It's not madness if you have a chart

This entry was posted in philosophy, sickness.

[You never know. Or do you?] Dilbert is great, but when it comes to pure brain teasers and real laugh out loud, Indexed is having a good run this summer.

This one takes a nice twist on one of my favorite quotes - the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and expecting different results - by adding chaos theory.

As Nate Silver pointed out in Signal and Noise - sometimes the changes are so small that you think you're doing the same thing, but it is just enough to give a different outcome (page 118 paper version, since that is searchable on amz but the kindle isn't...). Because chaos theory isn't about chaos as we normally think about it - it is not really random, it is just that there are some many things involved that we are unable to map them and model it all. And it all ties into the flow and effect. 

42, 46, 98?

Oh the irony that is my tagline.

Initially i figured that writing would make more sense in the winter, since less time is spent outside then than in the summer months of lazy long sunny evenings. There by leaving more time to read articles, magazines and non fic books.

And by extension; more time to write and reflect, triggering more writing and musings.

Well, the last two years have shown a slight change in that idea. It seems almost like I'm mentally in a coma during the winter - I read, I get the job done and I play some games, watch some tv. But adding more value than 140 characters including a URL has not been a top priority.

Come summer and sun, the energy soars, the ideas floursih, the tv is all but banished (due to reruns of reruns from mid/early May), the games forgotten or unplayable with the sun going until late. And so the blogging picks up.

Hence it has been early summer that has triggered a resurgence of posts, and come fall this 10th year of blogging on and off I'll try to keep it going at a more measured pace.

Aiming for two post each week, possibly scheduled four at a time, seems like doing about five in a sitting works pretty well, as long as the drafts are there with links, quotes or snippets.

With 46 in the bank from May and June, another half year of twice weekly works out to around 98 for the year overall. a stretch but doable. First two full years clocked in at 107 and 98, so putting that out there as a ballpark seems right.


Update @15.7; despite a full stop the first part of the month, there are now ten posts published or scheduled 



- ...and the sun shines in the distance as I write this, who knows how it will be when I polish it up, or when it hits the blog proper...

This is MY place - for now

@avinash sharing Baekdal quoting Avinash,  with the subtlest prompt:

[If you read only one thing in Jan] *Rented or Owned: Where To Focus Your Brand Content*  

[src]

A good piece with some nice charts for illustrating how you can think about what content goes where, and why you should have a clear understanding of it. Still a must read for anyone doing more than "just" blogging for their own benefit.

As I've stated before lately, this blog goes back to pyralabs era, and the current google focus and understading leaves a bit to be desired. So I keep on pulling down a back-up, and playing around with WP options (occupational hazard at the moment as well) - and with a Kickstarter donation to Ghost (one of 5000 - yay!) I'll have to give that a spin in the fall.

27,000 code additions to the core repository in the last month (Ghost update)

Still it feels open enough at blogger, to let things roll along, at least the web interface works well enough for simple writing - and that should be the focus above all. Content, content, content. Then a sprinkling of links, and a small drop of design.

So the traction gets a bit harder, the volume a bit higher, and the swap is postponed once more. Until the fall at least, to see how far this "streak" of publishing can be extended. To see how "post Reader" Google behaves. 

You should handle the truth

So that went well. Or not. I'm still having a hard time with blogger not having a draft option in the API. Makes it close to useless in 2013 with apps and push and IFTTT ruling the flow of ideas and content.

Ranting done, the post I was planning on writing is a short spin of this note:

"Open DataExecutive Order signed by President Obama. Along with the order is an accompanying Open Data Policy released by the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Science and Technology Policy"

[via Pocket, U.S. Government Data To Be Made Freely Available]

Working with data both for analysis and viz, must say that this is great news. Others have gone into the details, and compared it to the British version.

My main "yay" is the focus on tools, including simple wrappers for making just about any database into a functional (REST based) data source and API. Oh. And did I mention they are open source?

Pushing the legacy forward, I think (and hope) this will be remembered as one of the great Obama moments. Understanding promotes stability and peace, and understanding starts with access.

So, here's to hoping for a good summer for open data, followed by inspired announcements in more countries as fall sets in.

...and I'll be forced to tell you no lies

Picking up the thread from last post on "lies to children";

People mean well, especially friends and family, but they're going to give you bad advice. ... PS the irony of this post is not lost on me.

As often a great mind-bender from Seths blog - how he gives advice about people giving bad advice.

There is something so simple about it, how most advice is in a way bad, because we can only ever give advice based on our own understanding, and not the 'real' situation. Nor can we (most of the time) decipher and understand the drivers for someone else, really see where they want to go, who they want to be.

And thus, our advice is more or less a story about how we think the situation should be handled to reach the resolution that fits our narrative - not necessarily for ourselves, but our narrative of the current and future state of whomever we are talking to.

Does that mean we shouldn't give, or ask, advice?

Or just that when we decide what to do, advice and "seven ways of" or "top ten tips" should be a set of inputs to calibrate our path?

I'm certainly not telling...

Zen and the estrangements of mankind

Part 1 (on work v passion) and then part 2 (on mental models), makes this the third part in the flow of the book, but the fourth written and posted.

Unusual behavior tends to produce estrangement in others which tends to further the unusual behavior and thus the estrangement in self-stoking cycles until some sort of climax is reached. @1253

Part 2 ended with an idea left unsaid. And it was too soon. It is easier now, another year on from that day, our 9/11 - 227, or 7/22. 

July 22nd 2011 will probably live on for quite some time as a reminder. But even the most horrible dates fade over time, "never again April 9th" - reflecting on the way Norway was invaded by Germany and caught unprepared in 1940.

Yet it is a saying almost gone from our mind. And 70 years later we were in fact more or less taken unprepared.

By a single man. 

And his vision of the present, the future and the defining moments.


Not crazy, at least not crazy in a judicial definition - so he is serving his time. But somehow he entered into his own "world", and step by step built up a "vision" that lead him to, step by step, assemble a plan - and then a rationalization in the form of a mash up manifesto. I read parts and skimmed parts in the hours and days after 227, but have been unable, unwilling, to open it afterwards. It is best left for history, as it gives little else than a varnish atop a narrative oh so bewildered.


Which, in a strange way brings us back to ZEN - and the journey back into a life gone for our guide

He was insane. And when you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he’s insane, which is not to see him at all. To see him you must see what he saw and when you are trying to see the vision of an insane man, an oblique route is the only way to come at it. [ibid, 1406]

It certainly seems like a good definition of insanity; when it is something we can't grasp, when we need to shift our mental models "one step left" in order to even grasp the outlines of the story.

Yet only a few pages previous, there is this passage;

We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think ... We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world [ibid, 1370]

Is the world even real, beyond our sampling insights or fragments of reality? Like the Matrix, it could all be a simulation. Or at the very least suffer from a solid selection bias?

We see and react to what we all can live with around us, as opposed to the jarring discomfort of unwanted elements. Like beggars, how much simpler to ignore them actively or passively, letting their strange haven under the bridge be a hidden sight, their needs and encroachment on our daily bustle.

Like science and philosophy. Most people go on their merry way rather uncaring and untouched by the big questions. Does that make them more or less real, pressing, true?

I love to hate my blogger

Well this was strange, and crappy.

What is that? An official blogger app for iOS. Updated May 6th 2013. Yay for list and status. Yay for edit. Nay for only bold/italic choices for formatting. Nay for no visible way of linking or editing existing links.

Considering that the web version doesn't work at all with chrome for iPad, I guess it is a small step up -  but compared to the Wordpress app it is scary bad. Proof that blogger isn't something google sees much value in, and that they have a hard time getting something decent together for tablets in general and iOS in particular.

Which like Reader seems strange to me, considering that they want to organize the worlds information, having it first hand would seem like a good choice? But I guess they crawl a lot better than they do UX, and probably more efficient all around.


But onto the quote and link for the post proper - another archived draft, this one from right after New Years, and related to dieting:

Controlling what you eat is an interesting challenge, but not nearly as important as controlling how you think.

[src] via Seth's Blog

Reading bit by bit "this will make you smarter", a collection of short essays as answers, each about two full screens in the kindle app.

Quotes would go here.... On something more suited that a google product... Stay tuned (and yay for crappy html as well - total fail) 

I am my mind;

If you lead an organization, or have the sort of job that demands that you think about the world, these tools are like magic hammers. They will help you, now and through life, to see the world better, and to see your own biases more accurately.

[location 583]

Bias is one of the points brought forth, which ties into my other non-fic reading at the moment; Dan Ariely and a bundle of all three books. Considered jumping onto his Coursera offering, but the time just wasn't there, but finally reading all three books back to back is a good treat non the less.

Bias is the thumb that experience puts on the scale [ibid 1227]

Biases are there, we are wired into thinking some ways - but it is in part predictable, so we can, should, work with it. Not letting it go unnoticed in the autopilot lane, but taking a few minutes to reflect on why and how we assumed. Doesn't have to be a complete written expose, but checking yourself makes a lot of sense.

There is no absolute truth, since quantum states as we understand them contain probabilities all over the place. But also at a higher level, it is often more about storytelling than actual impact or 'fact'. A "causation web" rather than a pure and simple trigger for some thing, and then we try to influence various aspects of the web - based on what "makes sense" in our story, our reference frame.

Why do more than 40 percent of Americans think the universe began after the domestication of the dog? [ibid, 860]

Because it makes it easier overall? Religion puts things into place, makes for an overall narrative and guidelines that make a lot of sense.

Be nice, you will be rewarded, there is a Truth out there.

Does the timeline matter in the day to day life? Does it change how you would look at gas prices and environment? Taking something for granted or realizing that it is a (rather) finite resource built up over thousands of years, not likely to be around in the time of our grandkids?

But but but...

Think happy thoughts, it is a simple saying but a profound impact. How does it relate to bias? Is it the same thing, that we shape our world by our understanding and stories of it?

No, you can't heal yourself solely with (Jedi) mind tricks, but in a lot of situations your view impacts the process and the result in terms if how it makes you feel.

Energized or worn down.

Impossible or stretch.

 Same thing or not?

...and the sun washed out any hope of getting further for now - just as i realized that i've passed 500 published posts. it all adds up. given time, same as this post, third time the charm and out it goes on schedule in the morning...

Just do your stuff

Going more and more pure digital - added a subscription for Fast Company on the iPad, and started off wtih the 100 creative people issue. Way back when (before this blog, actually last century...) used to subscribe to both FC and Wired, but along the boom and bust FC got axed. And I've been meaning to pick itup again for some time now. But with the digital price approaching a single printed copy at the newsstand there really wasn't any need for consideration.

Now I just need to find a good way to get the ideas easily off the app and into the blog. (All the while working away at the Wired backlog stack still occupying a corner of the desk)

But enough meta, and onto the meat


Best quote so far from the 100 most creative list;

"I want to say that, instead of im-possible, I'M possible,” ... "And so are you.” CeeLo

Sure there are thing that are impossible. And sometimes we meet people we feel are impossible. But just move beyond it. focus on yourself and how you can move (yourself or others) forward.

It is so easy to just get into the funk, and let it bring you down as well.

Amazing how much better things get when you improve the bits you have control over rather than ranting about the ones you don't.

@codepo8 

Getting both that tweet in the stream and reading the CeeLo piece on the same day felt like a happy coincidence. And it sparked another boost of energy, creativity and finally now blogging.

This is going out 'realtime', with the archive posts coming up being backdated to fill the gaps from last week.


As a suitable side note, the soundtrack for this writing is Girl Talk and All Day. A true example of making impossible into possible. Mashup (archive ftw) at it's finest?

18.5 days of music on the laptop feels like magic. Sure Spotify and Wimp brings everything and then some. But I still enjoy having "my" collection - since it allows for fun trips down memory lane, like picking up Tommy Tee from 1998 and Dr Dre from 2001, or working out again to Prodigy, like way back when.


...and the sun made a short but crucial appearance today - otherwise it feels like the end times, rain rain rain for days and days...

Glory, glory - what's the story?

Story inspiration this time - Pseudopod - is mainly a horror podcast, but episode 266 is as much about life as things that go bump in the night.

The theme brings to mind Bruce Springsteen and "Glory Days" (embed below) - looking back as much as ahead, or simply at right now. Living in the moment, or for the moment.



Sure there might be wonderful things hidden behind the fence.
But there might just as easily be things best left undisturbed.

We glorify youth, and by extension say that growing up is not a goal as such, just something that happens as you try to (re)capture that feeling of owning the world and everything in it. When everything was all about the here and now, when it felt like nothing outside mattered, and everything was still possible - because tomorrow hadn't started.

But every day is a new day, every dream another chance. Carpe Diem isn't just about the big dreams. It is also living life as it happens. Every day a little piece of the puzzle. Every (chance) encounter another moment to savour.

So, as summer is setting in, projects and deadlines are winding down, are you preparing for fall, or just staying in the zone of now?

My couch or your?

Wired [19.03] - finally getting rid of the stack, both the digital one in terms of drafts from (oh yeah) last year, and the paper one of old issues of Wired mag, saved for a post or two.


Main topic was a mention of couchsurfing - and the founder Casey Fenton.
The concept sounds really appealing, get around the world by hooking up with other (presumably) geeky people for a few days at a time. Even so, I think I'd personally feel more comfortable using something like aribnb - at least as a main solution, it just feels more right to spend a bit of money on the transaction.

I do love having friends over, and a spare room for those that either live out of town, or have to leave the car for a few hours. And I'd probably lend it to a friend of a friend as well, without any reservations. But beyond that? Not so sure. How about you? Where do you draw the line "in the sand"? Who and how long is OK for a house guest? Should they help with chores, do some shopping, or are they guest first and foremost?


ad for; Eee Slate Ep121 - windows7 !!??!! seriously? and a stylus to boot? Nice that it has usb, hdmi and then some, but since it is in all but name a laptop sans the keyboard I'm not really impressed. Sort of makes sense as a second device for the C-level and consultant lifestyle - if it supports MS Office fully, that is.

But I'll give Asus one thing, they keep pushing assorted form factors into the market, looking to either give the consumers a lot of choice, or just hoping to find one that sticks. But seriously - the Eee Pad range? Right ho'.



I'll be scheduling these old post up for the week ahead at the time of writing, so June of 2012 will be the most posted month for quite some time. Maybe a revival of sorts as we enter the final ten months of the first ten years (!!!).  Today it is 3-6-12, and so a good magic number for doubling up on content and ideas. in the early evening sun.

- ...and the sun shines bright enough to open the windows wide...

Never again

XKCD Never:
 


Sometimes looking back makes for happy thoughts. And sometimes you get happier thinking about what isn't anymore.

Memory, truth or insight. We shape ourselves by our stories, and move on.

The big 450?

It took a bit of time, and quite a few stops and restarts - but this should be post number 450 here on the 3-3-3 blog. So still some room for growth, and perhaps a more planned celebration/recap on closing in on 500 posts or ten years (depending on what comes first/last...) Stay subscribed - RSS is the ONLY meaningful way to get the erratic posts.

The main topic of the day isn't all meta - but almost;

Information (..) could not only get that, but then she’d be given recipes specific to the location where she’s looking at the wine: chowder pairings in Boston and chili recommendations in Austin.

Quote from mr Brogan - don't get hung up on tech - sure it needs location awareness, some sort of id input (code, name, qr,..) and a database, but for the user it is all about getting more from their interaction with the wine, on her own terms.

Which is a good reminder - it is really easy to fall in love with shiny objects (be they iPads or CSS regions prototypes), especially when you spend most of every working hour either learning, developing, testing or debugging new stuff.

so how to keep the open mindedness needed to reboot while keeping things grounded? How to be playful and exploratory, yet at the same time focus on the everyday nuisances the users don't even really know they have?

1 for 1, and 19 to go

Starting today, and running until next Monday (day before our national day, or 4th of July equivalent) - I'll by blogging two times each day. Once in Norwegian over at my wordpress playground, and once in English right here.


The direct inspiration was listening to Mitch Joel SPOS #251 - Do The Work With Steven Pressfield  discussing both the new manifesto "Do the Work" (free on Kindle due to sponsorship from GE), and the 'classic' The War Of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle (affiliate) which is now on the Kindle as well.

So the goal is to get back into blogging on a more regular schedule, by doing it for an hour every day (at least) over the next ten days. At the same time I plan to re-read WoA digitally, taking new notes and highlights, then comparing those to the ones in my paperback copy - which should be ample food for another post or three along the way.

#dothework and #keepmehonest are the slogans - and both tweeting about it and posting this is an attempt at that: stating it to help myself do it.


And yes, in a bit of break from form, that is my actual twitter account, not hiding it but not really promoting it either - this blog was always supposed to be more about my need for reflection through formulation than anything else (ref image gallery in the sidebar)

Flashing design

Yes, another minor design tweak for the blog (shouldn't affect the RSS feed to much ;D)
Figured it was time to try out some webfont use, and to push up the font size a bit - ease of reading being a major point with me after using the iPad (and now the iPad2) for 3/4 of a year
Still using one of the predefined templates as a base - content is king here, I'll do my coding and CSS tweaking at work instead

Gutenberg of Arabia - #18days

"Today, it occurs to me that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube may be the Gutenberg press of the Middle East, tools like his that enable people to speak, share, and gather"

Buzzmachine, Jeff Jarvis [Gutenberg of Arabia]

Interesting post, and the story plugs that it makes for are quite profound;

could the use of social media not only usher in a new wave of democracy to rival the "fall of the wall" in the late 80-ies, but also spark of a "reformation" type event for Islam as well? Bringing the religion and the region into the new millenium on our calendar and re-igniting the old scholarly culture of co-existence?

Paint me a picture, sing me a song

Amongst other things the evening has been given partially over to reading up on some blogs, and a great post from Mitch at Six Pixels sparked of some ideas of my own;


When The Definitions Are Wrong

One of the biggest disruptions you may have noticed since the pervasiveness of Social Media is our definition of things

So what is a blog?

For me it is mostly a personal journal, that is available to me at anytime and any place. Yes it is public, but mostly only technically so as there are few links and prompts for readers.
It is a place to reflect, gather up links, insights and ideas. To make things clearer by putting them into writing, and to challenge myself in terms of concepts and ideas that need a bit more thought.

For a lot of people it is a way of life - the teen blogs and fashion blogs spring to mind. It is how they interact with their peers, how they define and shape themselves. It is about communication certainly, but also about building an image (or a brand?), shaping the story.

Above all it is everything it has ever been - meaning archives by date, tag or topic - a repository of collected posts, comments, links and media (images, video etc)

So what is a website?

Simply a subset of content, structured and presented at a certain time to a certain user. On a blog everything is (in principle) there for everybody, whilst a website might adapt to the user (dynamic content, personalized) and vary over time with out storing the older versions.


Just those two words give so much meaning and so many expectations when we navigate the web. Will the page be there tomorrow? Will it look the same, and will it give us the same information?

I took some time put to watch a video on MTV - in and of itself a rare occurrence these days, as the music videos have almost all moved to the sub-channels that are premium paid - namely Runaway by Kayne West (YouTube).
No doubt a video that stretches the definition and scope of music video, more like a mini movie or the visual equivalent of a concept album. Yet it was still clearly a music video. The visuals tied into and built around the music. The story was there but served mostly to lift the different segments (verses?) into their own setting.

Would it have been better at five minutes?

Maybe, but sometimes to change and evolve things we need to push it beyond the natural limits, cross into a different but related realm in order to get a new frame of reference. Disruption and discomfort breeds innovation and change. You don't change by looking closer at yourself, but by looking at other things, other fields, other industries, other people or cultures.


Or like a short but thoughtful post put it (talking about people first, then companies):

Brand-driven businesses are of necessity mired in the competitive trap of trying to be somebody. To be the biggest, loudest, bestest somebody on the block. Innovation-driven businesses are trying to do something: they win by making better, doing better and being better.

(unfinished business)

So if you are trying to BE a blog - how is that working out? And just what is a blog - for YOU?

- ...and the sun is so far away, and sorely missed - ten below for weeks now...

muse

want gives inspiration?
a picture?
a song?
a sound?

the view out the window
a cup of latte
an article

curling up on the sofa with a book

or just a random flash in the back of the mind?





(initially an old draft, not sure why it never made it - but here it is - cleaning out the closets!)

Endning the day on a meta note

Well, 2010 is set to shortly surpass 2009 in terms of posting and production... in general the first five months of 2009 had at least on post per month. Then junior came along, and during the summer I attended Bloggcamp - got a free WP suitable hosting, set that up along with a free WP install, a Tumblr and a bit more time on Twitter. So I shared content, and I wrote a bit - but a lot of it in Norwegain, some of it "just" retweeted rather than commented and expanded on, and none of it here.


Now the assorted Norwegian blogs and experiments have all lapsed and been migrated into one common, free and hosted Wordpress.com blog (really good things happening with the 3.0 version, and merging MU back into the main branch) - and the Tumblr is set a temp storage for tweets and ideas in general. Sort of an extended draft box.


That means that after basically a full year hiatus (one comic and one book initiated post not withstanding), the time has come to get 3-3-3 back up to speed.

Seven years and close to four months have passed since the initial posting [pre post titles and page per post even], one of 12 during that first month, but the total for the year petered out at 37.

Then came the "golden" years of '04 and '05 both with 100+ posts - followed by two years of 50+, before '08 just inched past 40 after a big finish (15 posts in December, lots of ideas needed to drain and sort through)

First goal for the year is at least one post per month the rest of the way - and a total above 25. 

Considering the stack of Wired mags, and the possible goldmine in the "shared" feed in Google Reader (197 and counting), it should be pretty feasible.


And the big dual shout for actually kick starting this goes to mr Seth Godin (laying the groundwork via Linchpin, my first iBooks book) and Steven Pressfield with the War of Art (just got 20 pages in, so I guess it works - hard copy, doodling and lining my way ;D)

Going for broke, atomic or bust

There is room for one more test, this time after updating the blogger editor (now it actually says that it cant handle compose mode...) - and using the Atomic tabbed browser as the means of multitasking across the way of the web.

VeryShortStory It never really seemed right killing perfect strangers, but having come from a small family, I'd run out of options.

- twitter ultra short stories, and even automated thsirts over at the website

Another fun source of content is the twaiku, using twitterto send haiku poems around the world

So far the fans here in atomic actually do seem a bit smoother than the dual view of duet, especially with a custom search box for instant wikipedia goodness

Sing me a sing - with Duet

Trying o a new browser for the iPad, namely Duet,
Which should allow me to use the blogger interface along with the other window for grabbing and inserting links... Or thats the plan anyways.
And it seems to work pretty well, the link above is to an article in the New Yorker, on dystopian childrens books, supposedly a new trend or at least a bit more prominent than previously.
With this app it might actually be possible to get some writing done here again, with a small boy in the house pulling out the laptop just isn't as feasible, but a few minutes on the iPad is doable.
-...and the sun shines brightly still, 'tis summertime in Norway for sure...