When you have a blog it’s nice to see that people have found and are reading it. The problem is, with this blog, I just don’t see to many people a) finding it, and b) liking it enough to want to create a user account. But there it is, daily, a bunch of e-mails of new users to the blog. You’d think I’d be happy. Well upon further review (thankfully the Pro sports hasn’t trademarked that phrase, as it’s a common one for me) I see that most of these accounts are just spam bots. Scripts designed to create an account and then try to post something. I had 300 of these accounts going on, and I wanted to clear them out. Which leads me to an apology, when there’s that many, there’s really no way for me to separate the real from the fake accounts. So I pretty much deleted them all. If yours was one of the real ones, sorry about that. Further more, I’ve disabled (I think) the ability to register with the site, until I can find some plugin that can help me combat a majority of the spam accounts. I do believe you can still post if you wanted to with just a name and valid e-mail address. Those go though a 2 step filter, one automated and then I check the rest. I’ll have to test that function out still. So again, sorry if I deleted your real account, feel free to thank the spammers who continue to abuse the systems.
Browsing Posts in Random Thoughts
I was, and well still am, planning on using this blog as sort of a digital notebook of some of the stuff I was working on. This way, if my thought process was flawed as I’m learning / trying things out, someone more knowledgeable on the subject at hand could chime in and correct me. The only problem is, as I’ve discovered from my sister-in-law that some that have come here, I pretty much confuse. So It looks like I’ll be making 2 blogs. One that’s going to be “personal” one, and one that’s more for the techno babble. Granted some of the tech is going to spill over to the personal one, cause well it’s what I do. But I’ll try to keep it to more reviews and such.
Which is which, well Epnix.com is going to be the Tech blog. Where the categories / tags will be set for each of the myriad of projects that I have. The personal one well hasn’t been made yet, which is actually the source of the first project that I’ll be posting about.
This of course doesn’t mean if your not technical don’t read the epnix blog, just warning everybody what to expect here.
I have found my nemisis when it comes to blogging, and it is the “delete” button, that includes it’s best friend “backspace”. Why? Becouse that’s pretty much what has happened the past few months to me posting a new blog entery. That and I don’t sit here and hammer out blog posts untill they are done. Though in some cases, one should consider themselves lucky that I’ve not posted some of the “walls of text” that I’ve written.
Side Note: funny thing is, when most people get started reading something, they finish it, no matter how bad it is. I wonder why that is? Maybe a glimmer of hope that something intellengent would come out of the 10-20 minutes that they have just wasted prior to that? Or I suppose it could be that everybody DOES love a train wreck and just has to poor though it all. This way in the event they happen upon the unlucky sod that wrote it, they can let them know in detail what was wrong. I don’t know, I suppose I could look into it more… what do you think?
Regardless I’ve had more then a couple of posts that have never made it out of draft as I didn’t like them for one reason or another, and instead of fixing them. Delete!There were 2 in the que just a few mins ago, one was another verision of this very post, that just hit the magic delete function. One reason is that I’ll get started writeing a post, then have to leave it for one reason or another. Writing, interupted, well at least for me, is never a good thing as it takes hours for me to get back on track as to where I was going with something. The problem is, when the writing got interupted, it may be days before I get back to it. So anything I thought was a good idea or maybe somewhat humorius, is gone. Also when I look over the post in question I start thing oh that wrong, and this don’t work, and….. bah, might as well start over. After that the big problem is, I had so much to day about whatever it was I was about to write about. Plus I want to add on the latest “news” or thoughts to what is already a large post. I end up with a wall of text that has a tempral, space / time issue. I alude to future stuff while I write past stuff as if it was happeneing shortly before writeing it instead of days later. Yep, and another post bites the dust.
Anyhow, so let me get this post off before it goes by the way side and gets deleted like so many others.
Have a good one
Today I has going to write about how great of a job windows 7 does in handwriting recognition. I was going to say what a great job its doing with both my print and cursive writing. But then I found out about a small, but very annoying issue. See I’ve actually tried to write this twice now. But somehow the cursor moved, so when I went to insert the text it went to the void, never to be seen again. this really sucks, because the handwriting recognition is really that good So this flaw that causes you to Completely lose your text is just that glaring. In some ways its kind of funny. Just about everywhere else in windows there are multiple levels of undo, yes/no boxes that get in the way and so on. But not in text conversion. So the moral of that story will be to hit the insert button often, and make sure the insert cursor hasn’t moved.
As I play around with handwriting recognition, I do have to wonder though. Is this a technology that missed it’s time? You may have heard that type is soulless. You can’t derive feelings from a typed page like you can with a written one. There is a visual clue as to a persons feelings as you look at how ones handwriting flows and loops, or how much more messy or neater it is from what you are use to from that writer. Even how much pressure somebody put on a pen could let one one if the writer was hurried, or excited. There are those who made a career out of interpreting this, However most people could pretty much figure it out from notes and letters from friends. If I were to type or write a line of pure sarcasm it would be easily understood in a written note, but usually confused in a typed one.
The problem is, for me at least, I can type faster then I can write. Even with the high rate of recognition, and the the speed at which I was writing, I still can typed twice as much in the time it took to write the first paragraph. I know that’s not true for everybody, for that matter, most people who Graduated High school up to the mid to late 90’s typing was more of a after thought. I have pain stakenly watched many people hunt and peck there way though typing on the computer. However this is becoming less of a case for those that are graduating now. Were I was the odd one (for more reasons then this one admittedly) posting on forums back in the glory days of Bulletin Board Systems. Now there’s Blogging, and Facebook or Twitter micro-blogging, web based forums are a form of support, people are publishing there own web pages and so on. My kids, as part of there Elementary school Academic requirements, are taking computer classes that evolve on how to type or use the mouse to answer questions. It’s definitely come a long way from the Apple PC that was in the library, that you could use if you wanted to, but was in no way required. So i think it’s safe to assume that the successive generations will be more efficient typists then they are writers. Of course… y can’t type english…lol.. haha..is another story..ROFLKOPTR!!!11!!!!! *sigh* there are some that make my “version” of bad English still look awesome.
Where then does that put us as far as a need to write, with ether “pen and paper” or digitally. Well for one, it’s still easier to transition from text to graphics and graphics in meetings or class. Graphics could be flowcharts, org charts or other such “Knowledge diagrams”, maybe a sketch up of a scene for a film or photo storyboard and such. Though programs like microsoft word have things like smart art, you’re still stopping one task and calling up or inserting some other program. One thing that is well noted as a reason for keyboard shortcuts is to avoid having to take your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse to do what ever needs to be clicked on. so in this transitioning it’s more efficient to be using a pen or stylus/tablet then to be typing. Medical disabilities could also limit the ability to be able to type properly making handwriting a more efficient tool. Lets also not forget that a pen / pencil and a notebook of paper is lighter then most laptops, and can be used for days, weeks, months, after the laptop would run out of power, even though it’s limited to the amount of paper and ink that you have. There’s still something to be said about not needing power.
Well I have to stop this mental exercise for now, maybe I’ll come back to it later, as it’s time for me to get going. What do you think? How long will we as a collective whole be writing instead of typing?
Sometimes it’s amazing how things work out. Now, I’m not a genius in any since of the word. But, it’s kind of funny how no more the a few minutes ago (relative to the typing of this post) I was just commenting to a friend of mine, about how sanity is “Is a kin to stress. Stress is when we want to Choke the @#$^ out of someone that probably deserve it but don’t (as quoted from a few tee-shirts, bumper stickers, and a e-mail or 2). Sanity is merely the ability to not say something that you want to, but maybe should”. I mentioned I should write a blog post, explaining it more. Not that my blog is any sort of big deal, but just because it was a place I could put my thoughts down. So I hit up my favorite first reference, Wikipedia, which granted isn’t the most academically accepted knowledge store, but good enough for me now. As I look up Sanity, I find this:
A theory of sanity was proposed by Alfred Korzybski in his general semantics. He believed that sanity was tied to the structural fit or lack of it between our reactions to the world and what is actually going on in the world. He expressed this notion in a map-territory analogy: “A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”
I have to laugh cause this is pretty much what I was talking about. Basically put, what is defined as Sane is based on what we believe to be normal. See that guy walking down the road talking to himself (not his bluetooth, that’s a different topic), lost it right? Maybe, or maybe he just doesn’t care if the normally internal discussions we have with ourselves are brought out externally. Because talking to yourself is against Societies norms, then he would be labeled as “lost it”. But again, that is just due to how Society view it. Here’s the real fun part, Stress is going against what you want to do. You stress out when someone cuts you off because you really want to put your car into their trunk, but don’t want the cost or other related problems. Stress likewise is generated, when you choke down words or actions because, well they aren’t normal. You increase your stress when you can’t dance to that song you really like, because if you’re anything like me, trauma teams would be called because someone thought you had a seziure. Now for someone that has “lost their sanity” this isn’t an issue, as they are bopping away happy as can be. So by constantly maintaining our “Sanity” we are actually stressing ourselves out.
Of course the question then is, should we all dip over if it would make one happier? Well that would be technically impossible (ready for the headache). For example, if everybody started talking to themselves out loud, then that would be come the norm, and thus, sane. So we could never truly all lose our sanity, as the bar would then move with society. Beyond that, really, somethings are better left unsaid out of politeness.
Now, is the loss of sanity the same as being Insane? No, I don’t think so. There is a difference between where one just doesn’t stop themselves from going outside of socal norms, and when one can not stop themselves due to some physical disorder. Which, how to detect the difference is probably a topic of discussion of much more learned individuals (doctors, and lawyers) than myself.
So to my friend (Chris) See, guess I’m brighter than I thought, to my niece… No comments about my intellect from the peanut gallery. To everybody else… Goodnight.
