money in the ones near where I lived. CompUSA is where I went to check out the newest computers and gadgets. It’s where I bought my first Apple computer, a Newton MessagePad.

Sadly, CompUSA and Fry’s are extinct, victims of the one-two punch of the big box stores and the Internet. In my area of metropolitan Detroit one lone Microcenter remains as a sanctuary of geekdom, which is where I found myself yesterday evening to pick up the new Macbook Air that I reserved online.

I nearly shed a tear when I walked through the doors to the sight of the picture below. I walked slowly up and down each aisle, thankful for the mask covering my face that hid what I am sure was the goofy look of geek joy. Every computer component you can think of sat on shelves in rows you must pass through to get to the manufactured computers in the back of the store.

I confess that I have contributed to the demise of the very stores that I miss, buying all of my newest tech online and having it delivered to my front door. I had forgotten the pleasure of seeing all of this technology in front of me. Walking out the door I vowed to not wait so long before returning.

Blog Posts and Stories

Sat, 06 Nov 2021 12:10:19 -0400

While thinking about how I use micro.blog and how I am using Drummer it occurs to me that both blogging platforms have the same problem with handling what I call long form writing. The root cause is the publishing of the full content of every blog post, regardless of whether the post has a title, on the home page.

To my eyes it makes no sense embedding a titled post that has multiple paragraphs on the home page because it just makes the home page too long. The reader ends up scrolling further and further down a page. Another problem is the reader sees these entries as just another blog post whereas I want such titled posts to be seen as a story or essay.

My ideal scenario would be a publishing platform that is smart enough to handle a couple of scenarios. One scenario would be to enable the writer to create what I will call an introduction post that has a title, a specific introduction that I wrote, and a link to the page with the full article. The idea is that a story, or essay, stands alone on its own page and one is simply writing a blog post to link to that page. Micro.blog even has a pages option that could support this, but it’s not integrated in the manner that I am suggesting.

The other scenario, or approach, would be for the blogging platform to just automatically limit a titled post on the man page to the title and three sentences, with a cut and a read more link. I emphasize I don’t want a publishing platform that requires titled posts, I want it to smartly handled untitled and titled posts and not necessarily treat them the same.

I’ve always held that a blog post is only one, maybe two paragraphs long and something longer is different, what I call stories but others may call essays. This very item you are reading right now is an essay, not a blog post, it just happens to be published on blogging platform. In fact, perhaps what I am advocating is for a web publishing platform that is more than a blog publishing platform.

I can manually implement this approach by only writing blog posts here and publishing stories on another site, but that forces me to maintain two sites and use two different writing flows that I have find fatiguing. My desire is to use one writing and publishing flow for both forms of writing.

Learning Computing

Thu, 23 Sep 2021 11:31:20 -0400

Back when there were several book store chains and plenty of stores I spent a fair amount of time in them and in particular looking through the computer magazine section. Magazines were a big part of my formative computing years, and I looked forward to each month’s issue of Byte. The magazines were not only a source of news about the latest hardware and software, they were also a means of software distribution containing pages of source code available to manually enter on a variety of computer platforms.

Physical book stores are nearly extinct and computer magazines shrank in to oblivion, replaced by the Internet, but I have found one corner of the Internet where computer magazines still live. You may have heard of the Raspberry Pi, which is an inexpensive “computer on a chip” popular amongst makers. What you might not know is that raspberrypi.org is more than just the computer hardware, it’s a foundation dedicated towards computer education. The foundation publishes tutorials and lesson plans for teachers and it has a publishing arm for books and magazines.

Four different magazines are published: HackSpace, Custom PC, Wireframe, and The MagPi, which you can subscribe to and purchase online and in stores in the United Kingdom. Better yet, the magazines and books are free to download in PDF format.

If you own a Raspberry Pi and have the full desktop version of the operating system installed you will find a Bookshelf app in the Help menu of the desktop’s application launcher. Bookshelf has tabs for each magazine and books that you can download and read on the Pi. If you don’t have a Pi you can browse through and download the PDFS using the web browser on your computer.

If you are not familiar with Raspberry Pi you will find everything you need to know about it on their web site, raspberrypi.org. Another great source for information is the Official Raspberry Pi Handbook, and the 2022 version has been just released and available to download.

If you are looking for an inexpensive starter computer for yourself or a child, I recommend the Raspberry Pi 400, which is an “all-in-one” computer you can buy for $70. I also think anyone considering a future in computing, or just interested to learn more, should buy a Raspberry Pi 4 kit, which you can assemble and use to learn more about computer hardware and software.

2021 Microsoft Surface Event

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 22:04:22 -0400

I am contemplating purchasing a new laptop computer so that I can access and learn the latest operating systems. I am most interested in Window 11 because Windows is the primary operating system that I use every work day, but the integrations between iPadOS and MacOS also have me interested in a Mac. If I buy a Mac I can also run Windows 11 in a VM, so that will provide me the best of both worlds.

So, I watched the Microsoft Event today to see whether Microsoft might announce something that will influence my purchase decision. My conclusion is none of the products announced today fit in the budget that I have in mind because of the add-ons one has to purchase to gain full functionality.

Microsoft did announce nice looking products today, but for me they have a real pricing problem. Take, for example, the new Surface Go 3. The lowest price version costs $399, which comes with 4 GB of RAM and only 64 GB of storage, which I really do not think is enough storage for any productivity device in 2021. Consequently, the lowest model I would consider is the mid-tier 8 GB RAM, 128 GB model at $549, but that only gets you the tablet. You will want to add a type cover that costs at least $100 and most likely a Surface Pen for another $70, for a grand total of $719, and that combo is with an Intel Pentium processor rather than the more powerful Intel Core i5 in the Surface Laptop Go. In my opinion Microsoft should include the type keyboard with the Surface Pro and Surface Go at their current price.

My research prior to the event tells me that the Microsoft product that most makes sense for a reasonable PC running Windows 11 is the Surface Laptop Go. While it won’t run MacOS, you can buy a well equipped model (8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD) for $800.

Thing is, I can also buy a Mac Mini with the same memory, storage, and price and for less than $200 also have the ability to run Windows 11. Of course, the Mini is a desktop and my bias is toward the portability of a laptop, so that has me looking at a Macbook Air for $200 more, which is pushing the price a bit higher than I would like.

Of course, I don’t intend to make a decision until after the expected Apple Mac event that should happen in October. Rumors are a new Mac Mini and Macbook Pros will be announced, but not an Air. A new Macbook Pro might influence pricing of the current Airs. My ideal would be a new entry level Pro with 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB SSD starting at the current $1299 “base” price, which I think would mean Apple could drop the price of the current Airs by $100 to $200. The logic being it would not make sense to have the high end Air and the Low end Pro with the same specs and same price because nobody would by the high end Air. (The only reason to buy the high end Air over the Pro right now is the 512 GB storage at $50 less price!)

The other question is, what will be the specs for the new Mac Minis? In this case I expect the specs will remain the same, the prices will remain the same, and there will be a processor upgrade. However, the consequence there might be availability of the current Mac Minis at lower prices. An 8 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD model at nearly $600 is appealing.

One might think the reasoning I’ve described above is an “apples to oranges” comparison. I see it as a “get what I need” versus an “investment” comparison. I bought my last Macbook Air 15 years ago, and it still functions! It’s really slow compared to most devices today, but what that experience tells me is that buying an Apple laptop or desktop realistically gets me 5 to 7 years of use. I can buy a cheaper laptop to just run Windows 11 but it probably gets me 4 years of real use.

So, now we wait for the next Apple event. Traditionally Apple has held two events in the fall, one in September to announce new iPhones, which they did, and one in October featuring Macs and iPads, thus one more event to gather information for making my purchase decision.

Happy Operating System Season

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 09:15:00 -0400

And here you thought pumpkin spice was for fall, no it’s operating system season! Yesterday Apple released iOS and iPadOS Version 15, and coming up October is Android Version 12, Windows 11, and MacOS Monterey. Three companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft) and three platforms (smartphone, tablets, desktop/laptop).

I installed iPadOS Version 15 on my iPad Mini yesterday and I haven’t spent a significant enough time with it yet. So far it’s a mixed bag. For example, being able to place widgets on the home screen makes them a bunch more useful, but the tradeoff is a decrease in the number of icons per line that display. My old iPad Mini has a quarter inch bezel followed by a half inch of empty space on the left and right side of the screen. I fear this is going to look worse on the iPad Air.

Of course, iPhone owners have had widgets and App Library since last year, so this is not new to them. I don’t own an iPhone, but so far I wonder whether they see much new in this version of iOS.

For some reason I like how the App Library flys up from the lower right of the screen. I do think App Library is a better way to manage applications than has existed prior, just wish I could edit what Apple does automatically to tailor the result. I suspect the larger icons in each group were determined to be the most frequently used app of that group, do they change over time?

The changes of widgets and App Library create questions of what icons to place on the home screen if any, given the dock. Tapping the widgets launches the associated app, so they serve that purpose in addition to providing information. I probably don’t need any icons but so far I have kept six: Mail, Safari, Streaks, Notes, NetNewsWire and Pocket. Another decision is, what to do with the “old page” that displays when you swipe right from the left edge? The widgets on the home screen don’t need to also be there, so there is some changes to be made.

What else? I know the changes to how multitasking works is significant, but I won’t fully experience that until I upgrade the iPad Air. This is the fun of operating system season, discovering new “gifts” and hoping they aren’t lumps of coal.

Sir Sinclair and I

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 11:19:00 -0400

British inventor Sir Clive Sinclair died yesterday, September 16. I, of course, never met this man who had an impact on the direction of my life.

My chosen field of study in college, computer science, led to the career that caused me to move to metropolitan Detroit, ultimately meet and marry my wife, and have the life I now live. How I came to chose to study computer science was influenced by three events during my high school years: the arrival of the Apple II in my high school, taking an after school BASIC programming class, and being gifted the Timex Sinclair 1000. Sir Sinclair invented the ZX80, the predecessor to the ZX8, in Britian, and that same computer was later sold as the Timex Sinclair 1000 in the United States.

I was raised by my grandmother and we lived off social security along with some savings. The personal computers sold at the time cost well beyond our means, but the Timex Sinclair only cost $100, though you needed the nearly $40 additional cost of the 16 KB storage for it to be useful. The nearly $150 total cost made it the most expensive gift my grandmother ever bought me, and I don’t doubt she made sacrifices to buy it, but she felt it important for my future. Turns out my grandmother was right.

Even by the standards of the time, the Timex Sinclair was a bit of a joke for a computer. Frogger was one of the games available for the Timex Sinclair that my friend called “woodtick” because of how the large block pixel graphics of the frog took over the entire TV screen when it got run over by a car.

Back then the common display for personal computers were TV screens. Programs were stored on cassete tapes. As I said, the Timex Sinclair only had 16 kilobytes of RAM. It had a membrane keyboard rather than a real keyboard that had most of the BASIC functions assigned. When writing a program you “typed” PRINT by pressing a combination of a function key and they key that had the command printed on it. I don’t recall whether I ever connected the Timex Sinclair to a printer or did anything like word processing.

Despite the limits Sinclair’s invention made a brand new world of personal computing accessible to me in the comfort of my bedroom floor. Hours of typing in pre-printed programs from magazines and hours of experimenting with little BASIC programs sparked the interest that as I said led to the life I now have.

Reading tributes and stories of Sinclair, I know that I am just one of hundreds of thousands of people around the world that share the same story. What a wonderful legacy. Thank you Sir Sinclair, rest in peace.

Wishing It Was So

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 11:28:20 -0400

In my feeds this morning are some statements recalling how united they thought we were on 9/12/2001 and wishing that was the same today. A deeper, perhaps more meaningful question might be, why is it that the United States can only unite around hatred for an external enemy?

Some thought, many hoped, back then that the event would be a catalyst for change. Of course change is always happening, transformation is what is really desired. The difference is between what naturally happens and intent. Transformation requires true understanding of from what to what, which in turn requires a desire to look within.

Take for example the pandemic. Much of the struggle amongst ourselves is superficial. Wear a mask, don’t wear a mask. Get the vaccine, I’ll never get the vaccine. Our attention is on these arguments with little thought about why the arguments are even happening.

For me what the pandemic exposes, and what has existed from well before 9/11, is a majority of people stuck within the basic animal instinct to view everything and everyone by comparison. Either you’re or with me or you’re against me is one of our most basic survival instincts. While this instinct keeps us alive in a moment of crisis, living constantly in this mode prevents one from growing and usually makes us vulnerable to being manipulated in to decisions not in our long term best interests.

The transformation some of us desired after 9/11 that would have resulted in more unity did not happen because there was no intention for it to happen. Change, yes, that has happened, we have evolved to a more fractured not united state than before, and will apparently continue to do so unless we intentionally chose a different path.

The United States of America is only 245 years old. In comparison to the world, the U.S. is a toddler, to the universe, an infant. Our growth (transformation) relies in embracing the seemingly conflicting values of liberty and unity, by transformation from an either/or worldview to a both/and worldview. The transformation will not be easy because everything we know and see around us is built on and reinforces either/or. Either/or keeps power in power. Take the red pill

After Using Android 12 For One Week

Fri, 20 Aug 2021 17:32:46 -0400

A little over a week ago I installed beta 4 of Android 12 on my Google Pixel 4a. I have not experienced any significant issues with running this version of Android, even though it is still a true beta and not a release candidate.

Like most men, I imagine, I carry my phone in my front pants pocket. In the past I occasionally discovered that the flashlight feature of the phone turned on while the phone is in my pocket, causing an odd, if not humorous, appearance. After installing Android 12 I found this occurring much too frequently.

Two lock screen settings appear to be the culprits: Tap to check phone and lift to check phone. Movement while walking is being interpreted by Android as either a tap or a lift, so I have disabled both features. I notice that Android seems to be smart enough to know the phone is in my pocket because it turns off the ambient display, so it should also disable the tap and lift to check functions, and I have provided feedback on this to Google.

App suggestions, which many people do not like and probably disable, are not working. Google added this feature in Android 11 that changes which app icons appear in the dock at the bottom of the home screen and at the top of the app drawer with the ones most commonly used at a particular time of day. Right now the icons displaying are the ones that were present in the dock at the time I installed the upgrade and have never been changed by Android. I might be the only person who likes this feature enough to report it not working.

I like the changes to the UI that Google has made, particularly increasing the font size in settings. The changes to the notifications are nice, although I am not sure whether I am a fan of the increased size of the Quick Settings icons, I think I wish they were the same as in Android 11.

Of course, the big change in Android 12 is the new design language called Material You with includes automatically changing the overall color appearance to the wallpaper on the phone. I have the Landscapes wallpaper changing daily to see changes with the appearance of the phone, and I am pretty pleased with what I am seeing.

I have not noticed any significant difference with over all performance or battery life, which is good. Ideally we would get better battery life in each release, but at the least we don’t want to lose battery life. Beta 4 marks Android 12 reaching the platform stability phase, which marks it as feature and API complete so that developers can test against a reliable version. One more release, release candidate one, will be made available before the final release of Android 12.

Android 11 was released on September 8, 2020, if Google is to meet that same early September release date we should see the release candidate late next week, which might coincide with the launch of the Pixel 5a.

Google Wear Is A Hot Mess

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 11:58:36 -0400

Google Wear OS is a hot mess. During Google I/O earlier this year I got the impression that due to the partnership between Google and Samsung the pending Galaxy Watch 4 would be more in line with standard Wear OS watches. Given that it appears the Samsung watches will be the only ones to get Wear OS 3 this year, I was considering buying one.

However, as I read more reviews about the Galaxy watches I am becoming less likely to buy one. First I read that Google Assistant is not preinstalled. Next I read that the watches don’t easily pair with non-Samsung phones, nor work the the Android Wear OS app.

Amazingly, it looks like there will not be a serious Wear OS watch to buy in 2021, and there wasn’t one last year. It feels like Google has or should just give up. As the Fossil Sport I have been wearing is getting more finicky, I am contemplating my next step. Buy a Mobvoi that is expected to be the first to get Wear OS 3 next year, or dump Wear OS altogether and buy a Fitbit?

What’s worse are suggestions that Wear OS 3 may not work best on the Qualcomm 4100 chip in the Mobvoi, the chip that is the next generation smart watch chip from Qualcomm. What the heck?

Hot mess indeed

First Impressions Of Android 12

Thu, 12 Aug 2021 11:35:25 -0400

Yesterday Google released the final user beta for Android 12, and as I did since version 10, I have installed it on my Pixel 4a. First thing I looked for is how the new UI colors and fonts look and I found that to really see that you need to be in light mode rather than dark mode. I’ve been using dark mode full time with Android 11.

I did the update late last night so one of the new features I experienced first is the update to the ambient display, the larger clock display is handy at night when I wake up and want to see the time.

I think I like the changes to the notification shade but the larger quick setting buttons look off. Everything in the UI seems larger, which I appreciate.

One other change I looked forward to is the use of the power button to activate Google Assistant, which you have to specifically configure in settings. I disable “Hey Google” mostly to save battery life, but also because I find I don’t use it very much. Wish Google would add a gesture to the fingerprint scanner in which if I press and hold the phone would unlock and activate Assistant. If I just tap the scanner the unlock the phone, if I keep my finger in the scanner then unlock and activate assistant.

Something Was Going On In Japan

Sat, 07 Aug 2021 10:57:41 -0400

The summer Olympic are nearly done and I really didn’t watch it much. I think a big part of the problem was the time difference and the Internet providing the results. What I will remember from these Olympics, however, is how dangerous is gymnastics. Too much was written about Simone Biles’ “mental health” in a way suggesting what she was experiencing was “just” emotions. The problem was much more dire, the alignment of brain and body so that she lands on her feet and not her head.

Humans are not cats. Search for why cats land on their feet. If you ever had vertigo or just got dizzy, imagine that disorientation while spinning upside down ten feet in the air.

IoT Is An Oxymoron

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 11:38:33 -0400

What made local area and wireless networks happen are industry standards that enable different vendor products to work with each other. The Internet Of Things is nearly the exact opposite, in my home is a case in point. I have Hue lights that require a Hue hub for management and I have a number of sensors and smart switches that use Zigbee that I manage with Samsung’s SmartThings hub.

The SmartThings hub can control the Hue lights, but the Hue hub only knows Hue products. I started first with the Hue lights and the hub, but if I had could have seen in the future I might have just bought the SmartThings hub. On the other hand, one big thing I get with the Hue hub is the use of a catalog of scenes that combine different colors to make for some pretty nice lighting in our basement.

I recently bought two cheaper Sylvania color smartlights when recent heavy rains suggested it might be nice to have a color smartlight in our living room, right now we have a non-color Hue light in the living room. We have a moisture sensor in the sump pump pit that works with the SmartThings hub and an automation in SmartThings that turns on all of the lights when moisture is detected. The automation sets the color lights to purple (homage to Prince) but obviously cannot do that with non-color lights. It happened the automation was recently triggered during the evening when the living room light might normally come on so I realize it just turning on might not be enough notification. Thus the idea to buy a color light, thus the purpose of the Sylvania light because the Hue light costs $50.

Before putting the new Sylvania light in the living room I decided to test it in the basement, where I have the color Hue lights, and here exposes the problem. The Hue lights are controlled by the Hue hub that knows nothing about the Sylvania light, this the Sylvania light cannot be part of the any of the Hue scenes. Perhaps I can find a “third party” app that works with SmartThings to replace Hue scenes, but I have not yet done the research.

Better, yet, would be an industry standard for controlling these color lights that would enable me to fully control them, with scenes, from one hub or “smart device.” Of course, this is a known problem and industy leaders appear to be working together to address it by developing a protocol called Matter. Hopefully, there will be a day when all I need is one controlling device, technically right now I have three: Hue hub, SmartThings hub, Amazon Echo, and Google Home.

P.S. I really hope the Matter protocol addresses how smartlights handle resumption of power after a power outage. Hue added the ability to enforce the last known state, if a light was off when the power went off then it is supposed to stay off when power is restored. However, I’ve found that doesn’t work well with multiple successive short power loses. Worse, is the fact that the Sylvania light appears to not have such a setting. When power is restored the light turns on, regardless of its prior state.

Fun With Servers

Thu, 22 Jul 2021 09:40:38 -0400

I borked the server that has been hosting my instance of nodestorage, which in turn provided the editing for my old 1999.io blog. This blog was the direct predecessor to this site and I was publishing to it from May 2016 to February 2018. Before that, from 2014 to April 2016 I was publishign to this site using Fargo.

Right now I cannot SSH in to the server but I do know that it is running and serving up an old Bitnomi default page. I decided to build a new server to replace it, but won’t be able to move any of the data on the old server if I cannot get in to it.

I had nodestorage configured to publish the content to a S3 bucket, which is serving it directly, so I was not expecting the outage to affect the published site, but it does. When you first access the top navigation bar is delayed in loading. Looking at the page source I see variables that contain URLS back to that old site, one which appears to be defining a chat log socket. Unfortunately, this means to not have this affect on the old blog content I need to keep nodestorage running at the URL provided.

The Garden And Stream Metaphors

Sat, 19 Jun 2021 11:22:05 -0400

Dave, in the context of the Internet, the garden and the stream are metaphors for two different approaches to content on the Internet. A stream is ephemeral, it continues to move over time and one mostly adds to it and watches it flow away. On the Internet a stream is content for only right now, and usually isn’t edited nor looked at years later. Streams are date and time driven. Stream platforms are optimized for quick and easy entry of new content.

Twitter, Facebook, and blogs are examples of platforms used for publishing streams of content. Note that this is not absolute, for example one can and might edit a blog post they wrote a year ago in which case that blog might well be a garden.

The garden metaphor, in contrast, is more permanent. The content in a garden is continually edited to reflect new ideas or new learning over a period of time. A garden is organized around a topic. Platforms for creating and maintaining gardens are optimized for editing and linking together of content. Connecting the dots (linking) between content can generate new ideas or thoughts. Wiki is an example of a garden platform, as is the web itself as originally intended, as are other tools optimized for linking together and organizing content.

A couple of other interesting differences exist between the two from a user and platform provider perspective. Almost all streams are public, their very point is public sharing, and the platform providers freely provide their platforms and make their money my manipulating the presentation of what one puts in to the stream to others. Users have little to no control over who sees what they put in to the stream.

Gardens are either public or private, thus users tend to have more control over who and how one sees their content. Platform providers either freely provide their platform as open source for users to install in their own computers or they make money by hosting their platforms and charging uses for renting space on their hosting. The key point being the garden platform providers do not make money on the content. In my opinion, a site that has the purpose of making money from content is something other than a garden, so for example, I do not think of Medium as a garden, nor are other sites like The Verge or Engadget that may publish using a blogging or content management system.

Seeking USB-C Dock For 4K Monitor

Sat, 15 May 2021 11:15:00 -0400

TL;DR USB-C Docks that include USB 3 data ports most likely do not support DisplayPort 4K at 60 Hz unless they support DisplayPort 1.4. A dock with a DisplayPort port and USB 2.1 probably can do 4K@60Hz.

I recently bought a BenQ 4K monitor and when I connected it to the USB-C dock that I had I found out that the dock could only support 4K at 30HZ, which is noticeably slow just when moving the mouse on the screen. Just about all the computer monitors we use support 60 Hz refresh rates.

Now, I was using my Pixelbook with the dock and I found that when I connect it to the monitor using a USB-C cable it can do 4K@60Hz, so I figured the dock was the limiting factor, which I confirmed on the manufacture’s web site. I then started to search for docks that say they can do 4K@60Hz and decided on the Anker PowerExpander.

As you probably imagine by now, I got the new dock yesterday and found it also is only doing 4K@30Hz, on the HDMI and DisplayPorts. Sigh. I tested the dock with another computer and it does 4K@60Hz, so I am back looking at the Pixelbook.

I have since learned from this article that the problem is that USB-C docks need to support data transfer as well as display and that decreases the number of lanes that are available for display at high refresh rates to two, whereas 4K@60Hz needs all four lanes. When you connect the Pixelbook to a monitor with a USB-C cable it can use all four of the cable’s communication lanes to enable it to handle 4K@60Hz.

Anker’s site says 4K on DisplayPort requires DisplayPort 1.4 and I have found that the Pixelbook only supports DisplayPort 1.2. As the article I found explains, DisplayPort 1.4 only needs two lanes for 4K@60Hz because it has an additional high bit rate mode and compression, which is why the Anker hub I have can do 4K@60Hz while also providing USB 3.1 data transfers. The problem is that the computer, hub, and monitor all need to support DisplayPort 1.4 for this all to work, and the Pixelbook does not.

The lesson from this experience is that connecting to high resolution monitors at high refresh rates via a hub is more complicated than simply using a cable because it requires understanding the technical capabilities of the computer, hub, and monitor. You may have to dig to find out whether a computer, and a Chromebook in particular, supports DisplayPort 1.4. Thunderbolt 3 also supports 4K@60Hz and fast data transfers but is not yet available in Chromebooks and Thunderbolt 3 docks are more expensive than USB-C docks.

I think my experience that I’ve written about here explains why Google recently announced the addition of docks to their “Works With Chromebook” program. If Google were to announced a new Pixelbook this summer that had DisplayPort 1.4 support (or Thunderbolt 3) it would be helpful to know exactly which Docks can do 4K@60Hz.

As for my current situation, even though this new Anker dock cannot provide 4K@60Hz with my Pixelbook, it has more display ports to drive multiple monitors and has more data ports than the hub it replaced, so I still have an upgrade over the dock I was using previously. However, had I known what I now know prior to purchasing this Anker dock, I probably would have bought this Cable Matters dock instead as I could live with USB 2.1. For now I using the slightly lower 2560 x 1600 resolution at 60Hz rather than 4K, but if I really want 4K I can connect directly to the monitor via one USB-C port and use the dock on the other for power and the additional ports.

A Wiki User's Expectation Of Double Square Brackets

Wed, 12 May 2021 12:00:00 -0400

I am following Dave’s writing about the integration of Little Outliner with apps like Obsidian and Logseq. I think it’s important to note that neither Obsidian nor Logseq are outliners, they are markdown editors with outlining and wiki features. I would characterize Little Oultiner as an outline editor that could have other features like wiki and markdown.

How Obsidian handles text between doulbe brackets is an example of a feature it incorporates from wikis. There is an existing standard for using double brackets, it is an internal wiki link and the expected action is that it automatically links to a page that exists within the app hosting and editing the content. Usually what is between the double square brackets is the name of the page. If the page already exists, clicking the link loads that page in the app. If the page does not already exist, clicking the link creates a new page with that title in which one can then edit.

The key is that an internal link is generated and managed by the editing app not the user, where as an external link is provided and managed by the user of the app. As an example, I edit my now page in Little Outliner that I think is currently served by an instance of PagePark. (Click here to see the outline in Little Outliner) On that page the fourth note has a link to tech.frankm.info that is another outline I edit in Little Outliner. I created the link between the two using the linking tool in Little Outliner, but what if I had put double brackets around the words Technology That I Use in that sentence?

Based on my experience with wiki, Obsidian, and Roam, I expect that when a double bracket is put around those words Little Outliner creates a link to an outline (a page if you will in Little Outliner) with the name “Technology That I Use.” If I click that link in Little Outliner it opens the page in Little Outliner (could be a tab) and displays the contents of the page, or a blank page if it is new.

To complete the thought, from a publishing perspective, PagePark could follow the internal link to the OPML file and render it as it does today, with the net result of more easily writing and publishing a multi-page site edited by Little Outliner and served by PagePark.

Long time users of Little Outliner may recall the glossary function that automatically substitutes text between double quotes to corresponding text in a separate file. One way you can think of it is like a text expander where you can put a commonly used abbreviation in quotes and when the outline is rendered the associated text in the glossary file is subsituted.

For example, if you look at the second bullet under Notes in my status outline you see that “my blog” and “my Twitter feed” are in quotes and on the published page you see them as hyperlinks because I have the HTML for the hyperlinks in my glossary file, which is specified by the urGlossary value in the OPML head of the file. When I was publishing my blog using Fargo.io, (and prior iterations of Dave’s blogging platforms) the glossary was one of my favorite time saving features.

Using A 32-inch Monitor

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 11:30:39 -0400

I recently started using a 32-inch monitor, and I am figuring out its best ergonomic setup. I’ve searched for information, and this article is one of the few that I’ve found that make a specific recommendation for large monitors. When I ordered the monitor, which is a BenQ 32-inch, I was concerned by the fact that the height was not adjustable and it would be too low, but that has proven to not be an issue. If anything the monitor might be a tad too high.

According to the ergonomic recommendations, the top of the monitor should be at eye level. In my case the top bevel of the monitor is a couple of inches above my eye level. I could raise my chair to move my eye level up, but then my feet don’t comfortably touch the floor and I felt it in my legs.

On the other hand with the larger screen I am now viewing content in separate windows rather than full screen. Consequently I can move the windows in which content is displayed to where it is most comfortable, and so there is a gap in the display at the top that I will never really look at.

I’ve installed the Windows 10 PowerToys so that I can use the FancyZones windows manager to create layouts for placing windows on the screen. My current configuration has one large window occupying about 65% of the left side where I display the primary 1580 x 1356 window I am viewing. The remaining screen space on the right is split in half, with a top 792 x 661 and bottom 792 x 653 windows for MS Teams and Outlook. The smaller windows are for glancing at information, either chats, calendar, or my inbox. When I process my inbox in Outlook I move Outlook to the larger window on the left of the screen.

To complete the picture, I also us two virtual desktops, the primary one I described above, the secondary one I have OneNote in the large window, Microsoft Todo, and File Manager in the two smaller windows.

Home Computer Repairs

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 10:34:00 -0400

Given the number of Raspberry Pis I have, you might get the impression that I am a maker, but I am not. I’ve just been enamored by these small, inexpensive single board computers. The closest I’ve come so far to a real project is what I call my desk clock, which is a Pi installed behind a five inch monitor that displays Chromium kiosk mode with a screen I configure using Dakboard.

I originally built the desk clock using a Raspberry Pi 2 that stopped working a few weeks ago. This past weekend tried to troubleshoot the problem. First I built a new SD card and it seemed to boot fine, but after a few more tests I found that the USB WiFi dongle was not reliably connecting to the home network, so I decided to re-purpose a Pi 3 that was on my desk for the desk clock.

To retain the backup and archive functions that Pi 3 was performing, I moved it’s SD card to a Pi 3b+ and then built a new SD card for the desk clock, except this time I cheated by using a pre-built image that dakboard provides.

The net result is that I now have one less Raspberry Pi sitting on my desk. Last night as I was putting things away I found another Pi 3 I already had been storing, which if I had known about would have simplified things, but not resulted in one less Pi on my desk.

For a summary of my Raspberry Pis, expand the Every Day Tech branch of my Technology outline.

Be Careful What You Ask For

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 10:21:01 -0400

What’s ironic is that every person arrested for the insurrection on the U.S. Capital on January 6, 2021 will expect, and demand, that everyone provide, the presumption of innocence, which requires the accuser to prove by providing evidence in court that the accused commited a crime. Yet, these people wanted state legislatures, the Supreme Court, or Congress to nullify the election results based on their accusuation of voter fraud.

The point being, the people storming the Capital really weren’t defending the Constitution nor do they really want to live in the world they think they are fighting for. Presumption of innocence means they have the possibility of not being put in jail by a force greater than themselves and that same presumption of innocence might be the only thing that saved the Republic, this time.

We Found Where Is The Republican Line

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 10:42:02 -0400

It’s amusing and sad to finally see so many Republicans jump off the sinking ship after it hit the iceberg. All through the last four years my question to Republicans has been, what is your line that Trump could not cross? We found the line was literaly no less than an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States. And these are people who call themselves patriots? If they really want to do the right thing they should resign.

The thing is, it doesn’t really matter now. What’s going to matter is when in four years and the Republican Presidential primaries start does the party push back against Trump and any who follow his playbook, or do they do all the same things again? It already started when Congress finally reviewed and accpeted the Electoral College results.

At this point I think the lust for supremacy is what Republicans are all about. They could not take a principaled stand until literally forced to by an attempted coup. I for one right now cannot imagine how I can ever trust anyone who is Republican and desires the power of federal office. We cannot let Republicans re-frame the story in a way that does not make them culpable in what happened on January 6, 2021, for they built the platform upon which Trump and his followers spoke and acted, starting with birtherism.

Overclocking A Raspberry Pi 4

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 11:15:00 -0400

I am using a Raspberry Pi 4 (daenerys) as my desktop personal computer during the work day, which I access from my work provided computer using VNC. By using this Pi 4 I can access the Internet from my desk without going through the corporate Internet proxy.

I built daenerys in a Flirc case, which looks really nice and provides passive cooling, and it boots from a SSD in an Inateck case. The SSD gets power from the Pi and so under normal load I would see temperatures hover around 55 degrees celcius, which is well below the 85 degree threshold that causes the CPU to throttle down.

Over the holiday I built another Raspberry Pi 4 (arya) in a MazerPi case that has a fan. The fan draws power from the GPIO pins and has two modes, high speed if plugged in to the 5v pin (PIN 2) and low speed if plugged in to the 3.3v pin (PIN1). To complete the picture, ground is plugged in th PIN 6.

The MazerPi fan just stays on all the time, I am not aware of a way to control the fan so that it only comes on when a certain temperature threshold is past. I first plugged the fan in to one of the 5v pins and found it loud enough to be heard, although not terribly loud. When using high speed mode the CPU temperatures were in the mid to high 30 degree range under normal load. When I ran Octane 2 it then crossed 40 degrees.

I decided to try the low speed mode, which is quiet enough to not hear unless one concentrates. Temperatures where in the 40 to 45 degree range, which is plenty good.

At this point the thought occurred to me that it probably makes sense to use the case with the fan for the Pi that I am going to use every day rather than in one I am going to use as an accessory and thus I removed the SD card from arya and plugged in the SSD from daenerys and it booted right up. (BTW, note that in reality a computer host name is associated with the boot drive and not the actual computer, so daenerys is really the 250 GB SSD drive while arya is a 256 GB SD card.)

Finally, I decided I wanted to try overclocking daenerys, which given the fan should be safe. Normal speed for this Pi4 board is 1.5 GHz, so I decided to overclock it to 2 GHz. Performance is noticably faster. At 1.5 Ghz daenery’s Octane 2 score is 8098 and at 2.0 Ghz the score is 9777. Neither score is fantastic, but good enough for the type of web browsing that I do.

When you overclock a CPU it will run hotter and that can cause failures. In the MazerPi, with the fan in low speed mode, and the Pi 4 booting from a SSD and overclocked to a max frequency of 2 GHz and a minimum frequency of 1 GHz I am seeing temperatures ranging from 46 degrees to 55 degress, which is about the same as well using the Pi in the Flirc case but not overclocked.

The net result is that have “upgraded” daenerys to a faster processing speed that provides better performance while maintaining a good CPU temperature and so far after one full working day it has been stable. The MazerPi case cost only $8 and is easy to assemble with help from a video I found on YouTube.

One Term Presidential Mirrors

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 12:59:22 -0400

I think it’s interesting that CNN is airing a documentary about the first modern outsider elected President before Trump, Jimmy Carter. When I think back about Carter’s years as President I think what happened is that he showed us reality that we did not like very much. It’s no wonder then that he lost to a professional actor and that in many ways we have been living in a delusion that has been amplified by Trump.

Why would the rock-and-roll set flock to a man who, as president, is remembered today as being a micro-managing, straight-arrow engineer who failed to inspire or understand leadership? The reason is that in his prime, Jimmy Carter was cool. He championed a kind of political populism that was extremely attractive to Americans disillusioned with Washington in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate. Sick and tired of elected officials who betrayed them, they found a refreshing change in Carter, a former peanut farmer who was seen as an anti-establishment outsider. As Bishop Michael Curry recalls in the documentary, “We were coming out of the Watergate era and looking …to be a country of integrity again.”

The problem with the quote above from Bishop Curry is that I am not sure the United States has ever been a “country of integrity.” I think some of the founders had this aspiration but failed to see the log in their eye of supremacy is the forms of slavery and colonialism.

To me the greatest irony of the Trump presidency has been that part of the campaign slogan, “Make America Great” is a good and right aspiration but demands a degree of introspection on what is greatness and who determines greatness.

P.S. I observe that it seems all one term presidents of my life time became one term because that were a mirror reflecting ourselves that we did not like very much. Our egos much prefer the myths of our false selves than the reality of our true selves.

Vivaldi Day 2

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 15:27:58 -0400

Today is the second day of using Vivaldi on the Raspberry Pi 4 desktop, and it continues to perform better for me than Chromium. I decided to run Octane 2 and Speedometer 2 to see how Vivaldi benchmarks against Chromium and I am surprised to find that it benchmarks slightly slower in both even though my practical use finds it faster. For example, Speedometer 2 scores 7.93 in Chromium and 7.614 in Vivaldi. For comparison, the Speedometer 2 score on the iPad Air is 201, fastest in the house.

Trying Vivaldi

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 17:13:00 -0400

I use a Raspberry Pi 4 as a personal remote computer that I access using VNC during the work day, which enables me to keep my personal web access from going through my employer’s Internet proxy. It’s also an excuse of me to fiddle with the Raspberry Pi.

I have been using Chromium for browing the web but grown frustrated with its performance on the Pi so this morning I decided to give Vivaldi a try. Vivaldi uses the same rendering engine as Chrome and I’ve found it uses the same extensions as Chrome, which is important because I need access to Lastpass.

Installation was a little tricky because I am running a beta 64-bit version of the Raspberry Pi OS and so I needed to find the arm64 version of the installation package.

So far I am finding that Vivaldi does run faster on the Pi4 than Chromium. One thing I did to speed things up is to turn off the drop-down, URL completion of the address bar so that I can quickly enter URLs. However, one function that I use to forage for new updates in the Federated Wiki verse does not work, for some reason, so for now I will need to use Chromium for that part of my daily flow.

The iPad, Magic Keyboard, and Me

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 12:02:14 -0400

I am completing the first week of using my iPad Air and Magic Keyboard during my work day and I am happy with the result. Over the years I’ve tried using different keyboard cases with tablets and usually end up setting them aside because I found it too difficult to switch between hand-held and keyboard modes. The magnetic attachment of the iPad to the keyboard makes it easy to remove and re-attach the iPad to the case, so when I want to hold the tablet to read or write notes with the Apple Pencil, it’s no more difficult than picking the iPad up off the table and when I want to type notes it’s as easy as placing the iPad back on to the magnetic back of the case.

The main negative of the case is that it adds a lot of bulk and weight, so there are times when I won’t want to carry both. When we get back to being able to travel around freely I will probably get Apple’s Smart Folio, which also attaches magnetically, to protect the iPad Air in those instances.

Beware Of The U.S. Theocracy

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 15:19:55 -0400

Dana Blankenhorn wrote:

When the nation state came to glory in the 19th century, it was as a bulwark against religion. The great threat of our time is the unity of the state and religion

I wish citizens of the United States would think a bit more deeply about our history, particularly the context in which First Amendment was written. The world from 313 AD until when the U.S. Constiution was ratified was basically governed by a theocracy. You had the Holy Roman Empire and Rome ruling most of the western world, then came Protestantism and it’s alignment with kings and The Thirty Years War, and then, more directly you have the Church of England that emerged to consolidate power in England when Henry VIII wanted an annulment that the Pope would not grant.

The founders knew how those who seek power, be they kings, dictators, oligarchs, and political parties, use religion to increase that power. After all, it’s one thing for a President to say something, it’s another when a preacher claims what he or she says is the literal word of god.

So, while the first ammendment constrains the U.S. government of what it can do to religions, more importantly it is intended to prevent the merger of religious and political power.

I agree with Dana’s warning about our real risk, which is the emergence of a religious-based rule in the United States. It started with Ronald Regan creating the snowball and rolling it down the hill to create the “Religious Right” under the pretext of a Pro-Life movement. It picked up more steam to elect George W. Bush that lead to a tremendous amount of lost life in wars authorized by national emergencies that are still not over. And finally in a mutal in-sincere but profitable alliance, enabled and put in place Donald Trump, and with him the breaking of everything Jesus taught.

Please, if you call yourself Christian and find yourself agreeing completely with these claims of religions liberty, stop and consider the very real possibility that your actions are actualy enabling the very opposite of what you think will be the outcome. In the process you are handling over all your authority, necessary for people to even consider the Good News, let alone follow Jesus.

What To Do With Ideas

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 13:24:13 -0400

I’ve responded to this question about “what does one do with ideas” with my wish for how products like Roam could be even better for me. In summary, I want an app like Roam that recognizes a string of text as the same as the title of an already existing page and automactically converts it to a link to that page without my having to specify it as such with square brackets.

I think the challenge is putting the “new idea” in a place that is connected/related in a way that easily re-surfaces. A common practice is to put all ideas in to one bucket/tickler file and then continually reviewing that bucket/tickler file, which itself requires discipline.

Roam has a nice feature that enables me to easily associate text to a future date so when that date arrives the app automatically displays that item. Roam isn’t unique in this feature and associating to dates is probably an easy problem to solve, but what I would like would be an automated way associate an idea to a topic that can re-surface whenever I search for or write about the topic.

The closest example I can think of is glossary function in Fargo or wiki links in Roam but even those require remembering special functions, quotes for glossary, square brackets for wiki links. What I would love is to be able to tell software, whenever I write this string of text automatically convert the text to a hyperlink to this page of more information about it. For software to just do it for me it would have to constantly monitor my writing, like MS Word’s spell/grammar check.

If memory serves, the closest experience I had to this was VoodooPad and WikiWikiWeb were you wrote in wikiwords like WhereIPutIdeas, that the software automatically converted to links, but that is flawed by the fact that one has to write in an unnatural way.

I guess what I want is some form of natural language processing of all text I write that queries against a collection of previously written pages and automatically links to matches. Even the backlinking in Roam requires some thinking/recollection on my part, unless there is something in Roam I have not yet discovered.

Adding Titles In Drafts

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 18:51:35 -0400

I use Drafts to write many of my blog entries and I use a Drafts Action to post what I write to micro.blog. Normally my entries do not have titles but occasionally I do want use one and for that I now have an Drafts Action that prompts me to enter the title before it posts it to micro.blog. Murphy willing, it will work with this entry.

Scapegoating Is Addictive

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 18:13:55 -0400

On Saturday I wrote that I think the real root cause behind why so many align themselves with Trump is the lack of good paying jobs that don’t require a college degree. In his recent column for the New York Times, titled The Rotting of the Republican Mind, David Brooks pretty much writes the same thing.

Under Trump, the Republican identity is defined not by a set of policy beliefs but by a paranoid mind-set….You can’t argue people out of paranoia. If you try to point out factual errors, you only entrench false belief. The only solution is to reduce the distrust and anxiety that is the seedbed of this thinking. That can only be done first by contact, reducing the social chasm between the members of the epistemic regime and those who feel so alienated from it. And second, it can be done by policy, by making life more secure for those without a college degree.

In my opinion, while Brooks is putting the focus on Republican’s, I think the same challenge lies with Democrats. The problem is that Trump and the Republican party really haven’t done anything about the problem because they can’t see the root cause, which I think is a combination of corporate greed by way of profit margins and a long history of anti-inflation that has conditioned us to seek out the lowest price for items we buy. (Have you ever enjoyed the thrill of finding a bargain?) I don’t think either party is willing and able to do what is needed to address this issue.

As a thought exercise ask yourself, why is it that so many of the products you use every day are manufactured outside of the United States? (If you can find a label, take a look at it to see whether I am right or wrong.)

Many politicians of both parties will have you believe the problem is unfair trade practices by countries like China, which is the thinking behind Trump’s tariffs that really did not result in more manufacturing jobs in the United States. Trade is a problem, but it’s not the only problem.

Corporations do not manufacture in the United States because it costs more to manufacture items in the United States and what does that mean? Higher costs result in lower profit margins and if corporations want to maintain margins, which shareholders want them to do, then they have to increase the price of their products, but the problem with that is U.S. consumers do not like to pay higher prices. It appears something has to give, either corporations take lower profits or consumers pay higher prices. (And equally important because nearly everyone who can save for retirement does with either IRAs or 401ks is that a good number of the shareholders demanding margins that increase stock price are consumers of the products being manufactured.)

Can corporations and shareholders be convinced to live with lower profit margins for the sake of the country? Can consumers be convinced to pay more for items “made in the U.S.A.”? Can US manufacturing costs, a high portion of which is labor, be decreased?

You see here then the issue, there is no silver bullet, instead there is a need for a comprehensive solution that requires compromise by all parties. Democrats have to be willing to decrease regulations that increase manufacturing costs and Republicans have to be willing to work toward removing corporations' burden of providing healthcare to its employees, which also increases the costs of labor. Serious discussion needs to occur within corporations and their boards of what is a fair profit margin and not just what they can drive the market toward (the starting point might be, what is a fair wage for CEOs?) and there needs to be a significant and continuous, buy made in the USA, marketing campaign to try to influence consumer purchasing.

The irony in all of this is that there was a time when both Republicans and Democrats campaigned on jobs, and jobs/the economy is still the issue now more than ever. The reason why Trump is popular is that his rhetoric and scapegoating resonates with the fear many Americans, particularly those without college degrees, feel. Scapegoating is an addictive drug, one feels good about “sticking to it to the libretards,” but when/if one looks around for change they will find no change to be found. Consequently, the only option that Republicans seem to have embraced is to keep the rhetoric going so that everyone stays happy enough to keep voting for the people placing the blame, which is themselves.

First Impressions Of The Apple iPad Magic Keyboard

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 15:40:05 -0400

I ordered an open box / reduced price Apple Magic keyboard from Best Buy that I just received. Normally I don’t order refurbished items, but I felt an accessory like a keyboard ought to be safe, and after combining the reduced price with some credit card reward points I got $100 reduced on the price.

There isn’t much to the unboxing, cut through the shrink wrap, open the box and all you find is the keyboard inside. I was surprised, given that this was a refurb, that the “standard” protected plastic wrap was on the keyboard.

There is literally no documentation in the box, I’ve had to use Google to learn about some of the standard keyboard shortcuts given that there is no function key row.

I am sitting on a couch with the keyboard with iPad on my lap, typing as I would using any notebook computer. The keyboard is smaller, which is not a surprise given that this is the 11-inch model, but still, I can touch type just fine.

A few things to figure out. There is one function key, a key labeled with a globe at the lower left, that seems to be for selecting emojis, surely there is a way to change that? So far I haven’t found one, although I have found some articles of useful information that I summarize below.

Tips from MacRumors
To see a list of keyboard shortcuts in an app, hold down the cmd key. Source: Business Insider
Computerworld has a bunch of tips

Damage Done

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 15:23:48 -0400

The coup has been in progress for four years, and probably even for more years than that. It most recently started with an assault on facts, starting with the numbers of people who did not attend President Trump’s inauguration, continued through three years of assaulting the press, nearly one year of an assault on science and medicine, and now with the assault on the heart of democracy, the election.

The risk is not who will be seated as President on January 21, 2021. The damage has already been done, going forward all elections will likely be questioned probably until someone comes up with the bright idea of just not having them.

All of this is on the hands of Republicans. To those who say Trump has the right to have his day “in court” I say, when did elections become about courts? There is a phrase, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it. Do you not see the damage you are doing to our country? For now on tens of millions of people will no longer trust elections because you continue to sow the seed of doubt, and for what? So that you can retain power? Did Washington, Madison, Hamilton, and Jefferson fight for power? Did Lincoln give his life for power or did he do it to preserve the Republic? The party of Lincoln indeed.

Here is a fact. What is common between Nixon and Trump is that they are both Republican. One resigned before being impeached and then pardoned, the other was impeached and could still be pardoned. The two most undemocratic Presidents of my lifetime, Republicans.

And finally, to those Regan Republicans, most of whom are of my generation. The USSR had elections, in fact most socialist dictatorships have elections. In the USSR (and now Russia) the outcome of the election was assured before the first vote cast because the person in power could not lose. What makes democratic elections, such as the ones we claim to have in the United States, is that the person in power (the incumbent) can lose. It’s not just about a peaceful transition of power, it’s about accepting the will of the people.

Republican actions right now are saying loudly, they do not accept the will of the people, and in doing they delegitimize their claim as a party of a free and democratic United States of America.

Lessons From The 2020 Election

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 12:30:15 -0400

It should be clear that Democrats need to work on their strategy for Presidential elections. If one is willing to listen to me, I have the following observations.

Simply getting out the vote will not work. It seems the conclusion drawn from 2016 is that Clinton lost because not enough Democrats voted. The thinking is based on the belief there are more Democrats than Republicans in the United States. The problem is, increating vote count only works in a pure democratic nationwide election, aka the popular vote, and we don’t elect Presidents in the United States by popular vote. (The founders feared a pure democracy.)

Republicans have simplified the path to the White House: win rural votes by > 50% margin and if you get 30% of the urban vote, you win, and that strategy aligns to the electoral college. In short, Democrats have to get more rural vote, which leads me to the one overriding fundamental that Democrats have to understand..

Fear of socialism trumps everything else!

People are not really voting on issues, which I think is why polling is not working. People are voting on fear and mostly fear of the other side. The Republican message is simple, Democrats are socialists, socialism = communism = evil = unAmercan, so vote Republican to save America! A significant number of people are convinced they can never vote for a Democrat because that is a vote for Socialism. Add to that another significant number of people, call them evangelicals, who are convinced voting for a Demorat is a vote for killing babys and you have this result. And evangelials equate socialism to atheism which adds another reason why they fear Democrats. Then, sadly, add to the fact that there are too many who fear a vote for a Democrat is a vote for people of color over white people.

If you consider that Republican votes are mostly all about fear of what Democrats will do, I think you see how the Democrat primary and compaigns of 2016 and 2020 make the election strategy for Republicans easy because policies considered to be socialist AND politicians considered to be socialists (Bernie Sanders) dominated the campaigns.

In short, I think Bernie Sanders created a lot of fear among voters AND was a easy target. Even after Biden secured the nomination Republicans simply claimed Sanders would have significant influence over Biden because Democrats do want the Sanders followers support. I think this is true, hard to dispute and personally frustrating to me because Bernie is not even a Democrat!

Why does this matter? It matters because for extremism to be successful it needs an equally extreme opposite. The antidote to extremism is the middle and unfortunately that is shrinking rapidly. I think the only way the middle, call them moderates, can be recovered is via a third party but how we finance and run elections in the United States in the 21st century really makes it impossible for a viable third party.

In summary, fear of socialism trumps everything. It don’t matter whether the Republican candidate is authoritarian, unqualified, and incapable of leading, it only matters that at Democrat doesn’t get power and destroy the country.

Accepting Deaths

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 14:30:00 -0400

COVID-19 is the third highest cause of death in the United States from February to October of 2020. One of the problems we have is how people are viewing these deaths. Rather than viewing them as an “event” caused death, like 9/11, people are viewing as a disease caused death, like heart disease, cancer, and strokes. In this case they are thinking, hundreds of thousands of people die from disease every year and this is the same.

The reason why this matters is that some people who view these deaths as similar to other diseases are more willing to view the 200K+ deaths as acceptable, but what they are not taking in to account is that all of the other diseases on the list have known preventative measures, treatments, and expected impacts, whereas we have none of these for COVID-19. The number of deaths of the other diseases would be higher each year if not for the years and years worth of science to lower the risk.

Further, neither heart disease or cancer, which are the two higher causes of death so far this year, are something in which a health person contracts the disease and can die in a matter of days or even weeks.

The point is that we should all be angry about the number of people who have died from COVID-19, particularly if we claim to place a high value on life. Surely, like all other places around the world, some people would have died no matter what, but nobody should view 200K+ deaths as acceptable and the problem is there is not true end in sight because there is zero leadership in the United States toward anything that resembles a plan.

The closest to what appears to be the plan is to just let the disease run its course. Perhaps another 100+ or more people will die, and too many people are ok with that so long as they can go wherever and do whatever they want to do. Meanwhile other nations in the world took active measures and controlled the very same disease we seem unwilling to fight, and did so for the sake of everyone in their country!

For people who want to put country over seemingly anything else, I don’t know how they can be proud of how we, the United States, is handling this crisis.

Here We Go Again Michigan

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 11:50:46 -0400

It seems logical to me that the number of cases of COVID-19 will increase as the weather gets colder in the northern United States causing people to spend more time indoors without good ventilation. A report over the weekend appears to provide the statistical evidence, the R0, or rate of infection, has jumped to 1.12, you want it to be below 1. Daily new cases per 100,000 people is 11.7, a number above 10 is considered high. The good news is that ICU occupancy is low so for now hospitals appear to be capable of meeting demand, but an increase in the rate of spread increases the probability of people with pre-existing conditions who catch the virus need hospitalization. Lending further support to the “colder weather” theory is the fact that the new Michigan outbreak is in the Upper Peninsula.

Given the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision that the Governor has over-stepped her authority with her efforts to contain the disease and the Republican party’s preference to not issue mandates, it is likely the spread will increase unless citizens self comply or take county and city health orders seriously. I expect the State Legislature to pass legislation to prevent counties and cities from issuing their own health orders.

Outlines, Wikis, and Wisdom

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 10:45:00 -0400

I have a great deal of respect for the people who layed the foundation of the computer technology I use today, people like Steve Wozniak, Dan Bricklin, Ward Cunningham, and Dave Winer. I follow Ward and Dave the closest because they actively write and because I use their work every day.

I am struck by the similarities and differences between Ward and Dave’s work. Ward created wiki, which is a tool he created to write and share pattern languages. Wiki’s emphasis is on easy writing and hyperlinking, which I think was the intended purpose of the Web. Dave also created writing tools, the outliner and blogs, that simplify publishing of writing on the Internet and he also created RSS to make it easier for one to keep up with the writing on the Internet. Dave’s original work is the conceptual basis for my stream while Ward’s original work provides the tools for my garden.

I like outlines and find that I really like Federated Wiki and today I realized that the similarity between them is that both provide context to writing but in different ways. Outlines are hiearchical while Federated Wiki has a lineup that shows context between source and destination links in a horizontal and linear fashion. I think this ability to easily see context and connections is also why I like Roam and use it for my private notes.

I am not sure that this matters much to others, but I think there is a relationship between context and history. History is the context of our lives and I think a great deal of our problems come from a failure to see meaning or to see what is really happening because we fail to know the context. Part of the problem may be that it’s too difficult to find the context of history, that’s where tools like oultliners might help, and because it is so difficult few people really take the time to seek out and understand context.

Context is needed for true understanding, knowledge, and thus wisdom and today there is a huge deficiency of wisdom.

Not All Styluses Make The Same Point

Mon, 05 Oct 2020 18:05:35 -0400

The Lenovo USI Stylus arrived today, giving me the first chance to try a Universal Stylus Initiative digital pen. Historically, digital pens only work with the tablets made by the manufacturer of the pen, and the pens are not portable between tablets. USI is a protocol intended to enable one to use a pen across multiple tablets. Thus, the Lenovo stylus I just got is supposed to not only work with the Lenovo Duet, but other tablets and notebook computers that support USI.

Unfortunately, I don’t have another device that supports USI, but I can say that the stylus I received just worked with the Duet once I got the pen powered up, there was no pairing process. The problem that I have with this stylus is that its tip is too big and round and so writing with it is like writing with a used medium tip marker rather than like a fine point pen. The tip on the Apple Pencil and Microsoft Surface Pen is much more like a pencil or pen so that what you write on the screen does not look like big fat characters.

The upside to the Lenovo USI is that it only cost me $31, which is considerabily cheaper than the Apple Pencil. However, even if it is cheap, the fact that one cannot really write digital ink that approximates a fine tip pen will hinder its usefullness.

Computing Is Art

Wed, 19 Aug 2020 10:20:24 -0400

I’ve read two articles this week that make the case for treating Computer Science as something other than Computer Science. The one, titled, Why Computing Belongs With The Social Sciences, argues that we will not gain more ethical computing from college curricula that have “Computing Ethics” classes but only by moving Computing in to the Social Sciences. The author points to the increasing relationship between algorithms and power.

Recommendation algorithms, automated sanctioning systems, reactive violation detection and prediction systems, and nudge architectures are replacing the human agency built into our legal and political systems with an architecture of unknowable black boxes allowing the one-way surveil and control of people without any corresponding contestation

In an essay titled Hackers and Painters, Paul Graham notes that while he graduated with a Computer Science degree, he self identifies as a hacker, which is the likely image most people have of one who holds a CompSci degree. Graham says that hackers are like painters and writers because they make things. The following is for me the most important quote in the essay.

Empathy is probably the single most important difference between a good hacker and a great one. Some hackers are quite smart, but when it comes to empathy are practically solipsists. It’s hard for such people to design great software [5], because they can’t see things from the user’s point of view

Both articles resonate strongly with me. I graduated in 1989 with a Computer Science degree and have been working in the Information Technology industry for more than thirty years and I can say that I have never used any of the specifics of my computer science classes save for one, one Software Engineering. I also got a minor in secondary education and what gained from that part of my college learning I applied frequently throughout my career.

In my experience computing is more art than a science and more about humans than machines and yet neither of these realities were part of my formal computer science education. Granted, much time has passed since I graced the college classrooms so I know curricula has changed, but yet given the “market” pressures on colleges I suspect the most focus on producing employable graduates, with life long skills a secondary benefit rather than primary focus.

Decision Making Matters

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 11:51:23 -0400

Perhaps the most important skill we learn in life is how we make decisions. Too little time is spent reflecting on this skill in ourselves, and evaluating it in leaders. How we see the world influences the decisions we make. If everything that happens is viewed through the lense of how it affects me personally, for example, does this help or hurt my chances for re-election, then most of the decisions I make are for my own self interest. (Note that very, very few people do NOT make any decisions in their self interest. I am talking about degree)

I suggest that over the course of history, those who history says are good leaders put common interest above their own in the moments that matter. For me the decision making process is a core competency of anyone who I consider to recognize as leader and who may gain my vote in an election.

Incumbents have the blessing or curse of having demonstrated how they make decisions, and thus tend to have an easier or sometimes bigger hurdle to overcome.

Definitely a Random Mind

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 09:55:00 -0400

I find it amusing how my mind recalls bits of things in certain circumstances. For example, during my morning walk I saw that the lawn care company was planting a shrubbery and I immediately said to myself, “I want a shrubbery, and a nice one too.”

Configuring A Raspberry Pi as a WiFi Hotspot and WiFi client

Tue, 07 Jan 2020 22:25:00 -0400

In episode 308 of the MobileViews podcast Jon Westfall talked about a blog post describing how to configure a Raspberry Pi 4 as a USB-C accessory for the iPad Pro. The instructions configure the Pi so that you connect an iPad to the Pi using a USB-C cable. A video is also available that provides step-by-step instructions, and you can also watch another video in which the author answers questions that were left in the comments of the original video.

While I found the concept intriguing there is no way I could implement it because it only works if you have the latest iPad Pro that has a USB-C port, which I do not have.

Later I found another video done by the author of the original one showing how to install an application called RaspAP and configure it to be a WiFi hotspot AND a WiFi client at the same time. With this configuration you can connect any iPad, or any other device that has WiFi and then you can SSH in to the Pi from the iPad to have access to a Linux command prompt, from which you could run a number of different applications, programming environments, and utilities.

It’s actually not too difficult to configure a Raspberry Pi as a WiFi hotspot (access point) and I actually had done so to a small Raspberry Pi Zero W that I have been using as a portable backup for a wiki I maintain of home information. The problem with how I have been using the Pi Zero is that it can only be either a WiFi access point OR a WiFi client, so when configured as an access point the Pi Zero can’t connect to my home network or the Internet.

What makes RaspAP better is that it configures a Raspberry Pi so that it can be an access point AND WiFi client at the same time using the same wlan port! I am not sure how this is done because as you may know a “normal” WiFi access point must have a second wired Ethernet connection to connect to a cable modem and provide Internet access, in such instances the access point routes (or bridges) network traffic between two networks (different IP addressing), one being the WiFi network and the other being the wired network, each requiring one port.

The installation of RaspAP does require connecting the Raspberry Pi to a wired network connection because there is a step that requires resetting the wlan0 interface that will hang if the port is in use. However, after installation, the Pi will connect to your home network and act as an access point for another network at the same time.

Along the way I also found out that I can power the Raspberry Pi 3b+ using the Ravpower (Model RP-PB043) portable battery that I own, which means that I have a portable, wireless network between an iPad and and a Linux computer that will work anywhere.

How might I use this set up?

Let’s say I am working on a Nodejs program. I can have Nodejs installed on the Raspberry Pi and I can have all my code also on that Pi, perhaps cloned from a git repo. Let’s say I plan to be on a long flight and I want to carry a minimal amount of gear. I can pack my iPad Pro, Raspberry Pi, and the Ravpower in my carry on and when I am able, power up the Pi, leave it in the carry on, and connect to it via WiFi from the iPad. At this point I can then SSH into the Pi and use a text editor (emacs, nano, etc..) to work on my code and test it using nodejs. Of course, you can do this for any other programming environments or compilers that install on the Raspberry Pi and run via the command prompt. (Actually.. one should also be able to VNC into the graphical Raspbarian environment if you need to.)

While I could do the above via the airplane WiFi, doing so costs money and service can be spotty, this network connectivity once configured is available nearly the same way all the time. The “remote programmer” scenario is just one idea off the top of my head, I am sure there are other uses cases for a configuration such as this. The developer of RaspAP is working to include OpenVPN to make the Pi a VPN endpoint that will provide all secured network communication for all devices that connect to it. You can find more examples for using RaspAP in this Github repo.

Micropub Editing Needs To Improve

Sat, 28 Dec 2019 14:24:00 -0400

Today Dave Winer writes about simplicity of blogging, what he describes as Flow. The idea is to make writing a new blog post as frictionless as possible.

For me it very quick to write and publish a new blog post, I click the OmniBear icon on the Chrome toolbar, write in Content field, and click Post. Boom, I have a new post on my blog.

However, what happens next is a problem. To edit a post I have to go to the micro.blog site and click through many steps rather than see a simple Edit link on the post or the ability to open the post to edit in Bear.

Editing appears to be a weakness of micropub, most likely because its origin is tied to Twitter which has no concept of editing. We need better ways to originate and edit blog posts.

Comcast Data Cap Is Not High Enough

Wed, 18 Dec 2019 12:23:31 -0400

Comcast’s 1024 GB (1 TB) monthly data plan (data cap) does not provide enough data for an increasing number of people. The main reason is that an increasing number of services, like Netflix, are streaming video at 4K quality, and in the case of Netflix, it default is to stream at the highest quality. Comcast and I fundamentally disagree, in that Comcast says few people will actually be affected by the data cap.

Last week I was shocked when I received an email notice from Comcast that we had consumed 90% of our 1024 data for the month. Why does Comcast default the notification to 90% rather than 50%? The higher data consumption appears to coincide with an automatic and “free” increase of our bandwidth to 100 Mbps last month. Comcast says an increase in bandwidth does not automatically lead to increase data usage, but given that Netflix, and I assume other apps, default to the highest quality video I suspect we ended up viewing more 4K video this month than we have in the past.

Ever since receiving the email notification I have been closely monitoring our data usage, comparing network traffic stats to Comcast’s usage meter, and I think the usage meter is accurate, unlike an issue that occurred in October where the meter was wrongly indicating drastically higher consumption. In general, I think Comcast’s usage meter is insufficient in that it only shows a monthly total. If you have a cap and will automatically charge overages, I think you must at least provide daily stats. The worst part is that home owners don’t have a good or easy to use tools of their own to confirm Comcast’s data, leaving consumers at a disadvantage when trying to dispute Comcast’s data.

Comcast’s Usage Estimate calculator says a HD stream consumes 1.7 GB of data per hour, where as Netflix says that 1 hour of HD consumes 3 GB. Comcast and Netflix agree that one hour of 4K video consumes around 8 GB per hour. Using Netflix’s rate that HD consumes 3 GB per hour, Comcast’s claim that you can stream 21 GB per day of HD video is not correct. At 3 GB per hour, that’s 11 hours per day for 1024 GB per month.

Last night I watched 1 hour of CW Seed on my Apple TV that consumed 6 GB of data, suggesting to me that stream is UHD quality rather than HD and I don’t see a way to control the quality in the CW Seed app.

If you only have one video stream in a house, 11 hours is probably enough, but if you increase that to two streams, you are down to 5 hours per day per stream and that is not hard to exceed, particularly if you unknowingly watch some video in 4K. If you stream all video at 4K you can only watch a little over 4 hours per day, which is tight for one stream, and impossible for two.

You can control the quality of the video streams for some services, but you have to do so per application/service. For example, you can configure Netflix to only stream at Standard quality, but who wants to do that if they spent money on a HD TV? And, if you use more than one app, as many do with say Disney+ or Amazon Prime, you might not be able to change the video quality or you will have to spend a lot of time changing settings in indivdiual apps. And again… you spent good money on a high quality TV, you rightly expect to be able to see the best video!

Comcast does provide an unlimited plan for an additional $50 per month. The current cap appears intended to drive more, if not most, home owners to pay that $50 more per month. (I personally don’t do online gaming, but I bet that can consume a significant amount of data per month). In my case, Comcast kindly increased our bandwidth to 100 Mbps at no additional cost…. but that’s not entirely true since I now appear to be in the position of having to pay $50 more per month!

Blowing Past The Comcast Cap

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 11:34:00 -0400

I continue to monitor my home Internet data usage closely since receiving notice from Comcast that we are near the 1024 GB monthly cap. I enabled Traffic Stats on my home router so that I can compare that to Comcast’s usage meter. Traffic stats is an approximation because it doesn’t only show traffic coming in from the Internet but also traffic within my home network, but I think it can give me an indication of whether Comcast’s usage meter is accurate. (If caps are going to be a thing, Home Routers need a feature that shows download and upload traffic to the Internet.)

After the first day, it seems the Comcast usage meter is accurate. If that is true, somehow we doubled our Internet data usage and the only thing I know changed is that our bandwidth jumped to 100 Mbps in the last month. The usage meter only shows data going back to June, so it looks to me like Comcast just started enforcing this data cap in our area, probably coinciding with the increase to 100 Mbps. Something doesn’t feel right, my usage as around 775 GB per month and with no other change other than the bandwidth increase I don’t know what we have been doing differently. It’s as if Netflix detected I have more bandwidth and decided on its own to use it and I don’t see an option to throttle it back to 1080 or 720.

The data cap is annoying, and frankly I think the lack in detail in Comcast’s reporting is a problem that needs to be addressed by regulation. If you have a cap you can’t just report a monthly total, I think you have to at least show daily usage. Given that increase in streaming providers supporting 4K video, 1024 GB (1 TB) per month is really not enough.

Comcast will be happy to remove the cap if I pay them $50 more per month. I will probably end up paying that for the benefit of not needing to constantly monitor data usage.

The Truth About Greatness

Mon, 16 Dec 2019 10:43:07 -0400

The campaign slogan for Donald Trump was Make America Great Again, iconized by red hats. We ought to have substantive conversation about what is America and how it might be great, but we don’t.

Here is a problem, greatness is not something one can self-declare. My constantly saying that I am great does not make me so, that makes me arrogant. Greatness is only determined by people other than oneself, and the same is true for countries. This is something Americans don’t seem to understand, but it is a truth.

Unfortunately, I think most people add the words “for me” to the end of MAGA, which ironically is the exact opposite to a quote from a Democrat President, John F. Kennedy. A quote that frankly conservatives should recognize as their own rather than a liberal’s. Please think about that when you complain about entitlement.

We ought to aspire to greatness, but that aspiration needs to be framed in the understanding of how greatness is truly determined.

Comcast Scrooge

Sun, 15 Dec 2019 13:55:50 -0400

Today I received an email from Comcast informing me that we have consumed 90% of our 1 TB data alotment for the month. While I had been vaguely aware that Comcast has data caps, I had not encountered an issue with it until today.

What I find odd is that we have been averaging about 650 GB of data per month, and now mid-month Comcast is saying we have already consumed about 900 GB? What changed? Frankly, it doesn’t make sense.

Coincidentally, I noticed that mid last month our Internet download speed increased from around 70 mbps to 100 mbps. There seems to be a relationship between the increase in our bandwidth and how much Comcast claims we are now using. I didn’t ask for the bandwidth increase. I am wondering whether now that our speed is faster the streaming services we use have flipped over to higher data rate video streaming than we’ve been using previously?

What is frustrating is that the data usage meter Comcast provides is just a total consumption per month, it doesn’t show me a per day or even per week breakdown. In fact, I don’t know how I have any way to confirm that what Comcast is claiming I am consuming is what I am actually using!

Comcast provides 2 months of “free” data overage before they will start charging me $10 for each 50 GB we go over the cap per month, so I don’t have to do anything drastic right now. Right now I don’t even know how to begin to fight this thing, I am going to have to study the topic and see if there is something that I can implement on my end to show how much data we actually do consume per month.

Dictatorship It Is

Tue, 10 Dec 2019 11:50:26 -0400

Today electing a president is not about issues, nor is it about changing minds, nor is it about who looks better and sounds better of TV. The election is not about a personal popularity contest. Electing a president is now simply about opposition. In short, there is no middle ground just as the middle class has grown increasingly small.

If you identify Republican you are likely going to only vote for Republicans because you think all Democrats are crazy and will destroy the country. Likewise, if you identify Democrat you will only vote Democrat. If you really don’t like your candidate you will not vote, or write in Mickey Mouse rather than cast a vote for the opposing party.

The consequence is that the candidates only say what their “base” wants to hear, and it doesn’t even matter of what is said is true. Candidates don’t really try to change people’s minds. In this environment, do we really need debates? Worse, there is little for few remaing, truly “independent” voters to hear, and frankly doing a bunch of research is too much work for the average voter. Increasing numbers of these disenfranchised voters will simply sit out.

Unfortunately, I think Democrats think the lesson learned from 2016 is to focus on their base and ignore the middle because they think there are more liberal/progressives voters than conservative, Republicans, or independents. An extreme shift left is viewed by their opposition as further evidence of crazy Democrats.

The authors of the U.S. Constitution foresaw this type of fanaticism that democracy enables and thus created a structure to prevent it. Unfortunately, over time political idealogies have trumped preservation of the Republic concentrating more power within the Presidency. A party aligned, rubber stamping Congress and Supreme Court is a defacto dictatorship and this is effectly today’s U.S. government.

A New Slice Of Raspberry Pi

Sat, 23 Nov 2019 23:18:00 -0400

I bought the Raspberry Pi4 this past week and I’ve installed it in a Flirc Raspberry Pi4 case. Beside the fact that the Flirc case looks really nice, the case provides passive cooling of the CPU. Reviews of the Pi4 when it first released indicated it ran hot enough under load to hit the 82’C threshold that causes the CPU speed to throttle down. The Raspberry Pi Foundation as released a firmware update that improves cooling and so far with the firmware and the Flirc case the top temp I’ve seen is 44’C.

The reason why the Raspberry Pi4 runs hotter is that it has a faster ARM Cortex-A72 CPU processor, as much as 4 GB of RAM, and a USB-C power supply. I am using daenerys (my name for this computer) to type this post and I am finding it surprisingly useful for web applications. Gmail, with its heavy use of Javascript is unbearable in older models, but is actually usable on the Pi4.

For a little under $100, the Pi4 is defintely worth being a child’s first computer. I think it can also be a very servicable Linux server, running Raspbian Buster Lite, a variant of Debian Buster, for home projects.

Right now I don’t any plans for daenerys but I’ll be keeping my eyes open for any opportunities. Daenerys is my fifth Raspberry Pi. The first model I bought was the Pi2, which I have connected to a seven inch screen and serves a desk clock that shows my schedule, CNN newsfeed, current weather, and four day weather forcase. I have a Pi3 running Tiddlyserver that I am using to for a family wiki, and another running Taiga, which is a project management app. I also have a Pi Zero W that use to host a portable copy of the family wiki.

American Idol

Fri, 15 Nov 2019 13:08:00 -0400

President Trump simply believes that he as president cannot commit a crime. He believes that a president is above the law. Trump’s belief is the logical conclusion of decades of expansion of presidential powers that started with Vietnam.

How far have we fallen? At the beginning of my life President Nixon resigned before he was impeached because he broke the law. Nixon knew he would be impeached because he knew and accepted that Americans did not believe a President was above the law. We now have President Trump who believes that more Americans now accept that a President is above the law and believes that Americans today find loyalty to him and loyalty to party more important than loyalty to the Republic.

All presidents in my life time have desired more power. The real problem has been Congress' abdication of it’s prime constitutional responsibility to be a check on the presidency. At root of this abdication is the transformation of Congress as representative of all U.S. citizens to only representative of the majority party. Rather than upholding and defending the U.S. Constitution, Congress has become all about enabling and implementing a Republican or Democrat ideology.

What I find ironic is that I think the core belief of conservatism is that “abosolute power corrupts absolutely” and yet Republican conservatives have been the prime architects of the expansion of powers to the president. Conservatives should be truly republican but do not act like it, but rather tend to act more as anarchists.

Worst of all is that too many U.S. citizens do not care that this is happening! Too many people do not know the Constitution nor appreciate the fundamental reasons for why the U.S. form of republican democracy was designed and adopted. These people pledge allegiance to a flag as if the flag is the thing rather than a symbol of the real thing, our way of life enabled by the Constitution.

What has been taking place over the course of my life time is the ascendency of a U.S. monarchy or dictatorship under the veneer of the Presidency. If you are truly a U.S. patriot your loyalty should be to the “Republic for which it stands”, which means the Constitution that defines the republic.

Another Goat On The Northside

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 09:45:20 -0400

Joe Maddon will not be the manager of the Chicago Cubs next year and that is not a surprise given they did not meet expectations this year. In a world where people both have too high and too low expectations for professional sport coaches and managers, the common playbook front offices take when teams under-perform is to fire the manager.

Yes, change is needed, and yes, it is easier to fire one person, the manager, and not the team. But, Maddon is not the reason why the Cubs did not make the playoffs. First, and foremost the reason is that Cub players did not do their job. The same players who once ground out at bats in 2016 where doing nothing more than swing for the fences all this year. Second, the Cubs lineup is nothing but the same style hitter, with no diversity on the bench or apparently in the farm system, and the talent, that’s on the Theo Epstein and the front office.

Frankly, up until this point, what Epstein and the front office have done is succeed with the easy decisions and fail at the hard decisions. How hard is it to tank year after year and stock pile on draft picks that every talent scout in America says is a good bet? When Maddon became available, was it really hard to quickly decide to drop Ricky Renteria and sign Maddon?

Be careful for what you ask for, you just might get it. Now Epstein has to make one of the most important decisions of his tenure, who to hire to replace the manager that guided your team to the first World Series in 108 years. David Ross might be a good guy in the clubhouse, but will he have the players attention any more than Maddon? Will Joe Girardi be too hard? Who Epstein hires is crucial towards getting the most out of all the the talented players that are now starting to enter the end of their contracts.

Worse of all, the attention on hiring the next manager redirects attention away from the real heavy lifting of the offseason, which is to make changes to the lineup so that you get more professional at bats. Changing the lineup means moving one of the core players who won the World Series, which is something Epstein has refused to do to date. If you only replace the manager and keep everything else the same, why should we expect a different result?

On Saturday Epstein announced that Maddon will not be returning. If next year is no better, who will be the scapegoat then? You can’t fire the entire team.

The Lovable Losers Of My Youth

Fri, 27 Sep 2019 09:14:40 -0400

The common denominator for all my favorite professional sports teams is that they were losers during my childhood. The Green Bay Packers were the siberia of the NFL during the 70s and 80s until Reggie White started playing for them in 1993 and three years later won the Super Bowl. Ever since 1993 the Packers have been at or near the top of the NFL.

The Chicago Cubs were the epitome of “lovable losers” for a century. Even though the Cubs flirted with chances to make it to the World Series in 1984, 1989, and 2003 but it hasn’t been until the last five years that they have consistently been at or near the top of the league, and you know they won it all in 2016.

Like the Green Bay Packers, the Detroit Red Wings were also once the dominant team in the NHL but during the 70s and 80s they were known as the “dead Wings.” The owners had to give away cars to get people to come to their games. In 1997 the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup, and of my favorite teams they have won more championships in my life time, winning again in 1998, 2002, and 2008. Since the calendar turned to the 2010s the Wings have been in a rebuilding phase.

Finally, the Detroit Pistons where also perenial losers during my childhood but where the first of my faves that I witnessed winning a championship in 1989, and again in 1990 and 2004. Frankly, the championship they won in 2004 is one of the most gratifying because nobody really expected it and they upset the perenial champion Los Angeles Lakers. Like the Red Wings, the Pistons are rebuilding but apppear to be nearing returning to the tops of their league sooner than the Wings.

Over my life time I’ve seen the long road it takes to get from basement to top floor of a professional sports league. I’ve seen how it takes for a team to learn how to be a champion, particularly from the Red Wings who had huge playoff failures after being the best team in their league the entire season.

Of all my favorite teams, the Cubs have the most talent and I expect will have chances to win championships again in the foreseeable future. The MLB’s farm system enables a franchise to have more control over its future if they have the right leadership. The NHL is similar, which is why theirs and the MLB front offices have such a huge influence on their long term success, much more than in the NFL and NBA that seems to depend much more on health and luck.

I am dissappointed that the Chicago Cubs will not make the playoffs this year. I will always love the Cubbies, win or lose, but I much better like where they are now, a very good team that can disappoint than a bad team that surprises.

Definition of Insanity

Mon, 09 Sep 2019 11:17:00 -0400

Home Run hitting is vulnerable to breaking down. Combine that fact with an aging starting rotation and an inconsistent bullpen and you have a summary of the Chicago Cub’s last two seasons.

The Cubs currently have 5 batters with 20 or more home runs, and one more, Jason Heyward at 19. No Cubs hitter has a batting average of .300 or better, Anthony Rizzo is hitting .286. Even if you add Ben Zobrist to the mix, the Cubs lineup is too much the same making it easy to defend.

I understand the resistance in parting ways with the talent that got you the World Series three years ago, but I think it should be clear now that unless there are some diferent players in the lineup next year, you are going to end up with the same result.

Many will put blame on the manager, but he is not the person responsible for the roster, that lies with the front office. You clearly see a bias towards a single style of player that is good but not diverse enough, and that really doesn’t give Madden many options to change things up.

Ownership has some hard decisions to make during the off season. It’s easy to decide whether or not to spend money, it is much harder to decide whether the people running your team know how to change and if you do replace them, with whom?

I expect the Cubs to replace Madden because that is the easy choice that just about every team makes at this point. A different leadership style might spark a different emotional result, but it won’t change how teams pitch to the Cubs.

Chromecast Overheating

Sat, 24 Aug 2019 17:27:21 -0400

I’ve been using Chromecast ever since Google first started selling them, and upgraded to the Ultras when they became available. One is attached to each of our two TVs, however I also have an Apple TV connected to the basement TV. I primarily use the Apple TV because I find the apps are better, for example the MLB app has a catch up feature only available on Apple TV.

I do occasionally stream ball games using the Chromecast on the Living Room TV but it has he annoying behavior of performance degrading after a couple hours of streaming. All of a sudden what I am watching starts stuttering and becomes unwatchable.

I don’t have solid evidence, but I suspect the Chromecast is overheating to the point after a few hours the performance suffers. The OS on the device might be throttling down performance to protect the CPU. The Chromecast is very hot when I touch it. I probably should get an HDMI extension to move it further away from the back of the TV.

Given my experience, if someone is in the market for a streaming video device I recommend the Apple TV unless you find the price prohibitive. I think the UI is good and it has had solid performance.

Go Cubs Go

Sat, 17 Aug 2019 14:33:34 -0400

The Chicago Cubs have one of the best home records and one of the worst road records, and they have the best run differential in their division. People seem to be scratching their head over how the same team can be so good at home and so bad on the road. The problem is not the hitting, although they could be more consistent. To me the problem is the bullpen, they are giving up too many runs in the 6 thru 9th innings. Nobody in the pen is reliable.

Twenty years ago the bullpen wasn’t so important because starting pitchers pitched more innings and more often completed games. Now, starting pitchers are only expected to pitch six innings and that means you got have more pitching than ever before.

The Cubs overall pitching staff is not good enough. You might see an uptick in performance if they make the playoffs because the starters tend to go longer and you tend to narrow the pen down to a handful of pitchers, but I don’t expect the Cubs to get beyond be first round if they do make the playoffs.

I don’t know what specific things the Cubs need to do for next year. I don’t think the problem is with the managing or coaching, it seems to point to the talent in pitching. Lester and Hamel will be a year older and there doesn’t appear to be any replacements coming from the minors. The window on the talent the Cubs do have is getting smaller and it will be a shame if they only make it to one World Series.

On Our Twenty Third Wedding Anniversary

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 10:58:00 -0400

Each year we try to celebrate our wedding anniversary on vacation to spend time together. This year we traveled to Marquette, Michigan, stayed at the Landmark Inn, took a tour of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Munising, and then on our way back spent an evening at Headlands International Dark Sky Park near Mackinaw City.

Here are pictures that we took during the trip:

I defintely recommend all three venues. Pictured Rocks might be the closest thing I’ve seen to the Grand Canyon east of the Mississippi. The Dark Sky Park is a great place for star gazing, just be sure the moon isn’t too bright and you have clear skies.

The Risk Of Identifying As A Platform

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 11:50:00 -0400

In a YouTube video recently posted, Bill Gates said something along the line of his greatest failure was to not lead Microsoft to produce a mobile operating system that would have been as successful as Android.

I had an up front view of Microsoft’s mobile operating systems in the early 2000s and for Microsoft to create an Android would have required something akin to a labotomy. The Microsoft of the early 2000s saw itself as a platform company, that platform being Windows, and as a consequence, its prime objective was to protect the platform because to do so was to protect its existence.

To make something like Android Microsoft would have had to be willing to create a new platform rather than try to extend a desktop platform to mobile, which was doomed for failure. Microsoft could not fathom creating a second platform because to do so, in their mind, was to put Windows at risk. (Microsoft also applied the same thinking to the Internet.)

In my opinion the most important thing Satya Nadella did when we took over Microsoft is return to Microsoft’s roots as a software developer and move away from identifying itself as a platform company. As a software developer Microsoft does not see it’s entire existence depending on Windows, which allows it to embrace other platforms such a making a robust version of Microsoft Office for iOS and Android and even to integrate Linux with Windows.

Had Microsoft not got drunk on the Windows platform, starting with Windows 95, it might have been willing to embrace the Internet and mobile more fully and maintained itself as, in Bill Gate’s words, “the” leading software company rather than “a” leading software company. It’s easy to get drunk on the amount of money successful platforms provide and appear to provide forever.

Platforms are an institution, and most institutions naturally expend tremendous effort on self preservation. In my opinion the only way a platform company can truly exist over time is by being willing to put it’s current platforms at risk of extinction through the creation of more viable future platforms. In my opinion some people in Google know this and that appears to be the reason why they are quiently working on Fuchsia but only time will tell whether this insight is fully embraced by those who are running the company.

For A President, Congress Is The Law

Wed, 29 May 2019 20:59:24 -0400

I wonder, if the Republicans controlled the House, whether there would already be an impreachment inquiry open. Mueller served the role as investigator, collecting evidence and documenting his findings. The Constitution gives the House the job of prosecuting attorney (not the Attorney General) in determining whether to charge the President with a crime, which for the President has the unique label of impreachment.

A Republican inquiry would review the evidence, formally declare there is none to bring charges, and then the case is closed. Until the House says it is closed, the case is not closed no matter what Trump or Barr says. That is the Constitution.

To uphold their oath to the Constitution, Democrats in the House must open the impeachment inquiry and determine whether or not to vote articles of impeachment. They must be willing to take the political risk, if that exists, to fulfill their role in our government. It’s not about politics, it’s about the rule of law.

In fact, I think Congress should produce new presidential special consule legislation that states that all presidential special consule investigations require an impeachment inquiry to formalize the conclusions of the investigation.

If the criminal justice system cannot bring charges against a sitting president then Congress has to take serious this responsibility. That is unless Congress thinks the President really is above the law.

A Crostini Meltdown

Sun, 12 May 2019 14:58:16 -0400

The Crostini Linux containers on my Google Pixelbook melted down after I upgraded the Pixelbook to the stable release of Chrome OS 74, a reminder that Linux Apps (Crostini) is very much in beta.

I’ve written the details of what occurred, the trigger seems to be that I had two containers. After Chrome OS 74 installs and you launch a container, such as by starting the Terminal app, you see a message telling you that the Linux apps is being upgraded and the app you wish to run will load after the upgrade completes.

I saw the message for the primary container, named penguin, and everything worked as planned. The meltdown began when I started Gnome Terminal, which was in the second container, the one in which I was running Docker. The upgrade message appeared but the upgrade did not seem to complete. After letting it run for an hour, which was much longer than the prior upgrade, I restarted the Pixelbook, and either that or the upgrade rendered the container usable.

From here a few attempts to fix the problem cascaded the meltdown to primary container too. My attempts to re-build and restore the primary container from a backup failed and I am left to re-building from scratch. Not totally awful given that I had no real data in either container, just apps with a bit of data synced to a cloud or github.

I am not entirely sure what happened. I might have been too impatient and the second container may have upgraded had I just let it run. Or, it might be that running Docker in the second container created problems.

The moral of this blog post is that even if you are sticking to the Chrome OS stable channel, Linux Apps (Crostini) is still in beta and thus breakage can and will occur.

Migrating To A New iPad

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 17:07:53 -0400

I got a new iPad Mini for my birthday. It is noticeably faster than the Mini 4 and I am happy to be able to use the Apple Pencil with it. I have found that GoodNotes can be configured for vertical scrolling rather than horizontal so it best approximates the Newton notepad.

The setup process for moving from one iPad to another is pretty neat. It automatically detects the old nearby iPad and establishes a connection to it by scanning a barcode with the camera. All the settings transfer and apps restore from a recent backup. Not all app settings, particularly logins, restore so I am finding that I have to check each app individually.

Breaking And Fixing Things

Thu, 18 Apr 2019 16:16:00 -0400

I have been having fun breaking and fixing my wiki over the last several days, and in the process learned more about wiki. Wiki is written in nodejs and there is a wiki-server and a wiki-client along with several plugins. My adventures began when an update was made to wiki-client that broke the ability to use HTML forms in a wiki page. A fix was made to wiki-client that resolved the problem but my server was not getting the update.

It appears that somewhere along the line I managed to install wiki in two different directories on my server. The install from which I was running wiki was not updating when I ran npm install -g wiki and it took me a while to figure out how to run the global install instance of wiki that I was updating.

Today I removed the “second” installation but now I have to provide the full path to the correct, current, installation of wiki. When I just run wiki it tries to run it from a directory in which it is no longer located. I must have an alias or script pointing it in that direction but for now I haven’t figured it out.

Anyway, I now have the current verison of wiki-client so I can now fill in html forms, one of which is for a search plugin that now appears to be broken. Oy vey! Search works on a older installation on my Pixelbook, but the new version/current version is not working.

At least I did manage to get the graphviz plugin installed (you can see it in action on this page), figuring out how to set up myself as an admin user to do the installation took time to suss out.

Breaking and fixing things is a important part of the learning process when learning software.

Journalism Yes, Media No

Tue, 02 Apr 2019 12:53:28 -0400

I have been reading Dave Winer’s writing for a long time, and a common theme of his writing is journalism. My translation of what he has been saying is that news has become a platform, and as such anyone can do it, and those who are employed as journalists need to shift from being gatekeepers to being participants. True platforms route around gatekeepers.

The reason why this message is not well received by journalists is obvious, it’s because what they hear is that you no longer have a job. Staying employed is important to these people and you cannot blame them because it is how they support their families.

When the constitution was written people like Benjamin Franklin viewed journalism as a vocation because frankly the idea of a “job” didn’t really exist. When vocations became professions, a shift in priorities took place, with maintaining employment moving to the top. When journalism transformed to media thanks to corporate consolidation, the move to journalism being about money became complete.

The honest question that has been avoided ever since is, is what we have, journalism as media to make profits, consistent with the “fourth estate” established by the First Amendment? If the prime objective of the Consitution, of which the First Amendment is a part, is to be the United in the United States of America, then today’s media is not that which the first amendment refers to because there is more profits generated from disunity than unity.

Citizens instinctively know that the profits that corporate ownership demands is corupting, and therefore they do not trust media because they know there is a bias towards making money over telling truth.

Of course Fox News is giving their viewers what they want to hear, that is how they make money! Of course MSNBC is giving their viewers what they want to hear, that is how they make money! Of course the New York Times is giving their readers what they want to red, that is how they make money!

On and on it goes. It is another example of how hyper capitalism is destroying republican democracy and thus destroying our country.

Testing Micro.blog Wordpress Export

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 17:02:36 -0400

In December micro.blog stopped exporting my site to Github, a consequence of their change from jekyll to hugo as the CMS. We do have manual ways to export a site, one is to download an export file as a Wordpress export and the other is to generate an archive in a “blog archive format” that doesn’t appear to be well documented. Manton wrote a post proposing the format in 2017, but I have not found anything else so it doesn’t appear that format is useful to anyone other than programmers.

An export is only as good as the ability to import, so I decided to create a local install of Wordpress on my Pixelbook using Docker and then try importing the Wordpress export. The good news is that the import was successful. The bad news is that the export file retains markdown that is not converted to HTML so none of the links in the posts appear correctly. We either need the micro.blog export process to convert to HTML or some way for the import process to convert markdown to HTML.

Update: I was directed to install the JP Markdown plug in to my site, which I did and then did a wipe and re-import and the good news is that with it installed all the markdown formating is appearing on the local Wordpress site.

Living The Dream

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 22:24:19 -0400

I’ve had the same reaction to Howard Schultz’s comment about the American Dream as Dave. When I was growing up the American Dream was equated to the Middle Class, by which I mean adults aspired to having a comfortable life and dreamt of a better life for their children.

While I do agree with Schultz in that another way to describe the American Dream is to be successful, I think the biggest problem is measuring success by wealth. The focus on wealth in America is allowing us to accept the huge income inequality that exists in our country.

For me, Schultz implying that Elizabeth Warren and others want to punish him and others for being successful is totally wrong. What we want is for the very wealthy people to contribute a share to society commensurate with their ability.

Schultz might want to put on an indepedent label, but his ideology is conservative Republican selling himself as a Democrat Ross Perot.

Progress Requires Wrong AND Right

Wed, 12 Dec 2018 13:59:38 -0400

Progress cannot happen amongst people who are unwilling to accept they could be wrong. The scientific method is based on the truth that ideas, hypothesis, can be wrong and hence requires proof of hypothesis that is peer reviewed and consensed as being right or most likely right. Proofs are not only facts but also consensed arguments of what is most likely right. Built in to science is acceptance that what may be considered a proven correct hypothesis today could be proven incorrect hypothesis tomorrow and that is considered to be progress.

Milestone Achieved

Tue, 04 Dec 2018 10:06:51 -0400

Something momentus has happened. If you click On This Day up above you will see posts that were not written today but on this day, last year, when I flipped the bit and started blogging mostly here rather than over there.

I am excited to have On This Day finally fulfill its purpose.

Planting A Garden

Fri, 30 Nov 2018 19:37:46 -0400

A few weeks ago I read The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral by Mike Caulfield and it really resonated with me. In my mind almost all of what I write on the web is part of my own garden, even though I do that writing using blogging tools that are more stream than garden.

One thing that I would add to idea of a garden or stream is structure. I personally like drilling down into a topic, which is why ever since I first experienced hyperlinks and the web it clicked. My affinity toward structure is also why I find outlines appealing.

Chronology (reverse), archives, and permalinks are structures of blogs that I think distinguish it technologically from “regular” web sites. The informal personal voice of blogs is what distinguishes the blog writing style from other writing styles you see on the web.

And yet, blogs writing is also point in time. One writes a blog post, it enters the stream, and beyond perhaps that first day one rarely, if ever, edits or adds to a blog post.

The ongoing revision of a piece of writing is fundamentally what I think Caulfield means by “the garden.” With that paradigm, I created two “projects”, the first being a web page in which I originally wrote about which Chromebook I was going to buy and then continually revised that page as I learned more up until I made my decision. The second project is a new page in which I am recording my experience with using the Pixelbook.

In both instances I created and maintained those pages using jekyll and offline tools like Drafts and Typora, which I find works very well. However, it feels that a wiki is more in tune with the garden concept which is why I have been dabbling with wikis.

Right now, this whole thing is work in progress. I think I favor the offline ability I have with my jekyll and Netlify set up versus in browser editing required by DokuWiki.

Traveling Light

Fri, 02 Nov 2018 12:08:36 -0400

I’ve been traveling over the past week, visiting family and friends throughout Michigan and Wisconsin. This morning I am packing up to depart on the next leg of my trip and struck by how few bags I have on this trip.

Ten years ago when I made this trip I packed one or two plastic bins for power cords, surge protectors, WiFi access points and more. I may have had a few bags for computers and then my regular luggage.

Now, all of my electronics that includes one notebook computer, two tablets, and their associated cords all fit in to one backpack. I have on suitecase and that is it. Obviously, the electronics that I carry is much smaller than ten years ago, but I am also helped by updated hotels with plenty of power outlets and WiFi. No more hunting around and moving furniture to find an available outlet.

Still Standing

Sat, 13 Oct 2018 12:09:06 -0400

We saw Elton John last night for the first and last time, as this is his farewell tour and I believe it to be true. The show was fantastic, particularly when you consider that Elton is 71 years old. He played for a little over two and a half hours, with no intermission. After each song he would stand up, acknowledge the crowd as he did a circle around the piano seat, take a drink of water, sit down and launch into another song.

I’ve never seen a musical act with so much percussion. Two full drum sets, three drummers, including tympani, bells, and tambourine. The dude playing the tambourine, which was well miced, got more video time than the guitars. The act, however, had no cowbell.

Finally, a couple notes on Little Caesar’s Arena. It was the first concert that we attended at LCA. In an email the day before we were told the arena would open at 6:30 PM and encouraged people to come early, Elton was starting promptly at 8 PM. The arena didn’t open until 7 PM, which was very annoying.

We had seats in the upper bowl, which frankly were the cheapest seats. The climb to the seats in the upper bowl is pretty steep, and I felt bad for some of thr elderly and disabled who made the climb.

More Thoughts About The Google Pixel Slate

Thu, 11 Oct 2018 15:40:29 -0400

Google classifies the Pixel Slate as a Tablet with Google Assistant. Based on my definition of tablets, the Slate is not a tablet, it is a 2-in-1. If you stick to Google’s view of it as a tablet then I stand by my initial impression that the Slate could be DOA.

My concerns about it are driven by the total cost of ownership. I start with the 8 GB, 64 GB, Intel Core M model that costs $799, and then add a keyboard, either the Google keyboard that costs $199 or the Brydge G-Type that costs $159, making the minimum total cost $958; throw in the pen and that is just north of $1,000. For my money I much rather buy the Pixelbook or any one of the newer Chromebooks than pay $1000 for the Slate 2-in-1. Arguably the Surface Pro 6 is a better option, and it would definitely be better for me because I know I can use a pen with OneNote.

The Slate does look like a nice piece of hardware, and if you want Android and Linux apps on a 2-in-1 it’s your only viable option, but is that option more appealing than an iPad Pro? Particularly a newer, larger screen, same form factor, smaller bezel iPad Pro? I am skeptical.

My Definition Of A Tablet

Thu, 11 Oct 2018 15:23:17 -0400

I do not think we should define a tablet as a screen without a keyboard, instead a tablet ought to be defined by how it is most commonly used, by which I mean you mostly use it in portrait orientation like one would a notepad of paper or a book.

In my opinion, a tablet has at least a 7-inch screen and is comfortable to hold and use for long periods of time with the device in a portriat orientation. Consequently devices that claim to be a tablet that have a 12-inch or larger screen are not really tablets, they really fall into a tweener (with notebooks), 2-in-1 category.

Based on how I use my iPad Pro 10.5, it is more a 2-in-1 because it is mostly used in landscape or when in portraint lying on a desk. By my defintion the only true tablets that I own are the iPad Mini 4 and the Nexus 9. The iPad and it’s 9.7-inch screen is probably the largest screen size for a tablet.

My tablet use case definition might account for why tablets have not really overwhelmed the market. Apple had great initial success with the iPad, but sales started to taper off until the introduced the Pro line and significantly decreased the price of the regular iPad. The Pro line really fills the 2-in-1 market, while the lower price iPad has gained sales from holdouts who have wanted one the past but found them too expensive.

Further, by my defintion, the most successful tablet maker is likely Amazon with their cheap 7-inch and 8-inch tablets.

Changes Google Needs To Make

Wed, 10 Oct 2018 09:46:35 -0400

I have a hard time swallowing the $150 price increase between the Google Pixel 2 and the Pixel 3. I know Google can set prices the market will bear, but when I look at the difference I ask myself is the price increase due to higher costs or a desire for a higher profit margin?

Just about every Android phone that I have owned, from the original T-Mobile G1 to my current Pixel 2, has been either a Nexus or Made by Google phone because I value having the pure version of Android that is directly and quickly updated by Google. Having suffered during my Windows Mobile days of delayed software updates due to OEM timelines, I have tried to avoid such situations.

I want to keep using Pixel phones, Google seems to want to be in the premium priced smartphone market. What can be done? Google can follow Apple’s lead into that premium market by doing the following:

Continue to support older Pixel phones for several more future releases of Android. Google forced me to by a Pixel 2 because it announced Android 9 will not support the Nexus 6P, which I previously owned. In short Google should not continue only providing two operating system upgrades for their Pixel phones. The latest version of iOS supports five generations of iPhones and Android needs to do the same for Pixel phones.
Keep selling at least two generations of Pixel phones and lower the price of the older generation. Right now the Pixel 2 is still available at the Google Store, but for how long? I think Google needs to keep selling the Pixel 2 until it announces the Pixel 4, which then builds in a lower priced Pixel.

It seems clear to me that smartphone prices have gone up across the board because Apple increased the price of the iPhone. I don’t like the iPhone prices either, but there is one big difference today between iPhone and Pixel. The iPhone you buy today will very likely be able to run the version of iOS released four years from now, so you don’t need to buy a new iPhone in two years, you cannot say the same thing about Pixel.

The combination of the $150 price increase, Apple’s practice to support older models of iPhones and selling older models at lower prices has me considering for the first time a switch to iPhone. I value the ability to receive updates direct from the source of the operating system.

I prefer Android smartphones and I don’t want to switch, so I hope Google will make the changes I describe above. I also need to take a closer look at Android One, which may clean Android with updates from Google at a lower price. The bottom line is that Googe needs to know there is more to providing a premium phone than a price increase, and paying $800 for a phone that will only get operating system upgrades for two years makes no sense.

Civics Lesson

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 11:23:18 -0400

First, one needs to learn what history says it means to be an American. Next, one needs to decide what they believe it means to be an American. How consistent are your beliefs with history?

Next, one needs to determine what each political party claims it stands for and challenge the assumptions for how those claims are consistent with being an American and for progress.

Of course, the questions of whether progress is needed, desired, and how it looks needs to be decided, ultimately by each individual.

Overtime Baseball

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 11:12:28 -0400

The Cubs and Brewers are playing game 163 starting at 1 PM EST to determine who wins the NL Central division and who will have the best record in the National League and with it home field advantage through the NL portion of the playoffs.

On paper the game appears to come down to momentum versus experience. The Brewers have won seven straight to finish the season and force this game, while the Cubs have been in the playoffs the last three years and won the world series in 2016.

For me the Cub’s chances to win the game weigh heavily on Quintana’s ability to keep Lorenzo Cain off the bases so that he can pitch around Yelich. Cub’s need to hit and score runs early as the Brewer’s bullpen is superior and this most likely will turn in to a bullpen game early. The Brewer’s bullpen enables them to follow the same formula as the Royals did when they had their playoff runs.

Anxious to see how this turns out. While the Cubs at worse will end up with the second-best record in the NL, they go in to playoffs as the weakest team due to injury and the grind of playing on 40 of 41 days to end the season. In some ways this is a must win just to get a few days off, but I don’t think Maddon will manage in such a manner.

They Liked His Anger

Fri, 28 Sep 2018 15:26:41 -0400

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s recommendation for a full vote on Kavanaugh demonstrates the value of diversity. All the Republicans on the committee are men who identified with Kavanaugh’s anger. Lindsey Graham seemed to channel it the most. In that moment it no longer mattered whether Kavanaugh is qualified for the job (I don’t think he is) or guilty of sexual assault because by god they like the man just because he got pissed off! And that too is how we end up with Trump as President because enough voters liked him and didn’t care about his ability to actually do the job.

Senators have a constitutional responsibility to determine whether a person is competent to be a Supreme Court justice and not just like the candidates. The Senators who supported Kavanaugh have failed their duty.

Keep An Eye On The Watch

Sat, 15 Sep 2018 17:55:34 -0400

I think the smart watch market is fascinating. On one hand you have Apple, with one design and software innovation and on the other hand you have a multitude of watch designers producing a variety of different looking watches at different price points using comparatively mediocre Wear OS. It also highlights the advantage of designing your own chips because Wear OS has been constrained by slow chip development by Qualcomm.

BTW, if one is in the market for a Wear OS watch, wait until when watches with the new chips release later this year, early next. I know a number of new watches are being released to coincide with the new version of Wear OS coming next month, but I expect the new chip to provide better battery life and processing for the future.

The Right To Not Be Forgotten

Mon, 10 Sep 2018 16:51:56 -0400

Dave Winer has been writing about owning and archiving what one writes and publishes on the web for a very long time. I think the heart of the matter is that if one is to think of the web as a library there has to be a mechanism for it to be long-lived.

In other words, permanence. The interesting thing is that many people dislike the web’s permanence, and the European Union even has a law in place intended to enable people to disrupt that permanence.

If you do see the value, however, there needs to be permanent access to what is written and a way to get to it. Permanently storing files is a whole lot easier than permanent access.

Dave currently thinks Github may be as good as anything given that it is owned by Microsoft, a company one expects will be around for a while Still, given that it is a corporate asset, Github exists at the pleasure of Microsoft and not the public.

To Dave’s point, one thing I like about micro.blog is its support for Github. Micro.blog writes a copy of both the source markdown and the rendered HTML of what I write here to Github, and that provides one degree of backup. However, it gets even better because I use git to maintain a clone of that repository on my local computers, which provides me an easy backup copy of what I write on a computer I own.

The markdown is source for jekyll, which itself is an open source blog platform, and that source boils down to plain text files. BTW, jekyll itself works in this manner with Github pages which is good enough for many people, but I happen to like social layer and community that micro.blog provides.

Real Respect Not Displays

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 17:24:56 -0400

I don’t get the mindset of conservatives. They say things like they want small government and want government out of people’s lives and yet they want to dictate their beliefs to people with whom they disagree.

If America is about liberty, then one expressing that liberty by protesting is in fact a high form of patriotism.

Second, people need to understand that public displays of patriotism, which is what standing during a national anthem is, is done by non-democratic countries too. Such displays are not uniquely American. See above for what is uniquely American.

Finally, in my upbringing kneeling is a sign of reverence. One can make the argument that kneeling is even a higher display of respect than standing. If Colin and the other NFL players did something like turn their back, or lie down, or start break dancing THAT would be disrespectful.

Worse, what is most disrespectful to veterans is not voting. Actively working to prevent citizens from voting. Not challenging the President when he sends our military in to conflict. And not demanding that Congress uphold its constitutional responsibility to declare war. Wouldn’t making sure every vet gets the physical and mental health care they need be a true sign of respect? What is more respectful, actually caring about active military and veterans or puttinng on appearances of respect?

P.S. Go to any sporting event and you will find people walking, talking, and otherwise not paying attention during the national anthem.

My Micro.blog Wish

Mon, 13 Aug 2018 18:05:57 -0400

I think of micro.blog as a publishing platform, for two reasons. First, what I write is published to my blog. Second, what I write is published to other distribution channels, specifically for me Twitter and Facebook, but it could also include Medium and LinkedIn.

What would make micro.blog perfect for me is the ability to designate, at the time I am writing, to which distribution channels I want a particular item published to. All things that I write are appropriate for my blog, but some things I might only want to also be published to Twitter and yet other things I would prefer published to Facebook.

To me, the ability to control what gets published where, from the app in which I am writing, is particularly important if I were to publish to the LinkedIn and Medium channels that could be considered more “professional.”

Right now, cross-posting is all or nothing. Everything I write in micro.blog is cross posted to Twitter and Facebook and frankly some posts, like this one, don’t make sense for those audiences.

I recognize there are drawbacks to cross posting, specifically, it’s a write once experience meaning that edits don’t get re-published to Twitter and Facebook because there just isn’t a mechanism to do so.

Blogging Since 1999

Sat, 30 Jun 2018 18:30:04 -0400

I’ve ported a blog post I wrote in 2014 using Fargo to the site I am setting up using Jekyll and Netlify. The post is an historical account, current at that time, of the tools I used to write and host content on the web. I’ve been blogging since 1999, which means I am approaching 20 years of blogging.

Unfortunately, not all of my early content, almost 8 years worth, is accessible due to how that content was stored. However, there is access to the last decade worth of my writing, some of it good, most of it meh. I’ve pointed to the sites hosting those last 7 years.

Long Form Writing and Trying Out Netlify

Sat, 30 Jun 2018 11:38:04 -0400

Unlike most others here at micro.blog, I consider my micro.blog as my blog. The reason is that I distinguish blogs from long form writing and publishing on the Internet. For me, a blog post is 1 to 3 paragraphs and written in about 15 minutes or less.

I blog to share a thought or something of interest to me, I write to formulate and share ideas.

When I set up my micro.blog account and associated a personal blog domain to it, I decided that I would use my then current blog, Let’s Be Frank, for long form writing. The “broad” push to HTTPS is going to make that a problem because that blog is managed using an app written by Dave Winer called 1999.io, and it has a lot of Javascript libraries that I don’t think he is every going to convert to HTTPS.

So, stay there and maybe figure out how to convert to HTTPS or look somewhere else? I recently learned about Netlify from Jack Baty and after checking out its web site, I determined it has much of what I was looking for: low price, easy HTTPS implementation, and flexibility.

Netlify does not provide a Content Management System, but it integrates with Github to provide continuous deployment, so you can use static site generators like Jekyll for publishing content. Since I have a little experience with Jekyll, I decided to try out Netlify by following their Jekyll tutorial and it didn’t take me long to get a site up and available via HTTPS.

The upside with the approach I have so far is that I can write and publish content from any device, particularly my iPad. All you really need to do is add a file in the proper naming format to the posts folder of your Github repository. I’ve cloned the repository to Working Copy on my iPad and found a Drafts action that will save a new item to Working Copy and insert the proper header informatation that Jekyll requires.

Right now the new site is very much a work in progress and there may be changes. Oh, and I am aware of the irony of me writing this post here but this is is where you know me and I am not a stickler to such self determined rules.

The Overthrow Will Not Be By Force.

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 11:01:33 -0400

Too many people in the United States think our government will be overthrown by force when the reality is it is happening in just the opposite manner. The strong arguments against gun control in the U.S. is evidence of this, as the argument centers around needing to keep guns as protection against government oppression. The powers that be don’t need to take guns away, they just need us to keep arguing about them, which fossilizes idealogy and keeps attention away from what is really happening.

The constitution enables authoritarianism when Congress and the Supreme Court do not function in their jobs as overseers of the Presidency. When Congress and the Supreme Court simply align with a president due to party affliation, you have a dictator in practice.

Today the process nearly complete, and gerrymandering will seal the deal. Gerrymandering removes the one power citizens have, which is to vote. You don’t need to burn down the flag nor rip up the Constitution, all that is needed is idealogical compliance to what the Presidency wants.

Tolerance Is Fundamental To Freedom

Tue, 29 May 2018 12:53:21 -0400

Tolerance is fundamental to freedom. If we stop tolerating actions or opinions that we disagree with, you stop freedom, democracy disappears and is replaced by dictatorship. The irony is for the idea that kneeling during the national anthem is disrespectful and should not be tolerated, we are giving up the very freedom that too many gave their lives for.

You can not dictate respect. Dictating respect is counter to tolerance and is counterproductive because respect is earned, not given.

Do you really want freedom? If you do, it starts by tolerating those with whom you disagree and not treating them with contempt.

Drafts or Ulysses?

Tue, 08 May 2018 10:54:05 -0400

One thing I find frustrating about iOS are the number of apps that all seem to do the exact same thing. How do you decide on one over the other? An example is Drafts and Ulysses, both are good markdown editors but Drafts supports more automation. Last summer I was looking for a new editor and Ulysses came highly recommended, so I bought it, but then the company switched to a subscription model and that turned me off, I decided to not buy in to the subscription.

Then I learned about Drafts, and so I went and downloaded it and have used it to write some blog posts. To date I have mostly used it to write long posts for one site that only has a “basic” web-based editor. Of course, Drafts has now been recently upgraded and it too has a subscription model.

To me, it doesn’t make sense to have Ulysses and Drafts on my iPad, Drafts seems to able to do the job good enough. However, so far I have not seen an Action for sending text to Wordpress, which I find a bit surprising. Does anyone know of such an Action? The one in the Drafts directory appears to require components not part of Wordpress.com.

Micro Blogging versus Social Networks

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 09:59:34 -0400

You might think it too fine a point, but I think any blogging product requires the ability to edit what one has written. To me, editing is a fundamental difference between blogging and social networks because blogging is about permanence where as the social network timeline/newsfeed is a black hole.

To me, what makes micro blogging different from social networks like Twitter is the permance I describe above, and therefore editing should be a fundamental requirement for all micro blogging apps.

Gmail versus Inbox

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 12:49:47 -0400

Google has released the new version of Gmail, which I am checking out. I have been using, and like, Inbox mostly because how quickly I can use it to triage email. By triage I mean browse for messages I want to read and then quickly archiving all the remaining messages. No other app, including Gmail provides as easy a way to archive a group of messages.

The downside of Inbox is that it is very JavaScript heavy and therefore the web app performance can suffer. Another downside is that the app versions don’t look as good on larger screens such as on my 10.5 iPad Pro in landscape.

So, I am considering using Gmail on large screens and Inbox on small screens. However to decide that, I need to use the new Gmail for a while.

Boycotts and Free Speech

Fri, 13 Apr 2018 10:59:50 -0400

What, if any, relationship is there between free speech and cable TV, and in particular news or opinion shows on cable TV? Cable TV is not the public square nor is it public airwaves, it is corporate owned and exists for the purposes of making money. The primary method for making money is advertising.

If people opt to make note of the advertisers and decide to not purchase products from those advertisers, which is known as boycotting their products, I don’t see how in any way that infringes on a person’s free speech rights. At most it infringes on that person’s ability to make money on cable TV.

Furthermore, free speech is a protection for citizens from government. If cable TV is not part of the government, then frankly I am not clear on what free speech rights apply to anything on cable TV. Claims about being “fair and balanced” is marketing and not statements of facts nor rights.

There Is No Such Thing As Health Insurance

Tue, 27 Feb 2018 13:55:51 -0400

Twenty states have filed suit against the federal government basically because there is no business model in healthcare insurance. Before we can fix problems we have to:

Agree on what is the problem
Agree that the problem needs to be fixed
Understand that the solution to every problem (healthcare) is not a hammer called capitalism
Agree on fundamental principles

Fundamentally, the business model for insurance is based on the premise that a company pays out less money than it takes in through people buying insurance. Property insurance works because it is possible that people who pay for it never need to file a claim through their life time. Likewise auto insurance works because there are people who never have to file a claim over a lifetime of driving.

In context, there really is no such thing as health insurance because every health care transaction is paid by the “health insurance” companies and just about everyone has one or more healthcare transactions per year. In other words, how does a “health insurance” company make money? If auto insurance was like healthcare, ever time one took their car in for an oil change or a tire rotation they would file an auto insurance claim.

Basically, we have to stop thinking that there is a capitalistic solution to the cost of health care. Just about all other countries around the world came to this realization and did something about it. We in the United States have drunk the capitalistic koolaid so much that we have forgotten our own history and just run around trying to hammer away every single problem.

Carnival In Da Moonlight

Thu, 08 Feb 2018 18:10:53 -0400

Michigan Tech’s annual Winter Carnival is in progress, with the snow statue competition completing this morning. I attended Tech from 1984-89 and have good Carny memories. The number of hours students put in to building these statues is incredible and the results are fantastic. Check out the photos!

Feedback On The OmniFocus Roadmap

Tue, 30 Jan 2018 14:57:54 -0400

A couple of thoughts about OmniFocus after reading Omni’s roadmap for 2018. As an iOS user but not a Mac OS user, I have long heard about OmniFocus and how great it is but never tried it out. A few weeks ago I discovered I could install the iOS version and try it out for free for two weeks, which I did and frankly, it didn’t seem much better than Todoist or 2Do.

My main requirement is multi-platform support because while use an iPad as my primary personal computer, I also use Android smartphones and Windows notebook computers. The inability to get to info in OmniFocus from Windows has been a show stopper, and web access, which is on the roadmap, will help, however I am concerned about the “minimalist” plan.

A simple way that Omni could solve this problem is by syncing with Toodledo. While there is a Toodledo iOS app, it is not very efficient so I use 2Do on my iPad that syncs my data with Toodledo. The benefit is that there are Toodledo apps for other platforms, and the Toodledo web app is one of the most advanced web apps that I use.

I am also surprised that OmniFocus doesn’t use an outliner for editing projects and tasks, given the existence of OmniOutliner, which I do use.

I’ll keep a watch out for the next release of OmniFocus and probably check it out.

Capitalism <> Democracy

Thu, 25 Jan 2018 12:50:48 -0400

The American Dream is Over. This is the Age of the European Dream.

One might not agree with the entire premise of the above article, but I think there is something to the point being made that we wrongly think markets/capitalism is the solution to every problem in our country. In fact, one can make the argument that capitalism is the root of much that is wrong in our country.

For example, the reality is capitalism (read revenue and profits) is the true reason why the NRA agressively opposes any gun control; the NRA’s corporate supporters make a lot of money off the sale of guns and ammunition and logically do not want any of that money to be at risk. Just like capitalism drove the tobacco industry to ignore studies showing smoking causes cancer.

For a long time I have been saying that we tend to confuse capitalism with democracy. I think this is reflected most prominently by the Citizens United SCOTUS ruling that says corporate spending on politics is a form of free speech, and thus corporations have a right to free speech.

Corporations are a construct of capitalism, they are not in themselves men or women of any race. In otherwords, corporations are not citizens.

Citizens United may be the worst SCOTUS ruling of my lifetime. Worse, it is reflects a flawed understanding that frankly skews society in favor of corporations and the oligarchs that profit from them.

Hanselminutes: Raspberry Pi clusters and Serverless

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 10:44:37 -0400

blog.alexellis.io/serverles…

This entry is coming from Feedbin, does this get posted to my blog or just added to the Timeline? Update: So, this did end up on the blog, interesting. I wonder if the same thing happens with Evergreen?

Yet Again Focusing On The Wrong Thing

Wed, 17 Jan 2018 11:53:17 -0400

The lesson to be learned from the false missile alert in Hawaii is not how someone screwed up, a bad communication plan, nor bad UI design. The lesson that should be learned is that the possibility of a nuclear strick on the United States is much more plausible today that it has since the cold war. We appear to be nearing Cuban Missile Crisis territory with incompetent leadership in the government.

The Continuing Search For The Perfect Todo App

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 23:44:42 -0400

It’s the beginning of the year and therefore the time for my yearly ritual of trying to find a to-do (task management) app that I like and think that I will use. I am again finding myself with Toodledo, mostly because it has more filtering features that other apps and because it has a robust web app. However, Toodledo does not have a robust iOS app.

The Toodledo iOS app does the job but doesn’t have the best UI. However, I have found that 2Do syns with Toodledo so I am giving that a try. At worst I can toggle between the two apps because they sync with the same data.

Unfortunately, 2Do does not sync Toodledo’s statuses, so if I want the same functionality I need to create tags rather that statuses.

Psion Is Trying To Make A Comeback

Sat, 06 Jan 2018 15:42:49 -0400

I am interested to see how well received Psion’s Android clamshell device will be at CES. Psion is a blast from the past, at it’s height it was competing with Palm and Windows CE with its own operating system, and now it will be running Android. If it is priced around $300, I might be interested in buying one.

And it’s British, so there is that.

The Storyline For Today's GLi Championship

Tue, 02 Jan 2018 13:20:57 -0400

Later today Michigan Tech will play Bowling Green in the championship game of the 53rd Great Lakes Invitational hockey tournament. It is the first GLi at the new Little Caesars’s Arena and is hosted by Michigan Tech.

Either of the potential opponents for Tech in the championship presented interesting story lines. Had Michigan won Tech would be facing their former coach, Mel Pearson, who just left his Alma mater to become Michigan’s head coach. Tech’s return to college hockey prominence started when Pearson took the helm.

Pearson’s last game as Tech’s head coach was the 2017 WCHA championship game in which the Huskies beat Bowling Green to take the Broadmore Trophy and the NCAA tourney bid. What better way for the Falcons to gain revenge for that loss than by beating Tech in their tournament in the new arena and carry home the MacInnes Cup, named for legendary Tech coach John MacInnes?

Android On Tablets Is Dead, Long Live Android On Tablets

Sat, 30 Dec 2017 17:03:39 -0400

Google has stopped selling the Pixel C, and there is no replacement Android tablet in the Google Store. Consequently, you will now see articles about the demise of Android on tablets and/or how bad Android has been for tablets.

Forgive Us Our Debts, As We Forgive The Debts Of Others

Wed, 27 Dec 2017 12:05:29 -0400

He died for our debts, not our sins

If we think deeply about the consequences of debt you see meaning. Holding debt over a person is to have power over that person. The person in debt therefore is more or less a slave to the person (or thing) that has power over them. One of the earliest themes of what Jesus did for us was to set us free.

As we in the United Stated look more and more like the Ferengie every day, it may be helpful to replace the word “sin” with “debt” more often.

Setting Up Pi Zero

Mon, 25 Dec 2017 17:15:38 -0400

I got a Raspberry Pi Zero W for Christmas that I am setting up, and so far not having much luck getting the OS to install. I think the file transfer is taking too long. I am regretting following the instructions literally, meaning I installed the Pi Zero in the case and there isn’t an easy way to remove the micro SD card without removing them Zero entirely.

Looks like I will have to remove the Zero and flash the card with a complete build on a PC. I hope that I can get the Zero out of he case without breaking it.

Day One Journal

Fri, 22 Dec 2017 17:06:44 -0400

Day One Journal is now available for Android, and now I have a decision to make. Before Day One changed to a yearly subscription, I had purchased a version and therfore I am grandfathered in a plan that enables me to sync across iOS devices, but that will not support Android. So, is it worth $25 per year to have access to my journal from my Android smartphone?

SSH Apps On iPad

Wed, 20 Dec 2017 16:03:48 -0400

What is the best ssh app to use on an iPad? Right now I use Termius, but it does this thing where it doesn’t scroll properly as the screen fills up so I have to do some dragging around to re-align the display. I also am turned off by the $29/year subscription cost and there are some premium features I wouldn’t mind having. It is, however, the most recently updated app in the store.

WebSSH Pro and Prompt 2 are two other alternatives that appear at the top of a Google search.

Amazon Lockers

Wed, 20 Dec 2017 14:38:07 -0400

I got an email from Amazon telling me that I can use an Amazon Locker to receive items shipped to me. There is a Whole Foods near me that has a locker, so I can select it as a delivery location. How do I use it?

Apparently, when something I ordered is delivered to the locker, I will get an email with a six digit code that I then use at the locker location to retrieve my package. I have three days to pick up the package otherwise it will be returned for refund. Perhaps best of all, lockers can be used as a drop off location for returns.

Given the rise in people having deliveries stolen, I can see these lockers becoming useful for valuable items being shipped for which you may not be hope to sign for.

The NFL Continues To Reward Violent Hits

Sun, 17 Dec 2017 17:10:43 -0400

Despite scientific research and Congressional hearings, the NFL is still not serious about the safety of its players due to concussions. In fact, the current NFL rules rewards teams of players who inflict a concussion.

The latest example occurred during the Packers and Panthers game on December 17. During the game Panther Thomas Davis launched into Davante Adams resulting in Adams being removed for the game due to the obvious helmet-on-helmet hit. A personal foul was called on Davis, but he remained in the game while the Packers lost one of their most important players.

Players who may be concussed must be removed from play until doctors confirm it is ok for him to return. In this case, the right thing happened while that has not always been the case. However, how is it that the player causing the injury, unnecessarily, is still allowed to play?

Treating concussions is important but equally important is preventing concussions from happening in the first place, and that will not happen without immediate and significant enforcement on the field. All direct hits to the head should result in an immediate ejection, and this rule should be enforced not only by on field officials but also by replay. At a minimum the NFL ought to have a booth review, as is the case with the NCAA, but I favor the booth being able to eject such players at any time.

The bottom line is that the current approach of only reviewing and penalizing such plays after the game is over is not sufficient in deterring such hits and violates the spirit of the game. The life time health of the players demands extreme action. If the NFL is unable to police itself then Congress must step in with regulation. Right now it appears profits are outweighing safety.

Tweeking CSS

Sat, 16 Dec 2017 17:42:31 -0400

Ok, after some fiddling I now have the home page rendering as I want it to on tablets. First I experimented with the viewport setting, but that did not fix the problem. Next, I downloaded the CSS and uploaded a copy to my server. Then, I experimented with the @media setting, landing on auto for the left and right margins and max-device-width to 1024px.

Now the home page renders centered on my iPad Mini, Nexus 9 and iPad Pro. It actually renders the best on the Nexus 9.

Not Centered

Sat, 16 Dec 2017 16:09:03 -0400

The next technical issue I want to resolve is the rendering of my main blog in portrait on tablets. As you see, the viewport is shift to the right, making the text not centered. When I rotate the display to landscape then the viewport and text are centered. If anyone has a suggestion to fix please let me know.

What We Need Is Wisdom

Sun, 10 Dec 2017 11:52:24 -0400

a.co

“Wisdom comes from dealing rightly with the information, but information has become a consumer item in its own right. We have no place deep inside us to integrate this information and transform it into wisdom. Hence our social system may produce many specialists, but very few wise men and women. And in the end we’re short of knowledge, wisdom, and time.” from “Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go” by Richard Rohr

Patience

Sun, 10 Dec 2017 11:38:35 -0400

a.co

“Communism tries to enforce equality, Nazism tries to enforce security and solidarity within a group, fundamentalist religion tries to shame and psychologically coerce people into an “only way.” The biblical God seems to just call us to simplicity and patience, which keeps us outside of every totalitarian big system or overarching explanation.” from “Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go” by Richard Rohr

A Call To Live Differently

Sun, 10 Dec 2017 11:30:07 -0400

a.co

“We don’t think our way into a new life; we live our way into a new kind of thinking. The Gospel is before all else a call to live differently, so that life can be shared with others. In other words, the Gospel is ultimately calling us to a stance of simplicity, vulnerability, dialogue, powerlessness, and humility. These are the only virtues that make communion and community and intimacy possible.” from “Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go” by Richard Rohr

I Want A Posting Switchboard

Sat, 09 Dec 2017 12:51:59 -0400

I’ve tried several apps that provide a central location for writing and a way to “broadcast” that writing to different networks, but none provide a simple way to designate per post to which network I want a post sent. Like others I have seen, micro.blog only seems to have a way to send everything I write here to all other designated networks.