IEEE Spectrum: How the Computer Graphics Industry Got Started at the University of Utah – Adobe and Pixar founders created tech that shaped modern animation – I used image generators from Evans and Sutherland earlier in my career, then they were purchased by Rockwell Collins (now Collins Aerospace) to be part of their simulation business. Exciting times back then!
Zettlekaste.de: Building a Second Brain and the Zettelkasten Method – This post goes into great detail contrasting the “Building a Second Brain” ideas of Tiago Forte and the Zettelkasten Method as practiced by Niklas Luhmann. The author states that both methods can be used simultaneously with little to no overlap (BASB is project focused, ZKM is knowledge-focused). It’s worth the time to read!
Notes on adding a feature to MyStatusTool
Looking at adding medium-editor to MyStatusTool, downloaded zip file from medium-editor repo.
Made a copy of my current setup
Updated config.json and app.js to use port 2030
Looked at this demo of use of textarea with medium-editor, will work on adding this to admin.js
Updated views\admin.js to add references to medium-editor CSS and JS files, and add other stuff to support.
Added medium-editor CSS and JS files to public\css and public\js folders
Was able to get the medium-editor working, but could not see the labels on the toolbar. After a fair amount of searching, found a set of options for button labels that made me go back to the demo page I was using for an example. Instead of “false” (the default value), the button labels option was “fontawesome”. I had issues with some other app in trying to correctly access FontAwesome fonts, so I decided to change that to “none”, and then I was able to see the labels – awesome!
I then was able to add links in some text, and that worked correctly in the displayed text and the RSS feed. I did notice that there were paragraph marks in the RSS feed description. I had seen some mention of medium-editor adding paragraph tags, so I added some logic to app.js to strip the tags before creating the feed (I was already doing this for the post itself).
I then tried all of the buttons on the toolbar, and they had the desired effect – nice!
During this effort, I briefly looked at some other options (TinyMCE, Quill), but found there were restrictions or payment requirements, so I am glad I was able to get the medium-editor working. I will be adding these changes to the repo and doing a little more testing before rolling out to my beta testers (let me know if you would like to be a beta tester for MyStatusTool!)…
CNN: A flying car prototype just got an airworthiness certificate from the FAA (Wow!)
Making progress in the world
It is easy to fall into a “consumption” mode of life, where most if not all free time is spent taking in news and information about things, but not producing anything with that news/information, or not producing anything at all. Similarly, it is easier to comment on the current state of affairs in the world than it is to take action to make something happen. It is easier to complain about your job, or neighbors, or other people or events, than to make some change (get a different job, find new friends, move).
To me it comes down to three things: (1) what do you want?, (2) what do you need to do to get what you want?, and (3) what are you doing about it? I have problems with the first one, for sure. Trying to make a decision about what to do with my free time, or what thing I want to change in my life, can be a difficult process – there are so many choices, and only so much time. If I do not decide what I want, I can’t move on to items 2 and 3.
Here is an excerpt from a post by Gary North (paywalled), writing on “What Do You Really Want to Achieve?”:
Here are the three inescapable questions: (1)What do I want to achieve? (2) How soon do I want to achieve it? (3) What am I willing to pay (do without)?
When you have this on paper, you are ready to develop a plan to achieve this. This plan must have time markers: quarterly, yearly, five years. It must have specific intermediate goals that will let you measure your progress.
This is psychologically difficult to do. Most people will not do it. Those few who do will not follow through with self-evaluations on time, which involve plan revisions. So, time dribbles away. Progress is catch-as-catch-can.
Finally, this post breaks down this method of making progress (even though it focuses on screenwriting, the advice is sound for any endeavor):
“A dream written down with a date becomes a GOAL. A goal broken down into steps becomes a PLAN. A plan backed by ACTION makes your dreams come true.”
Time to get started figuring out what I want!#
Anyone losing feeds in River5?
During the month of June, I noticed that items from Ken Smith’s Old School Drummer blog were not showing up as part of the Old School Bloggers river. I checked the river file generated by the River5 feed reader, and saw that items from Ken Smith stopped after May 31st. I created a duplicate of the Old School Drummers list, but did not see any recent items from Ken Smith’s feed after I created the list. I am going to install a fresh copy of River5 today for testing, but thought I would send out this word in case any other River5 users are seeing this issue. The strange thing to me is Ken’s feed is the only one affected out of nine feeds. If you have seen this issue, let me know!
Greg Wilson: Eleven Tips for Organizational Change “This was a proposal for the US Research Software Engineer Association 2023 conference, but was rejected…. I recognize that they are incomplete—in particular, that they are strongly biased toward what works in affluent, democratic societies—but if you’re tired of rolling heavy rocks up steep hills over and over again, maybe they will help.”
NetLogo is a multi-agent programmable modeling environment. It is used by many hundreds of thousands of students, teachers, and researchers worldwide.
Queens man indicted again
I have been waiting for the Queens Eagle newspaper to run this story (covered the first indictment), but they have not, so I am backfilling here….
CNN summary of reaction to the indictment (June 14, 2023)
Trump indictment in annotated form (CNN)
CNN summary of coverage through June 16th, 2023