vanderwal.net

2025 Vanderwal.net Backend Modernization is Done

A couple years ago I thought I would update the backend code from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7 and initial progress on it was hindered by time available.

Planning the Modernization Work

A few weeks back I started looking at it again and mapped it out properly like a project. I realized PHP 7 was deprecated and I should really head to PHP 8, so that target was set. I was planning on keeping things relatively simple using a database connection quite similar to what I had used, but digging through PHP 8 books and resources on O’Reilly Learning Platform everything was using a newer more flexible method. After digging further I took the route that would take a bit more work modifying existing code (some going back to 2000 and 2001). But, as I dug into the work I realized I was only needing to modify and modernize about 20% to 30% of code on the pages and templates.

In doing this I also realized my old method of security around the system management backend was no longer working, so it had to be rewritten as well. That meant rebuilding the backend screens. Those updates went live two days ago on the 19th.

With that done it was back to the last third or so of the pages and templates that are public facing. I had already reworked the category output pages and adding pagination to them. No longer will all 121 Folksonomy categorized posts show up on one screen, only 15 at a time will. The “Personal” category has 369 posts (it is a blog so it is about me, you see, but just not all of it).

The RSS feed received a very minor update to RSS 0.92 to keep in line with many of the OG methods that remain.

The Actual Homepage has been Restructured

The homepage for vanderwal.net has been restructured to make it easier to find information that isn’t directly in the blog and I get emails and DMs about somewhat regularly. Moving it to two columns helped this. I do need to modify this to flex or grid CSS model as tweaking the layout was rather tedious.

This Modernization was like Changing the Plumbing and Wiring in a Building

This modernization was like bringing the plumbing and wiring of a building up to new building code. The walls and structure are all pretty much the same. The top layer stays the same for now.

This modernization does allow me to hopefully finish setting up webmentions, which I’ve had partly wired since around 2021 or so. I just need the last piece to that to work. There are also other IndieWeb related updates I’m planning on making and have been waiting to get this code updated before modifying and adding them into place. By the way, if you are running your own site and/or blog, the IndieWeb community has a gem. There are a lot of resources in their wiki and pages helping anybody with their own site.

The pagination for the blog is likely going to change from a date with month focussed pagination to a page model with the oldest selection being page 1. The archive page will get a long over due update so it doesn’t stop at 2003 (looks at calendar, yep it is out of date). I’m hoping to have an archive page that shows activity, but also addresses the different post types (essay, journal, and weblog) that only lasted the first few years, but also around the 2014 code update and site move the entry type template went missing.

The category listings pages will also likely get an update and the category page may likely get some ease of moving through the posts over time, beyond general pagination.

Assistance with the Update

This being 2025 the question pops up if and how I was using generative AI as part of this. I was using Claude.ai from Anthropic with some initial questions, then I’d head to O’Reilly’s resources to validate them and learn what I needed to know (it had been about 10 years since I was knee deep into PHP). When coding and modernizing the pages and templates I’d and hit defects I’d run those past Claude to sort out what the issue may be (sometimes missing “;”, others the new query wrapper and parsing method caused me to miss something, or I had deprecated code I hadn’t converted). Claude would point out my errors and instruct me how to correct it. Sometimes it would offer a few options for approaches (some were not quite right and others were good and I needed to select a path - after verifying and learning about them further). It also would crank out code. I gave Claude instructions not to bother with large chunks of my pages and code, which it left alone.

I use Claude stand alone and used is Project function to keep things focussed. I fed it the outlines and high level task areas I have in GitHub and Obsidian and it was keeping track of what was accomplished and how the work met the goals. The most impressive thing, compared to other generative AI options is it was very strict with identifying things not viable in PHP 8 (and its iterative versions) as nothing else did this well. Claude also had the code of pages and templates I had worked on and would point out I was using a structure and method in other page and ask if I shouldn’t use that practice on the page I just fed it to sort out some defect I was working through. My code has had four or more iterations over the 25 years and my early coding wasn’t so hot and still remained. Claude helped my code get more consistent, not by it fixing it, but pointing out I had something good and modern and I should keep consistent with that. By the last couple of templates I didn’t need to have Claude check them as they worked with my own editing, but I still fed them in as it seems to help improve suggestions and catching lack of consistency of my own doing.

A year ago I tried this with OpenAI and its ChatGPT and it was a hot mess. It couldn’t keep PHP versions correct. I try it with every update and I find it really problematic and what it outputs (code and other attempts) as nothing better than mediocre and often not correct.

IDE Use

In the last 10 to 15 years the IDE I’ve used to code and work on vanderwal.net has been from Panic and either Coda or now Nova, which have worked well. I have kept a good firewall between AI assistance and the IDE. I don’t mind type ahead suggestions. But, finding deprecated code to address was something I was going to need. Some friends suggested I try PhpStorm by JetBrains, which seemed good as I’ve used PyCharm a few times in the past and really enjoyed it. I knew I didn’t want VS Code near this, as I’ve pretty much had it with VS Code (I mostly use it with Python for data analytics) due to plug-in issues and lack of ease keeping projects separated.

I picked-up a trial of PHPStorm and after a day or so I had the hang of a good portion of what I needed to do. My favorite part is the setting the exact version of PHP you are working with. It highlights where there are errors and problems. In the last couple of days as I finally was getting the hang of PHP 8 and the methods I was regularly using PHPStorm was helping with type ahead suggestions (there were a few times where I accidentally triggered them when I didn’t want them and nearly turned of that functionality - control Z is your friend). PHPStorm also can make use of GitHub CoPilot, which I don’t find helpful with OpenAI connected to it, but is better with Claude Sonnet. The downside with CoPilot is it doesn’t have access to the Project space in Claude I’ve been working with and therefore its suggestions are less on target - CoPilot with Claude is light years better for PHP than OpenAI offerings). Essentially I didn’t use the incorporated genAI functionality and I was very happy with that setup.

Posting Ease

One of the things I’m looking forward to are slightly better methods for posting to this site and managing posts. Many of the steps beyond creating and posting are manual steps, like kicking off creation of the RSS feed (I do that after a quick review of the created post as it is live, I kick the RSS feed after that review). The alerting the media, or the alerts beyond basic RSS, is also a manual step done after that review. I may automate the combination of those two kicks after a review.

A Blog Move and Thin Catch-up

Yah, I know. It has been a while. Some things have changed, as I’m searching for what is next on the work front. Where I was it was a bit restrictive on sharing outward, so things got a little quiet. I’m still working on the Social Lenses / Complexity Lenses and have 80 to 90 stubs of ideas in my backlog of blogfodder, for here or the Personal InfoCloud.

A Move of Personal InfoCloud

I hadn’t posted to my blog, Personal InfoCloud in a long while. I was in the midst of a 16 part “Shift Happened” series, which was hitting embracing complexity as the next part of the series. I’m not sure if or when I will return to that. But, my work agreement frowned on sharing things out and I had a long negotiation about my prior work and corpus of IP around the Complexity Lenses. But, now that I’m back and able to freely write and share again I realized my blog where that happened much of the time needed to move off SquareSpace. Why? Poor customer support and small things breaking and them blaming me, when I hadn’t touched it in years.

The last two plus months I focussed on the move out and into another platform. I had looked at a few options for a month or so prior, but SquareSpace had one easy export path out, which is to WordPress, which I could self host (I have a few small blogs and sites that I have on self-hosted WP and they are fine). While there is a lot of turmoil in the WordPress sphere, going with the self-hosted option seems viable as a transition, if not longer option. I did an export of my SquareSpace site and in 20 minutes of export I had all my posts in WP and all comments, tags / categories, most media in blog posts, and the structure was there.

While the first step was 20 minutes to get to about 80 percent of a move done, the next portion took about two months between many meetings around advisory to start-ups, discussions about next steps (everybody was holding out until after the election, then to sort out what level of chaos may ensue, now…, and finding a lot of interest it is just getting things to a reality), mentoring professionally to director and up leadership in product management and cross-functional design and development engineering (with a lot of data focus and AI), data analytics and analysis of my own 20+ years of what I know so it can be better organized for others to pick-up. But, I had a deadline of the first week of February for the move out of SquareSpace to take place, as it was the next billing cycle.

The last two months of the move of the blog focussed on getting the design transitioned over or finding a viable design theme to use and bend to something I could work with. I found something, but it came with a lot of options and capabilities, which I initially embraced, then started printing out screens to single screen PDFs and taking the red pen to them (even after the move I think there are some things that may go, but also things that need work to come back). The next big haul was touching every post fixing some media links broken and fixing the URLs, which included the pre-post name date slug as part of the post name. I got those finally sorted out at the end of last week and Thursday I started moving the domains (from where I was developing it in a sandbox), shift to the production site, adding certificates, fixing odd typography issues, fixing routing issues, and other oddities. I hit the deadline.

Move Done and Next Steps for PIC

With the move done, I didn’t realize how much stress and mental clutter I had tied up in that move. I was managing todo lists in Obsidian, GitHub, and some quick reminders with times and dates on them. I felt free to start thinking about what I was focussing on two months prior and a ton of pressure released.

With the Personal InfoCloud blog I still need to fix links that go to Slideshare as most are broken, but I need to sort out what I want to do with those presentations. Jon and Rashmi have started a new replacement for Slideshare as a modern attempt, which I need to try a bit more and assess the fit for needs.

I also need to sort out the homepage of the site, as I’ve long wanted to have a homepage that sits in front of the blogs. I have that now, but I’m not happy with it. With the deadline out of the way I can have it as one of my projects I’m working through.

The categories, post listing, and search is also something I need to re-think and get into a better state. When I moved from TypePad to SquareSpace in 2011 to 2012 there wasn’t a good way to manage this, and what I cobbled together I hated. But, for PIC the platform is something I don’t want to think about I just want to use to post things I write. WordPress has a lot more options and I played with a couple before I put a hard focus on making the deadline about 5 to 6 weeks ago.

I have quite a few blog posts ready to be written. An introduction to the Complexity Lenses (there are over 90 of them now and in my master outline of them with sub-nodes there are over 1,500 nodes all together, which each node capable of being a page to at least 5 pages of explanation). This introduction post may iterate over time, which I’m fine with and not true blog with a line in time tied to it that other posts have. I also need to write up my “20 Social Roles”, which I do a lot of work around helping organizations sort through the roles and dynamics of their work, collaborating, cooperative, and collective environments, but also tool and platform builders creating tools that close the gaps of missing support for any and all of these Social Roles.

What Happens Here?

Here at vanderwal.net I need to get back to building a habit of blogging again. The weeknote is something I may do to help my rhythm. I still write a ton, but it is all in my notes. My daily notes, or “Daily Dump”, looks an awful lot like my first 4 to 7 years of blogging here (so 2000 to 2007 / 2008), before short snippets and observations started ending up in Twitter.

I still need to spend a week of heads down work to update the underlying code that the site runs on. I started that about 2 years back, but a day or two here and there weren’t cutting it and not a good way to make progress, particularly since it requires rewriting the code on my many templates to get data out and filling the pages in. Once that is done I have a few things I really want to address, like pagination on tag pages, and fixing the flow of the blog across time.

Whew!

If you have interest in chatting and catching up, or if you have a project, product, or work you would like help with please reach out.

Take care.

Weeknote - 3 September 2022

You are asking, “Where are you? Are you okay? Are you still blogging?”

In TikTok parlance, “Great questions. Let me tell you.” First, this standard TikTok pattern is one I find really interesting. It fills in he politeness / nicety gap that has become common in the last decade or two, where people jump into answering questions. This nod to thanking the person asking encourages questions and puts people at ease who asked a question (speaking up is often not something most people are comfortable with). But, the pattern has been used so much and is just a common / required custom, it starts to come off as forced or canned, much like required legal disclaimers. None-the-less, it is a good practice.

Well this was a long “week” (parts of this were in an end of March weeknote that needed finishing, so now edited and updated). Things on the work front got incredibly busy and hectic. I’m going to treat this “weeknote” as a catch-up of things that have held my attention over the past year.

I’m hoping to get back to posting regular weeknotes and blogging. My other blog Personal Infocloud has been quite for a long time, but been waiting for about 2 years for SquareSpace to fix a defect that impacted styling and showing full posts. I have a lot of older content I’ve long used in presentations and workshops, that I’m working to turn into videos of some of the pieces of them that are clearer for understanding in video / animated form. I’m also back working on the 70 plus set of social / complexity lenses I’ve been working on for around 14 years with that label, but around 20 years all together going back to the Model of Attraction (still a foundation for a lot of thinking and framing).

With my son off to college, I may have a little more time to write and share. I’m also looking at a digital garden model (see the last section) and as of recently Massive Wiki for a collaborative or commons approach of moving the Lenses forward (well outward).

Note Taking

I have been deep into cataloging, reading, and using the heck out of Obsidian since trying it out in June of 2020 and going all in at the end of July 2020 and it is now second nature. But, this built on my 10 or so years of taking markdown notes in a directory, which I had 8 to 10 year of text notes in that same directory (which were bulk renamed to markdown). My approach and use of aliases and front matter have changed how I do things, but more on that in the Productivity section below. Many of my issues in a quick test of Roam proved to save me from that path and set of problems, Notion not being mine and not a standard file format so I can reuse the notes easily has stopped being used, I use DevonThink but its backlinking and attempt at other Obsidian functionality was clumsy in my source archive (and I just pull in my directory that Obsidian sits on top of so search is relevant with resources saved), and with Obsidian now having iOS capability I’m really using it a lot on the go. I have a seriously strong preference for having the notes be separate from a system that wrangles and provides organizing for and around them. Having used nvAlt for nearly 10 years when it broke badly and wouldn’t open, all of the 2,500 or so markdown (and text) notes that sat under the app in a directory (and linked with file metadata tags). Putting Obsidian in the same notes directory and crating that directory as a vault things just continued on, but now with far more functionality.

One irony is my use of Obsidian, and in particular my daily notes (Daily Dump), has me posting and sharing here less. It is ironic as I write in the Daily Dump as if I am writing to others, but the notes are just to myself (for now - this may change if I can sort out how to keep some of the reading, learning, observations, etc. separate from work or formative observations. The Daily Dump was partly intended to capture things that could be shared back out in a weeknote. Things like the Personal Operating System, which I found insanely insightful (read below), things from Sentiers and The Near Future Lab (particularly around Generalists, which I find quite similar to a bumping into a brightline for polymaths, but also bumps up against Jane McConnell’s book The Gig Mindset Advantage (more on these later as well).

With Obsidian having tags (used to aggregate related things, as a hook metaphor I’ve used for 18 years or more) and the backlinks to use as bridges to move to related materials and ideas much in the way any hypertext environment functions. I used VooDoo Pad on my Macs for roughly 15 years, but it not easily working across iPad and phone to easily read, edit, or add to the corpus had it shift out of my main workflow. I also use Drafts for quick input from mobile and sometimes iPad.

Obsidian has been amazing with its pace and quality of development over the last 2 years. The iPad version is pretty solid, but I’m usually in reach of my iPad so I’m not leaning on it all that much at the moment. This past week there were large changes to the insider build for 0.16 (it was reworking some underpinnings to improve many of community built plug-ins, themes, and templates), but it was the first time the updates broke things in my workflow rather badly. Normally updates cause no problems, but only offer benefits and improvements, with occasional bumps that are resolved in 5 to 10 minutes. But, with the bump this week, I still love it for thinking through writing and note capturing and interlinking. There isn’t anything out there that is close to it.

Read

I have been reading a lot, with a good portion coming through me trusty RSS feed reader, NetNewswire, which echoes my vanderwal.net links page.

Newsletters

While I am not a huge fan of newletters (mostly the part that they arrive in email and not RSS, but the ones that also have RSS feeds are the ones I have been sticking to). Many of these arrive on Sunday, but I really wish it were Friday night or early Saturday morning so I have Saturday and Sunday mornings to get through them and follow the links and devour what is there, but Sunday mornings many arrive and I spend the week going through them.

The one that I am a huge fan of from a general purpose is Patrick Tanguay’s own newsletter Sentiers, which I find to be a real gem. I lost track of Patrick for a while after his Alpine review stopped publishing. I would love to see his Sentiers grow to be a bit more as I find it to be such a good offering. I have been reading it regularly for about a year or a bit more and Patrick has been popping up on podcasts I follow (Near Future Lab (now mostly moved to a Discord for and The Informed Life - more on these later).

Jorge Arango’s newsletter, Informa(c)tion, is an information and organization focussed gem that arrives every other Sunday. There are always good pieces and the links are gems.

Others I really enjoy and tend to link to things that open more browser tabs are: The Marganilian by Maria Popova; Curtis McHale’s PKM newsletter; and Monocle Weekend Edition newsletter (there are many times of late were the newsletter is a bit off target, but the balance for me mostly entertainment).

Books

The Gig Mindset Advantage has been a gem, mostly as it is very familiar as it is pretty much my natural (unintended) MO (modus operendi).

The Map of Knowledge, by Violet Moller has become one of my favorite books. It quickly turned into a slow meditative read as it broke some of my prior understanding of the world of knowledge and creation of advanced math, sciences, and philosophy. This refactoring of my understanding was around the realization that most of the “great books” and works that are the foundations are just very tiny slivers of knowledge that made it through an insanely fragile process of keeping paper copies. A book would need to be hand-written to create a copy and that copy on paper would only last 50 to 80 years before it would heavily decay. I knew well that most of what Western Europe used as fodder in the Renaissance for advancement were works from ancient Greece that had been kept alive through the great libraries and education systems in Persia, Near East, Middle East, Arabian regions, North Africa, and Moorish efforts in Spain. The realization that were may not be looking at the best thinking from the “classics”, but just those that made it through time.

While I had a decent understanding of the vast contributions advancing math, sciences, medicine, and philosophy that are the foundations of much of western thinking, I didn’t know much of the who, when, and where. The Map of Knowledge goes into these areas with a very good level of understanding. The book also does a great job laying out the cycle of life for advanced learning and libraries in each of the regions and progressions through time. One of the common cycles that causes the downfall in many regions was gap in the civilization between those with advanced knowledge and learning and those in power, as well as regular poeple. That chasm between the advanced and those not caused a lot of friction, most often leading to the destruction of libraries and institutions. Many of the civilizations never returned to anything close to the advancements. But, the libraries and learning institutions dispersed and found new benefactors and locations to continue moving forward.

Violet Moller has certain given me a good foundation to learn more.

Gillian Tett’s Anthro-Vision was a book, well a chapter in that book, I’ve been waiting for for many years. The chapter on “Financial Crisis” where Tett had been researching financial markets using her background as an anthropologist for a new role at The Financial Times. Tett followed the paths of understanding in the way a good ethnographer / anthropologist does looking to understand the quiet, and seemingly foundational, areas that seem to be out of focus. This area was that of credit swaps in financial loan markets, which were what caused the 2007 housing market collapse and in 2008 at the massive meltdown of the financial markets. The model for building understanding is one that should be common, but sadly isn’t. The remainder of the book is quite good as well.

Productivity

The biggest thing around productivity is my use of Obsidian continues, as mentioned above. In a couple chats recently I have found other have brought up the backlinking / crosslinking as the most valuable feature. For those of us who have been using Macs for a while we find it reminiscent of not only wikis and their power, but in particular VooDoo Pad, which was light weight and everything was easily interlinked and backlinked and search was incredibly good. VooDoo Pad ran locally on your Mac (eventually it also could sync and run on iOS devices, but it needed a special application to run it). The genius bit about Obsidian is it is just markdown notes with an app that acts as an over watcher to connect and index things, but leaves the markdown notes fully usable by any other app or service that can use Markdown.

Having been taking notes in one directory (and its sub-directories) for some 20 years the ability to always get to my notes and use them is highly valuable. I have run through numerous other apps (particularly cloud based) that just die or go away as they are no longer popular or the owners have the wonderfully tragic combination of being ignorant and arrogant. I can pick-up any of my notes in markdown that have backlinks and they also function in Drafts or other programs. The principle of Small Apps Loosely Joined still has resonance and deep value.

Along with Obsidian and the backlinked notes, I have also been keeping a keen eye on Digital Gardening (Maggie Appleton explains this really well and had links to others also diving deeply). At some point I also stumbled upon Software for your second brain - The Stack Overflow Podcast with Alexander Obenauer talking about his quest for creation of a “personal operating system”, which he shares out in his Lab Notes. Much of Alexander’s quest became refocussed on Obsidian as it was doing a lot of what he needed and was trying to frame out so to build it. He has crated extensions to Obsidian to close some of his perceived gaps, but the underlying principle is data portability and a concept incredibly close to the Small Apps Loosely Joined.

Not quite a Weeknote - Life Demarkation Summer and Brother Mel

Friday was my 2nd week since my 2nd vaccination for Covid–19 so things are a bit freer for me, should I take that path. I am deeply relieved to have had the vaccine and to start thinking about life on the other side of this pandemic, but also realizing there will be a 6 month or 9 month booster shot needed to keep the protection fresh and adapt it for new strains, much like the flu shot.

The French Open and a Time When it was My Comfort

This being the end of May it means The French Open has started and one of my markers for my seasons and cycles comes to mind. Back in 1988 I returned from Europe from studying (I took my last semester of undergrad in Oxford at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and staying with my friend in Lyon (with about a week camping trip to Corsica)) to come back to the US to go through graduation at St. Mary’s College. I was going through some rather rough reverse culture shock and shifting to post college live. But, watching The French Open, the Today Show (it was traveling around Europe), Wimbledon, and The Tour de France (I grew up watching it and loved cycling) kept some tentative connection to Europe that kept me sane. I had some Roland-Garros and French Open t-shirts and beach towels that were gifts from an aunt who strung rackets for some at the Open.

I hadn’t had much of connection to The French Open prior to that summer, but it is something that has stuck. It brings comfort, but also brings some understandings of the world a bit closer. That summer I also found James Baldwin’s books and Notes of a Native Son and some other writings of his, which really struck home. I understood Baldwin’s comfort with France and challenging mindset of the US. Baldwin’s thinking in writing about not feeling a part and finding something with a life and mental models in another place somewhat comforting as it wasn’t just me. I grew up with Sesame Street and everybody gets along and treats each other the same way as a common mindset and thought that was the way things were, but living outside the US had me see that wasn’t the case and things I didn’t see or wasn’t able to see as I didn’t have another perspective I could see clearly.

Seeing the clay courts of Rolland-Garros bring that right back. But, also refind the focus of life long learning that the Oxbridge systems prepares one for. As well as some of the heavy reading I did that first summer back in the US.

Brother Mel

Thinking of this and having some time unfocused from work and time to think of the passing of Brother Mel Anderson who was President of Saint Mary’s College of California. This one hurt a bit, as a lot of who I am and became as an adult I owe to Brother Mel. When I was at St. Mary’s he lived in the dorms across from one of my good friends and while waiting for my friend to get back to his room so we could study or head off to do whatever I would chat with Brother Mel. We got into some good deep discussions early and spent a lot of time talking with him. He would ask if I knew about something and when I wouldn’t I would get books and rip through them to have follow on discussions. He was an intellectual mentor constantly pushing, but also opening doors to understanding how the world worked, and deepening appreciation for the arts, food, and better understanding the world around.

My first summer at St. Mary’s he asked if I wanted to work on special projects for him, which was ripping apart one of the freshman dorm’s hallway walls and reinforcing them to make them stronger and a lot more quiet. I was also running room service at the Oakland Airport Hilton, which was a blast. I was living with a friend in Berkeley in his fraternity’s old apartment building (it had an amazing roof top view of The Bay). But, as I was mostly around campus during the summer and not many other students (but basketball camp was going on, which meant I got to meet and know the Barry brothers who taught me how to shoot a basketball properly). I got to know the campus and the Christian Brother’s community quite well and would usually have a meal with Brother Mel once during the week. At the end of that summer Brother Mel asked if I was going to do anything fun before school started and I thought I may had to New York City, but my mom shot that down. My response was, “well, if not New York now then Europe next summer”. I had no idea that Brother Mel would take two to three students every other summer on trips around Europe, so he offered.

The following summer it was supposed to be Brother Mel and another student heading to Europe for just under four weeks. The other student had to back out a couple weeks before the trip due to a tumor found on his thighbone. Another he offered to go wasn’t able to do it on short notice, but was a friend of mine from the year before and rowing crew. One stop was Oxford to have an interview with the Centre I had applied to study at for my last semester (that was approved the week before we left). We stayed in London at a Christian Brothers house, Paris, Lyon, Florence, Luzern, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Heidelberg, and Amsterdam. Between each city we would take the train and I would read, but Brother Mel would talk to me about where we were going and provide history and talk about what to expect. We would head to museums, trek about the city, have one decent meal, and hit historic spots. It was amazing. It was akin to the old school Grand Tour, and it really opened my eyes to seeing the rest of the world. It was a great preparation for years later heading to conferences around the globe to speak and small really interesting gatherings around the globe with smart folks digging into various early ideas in a domain.

That following summer I was back from Oxford and Lyon, which I was well prepared for and kept in good touch with Brother Mel until I moved to the DC areas. It wasn’t as easy to pop over to St. Mary’s, but I stopped in a few times on trips back to say hello and catch-up. He is deeply missed and I’m deeply grateful for his life and his amazing impact on mine. He opened my mind and the world, but also helped me believe in myself, which I hand’t learned to do up until I met him.

Weeknotes - 07 February through 28 February 2021

This is a late posting of a combined set of weeknotes, which doesn’t cover much. This stretch started with a sinus series of sinus infections and then the side issues stayed. But, at the start of it went through the Covid–19 tests as a precaution (yes, the one where a swab is inserted into your nose so deeply they must be testing past lives too). The sinus issues have remain, with improvement and regression. Work has also been cycling through some deep model work where foundations and goals shift, in a very complex environment and taking mapping of models and needs from very complex into something more simple for initial framings that can adapt.

Read

“Posti (yes, the Finnish postal service) recently launched a new concept complete with good lighting, dressing rooms, an organized recycling area and wrapping stations. Designed for city-centre workers who would rather not have their goods delivered to the office, the concept allows for outfits ordered via e-comm to be tried on in a dressing room and then sent back if they don’t fit. There’s also an array of paper, boxes, ribbons and stickers for wrapping and sending gifts that would challenge even the best Japanese department store.” from - Monocle Weekend
Edition: Sunday: Finnish line

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Matt Webb writes about Memexes, mountain lakes, and the serendipity of old ideas and focuses on note taking, particularly smart people have reservoirs of notes they have taken and can pull at them to quote and interlink ideas easily.

Listened

On the walk listened to Ted Radio Hour - It Takes Time. Which broke into four segments: Sloths with zoologist Lucy Cooke, neuroscientist Matthew Walker, architect Julia Watson on long time and deep time(also has a book Lo―TEK - Design by Radical Indigenism) , and NASA engineer Nagin Cox who talks about different time patterns needed for working with Mars day time and keeping in sync.

–

Paul Ford and Rich Ziade had another gem, well the pretty much all are, in today’s Postlight Podcast - No AI Needed: Fix The Old Before Bringing in the New as they get into the Gartner and enterprise always looking at the shiny but not dealing with the underlying messes.

Weeknote - 27 December 2020

Ahhh! Year end holiday break. This is deeply needed. Ten days of long walks, reading, writing, and perhaps some planning ahead this stretch.

The past week turned out rather well after hitting a wall, but no resolution, but others also seeing the pain and how backwards things are and working to resolve them and bring them closer too modern without repeating known problems and pains of past years so to improve work and productivity (basically what I’ve been doing the last 20+ years).

A successful Christmas was had with a good dinner, with a variation of duck leg (drumstick and thigh) rather than duck breast as I couldn’t find them easily. The Thanksgiving and Christmas meal is getting to be a five pan on four burner production that is getting really honed.

Watched & Listened

I stumbled onto the full Snarky Puppy We Like it Here in studio concert recording, which started a good deep dive into all things Snarky Puppy and related musicians for a few nights and playing albums as background for repetitive task times during work.

I found Snarky Puppy around 2015 or so when a few musician friends were sharing it and it reminded them (then me) of college and after jam sessions with really good musicians and having something that wasn’t much turn into something rather good. Snarky Puppy takes that and turns it up to 11. Their approach to music and draw for amazing musicians to play in with them is very much like Steely Dan. Their music isn’t quite fitting to any existing genre (also much like Steely Dan), but they also drift across many different musical types and backgrounds and global foci that drifts and morphs.

Food

Having extra blueberry leek and thyme reduction has been really nice with some smoked duck and extra strong German mustard.

But, extra Italian bulk sausage and an abundance of left over gluten-free stuffing with leek and Italian sausage cooked and reheated so a little crispy with a runny yolk egg on top is my favorite breakfast. A bit sad that it is now finished.

Play

I had a bit of time to move Ghost of Tsushima along a little farther. I’m getting within range of finishing, which I may do over break.

Saturday night I noticed 2K basketball was on half-off sale (or more so nabbed it and started the download. 2K often offers enjoyment and a lot of frustration (glitches galore).

Rebuilding My Note Taking and Management System and Model

The past many weeks I have been digging into a better note taking and management method, while also embracing what I have and my core underlying principles. A continual genre in YouTube I watch is around productivity, particularly around personal knowledge management methods and tools. A couple years back I ran into Zettelkasten Method, that comes from Niklas Luhmann, which focuses on his prolific reading and his card catalogue and related note taking system. Then a few months back I heard Jorge Arango’s interview with Beck Tench it drew Zettelkasten back into focus. The interview with Beck focussed on Tinderbox, which I love, but I also want mobile access to my notes from phone and tablet.

Early Exploration

I have been using Notion a little bit, but my only use the last few months is as an interstitial capture for YouTube and some other rich media. [I like Notion and it seems like a modern take on Podio and has a similar downfall of not sorting out an adaptive data structure for interoperability and consistency.] But, the communities that are interested in Notion became obsessed with Roam Research, so I looked at Roam. Roam and Notion are two vastly different approaches, which can complement each other but in to way replace each other. But, each has a similar faults, no API, no standard export for structured information, and fully cloud based. That is too many common failure points wrapped into one product (Notion is working on and API, which is really good). Roam bugged me most because it relies on an outline format but has no clue about OPML exporting, but worse has no good export model. The cloud based, which requires being connected and online is a model I really don’t like as, particularly if their isn’t a local sync nor standard data format model. What I really like about Roam is its block focussed format, that is akin to purple numbers model of small chunks that are addressable and reusable.

In this time of looking what a next generation of quick note taking would look like, but long used tool, NValt failed spectacularly, in that it would not find my directory where my 1,200+ notes were stored, nor could I add new notes. Fortunately all of my notes are in plain markdown text files, so all I was missing was my tagging of the files in NValt (Brett Terpstra who created NValt has been working on a new tool that can replace NValt but has been taking forever to show up and my need became immediate). This is one of the common reasons for owning my own notes and having them locally and not using somebody else’s model and framework. But, also using the [small apps loosely joined] model where many tools pointing at well formatted / structured data / information can function to their best ability and can use their strengths without breaking anything with the information / data.

Seriously Looking at Note Taking and Management Tools

I started looking at about five or six different note taking tools. I was building out a rough attribute model of tools to help see what each offered or didn’t. I am needing to write this up, but it started with watching Mike and Matty’s, Notion vs Roam vs Obsidian vs Remnote - How to best fit note taking app for you and using their criteria as a base, then building on it. Obsidian and Remnote were already on my list, but also included Zettelnote, Zettlr, and a couple that extended Tidlywiki for a Zettelkasten type model. I also included OmniOutliner as that has been (and will be) my core outlining tool that interplays well with OPML and I can back and forth with good mind mapping tools that also output and import OPML data standard. I also included DevonThink Pro as it is my long used (since 2005) note and information storage and smart search tool (it already was indexing my notes directories) that there is no chance I’m going to give up, but also knew it didn’t have the core functionality I was seeking, wiki-style back linking.

I did a quick test or Roam and ruled it out as it broke rules I try not to break, and it broke many of them (biggest one is know now you are going to exit before you enter anything and a lack of any structure nor API made it a giant risk I’ve been burned by too many times, but the developers have a lot of arrogance about their approach that far too often leads to disasters - sometimes the kindest, smartest, and solid planning people end up with disasters that I feel very badly about but arrogance and ignorant I don’t).

Zettlr and Remnote were next. But the setup took a bit more of me managing and building things and I know when I lose focus those may not be best choices for myself (my past self 15 years ago or more would have loved it and done well with it, but those days are not now).

Obsidian Ticks the Right Boxes and Adapts to My Existing Model

Obsidian is where I put some time. I pointed its “Vault” to my notes directory (and sub-directory) where I had my 1,200 markdown notes already (some of them were .txt extensions, which I did bulk extension swap on) and it could read everything perfectly. One of my first tests was adding backlinks to some of my social lenses and social scaling notes, which worked really well by making related elements connected. I started capturing my notes about what I was doing in Obsidian and the ease of not only connecting things with backlinks, but having the ability to set empty node wiki links (many notes with the same link to a note / page that doesn’t exist yet, but have the same link to it) and then being able to use backlink following from that non-existent notes link list of things pointing to it was insanely valuable.

I have quite a few book list and book note pages already and I started linking them and linking authors and making author pages. I also found I was wanting note page templates for simple book pages in a Zettelkasten model, a book notes template, author / creator template, and a few others. I created these from existing structured notes I’ve used for years and put the outlines in TextExpander using a simple input line or two to label all of the headers with author name or other name.

I started typing out my notes and highlights from books I’ve read and annotated over the years and after the first three or so books I was deeply hooked.

The Use Where Obsidian Showed I was Hooked

Where I knew I was sold was this last weekend I went back to one of Matt Webb’s blog posts on Small Groups that is dense and has links out to great resources. I captured my initial notes on Matt’s post, and annotated relating to his sections. But, I also quickly dug through the linked materials and created and filled out structured note pages for those as well. The James Mullholland post on Small Groups was fantastic and it spidered out to more related resources, so I followed those and took notes. All of this was cross-linked and back-linked and fleshed out small group notes that I have been building as part of social scaling I’ve been writing on and presenting (talks and workshops) for years. The small group size they focus on is roughly team size, but not a team. Both of these are cooperative social models, which scale from teams, groups (small to large groups with similar social interaction models, but the dynamics shift quite a bit around 75 people and break fully about 300 to 500 people), community (everybody inside a firewall or inside an walled off construct), and network (inside and outside a firewall - so for business it is customers, contractors, consultants, vendors, etc. where there needs to be a safe model for sharing information with shared goals as different roles with their purpose come together for back and forth exchange) - more can be found in my related write-up 5 Core Insights for Community Platforms Today.

This note taking and contextualizing and cross linking to rip through and gut a series of related and interrelated pieces has been something I’ve long looked for and wanted. Many dog years ago in college I took reading notes on note cards with citations and context. When writing a paper / essay I would assemble the note cards in an order that could tell a story. Then I would build an outline in WordStar and type in the quotes. Then I would write the narrative and wrapper. Obsidian is starting to get at that, but ripping through a resource to pull out highlights, quotes, annotations, and notes is utterly fantastic. It gives me a solid resource to easily pull together ideas and supporting information.

Other Obsidian Capabilities

Obsidian can show two note pages at once so to easily copy book citation information from the structured book note file into the book note page. The multiple notes in panels also works well for copying quotes to quote pages and cross linking.

Using Obsidian and Still Working from Mobile and Tablet

The mobile use essential had been broken for a bit after Dropbox stopped supporting softlinks in Mac and requiring that to be native in Dropbox and doing the softlink from the Mac to Dropbox. I moved the directory to Dropbox, which leaves a copy locally usable should something happen to Dropbox and added a softlink for local backups. I pointed DevonThink to this directory to index and I was back running. Now I can use Drafts to take a quick note from my iOS devices and push it to the notes directory (later go back and fix the file name) and I have good inbound notes and can use backlinks (which I test later). This method also works for share sheet to Drafts from Overcast or YouTube and having the link to the media and the notes all pulled in.

Happiness with notes has been missing for a while, perhaps happiness has returned.

Resources

• Mike and Matty
• Curtis McHale
• Effective Remote Work
• Mariana’s Study Corner

Week Note 6 - 9 August 2020

The weeknotes have been, well, weekly since George Floyd was murdered. As that sunk in it took a lot of focus away from this restarting writing and sharing and put it to reading, supporting, and talking to others. I was utterly gutted, mostly because I felt like I looked away and had been feeling things had improved over the decades. But, I was somewhat blind to much of the issues I grew up in a Sesame Street world where everybody gets along and learns about each other, their background, and the wonders they bring to this world.

Much of this disappeared for me after high school as I ran an errand with a friend who I had just met in one of my courses. We went to get a couple tires from his car and went into a tire store in Stockton, California. There were people in there working and my friend and I were the only two customers in the store, but nobody was stopping to help. I finally said across the counter, “excuse me…” and it was like throwing a match on gasoline as the n-word started flying and one of the guys grabbed a tire iron and slammed it against the side of one of the large metal shelves and walked off. I just wanted to leave as it seemed like it was going to be more than nasty words thrown around. My friend said, “No, it is fine”. I really had trouble comprehending that. A couple minutes later a big sheepish guy walked up to the other side of the counter and apologized quietly and asked my friend what he needed. Tire sizes were shared and a couple minutes of walking away from counter and away from where the commotion had come from. When he returned he said they didn’t have that size, but they would have it in stock in a week. We left checking all around us in the mid-afternoon light.

This was the mid 1980s and the anti-apartheid movement and awareness was in full swing. Joining causes, writing letters, and going to concerts with an awareness focus was common. Our church was housing the Anglican Bishop of Namibia and some of his Deacons around this time. I enjoyed talking with two of the Deacons that were staying with my parents and I. They talked about the South African soldiers beating parishioners and the priests to drag them out of their church. They had dents on their upper arms where bones had been broken and one of them a good dent in his head from the butt of a gun. I said I would really like to come and help, but I felt my skin was the wrong color to do any good. They stopped and grew more calm and looked at me in the eyes. One gently took my wrist and turned it over and pointed to the veins and said, “You know the blood in your veins is the same color as the blood in our veins. We are all the same color on the inside. What really matters is what is in your heart.” That really stuck with me, as did their stories. I didn’t go to Namibia, but I did read everything I could about Africa after that.

In the late 80s I took my last semester of undergrad in Oxford and spent time in Lyon, France, and traveling a little. I read a lot of the broadsheet papers and Namibia was in the news in English papers as well as other African countries. But, one of the things that stood out was how people of color were treated around Oxford and France. It was quite different from than in the US. That difference stood out. Talking with other Americans of color whom I knew or got into conversations with on coaches or trains, I brought up the question of what they found. The difference in their perception was things were much more open and equal (this is far from everywhere in Europe), but the differences then was a sense of freedom to be who they were, more so than they felt in the United States.

When I finally got back to the US so I could go through graduation (I could have stayed and rowed in Oxford and travelled with the college boat I had an offer to stay for Trinity term and row with and I could have stayed and travelled with my friend in Lyon). When I left the US in the prior December to head to Europe I was expecting to have culture shock in Europe, but I didn’t experience much and I deeply enjoyed it. It was an amazing experience. Returning to the US I had massive culture shock, which I wasn’t expecting and it shook me. My perception of life and lives of others, the news, the size of cars (as well as needing a car to get around), and the lack of fresh produce and fresh bread within an easy walk. But, watching news on tv the racial tone of the news was something I had completely not seen before I left. It was really clear watching news of a conflict in Virginia Beach between young (mostly black) beach goers and police and CNN (in 1988) was framing those of color as the problem. It was something I hadn’t seen or noticed until being away and returning.

Somewhere over that summer I stumbled onto an interview and focus on James Baldwin and he was echoing a lot of what I was seeing and feeling as a difference between Europe and the US. On a trip to Berkeley I went to one of my favorite bookstores and picked up a couple paperbacks of Baldwin’s works and started reading. Having somebody else writing about things I was seeing and feeling, which I didn’t think I knew others around me I could talk about was comforting. Baldwin also wrote about other issues I didn’t have experience with, but it opened my eyes to things others dealt with. What I got with Baldwin was an understanding of America, Europe, personal freedom, equality, and living in one’s own skin. I no longer remember the essays nor which books (I still have them, but I picked up one or two more that I didn’t put time into and memories of them ran together).

As Black Live Matter marches and protests were fully under way I found I was thinking of Baldwin a lot. I picked up Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.’s Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and its urgent lessons for our own and have been reading it slowly. Reading bits and letting it sink in. It has been good.

The Year of Covid–19 it has been difficult to keep up with friends around my son’s basketball, which feel a lot like a home and family. My son is missing his team and coaches and the common goal of the team.

The next weeknotes I will fill in some of the past few weeks of other things I’ve been reading, watching, listing to, and more. There have been some good sparks that have me excited, entertained, and exploring again.

Weeknote # 1 - 26 April 2020

This is my first weeknote, which by the name I am committing to posting weekly. I’m not sure how this will work as aiming for daily writing to set a habit is far more anchoring something in place that a something new with a weekly cadence.

I’ve long been a fan of friend’s and acquaintances weeknotes as it is a way to keep up with what they are reading, watching, listening to, writing, and thinking. I deeply appreciate other’s sharing their interests and likes and after many years planning to do similar I am finally doing this. I am also doing this for my own consumption and tracking.

I have a template setup with general categories / headings in TextExpander and each week I’m planning on opening a new markdown file in iA Writer and filling it in as I go. The starter headings are: Read; Watched; Listened; Food; and Productivity. This is largely what I care about from others, but also things I’m continually tracking down. I regularly tuck things into my Pinboard and tag links of interest with “linkfodder” and podcasts with “podfodder”, but also things I think I may want to write-up and have more of a fleshed out response to as “blogfodder” (those rarely actually get done, mostly due to being busy).

This first weeknote I’m catching up on the past few weeks a bit.

Read

I’m still trying to get through the last few chapters of William Gibson’s Agency, which I have been deeply enjoying (for quite some time, as it arrived when it came out and I started in then, but work and other life slowed progress). I always have a few books going at once and Violet Moller’s The Map of Knowledge has been a wonderful slow read full of thinking and reworking some back history on knowledge and understandings I have that were set in place in undergrad when studying at Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Oxford (now changed a bit since Middlebury took over, not a bad thing, just different) and the shift of pockets of knowledge and learning from the Middle East / Arabian / Northeast Africa areas and some of that shift to Europe after Constantinople fell in the Spring of 1453.

Supporting my favorite local bookstore, Politics and Prose I ordered Humo Ludens by Johan Huizinga for delivery. I have just tucked into that, which I have in a few readers and collected contributions to the value of play in understanding work as well as the world around us. Having the full text (only 213 pages) I can finally read as a whole rather than a gutting or selected reading approach.

Being a fan of Kenya Hara’s work and writing (Designing Design is a favorite of mine) I picked up a sale copy of Designing Japan and the preface and first few pages really has me looking forward with some quiet time with the book.

Watched

Last weekend, on recommendation of a colleague (and has been mentioned in other’s weeknotes as well) I watched Devs that was on Hulu / FX. I nearly gave up on it as it is a bit dark and gruesome, but stuck with it and it has turned into a show I’m thinking somewhat deeply about a week later. The inclusion of theoretical physics / science got me really hooked. Sorting out what character was the focal view from wasn’t clear for quite a few episodes, but understanding that helped frame sorting through some of the ambiguities. But, it also had me digging out framing resources on a few of the theoretical physics I’ve never fully anchored in my head, and don’t really have folks I’m talking to regularly to talk through thing around this.

The late summer and fall of 2018 when I was digging for work / projects I started in on the corpus of Bon Appetit on YouTube (along with a few other channels). During this time of lockdown and remote work, this crew of cooks / chefs has been highly entertaining with what they are sharing.

Listened

I’ll address podcasts in later weeknotes, but I’m consuming them at a slower rate than I was prior to covid lockdown (mostly due to my morning listening I’m spending some of that time trying to pull focus on what I need to so that day for work and focus has been a bit more fragile).

Music, well music to help focus to get work done has been something I’ve been working to get sorted as my usual go to playlists haven’t really been doing the trick.

I have cut back my use of Apple Music streaming listening as a few months back I picked up a discounted set of months from Tidal and the Master quality with MQA decoding (or partial decoding) has been a real find and source of enjoyment for headphone or in ear monitors (IEMs). I’m still on trial with Amazon’s Music HD (which their Ultra HD, is similar, but not quite the quality of Tidal yet can still hear details of well recorded playing and hear the room) and trying to sort what I may do between the two services.

This past week I found Hans Zimmer’s soundtracks have been good fodder for focus listening that, for me, can fade into the background a bit yet still drive energy and focus for work forward. The “Interstellar”, “Inception”, and “Batman Begins” soundtracks had multiple plays on days without many meetings to work through some explainers I’m working on to shorten getting to understanding with people we’re trying to onboard into a complicated system nested in a world of complexities.

Food

Spring foods (or one’s that really have me loving spring) are fading as spring onions (not green onions) were no longer in the farm fresh section of the grocery store. I am on my last bundle of them and using the last of them in Canadian bacon, garlic, shitake mushroom, spring onion, asparagus, and feta omelettes is planned. Also putting them in the black bean, Canadian bacon, mushroom, garlic, fresh grated tumeric breakfast bowl with soft fried eggs during the week may finish them before they go bad.

Productivity

Over the last year or two I stumbled onto Ali Abdaal particularly Ali’s YouTube Channel and he covers a lot of productivity tools and focus. Ali shares his study techniques he picked up studying for medical exams at University of Cambridge where he studied and now for medical exams as a junior doctor near Cambridge. Ali share a lot of how to study insights and deep dives, which are mostly applied practical organization and productivity practices

Through Ali’s work I re-stumbled upon Tiago Forte and his work, which many of my long time practices (when I am in them deeply) are quite similar. A project / product I was helping about 10 years ago was trying to bring Tiago on to it as well and I started looking into his work and what he was sharing.

Closing

Well, this wraps a first weeknote. Let’s see if it there is one next week.

Be well. Stay safe. Peace be with you.

Still Going

I keep thinking I’m going to get back in the habit of writing here regularly, but something eats the time and attention I think I have set aside for writing (be it daily or every few days - daily is better for me as it sets a habit in place for me better then in a non-daily cadence).

Personal Update

I’m alive and well, which is good in these times. It is something people keep asking and I’ve rather sucked at responding to many direct queries, mostly because of time and attention / focus. My health is good (knock wood). Work is going and quite busy and bordering on hectic with many projects running concurrently and too many needed tabs open all with the same favicon (really people, this shouldn’t be a thing still in 2020, it should have been fixed in the early 2000s and was fixed and long past time to go back to that).

Other Updates

I’m back using an RSS reader somewhat regularly now that NetNewswire is a re-built from scratch thing again. One of the things I’m back really enjoying are the weekly updates from people I know (and miss conversations with). Finding what they are reading, working on, thinking about, eating, watching, etc. is something that quite often surfaces things I may have interest in. One of the things I’m continually lacking of late is good conversations that can go deep on many of the subjects I’m digging in and around. Between podcasts and personal blogs (quite often it is the weekly update) these sort of suffice or have become one-sided (as far as the party at the other end is concerned) conversations.

Thankful for a Slight Break

This past year has been an utter rush of good deep planning and strategy work, helping frame DevOps for potential use for digital developers and engineers for a large company. It is part of a longer path, but from mid-December last year to now it has been pretty much heads down of early stage planning, product selection, mapping transitions, and planning next stages and transitions that will follow. Other than a 3 day weekend here and there, I really haven’t had a break more than 3 days in this stretch.
I am so utterly grateful for this amazing opportunity to work and solve wonderfully complicated and complex problem sets. But, I may be even more utterly grateful and appreciative for a four day weekend for Thanksgiving. I haven’t need a break like this in a long stretch.

This Was a Slight Change of Known Plans

Last year as this started it was one of many long stretches of scrambling for work and projects, as the underlying market has been shifting a lot since the market crash in 2008 and the wild shifts that have followed. This project surface this time last year and was a scramble to see how quickly I could get in and starting to work on it. I had initially thought this was a 6 to 8 week project, but it has been so much more and has opened incredible doors of opportunity and older doors from long connections to pull things forward to current. Many things I started working on in the mid–2000s took a long time to gestate, but now is a really nice confluence of the rivers of thought and technical need converging.
This year I have lost track of some folks, but also reconnected with people who also were pushing the edges so many years ago. Now hoping to keep this trip going and pushing foundations and boundaries out and into place.

Unritualistic Update

Time passes and sometimes is wizzes. Of late it has been whizzing and I haven’t had time to visit here and leave a note for others, nor myself.

One of the things I realized when I search Google for something and end up here at my own site is this site needs some updating. I haven’t done a big change to much of anything since 2005 or so when I turned off comments. But, much of the code I wrote that runs all of the site is still the same or similar to when I turned it this blogging capability and then tweaked the UI about 9 months later in 2000.

One of the needs is I have a previous and next, but that is based on months and as you see I haven’t posted in months. I also need to paginate the categories pages as some of them are rather large (well in yesterday’s standards, but in today’s standards of using frameworks that are built poorly and widely used a Hullo World page can be a meg or more and say and show nothing). Along with fixing pagination I really would like to just show intros of posts on category pages so they are a bit easier to scan. It is also long past time to lose the .php extension on the pages. Also, I need to get https running again and for the whole site. Lastly, I need to update the underlying database and bring the scripting language up to something more current as much of the code is 18 years or more and still runs, even through I’ve updated PHP quite a few times.

Me? Currently I am well and quite busy on the work front with is a terrific change and pulling a lot of what I have done over the years into one focus, which is an absolute blast.

Ah, August

August in the Washington, DC area is commonly hot and humid (you know, temperatures in the 90s Fahrenheit and 120 percent humidity), the sort of weather that takes your breath away as you step outside. When I moved to the DC area in 1993 for grad school I loathed August with the oppressive heat and afternoon thunderstorms that become mini monsoons.

Some 25 years later, I’ve come to peace with August. I oddly enjoy the clinging heat. August drives nearly everyone who lives in the DC area out. They flee to the shore, see relatives in slightly cooler climes, travel to far off lands, or become stationary moving only to their front porch and not much farther. This change in population density and movement means treks in morning commutes can become magical as you make the 6.3 mile drive in 20 minutes by making every traffic light and for some stretches you are the only vehicle you see moving on the street.

Sure there are tourists who flock to tourist destinations and dawdle looking at the sights or stop with no warning to look at a map. Or, they just stand and have a conversation that consumes the full width of a sidewalk trying to figure out where Billy went (or some other child they didn’t pay attention to that has wandered off) or what type of food or museum will be next, which nobody agrees with. These tourist’s stalemate conversations are mini examples of what happens in Congress, but since Congress is out of session these micro moments are street-side examples of in-action in action of today’s Congress while Congress members are back in their districts, which these people left so to see Washington, DC and their Congress member in in-action.

What is most magical about August is running errands at your pace and leisurely shopping trips. The packed Little Red Hen on Saturday morning has you as the only person in line (okay, there is no line and you can just walk up to the counter and order, but not mentioning the word “line” could leave people confused, as it apparently is part of the “experience”). You can quickly grab a leisurely coffee and walk a few doors up to Politics & Prose to look around as the only customer walking around looking at the what is on offer.

The drive home is at a leisurely pace (this needs to be self-enforced as the usual traffic isn’t there, which usually helps pace you at a non-speed camera inducing speed) is enjoyable. There aren’t people driving with their head in the backseat trying to calm children, or trying to incite them to over achieve at their soccer practice they are running late to.

The August abandonment of the DC burbs means not going away is sublimely enjoyable. But, keep in mind it is only three to four weeks of this tranquility before the 20 minute sauntering commute in the morning returns to its usual hour of halting frustration. The quiet idyllic wandering in book store aisles will return to bumping and constantly being in somebody’s way or someone in yours as you peruse the shelves as if shopping inside a pinball machine.

Ah, August, you have become far too short over the years.

Mac Touchpad Dragging

I bought a Mac laptop for myself in 2001 and largely have been using the same version of the same set-up since then across 5 or 6 Macs since them (with one or two full nuke and repaves in there, but with those I pulled in my the applications and modification / customizations from preferences). In the past few months, I’ve been using a brand new Mac that is supplied by work / project and not only does it lack my outboard brain, but it doesn’t work like my heavily modified Mac.

The one thing that has been driving me crazy is I haven’t been able to sort out how I have a three finger drag on my personal MacBook Pro so I can have it on my one for work. It is frustrating as I go to click on an object to then drag it with three fingers to where I want it, or I go to the top bar of an app and place the cursor over it and use three fingers to drag the window to where I want. I do similar things to resize windows. I have looked in Better Touch Tool, thinking I had set it up there. I looked in Preference Settings for the touchpad, but no. Today I opened a lot of customization apps I have on my personal Mac and nothing.

I was looking in the Preference Settings in the Accessibility settings and found what I was looking for, the three finger drag. I would have never thought it would be in Accessibility. Given that my current personal MBP has a touchpad that the left half needs a lot of force to click on something and do usual tasks it does make sense that having a light touch manner of dragging things would be in Accessibility. Now I know how to fix one more thing on a work Mac to get it to my own personal Mac set-up so it gets closer to being an extension of me and less a tool I have to think about how to interact with rather than thinking about the work I am doing.

Mac and iOS Tagging with Brett Terpstra

If you are still following along here it is likely in hopes of something related to tagging or folksonomy (I have a stack of folksonomy and tagging things piled up, but not written-up) so today you win.

This week’s Mac Power Users is an interview on tagging with Brett Terpstra. This episode digs deep into what is coming in iOS and current state of tagging on Macs. While things are mostly tagging standards based, the implementations are still a bit on the manual and geek scripting side of things.

I am deeply excited about iOS getting tags that come over from Mac, which is why I have been tagging things for the past few years. I have been playing the long game with MacOS tagging in hopes that it would also sync to iOS. Years back I was really certain (the kind of certain driven by hope, more than knowing) Mac was going to provide a tag only option, which was going to be really good, as files have multiple contexts and tags can adapt for that reality (which is far closer to life than nested folders).

While we never got the world I swore was going to be the next logical step, or at least as an option, we do have something interesting now. It will be more capable and usable in the next few months with the iOS 11 and the next MacOS update, High Sierra. If this is your thing, give Brett’s sit down with MacSparky and Katie a go and you are more than likely going to find one or more tip to up your game, if not get much more out of it.