The Exploration Afforded by Learning

This is most definitely going to be an opinion piece, but I just have to articulate how much joy I get out of real understanding. Or even not understanding and learning in the process that I have to open up another way of looking at things. It is a real joy, and in a strange way I like it when it is most difficult.

It is not the challenge that drives me, it is knowing at the end of the day I will be a little different and I won't be able to say what that difference is until I get there. There is also a distinct feeling of building something. Not in the physical sense but in the sense of growth. The potential however for creating something real down the road based on the knowledge I have gained is most certainly there however. The barn door has just got a little more open 😀.

When I was younger the prevailing perception of getting older was that you slow down. Imagine my surprise then in the present day when I have discovered that things get faster and although sometimes I can't keep up I enjoyed the chase. Like "Wile E. Coyote" chasing after the Road Runner.

Obviously due to my current age, 65, I learned the skill of manually gaining knowledge a very long time ago. So it is more than challenging for me to understand the thinking and perceptions inherent in a "new model year brain". Do people today process reality in the same way and do they clean as much information as I think I do. Consider this there are adults out in the world right now who may have had not only the Internet available to them for their entire lives but to technology that goes along with it. So for example let's say they have always used a search engine for their research. Imagine if that wasn't available. The challenge of not only finding physical material but knowing where to look and how to piece things together, these activities might be completely new to them. I am intrigued as to how the problem would be approached by different people.

 

One of my memories when I was 12 or 13 was receiving for Christmas the hardcover version of "The Radio Amateur's HANDBOOK' which I absolutely adored and wore it out by the time I was 15.yes, I was an absolute nerd, quite content to spend hours with the book or work on a project. Guess what, I still am. Recently I found an original 1970s addition of the exact book online and in so attempted to spend $100 Canadian just for the sake of memorabilia. I fondly remember going through Ohm's law with my father while we discussed the latest chapter. I don't know whether I will get the book or not, but finding the exact copy online and available in good condition, sure makes it tempting.[Note: There were two completely different books published under the exact same name. The one I refer to is the one from the publisher Crowell, New York ]

The Radio Amateur's Handbook
by:A. Frederick Collins,
Robert Edward Hertzberg

WorldCat.org listing:
The radio amateur's handbook

Authors: A. Frederick Collins, Robert Edward Hertzberg
Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0690667736  

ISBN 13: 9780690667738

Year: 1970
Edition:12th rev. ed.
Publisher: Crowell, New York
Physical Description: vi, 374 pages illustrations 22 cm

Here's an idea: resolve for one day, or longer if you like, to find solutions to anything that comes up in your life without using the Internet. Even though the idea is simple do most people now days have the skill set to so the problem, by lack of a better phrase by doing it "the old-fashioned way of physical research"? This could be a lot of fun if taken in small steps. You could pose a question to a friend and go on an adventure to find the resolution. If you're going to play the game I would suggest keeping it simple at first, but not so simple in that it is boring. The question must be enticing enough to make you and your friend want to find the answer. Then you could pick another topic to solve. It could be a lot of fun and I would really be interested in knowing if it made any changes in your life or outlook.

The idea could be expanded upon for example: How would people in the 1960s find the answer. You could then set limits to use only the tools and technology that were available then. This could actually be very exciting. Debating teams used to be very popular in high schools and colleges. While this thought is not exactly on topic the idea of explaining your point of view is again an adventure in learning. Sometimes will explaining something you inadvertently learned something about yourself. Debating teams by the way are when a group of people ticket topic and have to group takes one point of view and the other usually takes the opposite. Then they begin to develop their rationales as to why their point of view is the better one. They debate this until one of the teams wins. Of course frequently when you do this you find out things you never considered. Which is one of the great payoffs to really learning something. It is usually not the end goal where most of the learning and experience a curse it is the trip toward the end goal that provides the benefits. Sometimes you might even completely change your mind on an idea.

Now days ideas tend to be polarized. Take a look at any set of videos on YouTube, pretty much on any issue. There won't be discussion between the various groups, there will be sensationalism and polarization of the topic. This is not a good way to learn about knowledge because it mixes far too much extreme emotion into the issues. To really consider the pros and cons of anything you must at least be willing to keep your emotions from overwhelming the issue and becoming more important than anything else. Many times I have set on this blog "Don't take anything personally." I would like to add to that statement "Frst consider what the issue is based on the information you have available to you" and then don't take anything personally." In this way you learn to think before you feel and that gives you the ability to make choices when the emotions do come into play.

 If you would like to download the original untouched full-size photo, just click on the following image. 

Original full-size photo of a close-up Hydrangea macrophylla bloom with shades of violet and white. Three flowers from a Crocosmia are poking right out of the Hydrangea macrophylla. The protruding Crocosmia flowers are a brilliant orange. Set against a background of naturally occurring large green leaves. This photo is completely untouched and natural. I ran across these flowers by accident. Clicking on this image will download the full resolution photograph. It is the same image as the one at the top of the article minus that headline embedded in the graphic.

 

IMG_2189.jpg

Date	2012-07-25 6:11:50 pm
Model	Canon PowerShot SX120 IS
Width	3648
Height	2736
ISO Rating	100
Shutter Speed	1/50 sec
Aperture	f/4.3
Focal Length	60 mm
Exposure Bias	0 EV
Metering Mode	Multi-Segment

Consider the tremendous benefit over once lifetime understanding how to acquire knowledge (learning) as well as apply it in new and interesting ways. The development of that skill has brought us creative people throughout the centuries. People who think, and feel, and then apply what they understand to the world and society. What a gift! The human race can simply not forget how to learn new things through effort and challenge. Not only does the person grow in spirit and ability ultimately the greater society benefits. The very technology we use every day is a clear demonstration of this. Information is now simpler to access than ever before, but in order for it to be fully used we must develop the skills only achieved by true understanding and learning.

So make a commitment to regularly put down the easy way of doing things and revisit some of the learning traditions that have helped humanity evolve.
 

This has been a very short but hopefully inspiring and thoughtful article.
Take care and as always leave comments.

Patrick

 

Are People Becoming Resistant To Learning?

 

Image created with Vector FX
by Distinct AI.

People do seem to be less interested in learning and critical thinking.  

For a long time now I have followed the YouTube channel "Technology Connections" the host has a wonderful blend of insight and humour in the topics he presents. In the video "Algorithms are breaking how we think" he points out that people now in a large part seem to desire to just follow whatever the algorithm on a social platform or YouTube presents to them rather than deciding what to watch or read. The video is very good and I encourage you to watch it. I personally love to learn and I love to investigate but I agree with the host that people do seem to be less interested in learning and critically thinking.

This has me thinking, If this trend continues what will that mean for society in the future. Yesterday I was working with a young person and by that I mean someone in their mid-20s and I got the distinct feeling that although they were obviously very bright, that they would just prefer to do things by routine and not really have to think or consider anything. I thought for a moment that I might've been primed by watching the Technology Connections video but I can assure you that was not the case. I have seen similar behaviours in the last five or six years and it is becoming prevalent. I think we are reaching a point where some people are beginning to have difficulty in breaking apart concepts and really understanding the impact of what those ideas mean. This is a critical point because this is the essence of innovation.

 I don't want people to become mere consumers of data. I want them to grow from learning. As I write this, I am undertaking a mathematics course at brilliant.org some of it has been very challenging to get through. I usually spend at least an hour every morning, and currently it's closer to two hours just working on grasping the concepts. I really want to learn this, not just the mechanics of getting to the answer.

I think one of the reasons we are seeing the current trend of people just following whatever algorithms present to them in their media is because they have never learned the process of actually understanding and learning. (Related article on this blog: Learning and knowledge in the shadow of AI) Or at least knowing why some bit of information works. I went searching the other day for methods to improve my sites ranking on search engines. I've done all the basics but I also see that Google and presumably other search engines are not picking up many of the articles. When I investigate the Google search console one can see that there are many "redirection errors" and there shouldn't be. I volunteer in the IT sector specifically related to webpages. Something about the site is really throwing off Google's smart phone crawling robot. As I dug into the whole topic of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) I only came across scads of articles and websites recommending that I use, blindly, various AI tools. There was only one YouTube video which presented facts that I could check related to various HTML tags and I was able to verify that they were all correct in my site. So my quest will continue... But my point here is that what is happening to critical thinking?

I have nothing against AI (Artificial intelligence) to be clear. But I am very concerned about people's eagerness to avoid knowledge and just go for the answer blindly. They are indeed missing out on the fun of learning! When you really understand something your mind expands and the knowledge becomes applicable all over the place. It is a very empowering experience. Learning however does require you to slow down and maybe that is part of the issue here for people. They don't know how to slow down and develop extended attention spans.

Society needs to refocus on some core activity's especially for children so that the mind gets a chance to develop the skills of attention and builds the framework necessary for enjoyment and knowledge. When it works new knowledge is the ultimate "high".

This is what I suggest and please be aware that these are my opinions not necessarily backed up by empirical data.

• Children should not be given their own unsupervised smart devices like tablets and smart phones until about the age of 10. This would keep them off the train wreck of rapidfire media and allow them to develop an attention span beyond the one minute mark.
  
  
• This in turn would allow them to develop some thoughtfulness about their world and investigate in the real world. With other children and people.
  
  
• They would also get a chance to deal with difficulty on a real-time scale. Not all problems can be solved instantly.
   
• Side Note (March 8, 2025): *CBC Marketplace did a segment on "How gaming apps use your private data to track you" and part of the piece deals with how video games affect children. Running time 21 minutes.
  

Now I know that technology is everywhere and that some of these points are far too idealistic but they should be implemented in some way and indeed the adults can take this advice as well. Consider for a moment how you use your technology. Are you using it to open doors and expand your horizons or are you using it as a shortcut around thinking?

Bring back the joys of pondering something… Consider again the idea of sitting with a group of people and going at a problem saying "What If We Do This?… Will that work?" Think of all the great adventures that are brought us to this stage in societal evolution. We could not have arrived here without them. The skills they had were critical for them. These are skills we must rediscover.

This article may grow a bit larger but for this moment I will leave it there and look forward to your comments either here or on YouTube. Let's get into this shall we and expand our knowledge and understanding. 😄

Take care Patrick

*  The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is a Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster. CBC produces "CBC Marketplace" Canada's consumer watchdog series since 1972.

How to Cultivate Patience: A Personal Journey.

Image generated by Ideogram AI.

 First, let's define what I consider "patience" to me:

1. It is not just the willingness to wait for something to complete or happen.
2. It is about being comfortable and open to the passage of time.
3. It is about understanding that people and things occur at different rates.
4. It is also about understanding one's self and others around you.

That last point  (number 4 ) is really interesting and important. If you find yourself in the state of being impatient. That means that something about the situation you are in is bothering you and it is not usually as apparent as you first may think.

When I was in my mid-20s even though due to a disability I was physically slower, I would frequently get angry at people who didn't understand concepts as quickly as I could. This was missed place frustration at the physical limitations imposed by my condition. It took a long time, but what I finally discovered was the key for me is that you must be willing to go beyond your personal perceptions and consider for a moment the larger picture. Once I properly understood my physical frustrations, the impatient situations began to decrease.

So when you feel impatient about something, take a moment to look at your bigger picture. I bet you will find that there is some other component not being addressed. This is actually a very big lesson to learn: To continually alter the way you look at things. It is actually a good habit and one worth developing.No one likes to go outside of their comfort zone, so this lesson did take me a long time to really "get".

Judgements about people can also manifest as impatiences. To cover the fact that we are judging someone we simply feel impatient. Here, the answer is to look inside oneself to see what is motivating any particular feeling.

Learn not to take things personally. You are not the centre of the universe. Adults and children are spending far less time with each other in social activities. So we get used to dramatic feedback in everything from games to YouTube and this can result in a very insecure personality. Emotionally such individuals develop a need to be focused upon all the time. This is a recipe for disaster. Conversely if one understands that they are part of a larger community and that communities go through various cycles and changes you will find that there is no need to get an "Attention-Hit".  So turn off the computer and spent some time with your fellow human beings. The insecurity will disappear replaced by a healthy sense of balance.

The more you understand about your self, the more you will grow and the more you will learn. The ability to be patient will grow and grow. You will also know when on occasion to not be patient. The point is you will know what true patience is.

As with all things in life, cultivating "patience" takes effort and commitment. For some of you it will not come easily because it will inevitably involve challenging yourself and your belief systems on some level. To truly understand what patience is, is indeed a journey. I can guarantee you that as you go through life your definition will change. But it is well worth the ongoing undertaking.

As always, feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think. Take care,
Patrick

** NOTE: The pictures "Image generated by Ideogram AI" displayed at the top of this article is from the service Ideogram AI.  As a layperson, I have read their relevant "terms of service" and determined, to the best of my ability, that the image may be viewed by the public.  However before any reuse, please review fully their terms and if necessary contact the company for more information.

The use of said image does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.

 

 

Let's Get Back to a Richer Quality of Reading and Writing.

 

A special thanks to Paul Stenning at The Heathkit Schematic and Manual Archive, which is where I found the Heathkit material mentioned in both the article and video.

  What Have We Done to the Written Word?

Have Articles, News Stories, Books and other documents become too brief and chopped up to be truly useful to anyone looking up information?

On March 11, 2023, I wrote a short blog post entitled "Oh, for the Love of Manuals!" regarding the decline in quality of manuals and the written word in general. Not only is it sad to see the discipline of writing go downhill, I am now of the opinion that the lack of good quality material whether it be factual or storytelling has an effect on the whole person.

A lack of explanation results in ambiguity.

Think about it, an abridged piece of writing demonstrates how the author's thought processes functions. Usually showing off lack of depth about the topic at hand. Sometimes the author's train of though can be fallowed, while at other times the lack of detail is frustrating for the reader. I was perusing a manual the other day and part way through the text they they showed a screen capture of an icon. Nowhere in the text did they define whet  where this icon was in the program, much less give it a name and it was a bad screen capture to boot. How did this pass into the final printing of this book? I know people like to be able to zero in on snippets of a document now, but sometimes a little more detail would certainly help. Here's an example of the icon from the manual.(Now that the image has been enlarged by four times, I can just see enough detail to recognize the icon.)

Enlarged image of icon shown.

 Nowhere in the book does it name the icon, it just says what it does, and really, can you tell what it is?--I can't.

Even if your preferred choice of format is audiobooks the same issue holds true. The difference in writing in the literature created only 30 years ago is astounding. Listen to this introduction from Carl Sagan's book "Pale Blue Dot" (or read it via the Open Library). The video below is hosted on YouTube and is part of the " carlsagandotcom" channel The wording used is eloquent and accessible, whether it is read or listened to this text is inspiring. Carl Sagan took the time to describe his vision. He didn't optimize the ideas for fast consumption, nor did he make any assumptions on what the reader already knew. This is why this three minute clip from YouTube is so widely appreciated. It is a story unto itself. When was the last time you heard or read something like this? This is writing,and it achieves its goal of informing fully and inspiring.

Imagine the textbooks Carl Sagan and others read when they were going through their various courses. Difficult to read perhaps by present-day standards, but well worth the effort. Even the illustrations would be well thought out in books and manuals, for example from a 1961 Heathkit: manual. In less than a page it describes clearly the technique for proper soldering. Click the picture to enlarge:

Excerpts from the 1961 Heathkit
Compact Hi Fidelity Speaker System
manual model number AS-193 from
The Heathkit Schematic and Manual Archive.
Used under provisions:
"Fair Dealing" Canada and
"Fair Use" United States.
(Click image to enlarge)

 

The writing and diagrams in this manual is simply marvellous. Dare I say it is bursting with well-written information.

So how did we get from concise written guidance to "blurry icons"? One thing is for sure, in the soldering example, it is not assumed that the reader knows anything. Whereas in the blurry icons scenario the text assumes that that the reader does. It is to the point where they don't even describe the blurry image. Clearly we have gone too far in the direction of making everything a snippet of knowledge...  at least they could've provided a keyboard shortcut 😀.

This overly abbreviated trend in the media and knowledge industry also has a side effect on how people learn. Especially if they are only exposed to abbreviated documents as they are beginning to think critically. Indeed how as Google and other search engines affected the way people educate themselves  and the depth to which that knowledge goes, or lack of thereof.

Here's a question: How much time do you think has been invested in creating this text so far? The answer is over two hours (and a good eight hours later I am still at it) . Why, because first the soldering example had to be found, checked for copyright, and edited graphically from two printed pages down to one graphic. So even though I use voice dictation which makes entering the text for the most part rather painless, there is a fair bit of work that goes into these kind of things. The Internet is not a place to just upload things without checking. Not if you want your content to last.

But this article really is about the thought processes that are going on, as related to the use of knowledge and actually how we think. The depth to which those thoughts go and the understanding that is the result. 

I marvel at minds that can seemingly just absorb and understand information. For me it's a much more effort intensive thing. I may have to go over something several times in order to really grasp the concepts. I do this willingly because it is only then your horizons expand. The other reality that must be accounted for is that everything takes time. Even though we may want to get something completed quickly, quality must trump everything else even when we are on a deadline at least to some extent. Yep in other words quality takes work.

Which brings up another point: With the ability now days for people to, how shall I put this, " Copy and Paste " just about everything you really have to resist that urge, because it can make the quality of the  final product go down the toilet if one is not careful. (Have you looked at YouTube lately 👀 .  Somebody post something original and within hours there are legions of copycats). However the creators that do put in the work and I can think of a few that only post every few weeks, really do come out far ahead.

To sum up. In order for people to do better in their lives they should seek out more detailed explanations and experiences. Do your best to try to get away from the "brief answer" mindset. In the long run you will benefit greatly and the experience you gain will even make your own brief answers better than the rest when you need to use them. And at the end of the day your brain will thank you 🙏.

Have a great day Patrick....

PS: Wait! This article is about to get a little longer with an example of the downsides of the overly brief approach to writing.

As many of you know I usually try to produce a short video to go along with each article. It takes time but usually the process follows smoothly. This time around however I decided to use a new tool to create the end credits of the video. I like to include all of my sources and licensing information just to keep things transparent. I wanted to create a scroll of text which included still images. My video editor was not up to the task so I decided to use an add on which according to its brief description could do exactly what I want.

The documentation however is a disaster and that includes the video tutorials all except for a few which ultimately saved the day. Most of the documentation was overly segmented and again assumed the reader was fully versed in the philosophy of use for this particular software. A simple scroll with pictures took about a week to do, and I don't know how many articles and videos I watched and read. Fortunately once I found a good bunch of videos the project was completed within the hour.

The point this_so is that all of the information is segmented and fragmented. Did the company who created the software ever sit down and really consider who the product and documentation was aimed at.?… I don't think so, and  even the official material is fragmented. I'm avoiding mentioning the product name simply because it is not about the product, it is about the information supporting the product. Perhaps though the most annoying aspect of this hunt for information was the fact that the online documentation does not mention what version the information applies to.,and like all software, there are different versions over time and between computers. So I'm begging anyone who reads this… If you write documentation, please indicate right off the bat the version numbers it applies to.

The other issue is that maybe it's more a case of a fault of the search engines. A friend last night was mentioning that now days in 2024 it is much harder to find the information you are looking for online.

What if some people actually don't like to think?

"You can't have motivation without the effort of thought."

At first, I thought it was such an oddthought: "What if some people actually don't like to think." Well, the more I thought about it, the more I began to consider the idea seriously. 40 years ago it would've been truly preposterous. If you wanted to know something you had to put effort into either finding the information and then drawing conclusions from it based on whatever criteria you had in mind.

But consider for a moment how easy it is now days to find out something almost immediately, and based on previous activity on the Internet it is likely to be tailored to their viewpoint., Literally, "No Thinking Required." They receive a minor endorphin it from the brain and then move on to the next stimulating thumbnail on YouTube. I know people like this, quite a few and across a wide range of ages. Not only do they usually have difficulty in going outside of their mental comfort zone to solve a problem, they usually have no idea how to start. This topic has come up several times on this blog, and I think it's because of at least two reasons:

1. I find the idea of not liking the effort involved in thinking and considering something very foreign. It is almost confusing to me.
   
   
2. I always feel a great sense of achievement when I come to the solution or the conclusion. Especially if it's been a truly challenging one. (Right now I have such a case. Implementing voice dictation on a raspberry pi in such a way that it will be useful to a blind person. In other words I have to make it straightforward to turn off and on.  So far I have spent several weeks at this endeavour but I know I will get it solved. Progress is slowly revealing itself.)

Yet many people really do dislike the effort of figuring something out. This is a very dangerous way to go through life from my perspective.--- I mean, what is life without understanding? Not to mention you miss a great deal of the whole point of being alive, because the joy and growth are found in the details of something. Society itself is built on the idea of details. An understanding that the community has agreed on something and the knowledge of why that brings you together. This all takes effort and indeed a fair bit of thought.

Maybe that's why I find people losing their social skills. People that are focused on just a very narrow outlook and stay within their comfort zone can possibly really socialize and make those marvellous connections. Not to mention the insights that come from working with society.

Yet I think it's very easy to turn this situation around; it entails however slowing down and breaking away from the perceived need to move from one thing to another quickly. In other words no marathon surfing on your device. That is a good starting point. The other of course is turning off the autopilots in your behaviours and being present in the moment. Start to notice things around you. Indeed pay attention to how you feel at any given moment you choose.

At first, I'm sure it will feel uncomfortable. This is understandable because your reawakening skills. At first they will be cumbersome and you will be overly aware of them. But within a few days I am sure you will see the benefits. This does not mean you have to swear off technology or routines that give you pleasure. Just become more aware of who and where you are. Add that dimension back into your life.

Then you will find with the human race has globally known for a long time: "Fulfilment, Awareness, Thinking and Effort are key ingredients to a great life."

Take care and as always feel free to leave comments. I will most likely at a short video to this article within the next week or so. Stay tuned 😀

Patrick

 

Do we all live in our own abridged reality?

 

The short answer is: "Yes, absolutely."

But I don't think many of us realize just how "abridged" our reality and sensations are. Think about it, if once reality and sense of their surroundings were indeed accurate would it be so easy to change one's perspective on any given situation? And indeed how easily we accommodate any new perspective.

Ever had one of those mornings when you wake up and you are just in a grumpy or slow frame of mind? Thoughts meander through your head that are the most optimistic… Then you have a good strong cup of coffee and within a few minutes have all but forgotten the beginnings of your day. You feel engaged and ready to take on the world. How could your perception change that much if they weren't a construct of your own making in the first place?  It really is a powerful question because it means you can adjust a great many things related to not only perception but your own internal processes of thought.

The scenario I just described above is almost my daily ritual in the last few years, and conversely at the end of the day I don't want to stop doing whatever I'm doing. Especially if I'm in a project state of mind where I'm either building something, writing code or creating artwork. I always think of " If onlyI had another hour…"  Each morning though I have to go through the process of getting the lead out of my mind. Slowly but surely I have come to the conclusion that I will not worry about the mornings state of affairs. If my brain insists on being a crocodile and having to warm up in the sun, so be it.

Many people tell me that as they age their mind slows down and their world becomes smaller. For me the opposite seems to be true. I am gearing up and if I have any regrets it is only that I didn't understand all of this stuff when I was 25. It had to wait until now at almost 64 years of age. The malleability of one's mind is tremendous, but that same malleability characteristic can also mean that we accept our mental states without critiquing them. We just kind of go along with the flow. This is most likely a bad habit brought on by not enough time to pay attention to one's inner world. I recently reacquainted myself with an excellent book.

Using Your Brain--For a Change:
Neuro-Linguistic Programming
By Richard Bandler

Publisher: Real People Press
Year : 1985
ISBN numbers: 9780911226263, 9780911226270, 0911226265, 0911226273

• Listing on WorldCat Library index
•  Listing on Google Books

Don't let the title of the book scare you off, the term "programming" only refers to changing your reactions to a memory, image or state of mind. In other words, this book is all about paying attention to your own program. The routines you have built up and automatic reactions to them. Then it goes into ways you can alter that behaviour. The book is written in a very lighthearted and playful manner and is a quick read. You will however return to it many times as it is one of those good books whose insights may not immediately be totally apparent. As far as I know the book itself is been out of print for many years and it was a friend of mine who founded through AbeBooks. 

As I progress through life, it is become very apparent to me that most people do not pay attention to their own inner workings either physically or mentally. As a result they tend to become their own "victims", for lack of a better word. There is a real tendency to only take action once a situation has escalated to the point where they have too, and I can't help wondering: If they had been more self-aware and more involved with their own will being would they have reached the same state they are in now? Which from my perspective frequently is a negative situation. Whereas, here I am almost 64 years of age I don't do drugs except for the occasional glass of wine and mentally and physically am in pretty good shape. Indeed I think my physical disability Cerebral Palsy has been a benefit because at a young age it forced me to pay attention to my own inner workings, and later on seek input from counsellors and other people with different perspectives. It wasn't exactly a smooth trip through adolescence but at the end of the day I think it was necessary one.

Reality 101: The Course

We do indeed live in our own abridged reality and that means get to construct it, piece by piece and rearrange it in whatever way we see appropriate.  I have reached the point where I think these kind of insights mentioned in the above book and the practice of being aware of what motivates an individual should be taught in school. We should not just take our own mental states and react to them after the fact. We should to gain the most benefit of our existence be the architect of our reality in the first place. How else can one discover, truly, their talents, and by the same token, know the things they are not well suited to. You want to take deliberate action to know your self and construct whatever reality you want. There is great freedom in this because it places you firmly in the conductor's seat. 

 People seem to like these kind of ideas presented in a visual format. So I put together a short eight minute video. The key thing to remember is that no matter what you are always the orchestrator of your reality. 

Even if your hands are tied up and you cannot move you would still be able to interpret that situation. You might find yourself saying: "I can't move and so I might as well will relax… Why waste energy." By the same token if you become aware of your habitual habits, you can alter them. The change does not need to be you, and as a matter of fact, that's one of the keys to success. Make small doable changes. Just realizing that the change can be made is often in itself very liberating.

If for some reason you find that you are stuck in a certain frame of mind then realize that it will change and then you might be able to revisit the issue.

Your life is the orchestra and it is you who ultimately create the music. Even more so, you get to pick the instruments which ultimately make up the entire piece! Think of the freedom in that.

Have a great day
Patrick

Appreciating accomplishments.

Very often, when I speak the people who are going through a negative period In their life, one of the things that started the downward trip was that they stopped acknowledging their daily accomplishments.

Every single one of us accomplishes something every day. We often miss acknowledging this because in the modern fast-paced world achievements must be big and profound. Popular culture would have us all believe that we must launch a rocket to Mars, or something effectively preposterous every day, otherwise somehow it is not worth acknowledging. I had a personal example of this just the other day.

I had just uploaded my very first long format video (Article and Video Windows 10 basics part one) to YouTube and I instantly began to judge it against out plethora of professional and pseudo-professional offerings. For a while I felt like I had wasted almost 2 weeks worth of free time on this first project. Then I thought: "Wait a Minute!… I am learning as I go and in making pretty darn good use of the resources I have. It's not meant to be perfect… It was more important to get this first instalment posted." Indeed I am lucky because I realized to appreciate my achievement.

We are all learning as we go along in life and it is so critical for one's self-esteem to see and appreciate that in various forms. I watch a video the other day of a professor describing how to make the substance Graphene and was really struck by the time and patience he took in testing the substance he made. In doing so he got the maximum enjoyment out of the experience, not to mention the tremendous insights. Someone else might watch part of this video and get bored because at the point where he is verifying the results it's by slow repetitive measurements. But I think that's where he had the most fun, truly demonstrating that he created the substance and that it was tremendously strong. So by acknowledging the small achievements in this hour-long video he gained a tremendous boost emotionally and intellectually. All because what is important is acknowledging the small steps.

When you think about it we are all "Getting There" one step at a time. Take a moment to acknowledge those achievements.

Take care Patrick

The Basics: Windows 10 (Ongoing videos)

Animation incorporates artwork (the monitor) by
Михајло Анђелковић under the Creative Commons
license CC BY-SA 3.0 .

This is an interesting situation.. There is a client who contacted the place where I volunteer for some computer assistance. In the course of the following conversations it became evident that they really don't have a concept of how to use a modern computer. Throw out the last couple of weeks I've meant to create a series of short videos giving the client the basics. But I do have a bit of a problem. It is literally hard for me to think I had such a fundamental level. I've worked with the computers pretty much my entire life and technology in general. So how do I make a video or set of videos that are both sufficiently fundamental and yet they have to be engaging and not too long. I would like each segment to be no more than 20 minutes.

Part 1

THE DESKTOP

To give you some idea of how fundamental we are talking about. When I first began working with them they mentioned that their screen was "blurry" whenever they started the computer but that it soon it cleared up after the machine had been running for a while. They did indicate however that this happened every single time they turn the machine on.

I immediately began to think about the monitor, perhaps it was a true type font issue dealing with the way Windows tries to improve the readability on screen… Maybe the monitor was dying… Or may be something else was not loading properly… My brain cranked through all the possibilities I could think of. .... A driver issue maybe.... I couldn't think of any particular setting. They had said that this only happened recently....Hmmm... I got out of the old virtual machine and attempted to replicate the situation. At first no matter what I did I couldn't get anything remotely "blurry". The login screen on my virtual machine looked perfect. And then a Windows update was applied and I saw it. A new "feature" had been magically added to the logon screen. Here is a screenshot of my virtual machine before installation and after once Microsoft had applied the latest and greatest update. I suppose it's supposed to enhance security somewhat, (but I have a feeling is just somebody in the back room of Microsoft having fun).This logon screen effect might've been included in an earlier update as well.

 Feature update 22H2

Before

 

 

After

There are apparently various ways to turn this off which I haven't investigated thoroughly yet. Here, the point is to illustrate the different ways people perceive and understand things and the challenges that can produce. In this case this is one of many indications that the client perceives the computer very differently than I do. As you can imagine this leads into a whole host of confusion and frustration for them. This is more than a case of education this is a situation where the perceptions are very different across time. The challenge is to give them a good grounding in the fundamentals and not for them to death. Also how to convey that information. I haven't decided yet how I'm going to put the lessons together but I will post them on this site as they are produced. The desktop I already know is a complete mystery to them. I have to find a way to convey the idea of "a desktop". While the concept and parallel between a physical desktop and a computer desktop is easy enough for me to understand I think maybe the term desktop should be avoided at first.

This is going to be interesting.....

• Apologies, a cold interrupted my work schedule and thereby the blog. I am getting things back on track and will be filling in this article as well as working on another one.

The amount of detail that is required with even something as straightforward as Microsoft Windows 10 is quite astonishing. For one thing the reason it appears as straightforward is that we have had a long time to get used to the paradigm but someone coming at it cold is in for quite a shock. For example the term "Taskbar" is utterly meaningless and when you think about it it is never been well defined. To top it all off the way it is used has changed quite a bit over the years especially lately with the introduction of Windows 11.

Stay tuned. I'm back in the lab cooking things up :-)

 

Well, the first iteration, of the first video in this series is completed "Basic Windows 10 Part 1: THE DESKTOP". It covers the most fundamental aspects of using a computer starting with the mouse. I had intended to go quite that basic, but after discussions with people it became clear that even this needed to be covered.

There is so much material in this first video it is an hour and 1/2 long and took over two weeks to put together. This is a learning curve for me as well in regards to YouTube and I will be adding chapter markers and ultimately captioning. A written companion also be added.

The focus in part one is just the desktop and its major components. For the most part do not delve into the Internet, yet😀

Patrick

 

One day closer to Friday!

 

"One day closer to Friday!"

It used to be when I was a child and in my early teens, that statement was my mantra. I liked school, and I still do if only I could find the time to take all those wonderful courses. I have yet to invent the Time Machine.

Now days that statement means I get to shift from volunteer and work mode to a more relaxed mode where I still get involved in a ton of things. I always seem to be able to find some new avenues to go down. Coming up with ideas and alternate angles of approaching things it's easy for me. As a matter of fact, I'm a little dumbfounded by people that don't do this. Frequently when I respond to someone with an answer like "You Can Do Whatever You Want." They come back with "Like What?" and they truly don't know what they would like to do. The human inbuilt idea factory was never turned on for them. I just can't wrap my head around this concept of no ideas or no inquisitiveness. But trust me there are a great number of people who are like this. They don't celebrate the fact that it's one day closer to Friday because for them every day is pretty similar to the previous one. They grumble about boredom but don't do anything to change their situation. Heck as I've said here before on the blog, I usually have too much to do and I really would like to be able to do it all. Not only do I have to get a Time Machine put together I guess I better start cloning myself :-).

Isn't that the whole point of life, to discover things?! When you can't discover things you can consider the things you already know from a variety of angles. I was once in a local hospital waiting to get transferred in my current residence, and rather than getting bored to death I fixed the local floors Internet. The problem was with the local cable provider and I just phoned up and started to explore the issue. At first they wouldn't tell me anything but as the staff got involved I slowly but surely opened up a discussion and it turned out that they had a flaky wireless access point in the ceiling. During this adventure I learned a little bit more about how large-scale networks work. Although I wasn't up to doing this every single day it did pass the time in a constructive way. The best part is of course also the weekend means a lot more to you. Not quite as much is Friday but it stops life from sliding into oblivion. I am so aware now days of how unique the experience of being alive is. I also know that it is a short event. Something which is not be taken for granted. I don't believe in the existence of life after death in any form so while I'm "here" I really want to make the most of it.

So if you enjoy your Fridays and indulge in your weekends, good for you! If you don't, it is time to get off your butt in a positive way and shake things up a bit.

Take care Patrick

Knowledge: Who gets the big picture?

Are  people learning any given topic or experience as well as they used to, or are we becoming a society of  "knowledge snippets" machines?

Think about it. When was the last time you learned anything deeply, in great detail. Chances are you don't have the time and so like most of us you opt for the snippets of this topic. This has some profound implications, for one thing you need detail to have a true understanding of anything that is remotely complex. From that follows expertise and possibly new knowledge.

I often find it very frustrating when I open up manual for some program and find vague one sentence answers that don't give me enough to go on. This makes it very difficult to search for the content you need because frequently the function required is referred to only by a graph. It is one thing to create a document for Sonic was already familiar with the particular trade that is brief and to the point. It is quite another when someone is trying to learn something new and I mean really learn it. This morning before volunteer work I was trying to determine the best way to create a visual effect in my video package. After about 15 minutes of searching through various keywords I found this entry that was less than half a page long because in order to understand it you had to refer to other pages, and you guessed it the other pages then referred to yet another set. On the explanations combine to but put together on three pages under one heading and it would've been 10 times clearer and 100 times faster. My particular task in this case require that I have available to meet all the information. You really couldn't reduce this to snippets. Yet that was obviously what the authors were trying to do because they understand that no one in the modern world will probably have the patient to read three whole pages sequentially (if you haven't noticed I'm being sarcastic here).

Sometimes in order to gain full knowledge you must put in the work. But it would've been nice if the authors of the document and realized that instead of chopping it up into ridiculous chunks which slowed me down.

Some of the rationales I've heard for this abridged version of spreading information are that "The document must be usable on a phone or tablet." That isn't any kind of ration as a matter fact it doesn't make any sense because point to find information I was after this morning on a mobile device would be very difficult because of all the jumping around. Even though it would look much longer auto from putting it all together makes much more sense since the person would have everything they need right there.

 

Cross indexing insanity:

 

There's a time when you want to cross indexing topic or add a footnote but that doesn't mean you have to load the article with disruptive links that make it hard to read and often at the same instant unclear.

What is really beginning to concern me is the effect this will have over the long run. I don't think I'm being overreacted when I see down the road this could lead to, a shallower thinking society. After all if you don't exercise the brain and mind thoroughly regularly like everything else in nature with you don't use you lose. The act of truly understanding something is one of the greatest things about being alive. That absolutely great feeling of "I understand! Knowing that you get." because your horizons expand and chances are really good that the realization will lead you on to other realisations. (I get excited just thinking about the idea right now 😀) and it makes me want to build something! Or do something new.)

I may have to start an anti-knowledge snippet campaign! What do you think?

Patrick

Oh, for the Love of Manuals!

Photo by: Todd Ehlers License:  CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

First I must apologize for those of you that have noticed the site hasn't been updated in a few days. This was due to a software problem, and yes also to due to a lack of clearly written manuals. So this particular topic is very pertinent.

I won't mention any brand names but suffice to say two things conspired to keep me busy for the last 48 hours.

1. An error in one of my accounts cost of shutdown of some of my software, right after I paid a not a substantial amount of money to renew a subscription.
   
   
2. A good deal of my software is bought and paid for, and that act of buying something used to mean that you got a decent instruction manual. Well those days are long gone. It is one thing to abridge something is it is another thing to completely miss large chunks of information.

This is what caused my conundrum for the last two days. Instruction manuals have now been shortened and abridged to such a point that they give nope your understanding of what is going on. Nor do they provide the author of the document a clear understanding of what is going on or how to accomplish a task. This is a recipe for disaster and very time wasteful.

If I see one more book indicating that I should "click on a tiny icon" (not even bothering to give it a name) I made last go insane. The other thing that is sadly missing now days is detailed descriptions of features or if the information is included it is so broken up with hyperlinks and options as to make the text completely unreadable.

Then of course there is the most common problem. The software update you just received completely changes how the program operates and thereby makes the manual null and void.

The photo at the top of this post is of a 1973 Heathkit (Wikipedia article) manual, which while being brief were incredibly well written. They had to be, because you were assembling electronic kits. This just goes to prove that it is possible to be brief and get give sufficient information. Even the books in my elementary school gave more information about a given topic and what you find in most periodicals today.

Each morning I am rather astounded by what passes for newsworthy material. One problem I see is that in order to keep companies visible on the Internet they must produce material every day and unless you've got a staff of thousands, okay that was a bit of an overstatement, the quality will inevitably go down. This blog is a perfect example each day I miss publishing usually results in the loss of 50 views.

Still there must be some way to maintain quality. Because quality really is the cornerstone of knowledge. It is what enables you to go beyond the written or spoken word because the concept has been fully conveyed. To do that takes time and effort.

Anyway this is just very quick blurb. Just to get things back on track.

 I'll write more tomorrow. Patrick

PS:  It looks like Heathkit store is back in business! I don't know if they ship to Canada yet but I see they have the next generation of their famous "digital clock" which I built when I was a teenager. I have to find out if they ship the Canada and if they do. Well how can I not build another one.

Telephone adventures: What are you going to do today?

 

On the phone again😀

My volunteer job is rather unique in that because it deals with serving the public from an IT perspective (Information Technology) one never knows quite what issues are going to be faced during the day. It can go all the way from simply explaining how do basic tasks on the computer all the way to rather bizarre situations:

There was one person who called in which ultimately had the whole team scratching our heads. There laptop it started rebooting itself and getting stuck in a loop. That is, they would turn it on it would start up, in this particular case they would get the Microsoft windows logo then it would flash and restart over and over again. Every person on the team went through the appropriate list of culprits to no avail. Because we would doing this over the phone at one point it was arranged to use a second laptop with the camera to view the first that was stuck in the reboot cycle. Everyone at the office tried their best to solve this mystery… And then the answer casually was revealed by the owner… The investigation it reached the point where we ask the person to remove the hard drive from the laptop and were about to give them the appropriate instructions when they said: "Oh, I know how to do that, I do it all the time." What ultimately was revealed was that the owner of the laptop removed the hard drive any time there was any problem with the machine. Where normally someone would just unplug the machine this person had gone the extra step of taking the hard disk out. Most importantly, they had dropped the hard drive on the floor three times in total and this was a physical spinning hard drive. The problem had started soon after the third incident.

In the video on this page I talk a bit about this incident, feel free to watch it.

 

The owner of the laptop knew this wasn't a good thing to do under any circumstances and that is probably why they resisted telling us for such a long time. Anyway, we informed them that they needed to do hard drive and that they would need to reinstall the operating system. Unfortunately all the data was lost as the poor old drive had completely packed it in. Lesson learned, the hard way.

One of the trickiest things to do when you're working with people over the phone or remotely is to determine their level of competency with the equipment they're using. This can be a very tricky thing to do because different people uses vastly different terminologies and the configuration of their machines can be very different. Add to that the fact that there are many different ways to proceed with a computer and the Internet. Not everybody understands that the Internet is a truly two-way medium, that it is reacting to what you are doing with it. Many elderly people see the entire computer as a TV set essentially and they don't understand that there is actually much more going on. They can be very bright and aware but there are cultural upbringing started with the radio and later television and that is how they view things.

Other people don't differentiate between the various parts of a computer if you asked them about their monitor they get confused because they see the machine as a singular device. Some even referred to their machines as a brand name: "My Lenovo is acting up." If you get a phone call like this you know it's going to take some time to figure things out. People that are more comfortable with technology tend to have much for specific requests, like: "My USB ports are dead." These are "usually" relatively quick fixes. ( Personally, these fast ones aren't that much fun. I do like a challenge :-))

Then lastly, you get requests from what I will class as the "People that think they know more than you do and who won't tell you what they've done. But want you to fix it anyway." This group drives us all crazy, especially because they are set ups are usually complicated, overly so, and there is a tendency for them to do things on impulse. For example, one person we work with had USB hubs (Think a USB splitter, one chord in many connections out.) plugged into other USB hubs, it was a real rats nest and all from different brands. The main problem for them was everything was slow. The answer to the problem was that they just had too much plugged in and expected everything to run at full speed. They didn't like hearing that they had to simplify.

So that is what my volunteer days are like and that is what I'm going to do today most likely :-). It's a true adventure!

Patrick

Are We Trading Off Our Emotional Intelligence to Automation?

 

We are at an interesting point of time, the Internet is still evolving along with the technology that supports it and I'm wondering if we are losing specific skill sets to automation. This may sound like the old headline "Millions Unemployed Due to Robots In Workforce!" but it is not. That has to do with physical activities. This time I would like to consider psychological and emotional skills.

When handheld calculators became popular in the 1970s, I remember clearly them being immediately banned in school. Anyone found with one, was in serious trouble. The reason was obvious, a bunch of kids would of course use them to get the answers to all the math questions you could think of. But, all of us in school at the time could do the math in our heads, we just didn't want to especially since there was an easier option and that was the calculator. The key point here is that we already had a skill established. So the calculator was an option, for those of us sneaky enough to get around the embargo.

But suppose one had access to the calculator from the earliest days of school. We would never have developed the ability to do math in our heads. That's a really important skill and if you generalize a little bit there is a real ripple effect, because we are talking about the brain actually exercising itself. Learning how to make pathways between the neurons. Remembering phone numbers, was another mental activity which everyone undertook. You always knew your best friend's phone number and now no one needs to do that. If we begin to multiply the effect of not being responsible for these activities are there critical aspects of brain and mind development which the current generation is being deprived of?

With the beginnings of artificial intelligence being combined with search engines on the Internet, we are looking at machines that can actually do the research on almost any given topic for us. Once that evolves and matures, how much thinking will the average person really have to do? This is bound to have a major impact on the whole person as a whole. They might never develop the skills needed for deeper understanding of a subject or indeed their relationship to others. It goes way beyond problem-solving skills. From my perspective it impacts the very process of thinking and understanding in their most fundamental forms.

History is demonstrated that we lose skills pretty quickly, if they are not in regular use. I have met people who do not know how to deconstruct a problem as the first step in finding answers to the issue. Without Google they stop dead in their tracks and are absolutely at loss as to what and how to break something down into its constituent parts. My own math skills have degraded to a pretty abysmal level now days as well, but at least I know how to get them back. I did the exercise once and can do it again because I have the fundamental groundwork and history to build upon.

But if you don't have that in the first place and especially if you haven't learned it early in life that makes starting off learning these skills a very difficult task and to some extent on the finer points may be impossible. So how does this impact the whole human being? More importantly how do we ensure that this does not happen, so that people today and tomorrow will have the fundamental building blocks needed for life. The first solution I can think of is that people must be introduced to certain aspects of technology only once they've demonstrated that they have the groundwork and mental experience necessary for going without it if need be. A "License to use Google". Even though it sounds ridiculous something like this needs to be put in place on some level when we deal with automation and devices which remove us from the responsibility of learning and growing.

The following is pure conjecture on my part:
I find myself also wondering if this has even broader impacts. A mind that is underused, that has fewer neural connections solidly wired, may indeed have less of a margin for the actual process of thinking and therefore may be susceptible to various disabilities later in life.

On the other hand, would it be possible, or would the brain actually take this offloading of tasks as an opportunity to evolve in different directions? I mean usually when you deprive the brain and mind of activities there is a natural tendency to fill that empty space with something.

Let's see now if we follow the "fill the empty space with something ", train of thought where does that lead? Well, cell phones have pretty much meant we don't need to remember phone numbers and the same with calculators we don't need to do basic math, so is there anything we've expanded ourselves with, have we developed any new attributes, subtle though they may be? Most of us multitask every day now. Is that a gain or loss? It's really hard to say. I mean historically if we look back we have gained immensely from the use of technology. But this time it's different because we are dealing with some of the aspects that actually form the personality and psyche of the individual.

There are more questions posed in this article, then answers that's for sure. Let me know what you think. This could really open up to an ongoing discussion and as you can see after I thought about it some more I have made a video. So take a peek at it if you like. As of this writing it may not be available publicly on YouTube yet and may be difficult to find when it is because I only have two videos up there at the moment. Nevertheless enjoy and comment.

Take care Patrick