The Basement in the Attic

My random meanderings on lived experiences & the thoughts they generate.

categories:

  • “life” tags:
  • “change”
  • “politics”
  • “revolution”

Greetings Gentle Reader, I've been wondering a lot about Occupy.  On the one hand, the diffuseness of the message and the effort makes me wonder if the liberal side politics has lost it.  Not that a professional politician would be within a mile of an Occupy gathering.  I'm partially as confused as my friends who identify (overtly or not) as conservative.  What are these people on about?  How is it they're getting attention for...what, exactly? Can they go away now?

On the other hand, I'm fascinated at the self organization that's going on, and I recognize that there's a real something happening here, below the muddy waters.  Here in MN, Occupy is up against the impossible, winter's going to solve all of the gov't's problems.  It'll cost 20x the calories to keep one protester on-station overnight in Minneapolis than it will to keep the entire crowd in Oakland.  Of course, Occupy Oakland's having to fight more dramatic battles.  Minus 20 will do what all the cops in the Midwest can't do.

But here's the thing: Occupy is the “grey goo” of social movements.  In scifi, one of the many plot-devices is nano tech run wild, where the little robots get loose, and turn everything into a uniform mass of grey-goo, a slime of nanobots.  Occupy could be the same thing, a small virus that gets loose, and slowly eats the entire political system.

Look at that photo, she's right.  Complexity is not confusion.  It is confusing, and for an audience used to the highly refined sugar of bumper-sticker-politics, it's easy to dismiss Occupy.  Fearing the unknown, or even the just-blurry, is easy too.  In either case, the sheeple run and shy away from this oddness.

But read a little about Open Space Technology. I've been to the opening of our Occupy's General Assembly, and they've got a method, and it beats Robert's Rules of Order.  Is it possible that we're seeing a new organizational technique used to create a social order of a career-less future?  Is it possible that we organize along the lines of the individual contributing universally instead of specifically?  A culture of omnivorous makers instead of one of single-skilled specialists?

One enabler of this—and we're not there yet, folks—is putting enough smarts into our tools such that they can make less-skilled users able to produce with them.  The difference between a horse-and-plow and a micro-tractor is that the tractor's higher power-density means a plow that does more of the work itself.  Mastering a horse-and-plow is really tough, it requires a lot of muscles and callouses of the operator, and those are not earned immediately.  Whereas the micro-tractor and a really well-formed plow could require only the skill of walking broken-ground.  True, that's pretty rare in urban people, but it's a lot closer to ubiquity.  For now, the only intelligence in this example is in the shaping of that plow, and attaching it to something strong enough to pull it.  Pretty soon, though, there'll be enough silicon-smarts in a garbage truck that almost anyone could take up the task.  Then would we all take turns hauling trash?

I don't know.  But I do know that I share Occupy's dissent with the status quo, and I'm beginning to “get” their underlying organization and message, and I like them.  It may be that the US is leading once again, in the one area we've always lead in, the generation of ideas.  And if so, we're leading in a direction that the world's largest economy is not happy with, because with over a billion in their peasant-class, they've known for a long time that there simply aren't enough bullets to reverse an uprising.

Fortunately, Occupy isn't an uprising, it's a slide-rising.

categories:

  • “blogging” tags:
  • “noise”

Ok, I've had it: I cannot figure out how to edit my Wordpress homepage.  I'm an idiot.  On the other hand, I'm kinda liking the utter newbieness of having it like this.  I'm relishing the idea that I'm showing the world that I can't tie my shoes, while my admin password has more than 2^66 bits of entropy.  (A lot more.  Best of luck, script kiddies looking for a challenge.)

I guess we're all a study in contrasts, maybe the barefoot children of the cobbler aren't anomalous, but indicative.  That we shouldn't judge a book completely by its cover, but we shouldn't deny the existence of this tendency.

I hope you enjoy the content, once you get past the generic cover.

categories:

  • “blogging” tags:
  • “random-crap”

The move from iWeb maybe here, still waiting to see about if it works. Dealing with the pics now. More thoughtful posts to come, promise.

categories:

  • “motorcycling” tags:
  • “blogging”

iWeb

I know iWeb is not long for this world, I’ll take every day putting off spending real money for a real content-manager/creation tool. The above flowers are a blend of pale blue and green, which has us wondering if they’re fed ink/paint to make them turn out this way. Edit from the Future: Image long lost, cheap substitute substituted.

Today’s lesson: Motorcycles make HUGE rooster-tails in the rain. Like, to the point where they cover their tail lights. I had no idea. The group-ride headed right into the teeth of a torrential downpour, said utterly without exaggeration. Typical of the midwest, it was subsiding in 10 minutes and over and bluing skies within 30, but the unimaginable consequences of getting drenched... Hearing-aids soaked (still working), phone in damp pocket (last week it fell in the toilet, so this is slightly less disgusting) and trying to walk in saturated 15oz Carhartt jeans with Bohn armor on underneath...you have no idea. Later, at lunch under a scorching sun, I relinquished the “plastic pants” to go back to the still-damp jeans. Could hardly move, and they were still wet in the seat and behind the knees 4 hours later. Also came upon my first ever moto-crash: two riders off the road in the dirt. The first guy went off in the corner, reasons (other than speed) unknown. The 2nd guy lost it dodging #1. 2nd guy netted a broken collar-bone, 1st guy injuries unknown, possibly minor, but needing imaging to be sure. Both left in an ambulance, and a nice neighbor let us park their motorcycles at their farm. (Both still running! Astonishing. Both carburetted too, christ, what is this fancy for the primitive?) MJM’s camping with the ladies, on a river in WI that’s described as being prettier than the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. That’s pretty high praise. I miss her something silly. Weird moment in the ride this morning: before the rain, beautiful weather, cool, coming round a bend, into the wind, I’m about middle of the pack. The cooling wind on my cheeks, and ever-s0-faint smell of hydrocarbons just hinted to me of the moment when my instructor and I scooted into the open door of the plane for our tandem-jump. I thought for sure this would trigger some kind of ferocious panic-attack, but I just had a nice smile thinking of the astounding beauty of the light and how relatively benign the wind was at that point. 10 seconds later, it would become a pack of savage dogs trying to rip my face off, but that moment before, it’s a bit like Gary Oldman in “The Professional”: “I like these calm little moments before the storm. They remind me of Beethoven.”

Daughter’s in Chicago with BFF. She (daughter) took one evening to care for her 2nd cousin, suffering from Parkinson’s and now a broken pelvis or hip. He’s the most amazing, witty guy of all my ex-in-laws, and he’s brought low by this “series of unfortunate events.” There’s simply no justice in the universe. I hope my daughter carries out her intent to make far more frequent trips to Chicago to help her cuz. A long and rambling post, dear reader, compensating for the long failed operation of iWeb. Promises yet again to be a better correspondent. With my thanks and regards.

categories:

  • “life” tags:
  • “computers”
  • “social-networking”

My employers have just rolled out this large new product for sharing stuff on-line. The biggest useability problem is that they employ architectural metaphors without regard. There are “rooms” and “places” and... I could go on, but I just want to waste a moment of out time on why architectural metaphors for online things doesn’t work.

First problem is, there are no online things. It’s all data displayed, so thinking of knowledge-representation as atomic constructs is a risky beginning. While it works, you must either rigidly codify according to your metaphor, or not be surprised when users encounter your usage with confusion. In the architecture metaphor, “places” might be geographic locations that contain many “rooms.” (Though a “building” or even just an “address” should be in between there somewhere, to anchor a collected subset of “rooms” to that “place.”)

So that first problem was, if you choose a metaphor, you’ve got to go all-in, all the way, or not at all. Half-measures leave people fully lost. The second problem comes more specifically with architecture. I’m pretty ok at reading blueprints, and knowing my way around from them. A simple plan, I can form a mental image, and get around and know the space viscerally before seeing it. A complex plan? I’ll need the prints in my hand as I walk to navigate a complex path, but that inner feel for how big or how far, that’s there. It’s of course nothing like being there for real, but still.

And that’s the hint that architecture is not the best online metaphor. It’s because in the real world, we know architecture by process, by the path, not necessarily the destination. It’s been 15 years since I’ve been in the Museum of Science and Industry, but I’ll bet I can find even obscure locations pretty easily. Renovations are constant, but I’ll bet my path-memory still works.

So that’s the second problem: architecture as metaphor is not location-knowledge, it’s path-knowledge. (I’ve got an earlier posting on how we recall not by position or placement, but by process, See “There’s No Such Place as ‘Away’”) So, if you need to use a metaphor, especially to give people a starting place, you need to rigidly stick to that metaphor’s heirarchy of ideas in order to get that starting place value. If you break from it, expect that the confusion you’ll see will be all over the map. Trying to find a pattern to that confusion may be impossible, because the break is so low-level that people’s own experience will seep through all over the place and come at you from multiple angles.

categories:

  • “motorcycling”

As I was suiting up in about 10lbs of gear on a 90 degree day, it occurred to me that some of the motorcycling game must be the cosplay. I don’t mean that in the fetishy way of the furries, merely that practitioners of MOTGATT must have some wiring that motivates one to wear more stuff than -20°F would warrant.

I tried to express this to M, and pretty much proved my inability to speak & think at the same time, even though like all of us, I actually do my thinking out loud. (A painfully learned lesson, let me tell you.) So let’s me ramble on this theme, see where we get. My approach to gear has been experience is the only thing that protects a rider, and until that’s learned, one can buy a tiny fraction of that with investing in the gear and actually wearing it. And that last part is the continual thing, like payments. Inspiration doesn’t hit me here, it’s probably a continual process of realization and not an epiphany.

Housecleaning isn’t as much fun when the person you share the house with is in a timezone that is 18 hours away. Plus 18, is that the same as -6? Except for the dateline, then it’d have to be “-6 but add a day.” Which makes the plus eighteen seem so much clearer, except it’s double the number we can normally handle. (Isn’t 8 the magic upper-limit for us non-numerate people? I must ask M, who’s amazingly numerate...) There’s a new kayak out there for me, I’ve christened her “Rowan” with the help of an extremely witty friend. We shall share that this summer when she returns. Perhaps Calhoun first: it’s a remarkably fun lake, and it would be nice to purge the old memories there by adding a new one. She’s expressed interest in learning to ride a motorcycle, to my eternal gratitude. I will try to get us together for her to take the written, to get her learner’s for motos, and me to change my address of record. Then it’s off to school for her to complete it. And then in July, we’ll depart a perfectly functional airplane together, something I swore I’d never do. If one was wondering, she is the only person I’d do this for and with. Now if I can get on with a million little things to make niceties.

Just heard “Linus & Lucy’s Theme” from Vince Guraldi on RadioParadise, and had one of those sudden on-rushes of thought that, I think, are supposed to inspire these bloggy things. I am constantly amazed by the amount of entropy-reversal or order-creation that a living critter represents. Courtesy of extrasomatic knowledge storage, we human beasties seem to have a bit of an edge on the others here on earth. The point is, the point of all our explorations is to return to the place we began, and to know it for the first time. No, really: Think about it. You collect the lessons of a lifetime’s experiences, then what? Because when we die, all that order we’ve created is lost. Sometimes, due to the processes of aging, we lose that created-order LONG before dying. But it’s all gone folks. Every person, no matter how you may class them as “inferior” they still represent a huge amount of energy expended in creating order. So we aren’t to be faulted for trying to pass this value along. Especially our nerdier fellow babies, the ones who think their “wisdom” must be shared at every opportunity. Or our parents. We have to humor them, let them prattle on, pretend to listen, make a point of noting the context of the lesson they’re giving us, and try like hell not to repeat their learning-experience where they can see it. Because sure as time moves forward, we will not have internalized that lesson and thus benefitted from their lesson. Nope, we’re smarter, smoother, and have more mad skillz, surely that won’t hurt as much as they ...wait, it hurts MORE. Dammit. Maybe this is wisdom, maybe I’m finally getting it. The idea is to hold on less-tightly, to let the rest around you MAKE the same mistakes (because your lesson would be as ignored as you would’ve ignored theirs). And try to enjoy that flow of mistake-making. After all, it didn’t kill you to make it, why not let them learn, then share in a supportive way, the shared experience? Sit together and watch the NEXT guy discover it. This is, like all these entries, ill edited, and rambling. Perhaps one day, this will inspire more ordered thinking in someone: because we do stand on the shoulders of those who walked this beach before us.

NPR’s Saturday show just finished a story about the Scottish editor of the Rochester NY newspaper who writes the police log with wit, poetry, eloquence and humor. Critics can be found, as they always can, racing to the lowest common denominator, rending garments for others who might not understand.

This is a public opinion version what happens in tech all the time, as we’re managed by non-tech bean-counters who’ve read the latest issue of CIO Magazine and picked up some buzzwords and concepts. The idea is a compound one, first linguistic and second, knowledge of one’s own limitations.

Linguistically, like “denying the premise” it’s just cheap sophistry to find the corner of the thing and pry it up. It’s a lot easier than contributing to a real fix.

The second is that oft-cited study that ignorance on a topic means we lack precisely the knowledge we need to know our ignorance. The first is making the critic think they’re a contributor, the second is what makes them think they’re so much more than Captain Obvious.

I’ll avoid my favorite stalking-horses (politics and sloganeering) because I think you’re more than capable of drawing the line from here to there. And there. My standard cure for this is an extinction-level event...kidding, people, kidding. It is very hard to kill 7 billion of anything, and I actually LIKE people. I’ve come to regard my species as worthy in all its forms, and as an atheist, individually worthy too. It’s a leap, that last, when you see dingbattiness on such open display, but one must look at the flower and treat the poop as fertilizer. (Neither the editor nor the newspaper’s publisher show any sign of stopping this practice. Rock on: that ain’t profit-motive speakin’!)

categories:

  • “life”

It’s funny, dear reader, how subtle aversive behavior is. Why don’t I write more frequent entries in this thing? Is iWeb just that inconvenient? In fact, it would be hard to imagine Apple making it easier to use, except for migrating templates. So why?

Doing a work-from-home thing, every task takes a bit longer. I compare stuff all day long, sometimes side-by-side (please Bank Santa, a bigger monitor?) sometimes side-by-head. I’m constantly pulling up stuff, I mean constantly. I think I’m opening content every minute all day long, which seems just like you do until we put video cameras over our shoulders and record a day’s interaction. So adding just a tick, say 1-2 seconds, to each of those pull-ups, is really noticeable. So though I love not driving, I have to say, the inefficiency is a pain.

Thus, is the slight delay for iWeb enough to prevent me from telling you more of my daily life? Well, stuff has to rise to a threshold of interest to put it onto this platform. And since this is message-in-a-bottle stuff, and I prefer even delayed reaction afforded by email and yes, even FaceBook, I guess we’ve hit on the crummy combo that impedes blogeation.

So XMas 2010: The Teen Soon Not To Be (a teen) is nearer to school. She’s just announced her intent to delay her Chicago trip by one day to be able to take the admissions test for a local college. WOO-HOO!!! I’ve figured that I’ll file with the IRS on 1/1/2010 if at all possible, and that refund—which was going to be our spare-tire for the lovely new “High Deductable Health Insurance” plan that our stockholders have imposed on us—will now be at least partially repurposed for TTSNTB’s tuition.

2011 is shaping up to be the tightest year financially since probably ’95? The year we sold our house to move into my mother-in-law’s. Our gratitude there will never be properly expressed, due to the horrific mixture of feelings that precipitated the move. This year’s ace-in-the-hole is perhaps getting the TTSNTB employed. Tough thing to bet on, with PhD’s taking fry-cook jobs (I’ve met two: no, I’m not kidding).

So my picture is of the garage at the Spider House sporting about 1/3rd of the snow currently piled up. See the fence running off the left edge of the picture? That’s no longer visible for the mountain of snow. The Orange Bastard, a very cranky snowblower that my landlord has put at our disposal, is an interesting beast. When working, it needs 5 hands to operate smoothly. With only the two, it takes practice to get down the moves to try to save the engine when it begins to stall. But once mastered, that move becomes pretty elegant. Now we’ll see if it gets better on real gas, I had to burn up the gas-oil mix that I had, sorry. It is pretty fragile, though. Hey, dear reader, sorry for the litany of tears. I still retain my inherent optimism that all people are basically good, and always decent at arm’s reach. (You cannot blame anyone for hating strangers in far-off places.) I’m confident, in my usual Bullwinkellian manner, that my last great love is right around the corner. I’m happy to see TTSNTB every day, and she’s become very good at hugs, giving and receiving. The Spider House is odd in so many ways, but as the TTSNTB once said about a person, “odd but nice.” Blur still runs, although coming off 2 years of mostly motorcycle and foot, I’m harder on her than ever. Way to go, Ford. My computer life is pretty ok, the old aluminum powerbook has been functionally made into a picture frame, now I need to actually frame it. Life is good. To paraphrase the quote above, “hard but good.” I hope your seasonally appropriate activities involve friends and family. Gifts really don’t matter. It’s time with them that does.