Cheese Sandwich: Eight Miles High

In other news, I did manage to knock out eight miles in my run this morning. Average pace was down to about 11:22 per mile, but the early miles were quicker. Average heart rate was down from last week, and I didn't reach the same max. I didn't feel as strong at the finish this time, but I think I can do nine with little problem.

Except for one big problem: the Hart Bridge, which is at the end of the run. But if I have to, I'll just walk up it.

Mac: Still a Few Bugs in the System

I'm still on the mini for now. I used Leopard's Migration Assistant to move my account from the old HD to the new one. That turns out not to have been the wisest course of action. Mac OS X doesn't like moving data between two home folders with the same short name, so I changed the one on the MacBook and went on ahead.

Even over Firewire, it still took at least two hours, probably more - I wasn't really paying attention, to make the transfer. But once everything was finished, I thought I was in business. Alas, not quite.

Migration Assistant essentially made a new user account on the MacBook from my old one. I noticed this when I looked into my Documents folder and noticed it was was empty. That's what brought the other account to my attention, with the new short name. So I logged into that, and deleted the original account I created when I first booted Leopard on the new HD in the MacBook. Everything appeared to be working fine.

The first problem I encountered was trying to post an update on my little project. Tinderbox asked me to identify the html export templates in the preferences. So I found the relevant files but was unable to select them as they were dimmed in the dialog. This proved quite frustrating. I tried deleting the old preferences to no effect. Then I renamed the files, thinking perhaps Tinderbox thought they were in use or busy. That didn't work. So then I opened them in TexEdit and saved the as new files in a different location, Tinderbox still wouldn't recognize them. Gah! I'm guessing it really has something to do with cruft in the actual Tinderbox file. It's 6.8MB in size now and contains entries from September '04. I used to create a new file every few months because loading and saving would take longer and longer as the file grew. That hasn't been a problem for some time, and it's very convenient to be able to search the actual notes back to September '04. But in that time, the file as resided on a PowerMac MDD, an intel iMac, an iBook and now the MacBook, so the preferences changed each time. I took a look at the XML in TextEdit, and there are references to other export files on the older machines. I don't know how that might be complicating things, but I can't understand why Tinderbox seems to think some of the other template files are fine to select (except they wouldn't create the pages you're seeing here), while the ones I need are not.

I e-mailed Mark Bernstein and he replied promptly but offered little in the way of a solution other than to upgrade to version 4.1, so I've done that. We'll see if that fixes the problem.

The other application giving me problems is Yojimbo. It seems to think another copy of the application is running somewhere, as it refuses to start up and gives me an alert "Yojimbo is already running. Only one copy can be running at a time." Again, I have no idea what that's about. It does the same thing on the mini and on the MacBook. If anyone has any ideas, I'd be interested in hearing them. Could I reinstall Yojimbo and somehow import my data from the copy that's refusing to launch?

One final semi-disappointment is the Western Digital Scorpio I installed seems to vibrate a bit in operation. I'm not sure it's enough to suggest long-term reliability issues, but it may be. I have an older WD Passport drive that always vibrated a great deal, but that sees only intermittent use so I don't think that's terribly useful. What I may do is buy an external Toshiba 250GB USB 2.0 drive and swap the WD from the MacBook into the case and just use it for external storage and use the Toshiba as the internal drive. It's pretty trivial to swap drives in a MacBook.

Well, let's see if I can still export from the mini!

Mac: So far, so good...

I'm creating this post on the Mac mini that I hadn't upgraded to Leopard yet. I removed the 120GB HD from the MacBook and installed it in this mini, giving it a modest upgrade from its stock 80GB HD.

The MacBook is being restored from the system DVDs, then I'll run the Leopard installer. Finally, I'll reboot the mini in target disk mode and import everything from this account to the MacBook.

The next post should be from the MacBook...

Social Hygiene: Just Breathe

Linda Stone is my hero. And a timely reminder of something I too often forget. Via Scott Rosenberg.

Cinéma Therapy Notes: Bagger Vance

I had occasion to watch The Legend of Bagger Vance again the other night. It's one of my favorite movies and it happened to come along at a good time in my life. Anyway, I noticed something I hadn't noticed before, even though I've seen the movie dozens of times. This is probably something that can't be meaningfully discussed in the amount of time I have here (none), but I wanted to get it down.

The characters of the two "greatest golfers," Walter Hagen, played by Bruce McGill and Bobby Jones, played by Joel Gretsch, are polar opposites. That's pretty obvious and something that wasn't particularly significant to me before. But the other night I noticed how each makes an appeal to Junnuh, played by Matt Damon.

Hagen tells Junuh something to the effect, "You're just like me. You know that the meaning of all this is that there is no meaning." And he offers him a lucrative, if unfairly lopsided, proposal following the match. Effectively, he offers him a reward for embracing nihilism. Junuh doesn't respond immediately, but later rejects the offer in something of an affirmation of his returning faith in himself, or maybe his returning ego.

He has a later encounter with Bobby Jones, who explains why he's abandoning competitive golf to pursue a career in law and raising a family, two activities we might hope have some meaning. Again, the encounter concludes with Junuh making an affirmation of faith.

So there was a little yin-yang thing I hadn't noticed before. The power of choice, and Junuh's choices clearly manifested in "the field." Cool.

A later thought: As I was walking Bodhi after making this comment, I recalled another scene in the movie where two different ways of apprehending "the world" were contrasted. I loaned the movie to someone so I can't get the exact quotation, and the IMDB version omits the first line, which I will attempt to recall:

Hardy Greaves: He's sweepin' streets! It's embarrassing Mr. Junuh. Wilbur Charles' dad says he won't take no job that's beneath his dignity!

Rannulph Junuh: Grow up Hardy!

Hardy Greaves: It ain't time for me to grow up, Mr. Junuh.

Rannulph Junuh: Your daddy is out sweeping streets because he took every last dime he had and used it to pay up every man and woman he owed and every business who worked for him, instead of declaring bankruptcy like everyone else in town, including your best friend Wilbur Charles' dad, Raymond, which is why he's able to sit around all day long on his dignity! Your daddy stared adversity in the eye, Hardy. And he beat it back with a broom.

Needless to say, I love this movie.

Cheese Sandwich: Groundhog Day 2

I realize this is not very timely, but I wanted to mention that I held the Second Annual Groundhog Day Party at Action Dave's Cool-guy Bachelor Pad on the 2nd of February. Last year's event was the inaugural and attended by perhaps fifteen people altogether. This year I think we had about forty people in attendance, ranging in age from 21 to 70-something. I had a great time, and everyone I spoke to in the days after said they enjoyed themselves too.

I gave away three plush groundhogs from StuffedArk.com. That got a little interesting. I drew the names of the recipients from a hat and the first one went to one of the women. Unfortunately, she had the same name as one of the other guests, so each thought they'd won it. I'd made a distinction on one of the slips of paper by including a last initial for one but not the other. That wasn't common knowledge, so I had to explain that bit and they were good sports about it.

I drew a name every half hour and the second hog went to Tony, who received one last year. I suppose I should make previous recipients ineligible or something. Well, he didn't want another one, so he kind of tossed it to a group of women and they all jumped for it. Luckily, no one was injured. The third name drawn was also one of the male attendees, and he was promptly the object of intense female attention. He ended up giving his away as well. I suppose I could just put ladies' names in the hat next year, they seem to be the most interested in plush groundhogs! I gave away two copies of the DVD as well, and one of those went to a guy.

We started at eight, and I recall waking up in my recliner about 3:00 a.m. with the lights all off and the food all put away (I have wonderful friends). So I locked the front door and crawled into bed. Minutes later my phone was ringing and there was someone pounding on the door. Turns out a bunch of them were still out on the front porch and I'd locked them out and away from their purses and cell phones!

I had plenty of food again this year, but fortunately not as many leftovers. I took most of it to the clubhouse the next day for our Super Bowl party. The ribs were very popular this year, but I had more pulled pork left over than I expected. I think I have a pretty good handle on what amounts to order next year. While I mentioned in the invitations that food and beverages would be provided, people still brought stuff, and it seems I have a lot of beer left. The Don Julio, Jack Daniels and Grey Goose didn't fare so well. There were plenty of wine drinkers, though I think they all brought their own because I had lots of wine left over as well, and different varieties than what I'd stocked. So I'm taking this opportunity to educate my palate a bit, as I've forsworn beer until after the Gate River Run.

I think I took four of those giant green trash bags out to the dumpster the next day. I'd intended to try and be a little "greener" this year, and bought a second receptacle exclusively for glass; but that didn't work out as intended. Next year I'll try something different and see if I can't do a little better. Maybe a keg, I'll have to think about it.

Anyway, as they say, "A good time was had by all." Can't wait to do it again.

Mac: Bigger Disk

Since I spend most of my (computing) time in my MacBook, I'm going to drop a 250GB HD into it this weekend. Should be an interesting experience. If you don't hear from me for a while, that might be why.

In other Mac trivia - I installed 10.5.2 when it was released on three different machines with no ill effect. In fact, while I wasn't plagued with any particularly debilitating problems with Leopard, it did fix one thing that bugged me. I'd put the MacBook to sleep when I went to work, and sometimes when I came home and woke it, it wouldn't see the shared drives on the network and the mDNSResponder process would start chewing up processor cycles at a ludicrous rate. The only fix I found was a reboot. Hasn't happened since the update.

I have another mini I haven't updated yet. I'm thinking of making it into a Frankenmini by dropping a faster Core2Duo processor and a larger HD into it. But I haven't decided yet. The processor upgrade doesn't look hard, but it seems like something that could go irretrievably wrong if I screw it up.

Flash memory keeps going down in price. I bought a 4GB flash drive for less than $20.00 the other day. Seems kind of ridiculous, but cool.

Social Hygiene: We're All Buddhists

Most of us just don't know it yet.

I love it when people argue about Buddhism. But then, I love the laughing Buddha.

Check it out. Thanks, Hal.

Blinding Glimpses of the Obvious: Not So Rational Actors

None of this should be news to anyone, especially here. Via Kottke.

Competing Messages: Is the Web Different?

Dave Weinberger wrote a brief essay a couple of weeks ago, and I wish to offer a few comments on it.

Dave is one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, the book that gave the world the assertion, "markets are conversations," subsequently endorsed and adopted by seemingly every marketer and would-be marketer able to draw a breath. I've maintained for some time that this assertion, regardless of its construction, subordinates the social to the commercial. That isn't particularly surprising, as commerce has been about that since the beginning; what is surprising, and profoundly disappointing, is that it has made it into a virtue. Indeed, it has made us all into marketers, in addition to dutiful and relentless consumers. We have located the meaning of life in commerce. Something that is quite evident when our elected representatives can be roused to timely action only due to the "crisis" posed by a potential recession. And then the action, naturally, is to throw a little money at consumers so they can consume. Climate change isn't very urgent, I suppose. Legislative oversight of the executive branch can wait. But the possibility of slowing economic growth? Sound general quarters.

We truly are a perverse species.

Dave is also the author of a number of books about the effects of the internet on society, apart from facilitating and accelerating its relentless commercialization, notably Small Pieces Loosely Joined, and, most recently, Everything is Miscellaneous. Currently, he is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. (I'm kind of amused that they haven't made the name more hip and trendy by substituting "@" for "at." True, it is Harvard, but give it time.) This means Dave has lots of time to think deep thoughts about the internet and society, in between playing computer games and dealing with some seriously bad computer karma. Finally, I think I should note that Dave has a PhD in philosophy, while my educational background merely includes a baccalaureate in engineering, and the kind that deals with atoms, not bits, at that. Which is to say, I'm probably punching above my weight here.

I disagree with Dave on many things, and while I'm learning that the experience of my life is often much more pleasant when I ignore the things I have no ability to influence, I haven't learned to ignore some of them yet, and Dave Weinberger and Doc Searls are two that remain. So, even though I'm hopelessly outmatched in terms of authority, expertise, influence, reputation, attention and even time to think about such things, let alone write about them, I'm sufficiently annoyed that I have this compelling desire to respond. Desire, as we know, is the source of all suffering. So herewith I commence banging my head against a familiar brick wall.

Dave authored a brief essay he called "Is the Web Different?" in an online newsletter he publishes, The Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization. It's not a terribly long read, nor particularly difficult, so it may be worth your time. Personally, I found it terribly frustrating. What follows assumes you've read the essay, because I don't wish to reproduce the entire thing here. If you haven't read it, most of this will make little sense.

Dave wants to make a point, seemingly to sing the praises of the internet in a way that makes him appear reasonable and maybe even wise. So he affects an examination of three different points of view, categorizing them with convenient names, Utopians, Dystopians and Realists. This from a guy who tells us "everything is miscellaneous," except when you can construct particular categories that can help advance your argument.

Dave regards the points of view of the three categories, he calls them "tribes," as political positions. "They imply normative beliefs, and they lead their holders to certain types of behaviors and actions." Everything being miscellaneous notwithstanding, I'm not sure "political" is the most accurate characterization of these views. I would say that at least the utopians' beliefs are ideological, much more than political. Certainly, ideology informs politics; but ideology is even more closely tied to "normative beliefs" that influence a broader range of behaviors and actions than politics. Ideology includes the concept of an ideologue, something that is absent in the strictest sense of politics. Politics is notionally the art of compromise; while ideologues seldom, if ever, compromise on any matter central to their core beliefs. Dave's realists and dystopians may have political positions, but the utopians' have an ideological one.

Dave has a point to make, so he must refute, dismiss or distract us from alternative points, these being the potential answers to the question he posed in the title, "Is the Web Different?" The first to fall is, "Time will tell." See if you can follow this logic: Unfortunately, time papers over all wounds. Our values change, so our evaluations of change shift over time. The extraordinary becomes ordinary with extraordinary rapidity and insinuates itself into memory, undercutting the reliability of our judgments about the magnitude of change. So, time will not tell.

Our values do change, but history does record what those values were, or how would we know that in fact they had changed? The extraordinary becoming ordinary is familiar to anyone born in the 20th Century, as time has told. And our judgments may always be somewhat unreliable, but we seem to be able discern the magnitude of changes nonetheless. Indeed, the ultimate conclusion of his thesis seems to rely on a fairly accepted assessment of the magnitude of change brought about by Gutenberg and the invention of movable type. So I would say that time may tell, and indeed probably will tell; and that this bit of rather lame hand-waving by Dave is to suggest that he doesn't wish to wait for time to tell, because he believes he has a privileged insight and that waiting for "time to tell," forestalls the manifold benefits inherent in his vision of the future.

Following this are a number of what seem to me to be straw man arguments between the various members of Dave's "tribes," which may be intended to exemplify the weaknesses of their respective positions, but really seem intended to make them all appear fatally flawed and therefore readily discounted or dismissed.

Unfortunately, this leads Dave to construct sentences like this one: The changes are so important that they will take a while to arrive, and the changes are so fundamental that we aren't always even aware of them. If changes are "so important," it would seem to imply that their arrival is a matter of some urgency, and that it would take less of "a while" for them to arrive. Why he chose "important" as a characteristic to account for apparent absence or delay, I can't say. I can think of other characteristics that might account for apparent delay, such as "radical," or "fundamental," or "broad," but "important?" That's a value statement, and it is consistent with a Web utopian's point of view, but it's incongruous in this context. And, "so fundamental that we aren't always aware of them," seems so nonsensical that one might as well use the same argument for the existence of phlogiston. Maybe "always" is his escape clause. Maybe Web utopians are only sometimes aware of them, and the rest of us poor benighted souls are never aware of them, because, you know, they're "so fundamental." If we weren't ever aware of them, how would anyone know they even happened, let alone assessed how "fundamental" they were? But since it's a straw man, I guess it really doesn't matter anyway.

I have no idea whatsoever what's going on in the paragraph about the 2004 Howard Dean campaign. The closest I can get is that it's some sort of stream-of-consciousness going on in Dave's head dealing with lingering unresolved grief from that traumatic event.

After suffering through all of this, we finally get to Dave's point: Unfortunately, we can't afford to wait for time not to tell us. "Is the Web different?" is an urgent question. Decisions depend on our answer.

Why is this an "urgent" question? What is the basis for this urgency? Dave isn't clear, but perhaps it's this:

[I]f the Web utopians are right — if the Web is transformative in an overall positive way — then it's thus morally incumbent upon us to provide widespread access to as much of the world as is possible, focusing on the disadvantaged.

"Morally incumbent on us." More morally incumbent on us than providing "widespread access" to, say, food or medicine? Is the Web different in some moral way from food or medicine? Is that the real question here? Is "widespread access" to the Web the defining moral imperative of our time? Can you begin to detect the thinking of an ideologue here?

This brings about another unfortunate construction - "So we need to decide." Decide about what? "Is the Web different?" Is that even a meaningful question? What "yes" or "no" answer could possibly be genuinely meaningful given such an ambiguous question? What is it we're actually "deciding" about, and which "decisions" depend on that "decision?"

Then Dave ducks the issue! Thankfully, as it's the only responsible thing to do at this point.

But, no. All of the preceding was merely a bit of misdirection. Ducking the issue would be completely unsatisfactory, because Dave's an ideologue, and ideologues are highly motivated people, believing they're doing "good." Much like the people who brought us the whole Iraq War 2.0 Experience™. So he's not going to duck the issue. Instead, he's going to offer what he really wanted to say all along, but he had to get your head swimming first so he wouldn't come off sounding like, you know, an ideologue. Here's where it stops being funny.

Here's where Dave trots out Gutenberg's press, which time has indeed "told," brought about profound changes. Oblivious to self-contradiction, Dave says the Web is "different" in the way movable type was "different."

Well, doesn't that make them sort of "the same?" As in, "not different," in the sense that we might expect, indeed are experiencing, significant changes wrought on culture and society as a result of this technology? And in this way, how is "the Web" different from the invention of the automobile and the changes it brought about on architecture, cities, patterns of living, to say nothing of our climate? Can't we rely on history to inform us on how any of a number of disruptive technologies changed the cultures that invented them, for both the better and the worse? Can we not acknowledge that some of those changes were for "the worse," and might we not wish to try and apply some critical thinking to how we might choose to embrace this new, not-so-different disruptive technology so that we might preserve some things we value, which may be lost or at risk in the wake of all this disruptive change?

And if there is a compelling moral urgency to any decision regarding "the Web," shouldn't it be one regarding how we might try and avoid potentially undesirable outcomes, rather than blindly advocating for its rapid proliferation? Is it morally responsible to advocate imposing this technology on cultures even less able to manage its potential impacts than our own? Isn't there something of a colonialist or imperialist point of view in Dr. Weinberger's relentless and blind advocacy?

And what are we to make of the idea of "utopians" as a label? Doesn't it seem a poor choice? I think the thing one most recalls about utopians throughout history is that they've been almost universally wrong. To say nothing of the possibility that one man's utopia may be another man's idea of hell.

As an ideologue, Dave brooks no skepticism regarding the virtue and verity of his beliefs. With a wave of his hand, he consigns the "dystopians" to "the past," while the utopians are about building "the best future we can." Well, thank God for them! Dave's straw men dystopians aren't about building the best future. No sir. They're about the past. We can't have any more of that! This is the thinking of an ideologue, the arrogance, hubris and single-minded thinking of an ideologue.

The question Dave is answering isn't the one he posed in the title of this confusing little essay. The question Dave is answering is, "Does the world need more Web utopians?" I would rephrase the question to ask, "Does the world need more ideologues?" The answer in either case is the same: No. The future would be better without them.

Cheese Sandwich: My Next Camera

I've been thinking about getting a DSLR for my next camera. I'm pretty happy with my Kodak P880 and P712, but the reduced noise and higher ISO ratings of a DSLR are becoming more appealing to me. Prices continue to go down, making the prospect somewhat more affordable.

While I like the performance improvements offered by a DSLR, I can't say I was really looking forward to the increased size and weight, and the expense of a decent telephoto lens.

All of which is to say that I'm quite interested in a new model announced by Fujifilm last month, the Finepix S100FS. It's very much in the same vein as my P880 and P712, a "bridge" camera. What makes it especially appealing is the 2/3" Super CCD HR sensor, which, while smaller than any of the DSLR sensors, is significantly larger than the 1/1.8" sensor in the P880, to say nothing of the 1/2.5" sensor in the 712. The Fujifilm Super CCD HR is noted for its sensitivity, and the larger size would seem to bode well for less noise. Eleven megapixels doesn't exactly help, I know. While I'm sure it won't be as clean as a DSLR, it won't be as heavy or bulky either.

Cheese Sandwich: I Fugit

Seven miles in seventy nine minutes and five seconds. Though you really could subtract several seconds there at the end, when my key fob failed to open the gate and I had to mark time waiting for the gate to open. So I'm looking at a pretty solid 11:15 mile pace.

Felt pretty good at the end too. Max heart rate was 172 at the halfway point, and 186 at the end. Average was about 167 overall. I really need to remember to press the lap button at the right points. I get back to the condo and walk Bodhi to cool down, and I'm usually pretty stupid by the time I get back, so I either forget to push the button, or I push the wrong one, so my data is a little sloppy.

Only one bicyclist tried to run over me. This one was coming straight at me, but it was on the latter part of the run when I often put my head down. Luckily, I picked it up just in time to see him. Again, nothing from him to alert me to his presence. One pickup truck tried to beat a light and almost hit me. You gotta love those drivers out there. Everybody's in a hurry.

Anyway, not bad for not doing much this week. I think I can do nine miles by the 8th. Seven is the most I've ever run in my life in one run, so I'm pretty pleased with myself, slow or no.

Cheese Sandwich: Tempus Fugit

I'm still here. I've been busier than I expected to be, so I haven't had the opportunity to spend much time at this. This weekend gives some indication of being relatively quiet, so I hope to devote a little time to whatever it is I do here.

In about 30 minutes, I'm going to go change clothes and try to run about seven miles. I did six last Saturday, so we'll see what I can manage to accomplish today. Up until the last month or so, all of the running I've been doing here has been on a treadmill. I was doing about six on the treadmill with little difficulty and felt like I was in pretty good shape. Then I went for a run on the road with a neighbor and realized that I wasn't in anywhere near the kind of condition i thought I was.

What is obvious to me now is that road running is more demanding than running on the treadmill, and the two activities aren't remotely similar. I liked the treadmill because of the climate controlled environment, and the amount of feedback I got from the machine regarding my pace, distance, and heart rate. But once I realized that the information I was getting from the treadmill regarding "distance" had little to do with anything actually resembling running, the value of that feedback was somewhat discounted.

So I looked for a tool to give me some of the same feedback while road running, and I ended up buying a Garmin ForeRunner 305 GPS wristwatch and heart rate monitor. (It's heavily discounted at other online retailers, like Amazon.) I think James Vornov brought it to my attention. It's a great little device, though you have to take some of the instantaneous pace data with a large grain of salt. The average pace reported at the end is accurate, naturally. But it seems to bounce around a great deal while you're running, so I just ignore that and kind of pay attention to the time and distance and my breathing. It's a nice motivational tool, and I use it on my lunchtime walks, which are about four miles long, so it's worth it to put the thing on.

One of the things I miss running on the road is music. I don't carry my iPod when I'm running on the road because I like to be able to hear what's about to try and kill me. Bicyclists are the worst, they're nearly silent, and they feel no obligation to announce their presence as they come up behind you and pass you by inches when you're running on the sidewalk! So without my "psych music," it takes some additional effort to dissociate from the discomfort in the latter part of the run.

I'm going to run the Gate River Run in about three weeks. It's a 15K race, though I'm not really "racing." It's just something I want to do. I don't think I'm ever going to be motivated to run a marathon or anything, but nine miles seems like something worthwhile. A couple of my friends are running too, though I don't think we'll be together at all, since we all run at different paces. I'm pretty slow. On the treadmill, I was able to maintain a 9:40 mile pace for six miles, on the road I'm running about 11:15. My walks are just over 15-minute miles, so that tells you something about how slow I am! Anyway, it'll be fun.

I'm also trying to recover from the holidays and football season. I put on some weight from sitting on my butt in front of the television and eating a lot of not terribly healthy foods. It's coming off, but slowly. I've sworn off beer and Ben and Jerry's until after the race. Though I have decided it's time I learned a little bit about wine, so I'm still consuming modest amounts of alcohol. While I have a refrigerator full of beer, it's been harder to pass by the freezer section and not grab a pint of Vanilla Heath Crunch. Sigh.

Anyway, I see it's time to change, stretch and run. Hopefully, this will take me about 80 minutes. We'll see how it goes. I didn't train well this week, but maybe the additional "rest" will stand me in good stead.