RSS - Back in the saddle again

I've downloaded and installed RSSowl, and am going to use it for a while.... it took a while to find it, but I have my old RSS subscription file from Google's now gone Reader.  About 75% of the feeds were still active.

Here's the first time in years I've used an RSS reader.  It's Doc Searls chatlog.

Slide Rulers - Explained

Slide rules are simple... imagine 2 rulers.... if you move the end of one to a given position on another.... you can add / subtract with them.

A slide ruler uses a special scale that does the same job, except when you're done... you get the product of the numbers, instead of the sum. If you run it backward, you get division.

The only other real trick is that they wrap back around to 1 at the ends to make it easier mark (less numbers) and let you use them for any size numbers.

Fancy ones have scales that are 1/2 and 1/3 the space between marks to let you square and cube in one operation, and also add trig and log-log scales, etc.

InterIlluminati version 0.001 alpha - The founding document

8/22/2018 02:23 AM - Sometimes you get an idea in your brain, and you don't want to lose it, because you think it's a good one, and might possibly change the world. This is one of those ideas, and it's happening in the middle of the night. You dear reader, are seeing it because my dear bride made me go to bed early enough that, unlike normally, I am not so exhausted I'm dreading the 5:00AM alarm that marks the end of sleep, and thus have a little bit of flexibility....   early to bed.... early to rise.... lets you make notes at 2:30AM... 8-)

I've developed many bad habits over my life, and have gotten into a rut.  I used to be a person ready to experiment and try things at the drop of a hat... now I'm too damned tired because of these habits.  This changes today! 

I'm going to attempt to discover these habits, or their symptoms, and correct them, with your support.

I believe we've all (on the internet, and society as a whole) have gotten into many bad habits, and hope that if we can collectively discover them, we can change them intentionally, and chose a new future.

A group of people of any size, can commit to a shared set of goals, an a shared identity.  We all have many such identities throughout our daily lives....  Child, friend, sibling, student, teacher, parent, partner, editor, writer, etc.   We have religious identities, the standard  "Religion":  Judiasim, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and the like...   the other religions: emacs, vi, Word, Wordperfect, Notepad++, etc...    Linux, windows, Mac, etc...    American, Canadian, Russian....   the point here is that we each have many identities.... and so it's very unlikely that any 2 people share all of them.... I'd go so far as to say with the possible exception of a few identical twins with very boring lives, no two people share all of their identities.

The revolutions in communication thoughout history, spoken language, oral histories, the written word, the printing press, the telegraph, radio, television, and now the internet, have in each step made it possible for the ideas of one person to be shared, and challenged by a wider community of peers.  Each step made it possible for ideas to persist across time with finer sets of detail, and nuance.

The rise of civilization over history has decreased the portion of time everyone has to work, in order to survive.  It now seems possible that with automation, it is possible that if fairly distributed, 20 hour work weeks might be a thing, or there will be many unemployed.... that choice has yet to be made.    (Let's not forget though, that civilizations do collapse, and we're not special.  There were factories making gears more than 2000 years ago, folks, about 1500 years before clockmakers started bring them back into production.)

So, we currently find ourselves, and even I, with all my bad habits, find myself in the situation where if we think about it, we have free time to devote to any task of our chosing.

I have free time on my commute to work, during which I can passively listen to Podcasts...  I used to have free time commuting on a train which allowed me to experiment with photography quite a bit.  I have free time after taking care of my family and friends, most of which I've been spending consuming Youtube and other social media. 

I've not spend all that "free" time wisely.  I hope to change that.  I hope to get other people who share some of my idenities to do the same, and push some projects forward.  I'm sure there are MANY good ones out there that could benefit just from my attention, as a passive listener or viewer, with occaisional (sp?) feedback.

*todo: Install Spell check in Wikipad
*todo: Clean up old todo flags out of this wiki

A little bit of forward planning and persistence can be surprisingly effective.... the further forward you think, the less actual work is required.

Let us choose a future we like, and push in that direction... spending less time watching mindless videos and chasing likes and venting our emotions (mostly dispair and frustration) to the world.

I wrote this on my Wikidpad, a wiki on my laptop, and will soon send it out to the world.... hopefully I've saved enough so I can sleep now.  Good night, fellow InterIlluminati  (Those of use who share the ideas first roughly outlined in this ver 0.001 alpha)

Mike Warot - 8/22/2018 03:07 AM