Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Photography on December 30, 2012 | 1 Comment »
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 22,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 5 Film Festivals
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Family on June 17, 2012 | 14 Comments »
I’ve been out of circulation for a few weeks. Was in the hospital for 12 days. Home since June 8th recovering from surgery, going for radiation treatments, etc. Plenty of time for thinking and writing now. My computer is a hard wired desktop and I’m only online for brief periods every few days. Hey old Johnny is in top spirits and recovering.
Funny thing is that I don’t miss the constant Internet connection at all. I have time to read, meditate (very important part of my life), think, write and will be doing all of the above. Photography will be on the back burner for awhile until I’m out and about. Meanwhile, I think I’ll compose a few posts on my Neo and post when ready over the next days and weeks. Stay Tuned.
Posted in Uncategorized on December 31, 2011 | 6 Comments »
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 15,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Family, Photography on December 21, 2011 | 5 Comments »
Tracy and I went to the Christmas concert at the JMT school tonight. JMT is the local grade school and both Sara and Emily are in the choir. The entire gang was there — kids (all six), parents and grandparents. It was fun.
Photo of the girls taken by Tracy
Tracy took this group picture of our granddaughters in the lobby after the concert. From left to right: Megan, Livvy, Sara, Julia, Maddy and Emily. Maddy loves having her picture taken. Can you tell?
JMT choir photo by Tracy
Here’s a shot of the choir, another photo taken by Tracy under difficult lighting conditions with her tiny Canon digicam. We didn’t get pictures of the school band. They performed first.
Maddy conducting the school band photo by John
Here’s one I took. It’s Maddy standing on her chair directing the band. She was waving her arms and swaying from side to side. That’s mom (Sue) with the big smile behind Maddy. The people behind us thought Maddy’s performance was one of the funniest things they ever saw.
The kids in the band and the choir sounded pretty good and we all had a fine time. Merry Christmas.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Ideas on December 20, 2011 | 6 Comments »
Imagine a solitary person seated in a huge, windowless waiting room, staring vacantly ahead, life outside passing by unnoticed. Why are they sitting there? Are they waiting for the perfect opportunity that never arrives? Maybe they’re waiting for the ideal person to come along but who never does. Do they huddle alone because they judge themselves not good enough?
Waiting and never accepting. The curse of perfectionism paralyzes the perfectionist, condemns them to a life in limbo and puts a life infused with creative energy on permanent hold because perfectionists are never ready.
Perfectionism is an obsession. WordNet describes perfectionism as “a disposition to feel that anything less than perfect is unacceptable.” Wow, that pretty much excludes life doesn’t it.
Vibrant life is like a swift mountain stream, sparkling in the sunlight, always changing, forever new. Becoming is the joy of life. Life is change, a journey of discovery and creativity, always reaching for the better.
Perfectionism confuses the goals with the journey. Perfection is the end of all things…really. The universe, indeed all of us strive for perfection, but we’ll never get there and that’s a good thing. If all things were perfect, what would be the point of life? We can savor the deliciousness of life, the thrill of the creative journey, but only when we act.
Action is the cure for perfectionism. Take that next action. Will it be perfect? Not likely and you might even (shudder) fail. No, wait. Failure is impossible because failure is a state of mind. Take an action and no matter what you do, you’ll move closer to your goal. You’ll either find a solution or you’ll discover new information that you didn’t have and never would have gotten by waiting. Each action propels us forward and upward one step at a time.
Perfectionism is ironic because inaction and waiting for the perfect solution short circuit our creative being, remove all options for progress and guarantee failure. All life strives toward perfection, but perfection is elusive and always out of reach. Each time we create something better, we raise the bar. We reach higher and higher and that reaching is the real joy of life.
The why of perfectionism isn’t important. It may come from procrastination, or born out of fear. Fear of success, fear of failure, fear of not good enough or fear of the unknown. Without action, we’ll never know. Perfectionism is the polar opposite of positive living. Perfectionism puts us out of the game of life, sidelined on the bench waiting and that’s a shame. The denial of life and the joys of the creative journey are the real pitfalls of perfectionism.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Musing on October 22, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Mom is 88 today. Happy birthday mom! I think longevity depends on keeping the kid within all of us alive and well. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the real mom.
Mom in 1927
Here’s a picture of mom the kid. This photo was taken in 1927 when mom was 4 1/2 years old. We found a small suitcase filled with old family photographs among my aunt’s things stored in the garage. I’m glad I decided to look in the suitcase. This image is the first one I scanned. There are lots more where this one came from.
That little girl is still very much alive and today is her birthday. Happy birthday kid.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Ideas, Musing on September 12, 2009 | 3 Comments »
MaxThink is, in the words of it’s author, Neil Larson, a HyperText Outline / Idea Processor. It’s still alive and kicking in a windows incarnation after all these years. I bought MaxThink from Neil around 1990 and upgraded to Max94 a few years later. I still have the wonderful printed manual. I figured out how to get the old DOS program running in dosbox on my ubuntu linux system. It’s still better than anything out there today, including the mind mappers.
I think I stepped out of the TARDIS into the past because I found a piece I wrote over 25 years ago. I’ll have more to say about my adventures with outliners in general and MaxThink in particular in another post.
Need method of getting raw ideas into a computer in a smooth, natural flow. As ideas occur to the user, that person should be able to transfer the ideas to the computer quickly. But ideas are not isolated symbols. To have real meaning as an idea, many? symbols are ‘related’ to form more coherent thoughts.
Ideas could be thought of a patterns of smaller symbols that make up a whole that is greater than the sum of it’s parts (GESTALT?). The ‘linkage’ of these ideas is the tough part of using a computer as a ‘thought processor’. PROCESSOR? The human brain is the ‘idea generator’. How do you process ideas? To process something seems to imply that you DO (act) on something. Maybe to process something you ‘change’ that something so that something becomes something else.
Using a computer only makes sense if the particular task is easier to perform with a computer. If a task can be better performed by ‘hand’, then the task should not be put on the computer.
The following is an example/analysis of the though process of a person who is thinking freely (intuitively if you like), and a possible method of using the computer productively as an organizing tool. Computers are much better at ‘remembering’ details than a human brain. The computer’s process is strictly a ‘left brain’ type of activity, while the creative process is a ‘right brain’ type of activity.
It’s fair to say that the idea of AI or artificial intelligence is more concerned with the ‘right brain’ type of activity. Think of the implications of being able to enter right brain thoughts directly into the computer, then being able to easily establish linkages in the computer. That is what I would call an idea processor.
The earliest programs that call themselves idea processors are just now hitting the market. These programs are tools that allow the user to create an outline that can be expanded/contracted on command. What I have in mind goes beyond the outline type program.
The first step in my program would accept free form words/phrases, allow a screen display of the words/phrases, and also allow linkages between words/phrases to be created and shown graphically. This could be accomplished using keyboard, graphics tablet, [no mice yet -- remember this was written in about 1983] or voice input. The idea is to allow the user to enter a screen full of words/phrases that have been freely generated from a key word or phrase and to allow the user to establish linkages between the words/phrases that show on the screen.
Once the words/phrases have been linked, they can be further organized using a hierarchy beginning with the linkages, extending through various outlines leading to the final product that can be thought of as the same as a product delivered by a ‘word processor’.
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I typed this word for word from an old printout. I changed the paragraphing and corrected a few spelling errors but left the wording and punctuation alone. I wrote the above piece on a TRS80 Model 100, the first real laptop computer, and printed it out on a pen plotter on adding machine paper. I pasted the printout onto a blank 8 1/2 x 11 and made a copy in the office. I didn’t date it, but the method did.
This was written before desktop computers used DOS and Microsoft was a startup. It was written 4 or 5 years before I had my first desktop. It was written long before I bought MaxThink.
I look back and wonder. After more than 25 years, people still use their computers like expensive typewriters. Good outliners are things of the past and that’s a shame. Computers should be helping us think better and mostly they do the opposite. I’ll have more to say later. I’ve gone on long enough this time.
Posted in Uncategorized on September 10, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I’ve been so busy with my photography that I forgot to write. Duh! I’ve also been busy learning to write software programs. What will I think of next?
Say hello to Maddy and Liv, my new favorite photo subjects. I love photographing my granddaughters. Maddy’s the happy kid on the left. Liv wasn’t feeling too well last Sunday. Poor kid has an infection in both ears.
There’s no stopping Maddy though. She had a good old time. My wife was getting her to do the so big trick.
Liv fell asleep in my son-in-law’s arms. She does look peaceful.
I’ve been reading some interesting books lately. I have some ideas that I’ll be sharing with you soon — just need to get my writer’s hat on straight. Maybe I’ll have a long talk with my dragon. That’ll do the trick.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Dragon, Inner critic, Photography on August 11, 2009 | 1 Comment »
The twins were 9 months old the other day. We all went to the diner for dinner on Monday night so naturally I brought my camera. My daughter calls me pop-poparazzi. I love B&W available light photography and who could resist subjects like these. My granddaughters have always been my favorite subjects and now we have an even half-dozen.
Say hello to Maddy (above) and Liv (below). Babies are special. Of course I’m prejudiced.
I finished the roll of film in my camera and got seven decent shots out of 36. Yeah, I still use film and process it myself. Then I scan the negatives. Gives me the best of both worlds.
Did you know that properly processed and stored B&W negatives will last for 50 to 100 years or more? No matter what happens to the digital files, my family will always have the negatives.
My dragon loves photography. Me too. I operate on pure instinct with images. Photography comes easier than writing. I suppose it’s because my inner critic is stronger when I’m writing. He’s forever pestering me. Then again, maybe my inner critic leaves me alone when I’m editing my photos because I let him play with all the controls while my dragon tells me what looks best.
Maybe the next time I write a first draft I’ll tell my inner critic that I’m not really writing, I’m only taking notes and if he’s a good boy I’ll let him play with all the buttons on my word processor. Sooner or later we’ll learn balance. It’s not that I don’t want my inner critic around. I need him, but not all the time.
I’m taking a break between books (for a few days anyway) and I though I’d share a few pictures of the girls. Not that I need excuses.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged E-book, payout on July 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Photo of Chiostrino di Santa Maria Novella by Sailko
I love the novella form. The word “novella” is an Italian term meaning “story.” I thought it would be fun to use this photo of the Cloisters of Santa Maria Novella as an illustration. If a short story is like a snapshot of life, a novella is like a photograph that invites and explores a single issue. If you carry my analogy a bit further, the modern novel is more like a full length movie.
Longer than the longest short story and shorter than a novel, a novella is typically between 15,000 and 40,000 words in length. The length of the novella gives the author the freedom to explore a single issue in great depth not possible in a short story.
The novella form has a unity, a singular focus that can be lost in the plots and sub plots of a long novel. Here are a few examples of the novella:
Each of these fine works can be read in a single sitting. Single novellas in book form are rare because they are too short to meet the structural requirements of the printed book. When you can find novellas, they are often grouped into a quartet to meet print publishing requirements. I’d love to see a renaissance of the novella and the E-Book is the perfect format.
It’s time for a paradigm shift. Instead of viewing E-Books as digital versions of printed books, why not capitalize on the virtues of the E-Book instead? Freed of traditional production and distribution constraints imposed by printed books, E-Books can go where the printed book can’t.
Novellas, short stories, thoughtful essays, single articles are all E-Book candidates. Instead of being aggregated into anthologies or included in print magazines, short pieces can finally stand on their own. Might this be an opportunity for writers similar to single music tracks and the iPod?
I read a book containing four novellas by four different authors last week. It was a $15 paperback. With a typical 10% royalty, each author would receive a mere 38 cents from the sale of each book. What if each novella was offered at 99 cents on a site like Scribd? Too low? Well even at this price, the author would receive 54 cents, almost 50% more than book royalties. 99 cents is probably a good price for a short story.
A novella ought to be worth a bit more, say $1.59. An author would receive $1.02 from Scribd, nearly three times what he or she would receive in book royalties for the same novella. A best selling author who receives the highest print royalties would get about $4.19 on the sale of a $27.95 hardcover book. A book of four novellas would net the best selling author $1.05 for each novella. Hmmm — I like this math.
Readers benefit as well. I’ve purchased short stories and novellas from fictionwise to read on my palm. You can tell that was a while back. I never minded paying a dollar or two for a good read. E-Books open a new world of writing, publishing and reading not possible in the world of printed books.
