Essays
Something Was Going On In Japan
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.