The Captains of Our Souls

For many of us, our experience of our "consciousness" suggests to us that there is little going on in our heads that we don't understand. We think that the "conscious" part of us is always in charge, issuing orders, as it were. Barring some form of mental illness or chemical dependency, we don't do anything "unconsciously," especially unconsciously and out of habit.

But I think we do. And I think the chances are we do a great deal more of it than we're consciously aware of at any time.

That's just my opinion.

Then again, it may be just a little more than mere opinion.

Jack's Back

My dad is back after a short hiatus. We had an interesting chat last night. I hasten to add that iChat AV is the most valuable internet technology I've ever used. If I had to give up everything on the 'net except for one thing, that one thing would be iChat AV. You can have your music downloads, your e-mail, your "blogosphere," your e-commerce, your "smart mobs" (barf), your Web 2.0 and all the rest of it. Being able to see my parents when I'm talking to them is the most valuable thing to me.

Mom got an old treadle sewing machine from a guy who had one in his garage. She has to make him a cover for a baby carriage in return for it. It's probably close to 100 years old, but Mom was able to get it working again. She's a big quilter and she's started to use it on her quilts. I can't help but think it'll be good exercise for her, especially keeping her lower extremities moving when she's sewing.

Every now and then while we're chatting, my parents' cat wanders into the living room and loudly announces her presence. Last night she did it, and Karma, the senior feline in residence at Dave Cave III, heard it and looked up wondering where the other cat was. Next thing you know, the two of them will figure out how to work the mouse and start up iChat and be meowing and staring at each other. Then I'll have cat nose-prints all over my nice Sony LCD monitor, just like my front window.

My son Chris finally got his driver's license yesterday, as Dad also mentioned. Like me, it took him three tries on the road test. I dutifully, if reluctantly, reported same to the insurance company, and my premium immediately doubled. Maybe that's good, that it only doubled. He also got a job bussing tables at a local restaurant.

And that's probably enough about all that.

"Jinx! Owe me a Coke, no touch-backs!"

Read Britt Blaser's post on campfire talk and the read this excerpt from a commencement address nearly 20 years ago by Ursula K LeGuin from Evelyn Rodriguez. (Rodriguez link courtesy of Shelley Powers' Burningbird weblog.)

I will offer my own modest, "unhelpful," contribution to the idea: Authenticity is the difference between speaking the truth, and trying to sell it.

Attention to Attention

Heard an interesting story about meditation research on Morning Edition this morning. The idea of "Olympian meditators," is kind of silly though. There's nothing competitive about meditation; though human nature seems to make any activity competitive, even if the people engaged in the activity aren't competing. And if you approach meditation with the idea of becoming an "Olympian meditator," you've kind of made that needless goal a lot harder to achieve.

There's a Zen parable about a student who wishes to study under a master. He asks his master how long it will take him to become a master, and the master tells him, "Ten years."

But this is too long for the student, so he asks, "But if I work very hard, every day, how long will it take me to become a master then?"

The master tells him, "Twenty years."

The student is baffled. He says, "But if I work very, very hard, both day and night, without rest, how long will it take me to become a master?"

The master says, "In that case, thirty years."

Sometimes, that which you pursue retreats from you; and "trying harder" only makes reaching your goal "harder."

New Hardware

Apple's hardware announcements today were a little underwhelming, from my perspective. The iBook updates weren't bad, but I was disappointed that the new graphics processor doesn't seem to support Core Image. I don't know if that's a cost issue, or an effort to maintain the value of the PowerBook line by making it the only Mac portable that's Core Image capable.

The mini updates were even less exciting. I was mainly hoping for a Core Image-capable graphics processor. The extra RAM is nice, though overdue; and the addition of built-in wireless (Airport and Bluetooth) to the $599.00 model makes it a somewhat better value. But again, I think Core Image is a key technology and it's surprising to me that new hardware brought to market after Tiger's release doesn't include support for it.

Update: Accelerate Your Mac says that the ATI 9550 GPU is supported in Core Image as it is a derivative of the 9600 GPU which is Core Image-supported. The only question I would have is what difference 32MB of RAM makes in the applications? The eMac went from 32MB of VRAM on the 9200 to 64MB of VRAM on the 9600 in its refresh, and I recall reading something that Quartz Extreme would require 64MB of VRAM. On the other hand, the iBook's display is notionally fixed at 1024x768, so it may be less of an issue compared to the eMac which supports a max display resolution of 1280x960, or roughly 56% more pixels.

Three Loads of Laundry

Three missing socks.

Sounds about right.

Probably a statement on the quantum nature of reality, or Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle there. Or something.

Or maybe it's just nature's way of making pillows for sleeping cats.

I don't know.

But then, I don't know much.

Smashed Breakfast Sandwich

Heat up your George Foreman, we're makin' breakfast!

(I'm waiting for the O'Reilly title: Hacking the George Foreman Grill.)

Take a burrito-size whole wheat tortilla and put it in a dish, something that will raise the sides up a bit. Break an egg in the center of the tortilla. Drop a slice of ham on top of it, and a slice of cheese on top of that.

Fold four sides over the middle and place it in the hot grill and smash. (Well, don't like crush it. Just let the weight of the lid do its thing.) The first time I tried it, a few days ago, a little egg white leaked out, but not much. Version 2.0 seems to contain the egg better. I'd tell you how version 2.0 differs from version 1.0, but I don't remember. (Note to self: Take better lab notes.) Version 2.0 did have some cheese leak out, but not much.

Let it grill for a few minutes or several minutes. Something like that. (Note to self: See previous note.)

Let it cool for quite a while because, like McDonald's Hot Apple Pie, "filling is hot."

As always, I'm an authority on nothing. I make all this stuff up. Smash your sandwiches at your own risk.

Interesting Interview

Wil Shipley, until recently, one half of Delicious Monster, is interviewed at DrunkenBlog. Fascinating discussion of the technical issues around getting the iSight to read a barcode.

10.4.2 USB Oddity

Mac OS X 10. 4.2 (yes, I know that's redundant) introduced some odd behavior, as it often doesn't register right-clicking my Logitech MX-510 mouse. This is most unwelcome in Halo as I'm trying to lob a grenade or fire a secondary weapon. But it's also a pain in other contexts.

Most of the time, it requires 3,4,5 or more clicks to register.

Being a lazy person, I've done nothing to investigate this yet. I'll probably do that this weekend and start by "jiggling the cable." (I'll unplug the damn thing and plug it back in and see if that helps.) Then I'll unplug the hub and plug that back in. Failing that, I may install the Logitech driver, if that doesn't present its own issues.

In the meantime, I powerlessly whine into the void here at Groundhog Day.

Invisible

Last night I linked to Shelley Powers' compelling essay on women in the IT workforce.

Just now, I consulted "the authority on what's going on in the world of weblogs," and I note that, at this moment (11:08PM) it reports that three blogs point to Shelley's article. One of them is mine, but the authority that acknowledges no responsibility picked up my post from an aggregated weblog, Tinderbox Syndicate, not Groundhog Day. (It doesn't show "Duplicates removed," or anything like that either.)

So I go over to Scoble's weblog and picked one of his posts that hit the web around the same time, the one on the Boeing wifi flight, and I punch that into the irresponsible authority and I note that there are six (originally said "eight," but two are duplicates) posts linking to that piece of deathless prose.

Ladies, you have your work cut out for you.

To boldly go...

...where everyone must, finally. He gave us all she had, Captain.

Burningbird

I'm kind of listening to The Gillmor Gang while reading Shelley Powers' latest post, and I'm at a loss what to think about yet another all-white-male confab. Not that I have anything against white males, inasmuch as I am one.

Is it just kind of a "buddy" thing? It's just friends shooting the shit together? Is it just a failure of imagination? Gillmor is now saying "the show is crap" and "it's free" and "what do you want for nothin'?"

Good question.

Is this a criticism? Maybe so. Maybe not. Four guys should be able to get together and shoot the shit if they want to. If getting together and shooting the shit is just for the fun of it, just to enjoy each other's company, well, no big deal I guess.

But if it's supposed to be some sort of examination of an issue, a discussion that's intended to help cast some light on a topic, a conversation that is supposed to be of some value to other listeners, then I don't know.

Could Shelley or Jeneane or Dori have contributed to this discussion, which included RSS/Atom and Technorati?

Come to think of it, the only woman I heard these guys mention was Jeneane. I remember hearing the names of Dave Sifry, Dave Winer, Dave Weinberger, Tim O'Reilly, the PR guy who works for Technorati, Sam Ruby. What do all those people have in common? Whoops! Clay Shirky! (And the "probabilistic semantic web").

Okay, that was 77 minutes out of my life. So I flip back to the previous week's Gillmor Gang, and I guess I'm pleased (chagrined?) to note that there was a woman on that panel. Maybe they have women lots of times. I don't know. I think I've listened to only two of these things.

I guess I was just overcome by the irony of the moment, reading Shelley's very compelling account while listening to four (was it five?) guys talking tech. I don't want anyone to think I'm being "unfair" or anything. (Or not "useful" or "helpful," as I've been told recently.)

"What a drag it is getting old..."

Well, maybe not.

FrameBlender QuickTime Plug-in

Before:

After:

Some time ago, I used my camcorder to record the moon. It has a 22x optical zoom (I think. It might be 18x or 20x, I don't have right at hand to check.), which is more than the 10x zoom on the Kodak DX6490 (although the Kodak has vastly more pixels to play with).

FrameBlender is a QuickTime plug-in that will export a QuickTime movie into a single image that is the sum of all the frames in the movie. The Before shot is just a single frame from the movie. The movie itself is less than a second in length, I just clipped a tiny portion from a much longer movie. At 22x magnification, the moon moves pretty quickly across the camera's field of view, so you can't use more than a second without getting some smear. I also used a tripod.

The After shot shows the result of summing probably 30 frames or so of video. The black sky is much blacker, and the image of the moon has greater contrast and sharpness. Summing the frames has the effect of removing noise, both electronic and that introduced by the atmosphere, so you get a "clearer" picture.

Social Engineering

"You really know how to push my buttons." Geeks coined the term "social engineering" to describe the means by which even the best technical security features can be defeated by the exploitation of human nature.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D., is basically a social engineering handbook. It was first brought to my attention by Jonathon Delacour, and I bought a copy of the book a couple of years ago.

The other day, in response to an e-mail from someone who was unhappy with something I wrote, I mentioned that I felt that any success Technorati was experiencing in the marketplace for feed searches was perhaps due more to some astute social engineering than it was to network (hardware and software) engineering.

I think it's worthwhile to review the "weapons of influence" Dr. Cialdini describes in his book. A caveat is important here. Most of what Dr. Cialdini describes is adaptive behavior; that is, it helps us to exist in the world. Where it becomes problematic is how knowledgeable groups and individuals exploit these behaviors to advance their own interests, often at the expense, not to the mutual advantage, of those they exploit.

The first thing Dr. Cialdini notes is that human nature is often characterized by conditioned or habituated behavior. That is to say, we often respond in the same or similar ways to the same or similar stimuli. Again, this is largely adaptive because we lack the cognitive resources, to say nothing of the time, to devote to devising an explicit, consciously volitional response to every event we encounter. This "unconscious" behavior, is what allows skilled people to manipulate our responses. We can create new forms of unconscious behavior, new conditioned or habituated responses, that can mitigate some of the risk of being exploited to our disadvantage.

With that as a basis, the first principle discussed in the book is "reciprocation," or as his subtitle states: "The Old Give and Take... and Take." He even opens with a quote from one of my heroes, Emerson, "Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill." The quote is a reflection of the power of reciprocation, not its virtue. It basically says, whenever we believe we have received something of some value from someone, we feel obligated to offer something in return. This is a shared societal belief, and people who ignore the principle are often subject to some social sanction when their "anti-social" behavior is made known. For the most part, it is an adaptive behavior that supports social interactions among members of a group.

In the world of weblogs, much has already been written about the reciprocity of linking, especially with regard to newspaper web sites and how they violate this "norm" of weblog behavior. But reciprocity is also a component of sophisticated social engineering efforts like the Technorati Top 100, and the Technorati/Always Online Open Media 100, which use reciprocity to leverage the attention-directing authority of high attention-earning weblogs to garner attention for themselves.

The next principle Dr. Cialdini identifies is that of "commitment and consistency." The opening quote is attributed to Leonardo DaVinci: "It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end." "Commitment and consistency" are really the rationalization of previous behaviors. They are social values, because they allow us to form what are likely reasonable expectations regarding the actions and behaviors of others. We experience social pressures to exhibit consistency and commitment. We exploit this principle to our advantage in support groups like Weight Watchers, or Alcoholics Anonymous. But it can be just as readily used against an individual as well.

There are several examples and studies cited in the book, including the experience of American prisoners of war under Chinese control in the Korean War. One of the techniques often employed by those seeking to exploit commitment and consistency in order to gain compliance, especially from a reluctant individual, is to go for the small concession first, and use commitment and consistency to win a slightly larger concession later. Adding "tags" to our posts isn't such a big thing to ask, is it? Dr. Cialdini also cites evidence to show that the act of writing is also a powerful lever to work the mechanisms of commitment and consistency. So as we begin to tag our posts, we become committed or invested in the idea of tags, an idea which effectively turns the efforts of webloggers to Technorati's advantage. To be sure, competitors could also use tag meta-data, but Technorati earns the "commitment and consistency" effort of early adopters to associate the effort with Technorati. Something to bear in mind as we "write ourselves into existence" in our weblogs.

"Social proof" is the term used to describe the next principle. The opening quotation is "Where all think alike, no one thinks very much," attributed to Walter Lippman. The principle of social proof "states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct." Furthermore, "we will use the actions of others to decide on proper behavior for ourselves, especially when we view those others as similar to ourselves." As with all the principles, Dr. Cialdini cites a fairly compelling quantity of research and experimentation, along with anecdotal experiences to illustrate the principle. It is interesting to think about the principle of social proof when considering how the norms of weblogging "emerged" over the last several years. When you think about Doc Searls' "snowball," think about "social proof."

It seems to me that social proof has greater effect when we self-identify as a member of a group. Before the concept of "weblogging' had ossified into the framework we seem to agree upon today, if you wanted to participate in the "conversation" then you kind of had to self-identify as a "weblogger." I recall several discussions in the early days when people who identified themselves as webloggers but who didn't conform to the expectations of the "authorities" in the weblog "community" were criticized, or at least had attention called to them, for not having permalinks, or comments, or titles, and later RSS.

So when Technorati is able to leverage reciprocity not only for attention-directing, but for social proof. By getting high attention-earning webloggers to subscribe (lend their authority) to the concept of tags, (because it's not asking very much), then they're assured of thousands of other webloggers reading the endorsement and perhaps choosing to do likewise because it's the "blogworthy" think to do.

Parenthetically, technology also affected social proof in this instance, as one weblogging service or another would roll out a new feature, then instantly hundreds or thousands of other webloggers would be using it, or at least have it available. Naturally, the competition would follow suit. It's interesting that some weblog software developers are incorporating tagging solutions into their software, which will further amplify the social proof signal, just as comments, permalinks and RSS solutions did.

It's also interesting to think about the principle of social proof and the amount of weblog "coverage" of the London bombings compared to those taking place virtually every day in Iraq. (It's also interesting to think about social proof and the whole iPod phenomenon, and Windows and VHS for that matter.)

Following social proof is the principle of "liking." The key to exploiting the principle of liking is association. That's why there's often a pretty girl in an advertisement. It's also why celebrities are used as spokespersons. But liking and association work in other ways as well. Research as early as the thirties showed that enjoying food resulted in messages being more favorably received, than messages that were delivered while people were not eating. Think about that the next time someone says, "Let's do lunch."

Also, as with social proof, we tend to like others who are similar to us, which is one of the reasons we like labels and badges. We're "netizens" or members of the "blogosphere," or we "ride the Cluetrain." "It's okay, he's one of us!" Those people who aren't "like us," those members of the "hinternet" might destroy our "world." It's also why people with messages will often choose to flatter their audience rather than challenge them. "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." But sometimes the truth isn't very sweet, and not every message is in the service of the truth.

What's not to like for an A-lister to be listed on the Technorati Top 100? What's not to like about Technorati and Always Online "honoring" webloggers and others in the "new media?" If you're going to assemble a board of advisors, you're probably not going to pick people with prickly personalities are you?

The next principle is the one I happen to think is probably the most powerful, and that is "authority." I've mentioned Stanley Milgram's obedience to authority experiments many times, and Dr. Cialdini cites many more experiments much like them. It seems authority is most effective when a person is confronting a situation with a great deal of uncertainty. But even something as trivial as "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV," can influence people to receive messages favorably. Socially recognized symbols of authority can be exploited, indeed often are, even when the actual "authority" is nowhere present. Ever see an empty police car parked along the side of the road?

Of course, Technorati actually tells us they are "the authority on what's going on in the world of weblogs." And many of the high attention-earners, and would-be A-listers, out of reciprocity, or social proof, or liking, treat Technorati as an authority, despite the fact that Technorati specifically disclaims any responsibility for anyone who relies on their so-called "authority." I've objected to this example of authority without responsibility before, but it doesn't seem to be a big deal for anyone else, which I suspect is more a product of commitment and consistency, and reasoning backward from their feelings than any honest assessment of the situation.

So I happen to think that if Technorati is enjoying some competitive advantage in numbers of people using the service, it's likely more due to clever social engineering than clever technical engineering.

Switcher!

My daughter and son-in-law are ditching their Dell for an iMac. Gives me some good ideas for Christmas presents!

The High and the Mighty

I had never seen this John Wayne movie before, and AMC had been making quite a big deal about it all last week so I decided to watch it tonight. Woo-hoo! Great flick! Very much of its period, but that's part of its charm, if that's the right word. Glad to hear it's coming out on DVD after being unavailable previously.

More Tiger Trivia

Though not in the same "Hey, look at that..." vein as the previous post, it seems that 10.4.2 has changed something which allows me to use Remote Desktop 1.2 from Tiger again.

This is nice because it allows me to help manage my parents' eMac remotely, and I had been using my iBook which is still on Panther to do so. That works okay, but the iBook's 1024x768 screen res is the same as my parents' machine, so it gets kind of awkward waiting for the screen to scroll and redraw when I move from a menu bar down to the dock. There may well be some preference or feature in Remote Desktop that'll allow you to scale the screen or go "full screen" on the local machine, but I didn't really look for it.

As it stands now, my parents' screen fits comfortably in the 1280x1024 screen resolution of my PowerMac, and I can handle both desktops easily.

In other news, iChat AV had been working fine for me since 10.4 was released. Today I experienced some audio breakup and some frame-dropping in 10.4.2, but it may be unrelated to the .2 update. A number of people have been reporting problems using iChat with Tiger, but my experience has been as good as that under Panther.

Word Count in Selection

I was reading someone's weblog yesterday who asked if there was a way that he could get a word count for a given selection of text. As I recall, there were no real answers in the comments to the post, and I couldn't think of one at the time. Of course, I can't find the weblog now, and my history file can't seem to lead me back to it, so I'm not sure what to make of that.

But! I did happen to note that Spell Catcher does have a word count function for text selections.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

There's a post in here somewhere, I'm just not sure I'll be able to find it.

Let's start with a few observations or comments, or sentence fragments, if that's the best I can do.

I don't like the word "manifesto."

We seem to have two modes of action: One as individuals, the other as members of a group. Most of the time, we seem to believe we're acting as individuals. Less often, we recognize we're acting as a member of a group.

When we think of ourselves, we most often think of ourselves as individuals, not as members of a group. When we regard others, we seem to also believe they are acting as individuals, not as members of a group. Or at least, we make no meaningful distinction between the two. To be clearer, we may label an individual as a member of a group (i.e. "liberals" or "conservatives"), but we don't perceive that their actions, views or opinions are a function of their group affiliation. The difference I'm trying to make here is that people behave differently as individuals than they do as members of a group. They may take their cues from other members of their group, and in a "group" context, the members will tend to act in a way that is consistent with their affiliation. The Stanford Prison Experiment would be a rather unique, though I think legitimate, example of this.

Or further, we may believe that our perception of others is strictly our own individual action, or cognitive choice, and not a perception that is shaped by an unconscious role as a member of a group.

Most of our "actions" are really habituated or conditioned responses. Some of these actions are in response to external stimuli; others are internally generated in order to maintain a condition of homeostasis. If we've become conditioned to a state of internal stress and agitation, even if we don't like it, we will often unconsciously engage in behaviors that will preserve or restore that state of internal stress or agitation. This has been observed in families where one member with a particular problem has been a source of stress. When that problem is addressed such that the family member with the problem is no longer a source of stress, another family member will "act out" in order to return to the "normal" condition internal stress.

We have a misconception of our own cognitive ability. I suspect most people will either reject, or have serious objections to what I offered in the previous paragraph. We all like to believe we're rational creatures, and our actions are governed by the light of reason. I believe our actions are largely governed by our emotions and we most often reason backward from our feelings. I think our emotional apparatus is very sophisticated, and is most often quite effective at helping us manage our day to day lives. Indeed, as Dr. Antonio Damasio shows in his book Descartes' Error, injury or damage to the structures of our brain that constitute significant portions of this emotional apparatus significantly impairs the ability of individuals to make effective decisions.

I'd like to quote whole sections of Eric Hoffer's True Believer, but I'll try to limit myself to a couple of paragraphs from the Men of Words chapter.

...(T)here is a deep-seated craving common to almost all men of words which determines their attitude to the prevailing order. It is a craving for recognition; a craving for a clearly marked status above the common run of humanity. "Vanity," said Napoleon, "made the revolution; liberty was only a pretext." There is apparently an irremediable insecurity at the core of every intellectual, be he noncreative or or creative. Even the most gifted and prolific seem to live a life of eternal self-doubting and have to prove their worth anew each day. What de Rémusat said of Thiers is perhaps true of most men of words: "he has much more vanity than ambition; and he prefers consideration to obedience, and the appearance of power to power itself. Consult him constantly, and then do just as you please. He will take more note of your deference to him than of your actions."

Think about that for a while.

To sum up, the militant man of words prepares the ground for the rise of mass movement : 1) by discrediting prevailing creeds and institutions and detaching from them the allegiance of the people; 2) by indirectly creating a hunger for faith in the hearts of those who can't live without it, so that when the new faith is preached it finds an eager response among the disillusioned masses; 3) by furnishing the doctrine and the slogans of the new faith; 4) by undermining the convictions of the "better people" — those who can get along without faith — so that when the new fanaticism makes its appearance they are without the capacity to resist it. They see no sense in dying for convictions and principles, and yield to the new order without a fight.

As they say in these parts, "read the whole thing."

I don't agree with Hoffer in every respect. I think he's an acute observer, and I think that had he written True Believer today, with what we now think we know about the nature of human behavior, it might be somewhat different; but mostly in details, not in the broader outline.

I've seen a couple of references to "power," at Doc Searls' weblog. One from Marc Canter, and, most recently, one from Doc himself. These were the inspiration for the title of this post.

So when Doc says, "This isn't about redistribution of power. It's about the creation of new power like we've never seen before." I wonder what "this" is, and just what kind of "power" he thinks is being created. Or when Marc Canter boasts,

All culture, commerce and emotions lead through our industry.

What is known as entertainment, marketing, influence and psychology is driven by technology today. Everything that we know - is 'swatched' in the veneer of technology. We wouldn't be sitting here today, reading this post - if it wasn't for technology. Almost nothing 'happens' without technology. That's how big we are.

And at the forefront of technology is blogging and social software.

It's about us, people, and once we get our hands on the wheel of our own destiny - look out world!

Our own realization of what our own power is - is what it's all about.

I wonder what group he's talking about, and what that "power" is, that his group is supposed to be realizing?

It's all very kind of vague, isn't it?

I think that to the extent that what we do injures others, it is when we act as members of a group that causes the most injury. To be sure, the pedophile, the thief, the rapist, and most common criminal behaviors are probably strictly individual actions. But when you think about the victims of war, terrorism, corporate misconduct, oppression, prejudice, and the like, these are all consequences of actions by individuals as members of one group or another. I'm not sure about this, because it only just came to me and I haven't thought about it very much yet, but it seems like it might be right.

I think when we write about how we think others "should" (scare quotes and italics!) act, we tend to think of them acting as individuals, and not as members of a group. We tend not to think about how things could turn out somewhat, perhaps vastly, different from what we envisioned, as a result. I think when we think about how others should act, we tend to credit them with a greater cognitive ability than they likely possess, and so we don't realize that they will likely be responding more to the emotions the writing evokes, and "reasoning backward" from that, more than carefully considering what we've written.

Manifestos serve groups. Just something to be aware of, and perhaps a bit cautious about.

I don't think groups are bad things. But I do think we need to understand ourselves, and our roles as members of groups, better in order to mitigate the worst characteristics of group behavior. Having said that, I don't think it's likely to happen. There's no "juice" in it. So, I guess the second best thing is for people who are so inclined to pay attention to what's going on around them and to try and understand those events from a different perspective. You may not be able to change the course of events, but you may be able to avoid being trampled by the mob.

Useless Tiger Trivia

If you click on the green window control (usually re-sizes the window) in Calculator, it'll cycle through the various calculator modes, basic, scientific and hexadecimal (programmer). I just checked in Panther, and the green button doesn't appear in mine.

It also has the plug-ins feature that the Panther version introduced (do Get Info on the Calculator in Finder), but there are no plug-ins located in the package as there were in Panther, and the ones from Panther don't work in Tiger either.

I tried installing the plug-ins in Panther, but I could never get them to work. All I ever got when I changed views was a window of just plain brushed metal. Go figure.

If you've installed the Developer Tools (And why wouldn't you?) Play with Core Image Fun House. Cool!

Fajita Cordon Bleu

Of course, this is neither a fajita, nor cordon bleu, but it is what I had for lunch.

Take a burrito-size whole wheat tortilla, place a couple of slices of ham, turkey and a slice of swiss cheese in the center, you'll probably have to fold them in half. Fold the edges of the tortilla to the center as best you can. Stick the whole thing in your George Foreman thing, smash it and grill it till the tortilla is a nice crispy brown.

Squirt some honey mustard on a plate for dippin', and eat. Well, wait till it cools off a bit first.

Inspired by something I saw at Taco Bell, and probably one too many late nights in France eating smashed sandwich.

I stopped by Firehouse Subs after taekwondo this morning, as is my habit, and it was jammed with about a half-dozen little kids in front of me along with a couple of adults. For some reason, they seemed to be moving slower than usual, and Ursula wasn't there either. I figured I could make myself something to eat and just avoid the aggravation. So I did.

This Seems Interesting

"Scientists are puzzled by a mysterious Los Padres National Forest hot spot where 400-degree ground ignited a wildfire."

Buy the Numbers

Since my vast financial empire seems to be under some strain of late (Which happens from time to time. Nothing to be concerned about.), I've renewed my interest in my budget spreadsheet. I originally developed it in Mesa, a Cocoa-based, Mac OS X application. I must say, I wanted to like Mesa a great deal, and at first I did; but there are some annoying bugs or quirky behaviors that put me off eventually. It's had a few minor updates since I last used it, and I've been keeping up with them, so I may give it a try here again sometime, but for now I'm using Excel in MS Office 2004.

I have to say, it is a pretty nice spreadsheet environment. I'm not a bean-counter by nature. I have little interest in money, apart from keeping body and soul together and enjoying whatever new toy catches my eye, so a spreadsheet doesn't have the same appeal to me that a good outliner or word processor might. Still, having had to work in Excel, I'm somewhat motivated to explore it a little further. If I happen to discover anything noteworthy, I'll be sure to mention it here.

It's probably also worth noting that Nap mode remains stable, and I'm enjoying the quieter performance of my PowerMac G4 867/DP MDD.

X-Boox

I wonder if Apple's regular major releases of OS X is a good thing or a bad thing for computer book publishers. On the one hand, titles go somewhat irrelevant much quicker. Who's buying Jaguar Editions of anything anymore? On the other hand, guys like me tend to buy new books with each new release, though I'm not sure how many I'll be buying this time around.

Last night I gave away my Panther copy of The Missing Manual, and I doubt I'll buy the Tiger edition. I like David Pogue's writing, and The Missing Manual is a good resource for new Mac users, but there's likely very little truly new material in there to make it worth the money and the shelf space for me. I've got Mac OS X Unleashed for Panther as well. I may buy the Tiger edition of that, since it seems to be more comprehensive than the Missing Manual series. But I haven't made up my mind yet. I also gave away my copy of Mac OS X Hacks, Panther Edition, even though I haven't had it very long, because it simply wasn't as good as the first Mac OS X Hacks, which I still have and I intend to keep for a while.

What I think I'm most likely to do is buy more of Adam Engst's Take Control e-books, where I just want some Tiger-specific information about a particular feature, like Automator or Spotlight or something.

It's all kind of academic at the moment, since my financial resources seem to be somewhat constrained just now. But I expect that will resolve itself eventually, and I'll return to my spendthrift habits.

Chores

My least favorite chore is cleaning the bathroom. It's small, so that's good. But that also means it's cramped, with lots of places where you can't just swirl a mop around. And there's a lot of stooping and kneeling. Plus, it's the bathroom. Yuck.

Anyway, that chore's about finished. I'm letting the tub soak with some bleach and water and the bottom of the show curtain liner sitting in it. I hate taking that thing down, and I'll just buy a new one rather than try to wash the damn thing. I'm sure I'm creating some kind of hazardous atmosphere from mixing all manner of household cleaning chemicals and bleach.

I'd hire a maid, but then I'd just have to clean the place up before I let her in. You know how that goes. Well that, and I can't afford a maid.

Tinderbloggin'

Al notes Mark Bernstein's (developer of Tinderbox) comments with regard to some new macros and assistants for creating weblogs in Tinderbox. Groundhog Day has been a TinderBlog since day one, and before that as Time's Shadow, when I left editthispage.com and Radio. I'm looking forward to seeing what Mark's got up his sleeves too.

A5

Something else that only just came to my attention was that A5, an application that works with your calendar and to-do data on your Palm, was compatible with Palm OS 5. I had A5 installed on my Clié PEG-T665C running Palm OS 4, but somehow had the impression it wasn't compatible with the PEG-TG50 running Palm OS 5. On a whim, I checked the web site and discovered that it was compatible with OS 5, so I downloaded and installed it today. It's cool, and it's free.

CHUD

No, not Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, that little-known, timeless cinematic achievement, but CHUD (Computer Hardware Understanding Developer) Tool, Version 3.5.2, to be specific.

That isn't the latest version of CHUD, but it's the last one that included the option to enable the "Nap" mode of the G4 processors in an MDD PowerMac, of which mine is one. There's been a discussion of CHUD at Accelerate Your Mac, and until recently enabling Nap mode on an MDD Mac was a source of instability. But the advantage of Nap mode, especially for MDD owners, is it allows the processor to run cooler, which means less fan noise, and we have very noisy fans.

Well, since folks were reporting that Nap mode worked well in Tiger, unlike Panther, I figured I'd give it a try. I downloaded version 3.5.2 from Apple's FTP site and installed it this afternoon. There isn't a lot of documentation about Nap, so I restarted just in case that was necessary. I'm guessing it probably was. I was confused for a moment, well, several moments, by the presence of both the "Processor" System Preference, which has no option to enable Nap mode, and by not noticing the "Hardware" System Preference in the Hardware section of the System Preferences, which does have the option to enable Nap mode. Confusion abated, crossing my fingers, I enabled it.

I didn't notice a dramatic difference like those mentioned in some of the reports at Accelerate Your Mac, but it has dropped my CPU temperature, as reported by the Temperature Monitor dockling, by about 1.5 to 2.5 degrees F, which is just enough to keep the big fan in the CPU spinning at a nice, relatively quiet RPM rate. Previously, the machine would run at about 136-137 degrees F, which kept the big fan turning at a rate that caused an annoying, somewhat loud, rumble.

I've added two additional hard drives, a DVD burner, a USB 2.0 PCI card, and the ATI Radeon 9800 video card to this machine over the years, so there is a significantly greater heat load that the cooling system has to cope with than was present in its stock configuration. I'm pretty sure the video card has caused the recent increase in fan speed and noise. CHUD gets me back to what this machine sounded like when I installed the new power supply and cpu fan from Apple a couple of years ago, that was intended to address much of the original criticism about these "wind tunnel" Macs.

I've only been running with this configuration for a few hours, but so far everything seems very stable. More to follow if I encounter any problems.

(Update, 7:20 a.m., Bastille Day: Left the machine up all night and we're showing 133.2 degrees F after about 90 minutes of actual use this morning. No instability noted, but I haven't done much except use NetNewsWire Lite, Safari, Mail and Tinderbox. This evening will be a better test.)

(Update, 10:24 p.m., Bastille Day: Played a couple of games of Halo online, got the temperature up to about 137 again, but no problems with game play or OS stability. Looks like a winner.)

Best of Luck

And good wishes to Ken Loo who is starting a new endeavor.

I'm sure everyone else knows this...

But I didn't know that Mac OS X's Preview application has had a "Full Screen" mode since Panther. It's now part of the "Slide Show" feature in Tiger. I only happened to find this out reading one of my many Panther books, and I don't recall ever hearing of it being mentioned before.

I tried it out, and, for me, it really does make reading a long PDF document much easier or more enjoyable. So, if you're an OS X user on either Panther or Tiger, you might want to look at that feature. (In Tiger, just hit the pause control after you select Slide Show in the View menu. The controls will fade away in a few seconds, and you can just arrow through the pages. Though I must say, I'm not too fond of the way they come back each time you change pages. You can even have two facing pages on screen at once if you like.)

10.4.2

Installed the latest update to Tiger from Apple. No ill effects noted. Your mileage may vary.

Train Your Brain

Cognitive therapy in place of medication for ADHD.

Complicated Simplification

I have a talent for outsmarting myself. This probably comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with my writing, but it comes up to bite me in the ass in other ways as well.

I live in a rather small apartment, and I tend to accrete "stuff," so clutter becomes a problem. Looking around for some clutter-reducing, "low hanging fruit," I happened to think of putting all of my DVDs into a binder, and putting all the cases into a storage box so I'd still have them in the event I ever wanted to trade them in or something.

So off to Target I go, and I picked up a 208-disk CD binder. Upon returning to my apartment, I immediately set about removing DVDs and inserting them in binder sleeves. About three quarters of the way through the effort, I began to think about how I would know what movies I have, and how I could easily go about finding them. My lazy-man's brain said, "Pffft! You know what movies you have, and how long does it take to flip through 50 binder pages? Don't worry about it!" By the time I was dragging the box of boxes out into the breezeway, the anal-retentive left hemisphere of my brain spoke up and said, "You know, it would have been nice if you'd printed out your Delicious Library database and figured out which DVDs you hadn't entered yet before you boxed them all up and stuck them out here in the breezeway storage closet."

Then I'm thinking, "Stupid brain! Where were you forty-five minutes ago before I started this?!" (This is why meditation is so important for me. These guys never shut up otherwise.)

So now I'm thinking I want to go pull that big honking box, actually two of them, because they all wouldn't fit in the new 20-gal storage box I bought to hold them all. I had to put the remaining ones in the other storage box I already have in the breezeway. Go through Delicious Library and get it all up to date, then figure out some nice way to print it out and add those pages to the front of the binder. I also thought about exporting it to html and then importing the html into my Clié. Then I got to thinking it would be cool if the Salling Clicker could query Delicious Library from my phone or my Clié too.

Anyway, it looks as though I'm going to be pulling those stupid boxes back out so I can add whichever ones are missing to Delicious Library and then figure out which way to go from there.

The good news is there are no more DVD cases laying all around the TV, and I can fit my modest collection of GameCube games into the small cupboards in the TV stand. It looks much less cluttered now.

La Plus ça Change...

This is from Thomas Merton's journal, dated 4 January 1965: (You can use Search Inside This Book to read the relevant passage. Page 166.)

Even worse than Council speeches in the refectory was Archbishop O'Boyle's "explanation" of the last two agitated days of the Council. And then, after that, the Time story on the murder of hostages in Stanleyville, Congo, last November. A tragic thing. But the Time story, equally tragic, assumes fantastic perspectives. No indication that anybody could possibly be wrong except the African rebels, and that the Tshombe Belgian-American intervention is the only thing that could possibly be reasonable, human, etc. Were the hostages martyrs to a Red plot or also to the greed of the people who want to hold on to the mines in Katanga? The trouble is that indignation and horror swept the community (and they should) but with them also a complete conviction that of course the implied judgment and interpretation of Time were both satisfactory and final.

When you think that in all the country it is this way, about Cuba, Vietnam, the Congo, etc., what can possibly become of it but one dirty adventure and war on top of another?

Use of torture in Vietnam is admitted, without apology, as something quite reasonable.

"Honor"

In my opinion, you shouldn't be able to attach the word "honor" to something unless you know what the damn word means. See Miller and Stockdale. (And in case I'm being too obtuse for my own good: If you knew what the damn word meant, you wouldn't attach it to something as trivial and superficial as "tags." Clear?)

Absent Without Leave

Anyone knowing the whereabouts of Messrs. Delacour or WonderChicken is requested to report same to the Department of Homeland Sanity.

Don't make me come get you...

(What is it with that whole damn hemisphere anyway? Ken Loo, you're doing fine work. Keep it up! Don Park doesn't count. Close, but you're still solidly in this hemisphere. Joi Ito belogs (Misspelling? I think not!) to no particular hemisphere - he's part of the "blogosphere" (scare quotes and italics!))

"I'm not a joiner."

Yes, you are.

Another fiction of the ego to aggrandize a unique "self."

The central conceit (not a quote from the link): "Other people are 'joiners.' I am an individual."

Reminds me of an old Steve Martin routine.

Not a joiner? What about the "Top 100?" Sure wanted to join that crowd.

Not a joiner? What's with all the "us against them" rhetoric? What's the "Blog Daddy" thing about? Daddy of who or what? Not a joiner? What's with all the "I'm a liberal, but..." or "I'm a Christian, but..." stuff? Not a joiner? What about that whole "9/11" thing?

I know Judith Miller is willing to put her beliefs into action. That means she believes them. James Stockdale put his beliefs into action. For anyone else not willing to do so, they're just protective coloration. Kind of like the self-deception of not being a "joiner." I may be a fraud, but damn I look good on TV!

Just doing my bit to help the "self-correcting nature of the blogosphere," and to "subvert hierarchy." Maybe I'm just "fact-checking your ass." Not sure about that. Certainly an unwelcome visual. Pretty sure I'm not "writing myself into existence." (I exist, therefore I write.) Also pretty sure this isn't a "conversation." (You aren't listening. And that's okay since I'm pretty sure I'm not talking to you anyway. Herewith, we discern the limitations of the medium.)

Any more sacred oxen I can gore this evening? I'm in a "good" mood.

This has been a public service announcement from Commander Cranky-Pants.

"Who am I? Why am I here?"

ADM James Stockdale, a better man than most of us will ever hope to be, died yesterday.

Color Me Green

I am so envious. I bought one in '84 to drag back and forth to work and ran ThinkTank and AppleWorks on it. Went with me on two ships and a couple of deployments. Used to stay up too late playing Reach for the Stars before or after my night watch.

I think computers were a lot more fun before the internet came along and turned everything into something really important.

CNN: No Video for You!

Anyone had any luck watching CNN's video in OS X? I reinstalled Windows Media Player 9, and a new player window opens, but the video never plays.

Probably just as well. I don't need to waste any more time staring at this small screen.

What Do I Think?

I think bullshit makes the world go round. Well, that and competition for rank in the hierarchy, which is pretty much bullshit.

I think Feedster needs to indulge in some no-value-added attention-seeking behavior, like its "darling of the digerati" competitor. And they should always remember that markets aren't conversations, and there's no such thing as "bad publicity."

Of Mice and Men

Best laid plans, and all that. Spent the weekend making a few t-shirts (and wasting a fair amount of ink and iron-on transfer pages), playing around in iMovie HD, racing in the streets on the GameCube, burning a CD, housekeeping in both the apartment and on the G4, sitting in Books-a-Million, and, in general, not thinking terribly much about anything.

T-Shirt

Caitie's still asleep, and the cats have left me alone for a few minutes, so I figured I'd fix this thing and get the July archive going.

Had some fun yesterday playing with t-shirt iron-on transfers and the printer. Catie made a t-shirt for taekwondo featuring a photograph of herself and another student in a martial arts pose staring into the camera. She added the phrase "We kick butt!" and then we printed it and ironed it onto a new t-shirt. She wore it to black belt class and everyone got a kick out of it. ("Oh, very punny Rogers.")

Later on we went to Office Depot to pick up some school supplies. Kids in the northeast just got out of school last week, but Caitie goes back at the beginning of August. She had some composition notebooks that she wanted to personalize. So I showed her how to drag pictures from iPhoto into OmniGraffle 3.x, resize and rotate them, and make a collage of photographs. She had picked out some clear, sticky plastic that probably mostly resembles a kind of laminate, but I think it's supposed to be removable, for covering textbooks. She used it to put her personalized covers on her notebooks.

I plan on making a couple of t-shirts for myself this weekend. I'm going to try to make a couple of Buckaroo Banzai shirts, and I plan to scan a page or two from Zen Speaks!, which are black and white comic strips of Zen parables and history, and make a t-shirt out of that.

I haven't had much time to think about truth, ignorance and freedom. Like most of my great ideas, it doesn't turn out to be very much. Not that that's a bad thing. I did want to point out that my little missive Hell is Other People was about a planeload of people all trapped in their own center of the universe world, written from the point of view of another passenger just like them. Most of the feedback I got was quite positive and totally missed the point. Sometimes I'm far too obtuse to get my own point across.

I may have some time tomorrow to think about this some more, and perhaps write something down. I do believe that ignorance is the greatest barrier to freedom, more so than political oppression, though that is not to say that political oppression isn't unjust or a significant barrier as well. But there's a kind of freedom that Viktor Fankl wrote about in Man's Search for Meaning that is kind of the prerequisite for any sort of meaningful freedom in even the most liberal (or libertarian, if you like) political environments. But this is where I kind of disagreed with that little essay about Sartre, as well. Until you know you're trapped by habituated behavior and patterns of thought, in other words, by your own ignorance, how can anyone be said to be truly free? And if the nature of ignorance is that we don't know what we don't know, can we ever be certain that we are truly free? And what is the ultimate goal of freedom anyway?

Something else to think about just before Independence Day.

Reward

Shelley Powers wrote an interesting little essay called iTit the other day. What she seems to be writing about, I think, is reward-seeking behavior. We all have reward-seeking behavior, and, in the main, this is a good thing. It's part of our biological hardware.

We experience something, it "feels good," and we're motivated to repeat that experience again.

It can sometimes betray us with things like narcotics, or cigarettes but it's mostly a good thing.

Unfortunately, the groups we must exist as members of have learned how to exploit this reward-seeking behavior in order to promote the interests of the group, which often aren't congruent with the interests of the individual. We are physiologically "wired" to enjoy eating sweet, fatty foods, because high calorie foods were often scarce in our early evolution, and if you could find one, you wanted to be motivated to find it again. Nowadays, it's pretty easy to find one, you have to look no farther than your nearest vending machine or mini-mart.

When other aspects of our lives are unrewarding, we can experience the soothing effects of reward (usually related to dopamine) by engaging in some other reward-seeking behavior, like eating a pint of Häagen Daaz. While this affords us the positive aspects of a reward sensation, it has some undesirable effects as well. Like 40-inch trousers.

Buying things seems to be a reward-triggering activity for most people as well, which is good news, it would seem, for a consumer-based economy.

Homeostasis may play a role in this. This is the tendency for the body (and the mind-body connection) to maintain a specific state. When our bodies (or mind-body connections) depart significantly from that condition or state, we are motivated to seek ways to return to it. This is part of the mechanism that governs habituated or conditioned behaviors.

In the end, it's not owning the things or carrying around the fat that is rewarding. Indeed, we know too well that those are mostly unrewarding burdens. It was the behavior, the act, that offered a temporary sensation of reward.

The possibility that we shouldn't let go of, is the possibility of knowing ourselves. And in this act there is the possibility of reward, without the accompanying burdens of things and adipose tissue. But it does come with one burden: the burden of responsibility. But bearing that burden comes with rewards of its own.

It seems like we're okay with having someone tell us about something we know we don't know much about, like when Doc explains to us about how an antenna radiates power. We're less okay with someone trying to tell us something we think we already know about, and that is ourselves. As the center of our existence, what can you possibly tell me about myself that I don't already know?

A wise woman told me once that I had an anger problem, and that just made me mad. But she is a wise woman, and I'm not mad anymore. At least, not at her (wink). I learned many things from her, and I often asked her, "Why didn't someone tell me this a long time ago?" And if you've been reading this for very long, you already know what she answered. "Would you have listened?"

And I know she's right. I wouldn't have listened, and I didn't listen, because I had heard most of the things she was teaching me before. One of the things I'd heard, but never thought very much about, was "When the student is ready, the teacher appears."

I'm willing to wager that the vast majority of the students sitting in that commencement exercise David Foster Wallace was speaking at weren't looking for a teacher. But that's okay. One day they will.

The thing we might want to let go of is our certainty about ourselves.