BLOGAGE

[Book Review] Nov 2024

Only book I found so far on this topic. Author is developer of Auto-GPT Telegram plug-in and contributor to Auto-GPT.
It feels a little slop (slang for GenerativeAI created *); in fact we see some of the prompts used in chap 3, Role: An AI-powered author and researcher specializing in creating comprehensive, well-structured, and engaging content on Auto-GPT and its plugins...
A book on such a fast moving topic is ripe to be obsolete.
Gives a good overview of the stack and tech making up Auto-GPT; kind of a high-level primer.
Here are some of my highlights:
Auto-GPT, with its ability to interact via the OpenAI GPT API to recursively solve tasks and operate in a browser environment, was a marvel to behold.
Auto-GPT config file in the chatbot section or in the plugin ... will give you the choice to customize your own characters and personalities to add that individualized touch to your project.
A [temperature] range between 0.3 to 0.7 is considered optimal.

VC backed is really a whole different business model than "traditional" entrepreneur. A little verbose at times; but that is okay and to be expected as it is more of an academic work. Does a great job at grounding the reader in the individual and societal damage dealt by VC backed corps; individuals being contractors and out-sourced workers, as well as buyers and sellers on the platform. Book talks very little about VCs, what they are, how they work; (per the title) it's all about how the VC's goals and methods are manifested in the startup itself. Pretty fair and objective look at the VC backed startup. Ideally would be required reading for software developers. Perhaps most useful part of book is the last chapter where more positive alternatives to the VC backed startup are detailed. Overall a unique and insightful look, intimately, from the inside, of a VC backed startup.

 [book review] Generative AI with LangChain -- Ben Auffarth - March, 2024

Great book, lots of information; I gained a lot from reading it. Nice explanations of foundational models and generative AI up front. Full of code, but not in a tedious TLDR way, nice concise informational bits with the rest on GitHub if needed. In a dense quickly growing field, this book is a gem.

[Link Article] Why the Metaverse is Bad - 2023

robots.net/ai/why-the-metaverse-is-bad

 [book review] Programming PHP, 4th Edition -- MacIntyre, Peter;Tatroe, Kevin -- 4, 2020 -- O'Reilly Media -  DEC, 2023

Took a bit of effort to get through, and I haven't tried any code yet, but I rate this as a really good book. Broad coverage, good historic lead-ups, sequence goes atomic to complex understandably. Great references for continued exploration. Code examples are perfect, giving what you need, not overly verbose, and without any showy tricks. Dense. Formatting feels sub-optimal for seeing code vs results, but that might be due to document corruption and buggy e-readers.

Picked it up having seen it around, and found the title intriguing. Kind of a reminder / rehash of the knowledge of: Buddism, you're gonna die so live now, don't sweat the little things, etc.. Engaging presentation, well written.

Full of great information; could probably template out job duties for a few roles from this tome. Abstracts all concepts, therefore presents cloud vendor agnostic. A little difficult to read, not only as dry technical material, but also not always fully translated or proofed; sentences will just end midway, paragraphs will repeat.

Nice high level overview, with some odd specifics. Not sure it gives much value to the IT Pro.

Wonderful text. Here is a real understanding of the evolutionary psychological underlying human behavior and thought. Actionable techniques to tweak your own habits are provided.

[movie review] Barbie (2023) - Aug 2023

You're not missing much if you didn't see it... Real little kids, who just love playing with their dolls, were likely quite disappointed.  It is art, as the film promotes discussion on various topics and does exhibit some beauty. Like many recent productions, this one tries to do too many things, like developed by committee; lots of good fun ideas, one after the other, but none fully developed fully across the arc of the movie. If the whole movie had been like the early scene of Barbie walking around her plastic house, drinking and eating air, wondering what to actually do on a "sleepover", I think I would of enjoyed that movie most - a surreal perspective of an alive lifeless plastic toy. Biggest disappointment is with the lame under use of Will Ferrell - almost anything else would have been funnier than the lines and direction done. Just giving him no lines and having him ad lib would have been much funnier and better. Overall acting of stereotypical Barbie and beach Ken and weird Barbie was excellent, and the special effects very well done. A few of the musical numbers were quite nice; and the Tiësto remix of the cover song (used only in the credits) is great.

Amazing! This book made me a true atheist - before I was ambivalent, thought it just a label or category, not I realize I like a little anti-theist in my atheist. Dawkins drops so much truth, it's heart-warning to read. No special treatment on grounds of religion.

[book review] How to Build a Waterfall Almost Overnight and Jumpstart Your Pondless Waterfall, Pearl, Little_ Rothman, Joshua - (2012, Little Pearl Publishing) - 2022

Meh; leaves me wanting more. Digging it the hardest part though, for sure. Great pictures, good initial reference.

Next level AI - May 11, 2021

Quite meta. If you can go source code to code abstraction to source code, then perhaps you can go idea or description (novel) to code. With some tweaking, consciousness is just steps away.

Binge Watching Bonsai - July 30, 2020

I found this quite amusing. bloomberg.com/news

impeachment_inquiry - DEC 3, 2019

https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20191203_-_full_report___hpsci_impeachment_inquiry_-_20191203.pdf

Human Driving - Oct 20, 2018

Nice continued human driving (anti-AI driving) movement and shirts at humandriving.org

Reduce Exposure to Radio Frequency Energy from Cell Phones - document from December 13, 2017, posted 15 SEP '18

CDPH Guidelines on How to Reduce Exposure to Radio Frequency Energy from Cell Phones

Exit - Sept, 2018

Japan has a word, Karoshi, meaning death from overwork. A new company offers service to ease quitting. "Exit" takes stress out of fed-up workers' exit plans.

Some Bay Area day-trip stuff to do - Modified Aug 2018

AUG, 2018:
Golden Gate Bridge - vista points on both ends, Marin Hieghts vistas
freeweedtour.com
Yerba Buena - hang on lawn, lunchtime shows, MLK Jr. waterfalls, movies, food court, near museums
Exploritorium
Fort Mason - views, shows/fairs, gift shop
Big Basin Redwoods Park
Ghiradelli for ice cream
FiLoLi
Painted Ladies Walking tour SF
Fisherman's Wharp - sea lions, street performers, shops
Coit Tower - steps to climb, views
Teligraph Hill - views
Lumbard St. - views and people-watching
Bison enclosure at Golden Gate Park
Oakland Zoo
Pix at FB sign

NOV, 2017:
Henry Cowell State Park
ConservatoryOfFlowers.org
kerovac.com/visit
Pastarenos Farm / Petting Zoo
Lemos Farm
Precidio gift shop

June, 2019:
Institute of Illegal Images, 20th Street, Mission District; by appointment only. blotterbarn.com

Creed - May 17, 2018

Humming Birds - Dec 7, 2017

Humming birds like to live around where spiders are.
They use the spider's silk and webs as parts of weaving their nests together.
Clean spilled and dripped nectar off of their feeders so as not to encourage bees.
While they can fly in the rain, they don't like to fly around bees.

Cassini pix - Sept 18, 2017

Gorgeous images from Cassini's extraorindary mission.

Procambarus virginalis. - Feb 6, 2017

Every marbled crayfish is female-and they reproduce by cloning themselves.
"... -a mutation that left it with two copies in its sex cell. Somehow, the offspring was hardy and in perfect condition. Incredibly, it had three copies of each chromosome, and the ability to reproduce asexually..."
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/marbled-crayfish-mutant-clone
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0467-9

Odd Posture Metric - April 15, 2016

After doing a yoga class yesterday evening, I found I sat up a little taller in the car and tweaked the rear-view up a bit.

Did you even notice yourself adjusting the mirror or seat? You're driving your car; nobody else has sat there and driven since you last did.

Sometimes - it's the shoes. Between dockers with no socks, to sneakers, to dress shoes, to boots, I can go a half click or click, forward or back.

But the mirror is different. This morning I found I sat up a little taller in the car and tweaked the mirror up. (Sometimes your head height changes due to the angle of the seat-back, due also to posture comfort, but in this case the hips and lower/middle back.)

Felicity, I keep thinking of you... - Nov 23, 2015

Felicity, I keep thinking of you. You were always somewhere else, so I'd have to look for you. So I'm still looking around. I see your head popping out around the corner ... I check to make sure you aren't underfoot in the kitchen ... feel your flank graze against my ankle under the table ... I glance at one of your spots and there you should be ... looking back across the room at me ... eating I wonder, would you like a taste of this morsel? I hear you come in through the cat door. But it's just the breeze moving through the house. Just my mind anticipating a shadow.

Beloved Felicity, feline family member for 17 years, passed Saturday November 22nd, 2015. Older than our daughter, we got her as a kitten. Thank you for your abundant companionship. Felicity was with us originally on in Philly on Greene St., then two Upsal Gardens apartments, then Verde Dr. AZ, and finally in CA in Burlingame and Belmont.

Sometimes I used to get annoyed at Felicity. So domestic, or too aloof, sometime just not caring and making a mess, on occasion just plain rude. Then I would reconsider, and thank her for being around and grounding me, even just a little bit, in animal and nature. And, in exchange for food, shelter, and waste disposal, Felicity showed vast love and attention. I love cats, but think I might get bored as a house cat. I don't worship cats like the Egyptians, but do find them occasionally mystical.

Google is a little righteous (non-evil) after all - NOV 11, 2015

Google search history: history.google.com/history
Google location history: google.com/locationhistory
Google ad targeting: google.com/ads/preferences

License Plate Scanners and privacy - Aug 21, 2015

The real problem isn't the public nature of your data; it's the private nature of aggregate data.

Because you carry out your activities in public, any individual who legitimately wants information about you can, without violating any laws, personally keep track of your public activities. Without publication or any direct action, the person is not harassing you or whatnot. The things you do are completely public and not subject to privacy protections.

That, of course, implies someone is interested in you, personally, in the first place.

With aggregate data, we can put together lists of all people whose public functions follow a certain pattern. This, then, draws our attention to those people.

Most people don't realize the very criminal nature of human existence. A lot of folks have... mischief in their histories. Hanging in parks at night, casual adultery, illegal gambling between friends... hell, there's estimates that some 40%-70% of 20-year-olds have hooked up with underaged teens. These are all things that can put you in jail, and may or may not distress people in your community--some more than others, some not at all (nobody cares about your poker games in your basement with your drinking buddies). As it stands, these activities aren't actually harmful to society, or distressing at large.

That's why we have strict, constitutional controls for searches and seizure: if your criminal activities aren't drawing any attention, your criminal activities aren't harmful to society. The police rifling through your belongings and arresting you on bureaucratic technicalities *would* harm society at large, creating a constant state of paranoia and resentment among the population, along with costly economic and social disruption.

Aggregate public data collection and profiling similarly draws attention to people's behaviors, focusing legal scrutiny where it does not necessarily do the most good. As this scrutiny broadens, it necessarily dilutes the attention of legal enforcement from the important criminal activities which actually harm society. Persons whose activities are of no consequence are more frequently investigated and arrested, while persons whose quiet activities invoke a greater injury to their peers enjoy reduced law enforcement attention and a consequential lower risk for expanding their operations even further. Such aggregation could, as consequence, allow petty criminals to build and operate more substantial criminal networks with even less likelihood of police detection.

Many forget the police are not law enforcement officers, but peace officers. Their job is to keep the peace; they are not lawyers and not expected to know the law. This is because police detect crime by detecting its effects: injury, death, property loss, and, above all, distress among the population. This fits well with the explicit prohibition on police actively looking for crimes without first having a crime brought to their attention by the public nature of its activities.

Broad data collection and aggregation changes the public nature of people's activities. It distorts this function, leading to false positives and arrests of harmless members of society.

By bluefoxlucid (723572) on Friday August 21, 2015 @11:26AM

#OH - Aug 16, 2015

"Geishas don't do selfies."

#OH - Aug 12, 2015

While watching Ghost Adventures. "Man, you could edit up a better show then this on an iPhone." "Eeew. Burn."

Tumblr. - Aug 11, 2015

I checked out Tumbler. Anther social media to add to the list!

Hit the website on my mobile. Signed up, then it told me the mobile web experience sucked, use the app.

Installed and opened the app. First thing I see is an ad. Initially I thought 100% of it was ads. Then I realized, after I hit the "X" for like the 20th time, and the posts got a little wierder, that they weren't ads. A little digging and I was able to unfollow the corporate account, but it's influence was already my whole feed. Figured out following and liking. It's just Twitter mixed with Facebook but with pictures (Internet-meme format style) and a fun quirky community?

I found someone named beautiful bonsai or something, claiming to have pix of pretty women and bonsai. There was like no bonsai - disapointing.

I like their motto, never be bored again. We'll see...

Will Ferrell: You're Welcome America - A Final Night with George W Bush (2009) - July 30, 2015

That was some funny shit. While watching I was thinking "W" might have watched and liked it! "Wow, how'd he know I was thinkin' that?" Brought back the bad old days; that Bush comedy basically wrote itself. Recomended.

[book review] The Sixth Extinction: An unnatural history - Elizabeth Kolbert - 2014 - July 28, 2015

Perhaps most depressing yet "good read" book I've ever read. Nicely written, good information, overall accessible. No matter how much you care about recycling and how near perfect of a life style you live, just being a human means being a part of the species which basically is the 6th extinction, the Anthropocene. We over-hunt, over-consume, are lazy and selfish. The 6th extinction, the Anthropocene, started at the moment the first human was conceived. Megafauna extinctions, branch pruning away of our "sibling and cousin species", forest and global habitat destruction, invasive species acceleration, climate change, and now basically suffocating in our own filth - air, water, land, and food. The legacy of humanity might be a thin layer in the future fossil record; a residue of heavy metals, unburned hydrocarbon plasic, toxins, and radiation. The result of unsustainable growth based on running backwards millions of years of photosynthesis sequested into geological carbon. We are too good of hunters, and procreate too quickly - unbalanced.

Nature doesn't have weeds. - June 10, 2015

Mother Nature doesn't have any weeds. Why do we have weeds if they serve no purpose? Weeds are simply plants that the gardener (Human) doesn't want in that particular location. Plants not seen as useful are categorized as weeds, and weeds are thought to have no use. You might pull glass out of a flowerbed, and flowers out of a grass lawn. Weeds are sometimes invasive species which do better than natives and can overrun them - however the invasion part is/was purposeful or an accidental action of humans. In many ways all gardening, farming, landscaping, etc., is really just moving dirt and plants around, then waiting. While waiting the plants use water and air and resources to grow and shape the environment. Usually we move a plant from the store to our yard, or from a smaller to larger pot. Weeds are killed. Sometimes when I pull weeds from my bonsai I try to replant them in spots around the bench 'cause I don't have anything against the plant (weed), I just don't want it exactly where it is. In bonsai it's the tree's health and aestetic, that art itself, that determines a weed. In food production it's the crop's health and productivity efficiency that determines a weed.

Truck nuts. - May 16, 2015

"Truck nuts, also known as Truck nutz, truck balls, BumperNuts, BumperBalls, CargoNads, Drive-thru Danglers, Trucksticles, HitchNuggets, Highway Hangers, Balls-on-a-truck, or, as they are known in the United Kingdom, Bumper Bollocks", obligatory Wikipedia link, are dangling testicles accessories for pickup trucks (vehicles).

THE INTERNET ON WHY PEOPLE USE TRUCK NUTS:

1. SELF: Make their vehicle stronger, tougher, more masculine.
2. OTHERS: Compensate for feeling less masculine elsewhere.
3. SELF: To annoy people.
4. OTHERS: Because they're 'gay'.

DIY bucket drip irrigation - posted February 20, 2015 (found April 2015)

DIY bucket drip irrigation outdoor, using gravity, buckets, tubing, in-line dippers!

Moss Basics at ofbonsai.org - posted JAN 5, 2007 (found APR 30, 2015)

Best, most complete overview of moss for Bonsai I've found yet!

The Interactive Way To Go - April 11, 2015

Awesome tutorial on Go; I just finished it today after doing a little each night this week. Learned a lot of history, classic openings, theory.

Diet Doctor - Mar 29, 2015

Seems like an actual helpful site: dietdoctor.com.

The evolution of wearable tech - May 23, 2014

Fig Leaf
Animal Skin
Stick
Cloth
Makeup
Hats
...
rstoddart

San Francisco stuff - Last update May 12, 2014

Proprioception - Jan 11, 2014

Proprioception - Sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement. [W]
Exteroception - Sense by which one perceives the outside world.
Interoception - Sense by which one perceives pain, hunger, etc., and the movement of internal organs.
Conscious proprioception is communicated over different pathways than unconscious proprioception communication. Proprioception is provided by proprioceptors in, the inner ear (motion and orientation), and in the stretch receptors located in the muscles, and the joint-supporting ligaments (stance). One odd note from the Wikipedia page with no reference is, "The human proprioceptor has yet to be discovered."

More social network convergence - Jan 8, 2014

Below I already mentioned /., Yelp!, Linked-in, Twitter, and Facebook.
Actually keep thinking of more. Quara. IFTTT, Craig's List. There's more, I just keep forgetting them before I update this...

email .sig changelog: - Dec 28, 2013

v1.0 - Aug 23, 2013 - First recorded use, notably with a LOLCAT pix!
v1.1 - Dec 28, 2013 - To the second text sentence added, "While I still expect privacy, ", and changed existing leading, "also", to lowercase.
<contact info>
Please excuse any typos or mis-spellings as this note may have been written on a computer instead of a mobile tracker with autocorrect features. While I still expect privacy, also excuse the lack of 'interesting' content, noting that modern communication is essentially insecure and non-private. At the time of this writing, I am not under the constraints of a National Security Letter, a specific PATRIOT Act control, or a US federal 'gag order' denying me the ability to easily inform others of the above.

WasteFace mini photo gallery. - Dec 21, 2013

This is just some local graffiti; I'm not even sure why I'm taking time to photo and post these; maybe an East Coast thing. These are not sized, a little more effort to browse, but you get the full high res street feel, at least from the ones I took.

Bonsai Tantra ! - Dec 16, 2013

Pinkprints & Blackforest Bonsai on Tantra for Bobos!
An interesting cross-over. Here's basically the only hit on the Interwebs so far actually combining Tantric Yoga and Bonsai. I don't really get the author's point, except: Bonsai from 'the' black forest is somehow non-traditional and she has extrapolated Tantic understanding from the act. (Due to the tar-y stubborn branches?)

Yelp! - DEC 14, 2013

Part of social network convergence. /., Yelp!, Linked-in, Twitter, and Facebook.

>Recent reviews by Zake S.

What's this?

4HC - SEP 2013 to ??? (Books)

DOM #1, SEP 29, 2013: Pot Roast. 12 points, +2 point variation; was gonna get another +1 for pressing garlic, then forgot to even add garlic powder. Did the two beef broth and onion instead of onion soup. Needed Salt and Pepper, I'd neglected these. I only had six hours, so I did it mostly on high in the crock pot, then only low the last hour or so. Too tender to easily even lift out. Had it over rice with asparagus. Except for being overcooked, needing salt, and missing carrots (potatoes) it was okay.

iPhone tracking - September 25, 2013

As per this part of the Wikipedia iPhone page I've tweaked / opted out by setting like this:

Useless Unnecessary Disk Thrashing - SEPT 18, 2013

I'm sitting doing something else and I hear my laptop disk drive thrashing. Unit hot. Firefox hung due to a Shockwave Flash script crashed. Disk IO is at 100%. Apple update is hung too (not its fault I think FF took it with). Win8 is basically running slow and hot; maybe 6 min to get over the Windows Application event log 9009 Desktop Window Manager has exited with code (0xd00002fe) error, and that's even after a bunch of Win-key hits. (Kind of one advantage (disadvantage is, of course, RDP sessions always dropping (not due to policy)) of RDP'ing into this Win8 box is that when it hangs after logon before giving you the desktop you can sometimes get it to wake up by tickling the charms bar.) Today audio is crashed on my Win8 (rare) and I'm gonna have to reboot, but want to get out this mini-rant first. This is all because I didn't close Facebook (and sometimes Twitter). The way FB displays (this is one ways mobile is better (actually iOS 6.x FB app; the FB app I used on Android would have been at least okay, but the picture (and lesser so video) display way pretty bad)) I find bothersome. Scrolling with the ThinkPad center button and nib is choppy, it jumps around when it refreshes, export to pdf results in nasty page breaks, there's too many complex mouse-overs, and the scroll-bars are funny and incomplete and hidden. That's why I generally try to close FB after a mini-session. If I'm gonna logout might as well close the tab too, just to be sure. Usually I have Google Calender open in IE, and then FB open in a private tab in FF. That is to keep their cookies out of not only each other, but mostly all my other browsing. That and flash and ad blocking make the net tolerable. Obviously some still see all anyway. Gonna bounce now.

Open letter to 'out' weakened security products - SEP 17, 2013

bristolcrypto

Hamburg Data-Protection Specialist Johannes Caspar warns against using iPhone 5S's new Fingerprint ID function - SEP 15, 2013

'The biometric features of your body, like your fingerprints, cannot be erased or deleted. They stay with you until the end of your life and stay constant - they cannot be changed. One should thus avoid using biometric ID technologies for non-vital or casual everyday uses like turning on a smartphone. This is especially true if a biometric ID, like your fingerprint, is stored in a data file on the electronic device you are using.' Caspar finds Apple's argument that 'your fingerprint is only stored on the iPhone, never transmitted over the network' weak and misleading. 'The average iPhone user is not capable of checking, on a technical level, what happens to his or her fingerprint once it is on the iPhone. He or she cannot tell with any certainty or ease what kind of private data applications downloaded onto the iPhone can or cannot access. The recent disclosure of spying programs like Prism makes it riskier than ever before to share important personal data with electronic devices.' Caspar adds: 'As a matter of principle, one should never hand over any biometric data when it isn't strictly needed. Handing over a non-changeable biometric feature like a fingerprint for no better reason than that it provides 'some convenience' in everyday use, is ill advised and foolish. One must always be extremely cautious where and for what reasons one hands over biometric features.'" /.

Alarming trend for the state to view everyday people as adversaries - SEP 9, 2013

"Our world is made up of computers. Our cars and homes are computers into which we insert our bodies; our hearing aids and implanted defibrillators are computers we insert into our bodies. The deliberate sabotage of computers is an act of depraved indifference to the physical security and economic and intellectual integrity of every person alive. If the law is perverted so that we cannot tell people when their security has been undermined, it follows that we must find some other legal way to warn them about services that are not fit for purpose." ~ Cory Doctorow
This is the last paragraph in this piece: How to foil NSA sabotage: use a dead man's switch

And in the comments, by Chriswr: "I've just thought of a brilliant improvement. Suppose the librarian puts up a sign everyday saying "THE FBI HAVE BEEN HERE". This is untrue but not illegal. Then, when the FBI call she will be legally obliged to remove the sign. As long as everyone understands that the sign means the opposite of what it says this is foolproof and legally watertight."

And that's about the size of it...

Here's my current email .sig: "Please excuse any typos or mis-spellings as this note may have been written on a computer instead of a mobile tracker with autocorrect features. Also excuse the lack of 'interesting' content, noting that modern communication is essentially insecure and non-private. At the time of this writing, I am not under the constraints of a National Security Letter, a specific PATRIOT Act control, or a US federal 'gag order' denying me the ability to easily inform others of the above."

[book review] Are We Being Watched? The Search For Life In The Cosmos. 2013 by Paul Murdin - SEP 01, 2013 (Books)

Outstanding. I learned a lot about the ubiquity of foundational building blocks of life, development of the solar system, geological history of the earth. The vastness of time and space became more real. Seemed like a clean lay presentation of the current science in many related fields.

Privacy - Aug 09, 2013

So i guess, you didn't use envelopes for your mail before email?
Why use clothes even? What do you have to hide?
Why whisper?

That's right... it's called privacy.

"4HC" - Aug 7, 2013 (Books)

I bought this book. It's massive. I checked it out and look forward to getting to it in the queue.

[book review] "The Last Redwoods" by Hyde & Leydet (1963) - Aug 7, 2013 (Books)

Touching book. I feel sad for the destruction of so many of these beauties. I'm inspired to go to more Redwood Parks.

[book review] "The Science of Religion" by Paramahansa Yogananda - Aug 7, 2013 (Books)

Fascinating and Peace-oneness-enhancing! Explores the universalities of religion and humanity and claims all religions are actually the same, just with a kind or Maya layer of their own over them.

Twitter is a microblog! - Aug 7, 2013

Twitter (large post with all kinds of musings) - Oct 2012

NAS (Network Attached Storage specs and price comparisons) - Jan 2012

netbooks (specs and price comparisons) - Jan 2012

Microsoft Operations Management (MOM) page - Nov 2011

My MCSE 2003 Site - Nov 2011

If you type two spaces after a period, you're doing it wrong. - Jan 2011

iPhone (kind of large post with all kinds of misc stuff) - Nov 2011

MOM specific .vbs stuff - 2011

SSD DEFRAGGING - Jan 2011

Solid State Drives (SSD) have no moving parts. SSDs are limited to a finite number of writes for each spot ont he disk. SSDs do not simply overwrite data, rather they need to clear or delete a spot and them write to it. Fragmentation doesn't reduce seek and data access time. "...When the free space is badly fragmented, the writes can see 30 to 40 percent degradation in performance..." <reference>. "...SSD is an addressable memory space and what you’re doing is you’re mapping a virtual disk onto this memory space. There’s no penalty for having a fragmented disk...." <reference>. Defragmenting causes extra wear as each data move takes multiple writes. The best practice is not to automatically defrag, and maybe rarely manually defrag. Buy SSDs with "high-endurance cells", larger cache, and the best (internal) wear-leveling algorithms. My personal preference is to use SSD for non-thrashy priority access data, and instead of defragging, backup, wipe, and restore by file copy.

Disaster Prep - Last update Oct 11, 2010

Twitter was a microblog! - Sep 23, 2010

Updated May 23, 2014 to move the 8/2013 post down here and add the hashtag reference to detail change in Twitter handle. See #ztso for more info.

Trinity - MAR, 2010

I remember once, as a kid, understanding what the Christian Trinity was and meant. Since then I can't again explain it or understand it, but that knowledge that I once held what it means has been enough for me not to doubt that it has some significance and obviously that other people get it. Now, in Kriya Yoga, in studying Lahiri Mahasayas comments on Patanjalis Yoga Sutras I see the the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is just (and I don't know in what order) allegorical to the Causal, Astoral, and Physical Planes of existence we inhabit.

Religulous's Jesus added a nice ice / water / steam analogy. (Aug 7, 2013)

Gravity - MAR 14, 2010

Yoga the other day. At savasana the teacher said to let gravity take a hold of you or something. that got me thinking. I've always liked this relatively recent Gravity song, maybe by John Mayer, but never really caught the lyrics. Lots of focus in Meditation and reading about how we are all one and connectedness. Then there's the metaphysics and mirror quarks. Seems like Gravity is the simple, known by all, nobody knows how it works, basic example of this. Every bit of mass in the whole universe is undeniably drawn to every other bit of mass in the universe! It's all just one huge glob trying to stay together. This truly requires more investigation. How is this most basic thing not understood? It's just labelled as one of the laws of physics and nature, and just left at that? There's the Weak Force, Strong Force, Nuclear Force, Magnetic, Electrical, and Force of Gravity - just throw a name on it and work on what it causes... seems weak. How can pieces of matter at distance from each other, with seemingly no communication or connection or delay at all effect each other?

Tinsel - MAR 10, 2010 (Books)

Richard K. Morgan used this word a smattering of times, mostly in this way (which as he's British makes sense) and I got the meaning from context and imagery. Then Roy Eugene Davis, when commenting on Lahiri's Kriya Yoga quotes, writes, "...you will give up the tinsel of attachment to the things of material expression." It was at this point I had to look the word up:

• Shining material used for ornamental purposes; especially, a very thin, gauzelike cloth with much gold or silver woven into it; also, very thin metal overlaid with a thin coating of gold or silver, brass foil, or the like
• Metallic garland for Christmas decoration
• Tinsel was the codename for a type of equipment carried by RAF bombers which was used for jamming Luftwaffe night fighter controller's speech radio frequencies during the Second World War
• An inability to resist the gratification of whims and desires
• A type of electrical conductor comprised of a number of tiny threads

In my anti-organized religion way, I obviously find it interesting that tinsel is so closely related to XMas! Nonetheless, it's an interesting and rich word, now basically meaning to me something shinny and distracting, the outermost manifestation of the material world, maybe even so desire-ous that it wholly distracts.

Acquired Immunity - 2009/2010

Placeholder...

De Ja Vu - Late 2009

Starr King statue in SF's Golden Gate Park - March 2008

*NIX - Sep 2007

Sierra Vista area attractions - last update July 20, 2006

MCSE 2003 on a page - 2005/2006

Pictures of racks etc I built - July 23. 2005

A letter of recommendation - July 23. 2005