Learning in Manageable Chunks

 As I was doing my science course this morning, because it is online I can break it into manageable chunks. Therefore when I feel I have absorbed is much as I can I can take a pause or stop for the day.

This, as I have found out, has some major advantages. One can focus on what they've already absorbed to more fully understand it before moving on. Or if there's a problem it can be identified before getting lost in greater details. (How I wish I know and this in high school when I was drawing electronic schematics when dealing with the directions current flows.) I have already identified a section of the course I will deliberately redo in relation to a binary search algorithm. If I had learned in the more traditional sense where you must progress through the lesson linearly, and usually at a certain rate, to keep up with everyone else, it would be necessary to move on regardless of whether the information was understood. Then it becomes a point of frustration later on when you can't connect the dots and understand the outcome. This is one benefit of self-paced online learning. So I wonder if it was applied to some degree it all aspects of lifelong learning, how many people would discover they are actually "bright", for lack of a better word? That is to say if the teaching method allowed a person to work on the specific parts of confusion until they were comfortable with it. Would they then not achieve more. Basically love to learn. The lesson being that they have their own way of learning and that insight on its own is tremendously beneficial to the person as a whole.

The above text sounds a little convoluted. If I have time in the next few days I may do a short video explaining this. For now however this is just food for thought. 

I truly do believe that the human mind is so good at learning that we do it automatically. Unfortunately this means that we can also "learn" that we are not good at learning and that bias then affects all our other exposure to learning throughout life. By the same token, it also means that you can start learning in many ways at any time.💗

Take care have a great day!
Patrick

Quantity over quality

Important disclaimer: I want to be very clear I am in no way singling out this article or commenting on its specific contents. Rather to illustrate what I see is a possible trend on the Internet.

Oh my goodness! I couldn't believe what was in my recommended reading list this morning. An article on discontinued morning cereals of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Now to be fair I understand why they're doing this, in order for a company to stay visible on the Internet they must put out material frequently and no doubt somebody is getting paid to write that material. But really... Can't we find a better way to use all this technology. I couldn't myself to click on the link. Even if it turned out to be an exquisitely written piece

Now I know my little "articles" fall into this very category, and I have no excuse but also no delusions of becoming a massive porthole. I created this website way back when as a place to put the occasional thought. This year something occurred to me, I began to wonder if I can make this little site actually pay for itself in 12 months just cover one year of domain rental. That's the reason for the increased number of posts you are seeing is I'm just curious what can be done if one is persistent. But at least I try to give my posts some substance of usefulness. And if I do come up against a technical problem that I think is widely applicable and then I'm sure I've got the answer to I will put that up here as well.

Think about it though every single item that goes online takes electrical energy and hardware which must be maintained. Not to mention the fiber-optic's and metals which must be mind and purified to a high level. A huge amount of effort… For articles on deceased cereals?…

For those braver than me I will post the link to the article itself. Maybe one day I will be brave enough to click it. Without further ado here it is:

Here

Take care Patrick

"Iconic" a language for symbols. Something whose time has come

Attribution Forsaken Fotos on Flickr
Creative Commons license 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Have you noticed that computers and related equipment are moving away from text based interfaces in favour of the icon symbology?

It looks cute, most of the time but as someone who helps people with technology, the move toward graphic symbolism seems to be backfiring. Even myself when looking through the myriad of icons in my video editing package spend an ever-increasing amount of time just trying to find what symbol relates to what function. While I know there are standards of therefore some of the more common functions and indeed it can make it easier to produce software when you don't have to translate the entire interface to another language it can also unless you're very careful make the interface a mess.

I think we are going to end up having to create a visual script, an abridged version of the written word, to represent some of the features coming along. It could be called "Iconic". Something that would actually be taught so that by the time a child or person was faced with a multitude of images they could find their way through the maze. This would go a long way toward simplifying a lot of things will still keeping the information quality of the symbol high.

Or is there something out there like this already? Would emoji's qualifying? Not quite. From my limited experience with them they don't appear to have enough context or infer information in the defined away.

One of the most frustrating experiences now days is when I open up a new manual and it indicates an icon in the text, but doesn't give it a name, and the icon itself is too small to make out in the details.

I think the visual language of "Iconic" is something whose time has come. It would sure save me a lot of grief and time. Who knows it may even eventually replace the written word.

Take care Patrick

The Internet 20 years from now... Just where will we put all that stuff?

IBM Model 7030 Stretch Early Super Computer
Wikimedia Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Much has been debated about where the Internet is going and what it'll be like in the future. There is a larger question: Where does all the necessary storage come from? Society will also have to figure out how to power it all.-I'm afraid your laptop charger just will not do.

Then there's the question of where it's all going to be backed up, or will society ultimately come to the conclusion that there will only be selective archiving and like the human brain Internet will forget a certain percentage. While I love my life, I do not wish to remember everything in exquisite detail. Mind you that would make going through school a snap, provided I understood what I remembered.😀

They always say that society is changing so fast nowadays, but what everyone forgets is that it's always relative to whatever part of history a person is part of. 100 years ago there was only a fraction of the change in a given amount of time compared to today, but it was still faster for them then what their grandparents knew.

Whatever way the Internet continues to evolve I'm okay with it as long as I still have the opportunity to understand the knowledge which will be accessible to me. Because it is the understanding that I personally find so enjoyable. I don't want just a collection of things in my head, I want to know how they relate to each other and other items in my memory. In other words I don't want to be a glorified search engine. But rather a knowledge foundation.

In other words, plug the me in and turn me on, but leave the manual handy. And I mean the detailed one; not be abridged user's guide. I want to understand it all, for me that's one of the big joys in life.

Take care Patrick

Forcing People back to onsite work

 

 This topic has been in the news for at least several months starting when the Canadian government announced (article from the CBC) that workers must return to on-site work starting March 31, 2023 at a rate of 40 to 60% of their total work time.

I find this ridiculous if the job entails something which can be done off site. One of the side effects of the pandemic was it tested just how well some jobs adapted to remote working conditions and the results were quite, dare I say spectacular. For some it meant a reduction in childcare costs as well as less money spent on transportation etc.

Rather than write a lengthy post, I thought it might be more appropriate on this Sunday to do a quick video blog. Feel free to watch and comment if you like.

Take care Patrick

Owning responsibility

Holy cow! I had a phone conversation yesterday with someone who, in a nutshell, absolutely did not want to take responsibility for any of the technical issues they were calling about.

I couldn't even get the model number of their equipment beyond the brand. There was a lot of "You're supposed to know that…". When I looked up the information we did have on file, I saw that there was a previous email from them where they were asking three very vague questions. I instantly thought to myself "Okay, now I can get somewhere with this caller. I can break down each question and ask the things I need to know." The caller's response was "How am I supposed to know that?" (I felt like saying, "You bought the device, surely you know something about it." But I didn't. With these kinds of calls becoming combative in the least just causes things to spiral.) Eventually after what felt like a very long 30 minutes I mailed them some documentation and am praying that on Monday we won't hear back from them. I know that sounds rather callous but really people do have to own their own actions and decisions.

Deflecting responsibility for issues in one's life is a guaranteed way to not grow and is a roadmap to frustration for everyone concerned. The above was just an extreme example. I have worked with several individuals like this over the years and there does seem to be a few attributes they share:

1. Where there should be ownership of responsibility there is anger.
2. This can escalate into aggression and accusation.
3. They are the victim inevitably of whatever the particular situation is and that is the rationale for sidestepping responsibility.
   

It boggles my mind, because these behaviours get them nowhere and indeed cause them a great deal of grief. I'm going to guess that the only thing that keeps them reusing the above tactics are the fact that if they can keep you mashed in the situation long enough. Most people will finally give in and take over and fix everything for them. Or they will just walk away. In either case they get short term victory, but in the long term it's just a spiral downward.

But it appears the human brain was never good at looking into the future. Evolution has geared us toward only solving short-term issues in a very rudimentary way. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether it's good in the long term. It's as though evolution said "If you're alive at the end of the day, that's all that matters. We don't do quality of life."

For people to grow or evolve I think it will be necessary for all of society to recognize that we all have our own ivory towers. Our own perceptions which we tried to force on reality and or people. The above story is just a example of what it is like when these perceptions become extreme. Wherever your reality ends there is always something just beyond. Maybe the best way to deal with this kind of thing is for all individuals to realize that they must always go a little bit outside of their comfort zone regardless of what that zone is so that you are always in an ever-expanding bubble. That I think would go a long way toward growth and achieving goals. And lastly eliminating full calls like this one.

Have a great day Patrick

Is creativity a mindset?

Photo by Milogrodskiy.
Wooden palette with paints and brushes 
At depositphotos.com

 For ages it seems, people of said "Some are born creative, while others are not. " But I think creativity is taught.. A person may be born with certain attributes that make them better at some things than others, or perhaps a better way to put it is, that they are more attuned to certain aspects of their environment. For example a musician is sensitive to sound and melody and if they are lucky enough to recognize it they encourage that aspect of their lives. However, I am sure at the very beginning of their existence the environment created around them encourage them to explore and how to relate things to one another.

All this exploring takes energy and effort. In order to consider the possibility of being creative one must first get used to challenge, to work at a goal and perhaps improve the goal. Therefore I'm a little concerned about the present day where everyone expects solutions very quickly. Indeed you can see this in documentation for new products. Very small and short statements telling you how to do something, rather than explaining why that particular way is best or going into side avenues.

Manuals for almost any product used to be rather large and with computers even included schematics. Now with many electronics you get nothing. Of course that doesn't stop curious people from digging around. Thank goodness for iFixit :-).

I find myself thinking "Maybe, if we are fortunate enough to have all this Freedom and automation, maybe you should make it a little more challenging". Because I think effort and challenge are at the core of many aspects of growth.

At this stage in my life I'm very glad to have had the challenges and opportunities afforded to me. Sometimes it's good to be different… No, let me rephrase that: "It Is Good to Be Different, If You Have Learned How to Grow from Challenge". That statement still is imperfect but I think you get what I mean.

If you consider yourself different, don't despair, and whatever you do don't try to be normal, I have a feeling normal doesn't really exist, and that is probably a good thing.

Patrick

What is this notion of Power over People?...

This morning while I was talking with someone in my building, about of course one of my favourite topics, technology, it struck me that no matter how the conversation starts with them it always ends with the statement something like this: "Hmmm... I wonder if I could use that to erase someone's computer or trick them into doing it". The statement will vary, but it always has to do with "power" or control over someone or something else and usually to a negative end.

Whereas I tend to approach things from a more curious and positive perspective. I want to know why things work and how they relate the other things. I have no interest in exploiting or manipulating something or someone. This person's outlook on life is pretty bleak but it seems when I really think about it that they almost like it. When you try to sway them toward the "light side of the force" they inevitably do their best to swing back to the dark side. And again it's always to do with manipulating someone or something. I find these two aspects of this individual really puzzling.

In my way of looking at life, life ends up being exactly what you wish to perceive on many levels. You end up being the ultimate designer. Sure, there are things you can't control, but you can control your reaction and perspective of a situation. However even when you point this out to people. They continued to go and some pretty bizarre ways on their current trajectory.

In a very real way I can ask myself the same question, "What holds me on a positive trajectory?"....

Once again, my time is short this morning so I have to leave the question there for now. However if you have any insights on what holds people to certain trajectories or patterns in their life and especially in regards to what they get out of things like the perception of power over someone etc. please leave a comment.

Have a great day and take care. Patrick

The Grand Balancing Act

Photo by Colin Harris  ADE Under the
Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

 The assignments for my computer science course took much longer this morning that I planned. Now it's going to be a carefully orchestrated procedure to carry out everything I need to do today, which includes helping somebody set up their home for hands-free use of voice assistance. I talk more about that in my posting on January 7 here. I will be updating that article tomorrow at some point.

Today though I have a contract to get out for a website being moved over to my volunteer organization, continued training a new volunteer this morning as well, the above-mentioned, let's just call it "the hands-free project" for now.

Yes it's going to be an interesting day. Apologies for not posting a more in-depth article today.

Habits and entrenchment

 

Like everything else in life, habits can be a good thing, especially when simplifying one's life. Think of them as automated routines. But sometimes these routines can get stuck and they may have you feeling a little hopeless. We are not talking about anything chemical dependent, that scope of things has already filled libraries, just emotional or physical habits that it become entrenched and that perhaps you would like to change.

As always these are my own perceptions. I am not trained in any way in psychology or healthcare. I have a curious mind however and these are just some of the things that occur to me.

I think as a modern society we are a little too accustomed to finding the "path of least resistance" and therefore we have taken automation, and the biological equivalent, habits too far. Leaving us ill-prepared to deal with adversity. It is my opinion that everyone needs some adversity in their lives on an ongoing basis. To be clear this is the kind of adversity that while it poses a challenge is not totally overwhelming. Difficult yes, but within reasonable bounds. Something that stretches one's boundaries and enlarges their world. It may not be immediately apparent at the time the adversity occurs.Many times in my own personal experience, something that happened a few years ago in some cases has been a benefit when something else happens in the current day. Adversity therefore has the ability to build up or enlarge one's toolbox of answers. Because you can deal with more.

Habits on the other hand if not monitored can go the other way, by reducing the size of the toolbox over time. If you're habit is never to go out in the rain then you may be ill-prepared when you do have to go out in the rain to resolve an emergency. This is an over dramatization but you get the idea.

It is also important to know that whatever adversity you undertake or create deliberately as a challenge must have a resolution you can benefit from when possible. So keep things in perspective and do your best to challenge yourself a little every day. You will be less dependent on habits and there will be less likelihood of things getting entrenched because you will have discovered more about your self.

Take care Patrick