I was there for the early web, it wasn't a vague VC pyramid scheme. The web was a reduction of all the crazy complexity of tech platforms, web made it so you could write a network app in an afternoon. It was the opposite of the FUD that they're
calling "web3." I've yet to hear a coherent explanation of why it should be called web-anything. Selfish beyond belief.
#
All of a sudden the Dems are running a lethal PR campaign against corrupt Repubs. Why now? Well it could be because a
Republican is leading the charge.
#
![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2021/12/15/potusNeedsToCalmThisShitDown.png)
"POTUS needs to calm this shit down."
#
![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2021/04/07/harrison.png)
In a competitive market like
Tools For Thought, developers can amplify the value of features to users if they are shared between multiple products. If I create a service that makes just as much sense inside LogSeq just as it does in
Drummer, that's not only more functionality for users, it also clearly points to a future that users
really want, but don't believe they can have -- fluidity of their data, and independence from any single vendor. They are cynical about tech, and have every right to be, based on experience. They know all about lock-in. Most of them have never experienced the wide-open "blue sky" feeling of the early days of a platform with huge potential. I have experienced that many times, because of when I was born. It's not too late to transform Tools For Thought into that kind of platform. It can be even better than the web, why not -- we come after the web.
#
Watching the news tonight I couldn't stand the cowardice of the commentators. When is one of them going to say look here's the deal, Trump is a sadist.That explains all that they claim to be so inexplicable. He's a sadist. Next question.
#
I've used the term
sadist four times since 2017, including this.
#
![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2021/12/12/zen.png)
Already
Daytona has improved my writing. I think I could be writing a book now, a memoir, a
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence, my
Island Book. A new dimension has opened up. Until now writing has been more or less Of The Moment. As Google has punished me for not supporting their various
hijacks of the web, the writing has become more ephemeral, kind of like Twitter -- once written -- hard to find again. With Daytona all of a sudden my
memex has memory. My writing is upgraded a billion percent.
#
An Island Book is a book that after it's published you have to go live on an island.
#
Here's an idea. I have a drone that communicates with my peloton via satellite, so it's not constrained by range. I can send the drone anywhere I like, but I have to ride there on my peloton. Obviously what I see on my screen is what the drone sees. I think it would quickly become addictive, not that peloton isn't already addictive. PS: I can fly.
🚀#
I use
debuggers as an integral part of the coding process. I almost never run anything complex without stepping through the code in the debugger, to be sure it's running the way I intended it to. Having the data it's working on right there, easily browsable, gives me ideas for new functionality. Imagine being a surgeon who can get
inside the living body, turn off all the systems to examine things, then click a button and have the organism reanimate. And then imagine having such a tool available to you and not using it. There are programmers who don't use debuggers. They're working at a lower level imho. Like flying without instruments.
#
The first environment I used that had a real debugger was
THINK C. Before that it was
printf,
writeln, etc.
#
![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2021/12/12/natural.png)
In a
bootstrap you do things by hand, a lot, until you can see how you can have the machine do it for you, with you losing the minimum amount of power and gain the most ease. That's why you have to develop things in layers.
#
So I have the last 4.5 years of Scripting News in the Daytona index, now I desperately want all the rest of the years, but that's not going to be so easy. In 2017 I had a really good idea of how I wanted the data stored, but until then, I was playing around a lot. A lot of it is in OPML, somewhere, probably. But a lot more of it is in HTML. But it's pretty incredible to have 4.5 years. Makes all that writing so much more useful.
#
I noticed people are talking about
Daytona on their blogs, and there's a general positive view of it, and an expectation that I will continue to improve it. That's all good. But a lot of that depends on how much I get back from users. Ideas that are interesting, not necessarily obvious, and aren't expressed in terms of panic. I want to move this forward, with friends, with people who are as excited as I am and are ready to roll up their sleeves and participate. But if you wait for me to do it, then I'll just add the things I want. I'm hoping that
Drummer users take an interest. And not just "do this for me now" -- help out. I can't read minds, and I don't really like working for free. I don't want dollars, I want the product of intelligent, kind people who help. My friend
NakedJen has the perfect motto for this, "You can fake caring, but you can't fake showing up."
#
![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2021/12/11/mrNatchRespect.png)
BTW -- some perspective. Drummer is a baseline product. There aren't many new ideas, it's mostly making some tried-and-true ideas work in an environment that has a strong future. But
Daytona is new. We needed it and it's so weird we didn't know we needed it. The really interesting things are like that. It breaks new ground and it's not just for blogging. But it's not for lazy people. If you don't want to read the docs and understand what it's doing, you won't get it to work. Maybe in a while we'll figure out how to pave over some of the difficulties, but not yet. Daytona is a gift. It's something we had no right to expect. But sometimes there are breakthroughs, you discover some power that's amazing, and everything you try with it is something new. This is one of those products.
#
The Democrats need someone who can be counted on to say "The Republicans are full of shit" when called on by the press. Too bad we had one, in Al Franken -- well, now we need another. It's really simple, most of the things they say are BS, so it needs to be said apparently because journalists seem largely unable to say that simple truth.
#
Pro tip: If you’re plotting to overthrow the US government, don’t do a PowerPoint about it.
#
Today I learned that if you want Apple's mouse to scroll, as if it had a scroll wheel, you have to go to the Accessibility panel on Preferences, then click Options, and check the Scrolling checkbox. Then it works. I had gotten a cheap Microsoft mouse that had a scroll wheel, but it's junky compared to the Apple mouse.
#
![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2021/12/11/mrsMaisel.png)
I'm finally watching
The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. I had tried before and gave up, for the same reason I guess I gave up on
Halt and Catch Fire -- it's too close to home. I come from both cultures, Maisel from my home in NY. Miriam's mother and father could have been my parents or grandparents. And I lived the HACF life in Silicon Valley in the same timeframe as the show. But for some reason when I tried MMM this week, I got into it. I think I figured out why. The family I was part of is now completely gone, and has been gone since early 2018 when my mother died. Enough time has passed that the memory has softened and idealized in an emotional way. I still remember why they upset me so, but I don't feel it so much any more, so Maisel is tolerable, even adorable. And bingeable. TV shows are excellent because they immerse you in their society, you start thinking of the characters on the show as members of your clan. Maybe I should try HACF again. Also, it's really funny that
Silicon Valley comes even closer to the lifestyle I led, and I loved it when it came out! I think I was actually in a couple of episodes of that show, certainly some of my friends were.
#
Made a small change to
Daytona. When you enter a search string, it constructs a URL for the search and redirects to it. That way the address bar has a link that's ready to be shared. This is something Google does that's quite useful. It works if you're searching Scripting News or the Drummer Docs, but sharing searches into your own public writing doesn't make sense, because they will search in the other person's public writing, not yours. For now you're the only person who can search your public writing. But I had it redirect because you might want to remember the URL for your own use.
#
When someone tells you to relax when they don't like something you said, the reason it feels bad is that it's
gaslighting.
#
- A thread on Twitter led to this question from Joël de Bruijn: "Is an OPML file meant to encompass a whole library (with a notebook, subnotebook, note structure) or is it more like "one note = one OPML file" structure? Or something in between, what a user prefers?" #
- OPML is just a file format, like HTML or RSS. So it can be used for whatever you want, large files, small files, libraries, bullet charts, tree charts, graphs, calendars, directories, projects, things we haven't invented yet. #
- It was originally designed as the interchange format for the outliner in Frontier, a scripting environment I created at UserLand Software in the late 80s and 90s. In Frontier, an outline could be a script, a menu, an object database, a blog, a blog post, or just an outline. We needed a way to exchange outlines with our product and other outliners, so this is what we came up with. OPML wasn't the first interchange format for outlines, there was a format called .HEAD (pronounced dot-head) that we used for outliners in the 80s, but OPML was better because not only did it handle structures of text, they could also have attributes. Anywhere you could put an outline node, you could add attributes. They aren't visible when you're editing, but they're accessible through a dialog, or software can automatically attach attributes, such as the creation date of a node, so that they are indentifiable and can be pointed to from outside the outline. #
- Then came a very special attribute, the type attribute -- which says basically that this node in an outline is a document, so the outline containing the node behaves like a file system. That's how I edit my blog. Each post is a document contained within a day, which is part of a month. I find it convenient to start a new outline every month, and archive the previous month in a GitHub repository. You can study what real-world OPML looks like there, I have 4.5 years of archives there. I recently created a search utility for those, which is kind of like the tagging systems you see in Tools For Thought products, but I don't have to tag anything, I can just search for the words. It's already a lot better than Google or other search engines that don't understand outline structure. #
- Anyway that's a longish answer to a question that can be answered simply by saying that an OPML file can be whatever size makes sense for the application. It's just a file format. Its signficance, I hope, is that it can provide a way for all kinds of outliners, and applications that accept outlines as input, to share the same data, making it possible for lots of outline-based tools to co-exist, and for users to be able the use the right tool for whatever job they want to do right now, without having to convert any data. It's totally possible, and I'm happy to help any way I can.#
- And btw, a plug for my product Drummer, whose native file format is OPML. 😄#
![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2021/12/11/uglyFireplace.png)
One or the other.
#
Daytona is a search engine designed for outline-based information, perfect for Drummer.
#
Daytona plus OPML-compatible outliners, will make an incredible information tool for lawyers, scientists, all kinds of researchers.
#
You can now
search for Tesla on this blog. This is soooo sweet. I got what I wanted. It only took 40+ years.
💥#
Braintrust query:
Another Regex puzzle. I want to do a simple replacement that's complicated by the constraint that it can't do the replacement inside an HTML element, only in text that's not.
#
I have an announcement coming shortly, having solved a problem that I've posed here as a task for
Tools For Thought databases, I want to get all the OPML files that I have archived for Scripting News queryable so I can do research on my own writing. I now understand why they couldn't do it, and the solution is remarkably simple, was easy to program and imho blows away the tagging approaches the other TFT apps use. Sometimes you have to start with the use-case, not the technology. And this is a long-term problem that was solved, it goes all the way back to the beginning of outlining. The braintrust query above is for this project. I want it to be just right before showing to you.
💥#
BTW, another advantage of the approach we've used is that it's not just for Drummer. Literally any outliner can participate. I am indexing OPML files that are
stored on GitHub. It's impossible to know which outliner they came from.
#
- I like to post a big screen shot of a product on its first day.#
John Naughton presents the idealized view of Wikipedia. I consider it authoritative but seriously flawed. There is no way to get lies removed from the record. I've seen people insert themselves into stories they played no part in. I've never had an edit stick, even for mundane events like a traffic accident on the MacArthur Freeway in California that I happened to witness. But it's the best we have.
#
The Beatles broke up because they were tired and sweet loving people, in way over their heads, and wanted some semblance of normalcy in their lives. They stayed together so long because they were best friends, and loved making music together, but when their manager died, it fell apart. Get Back tells an important story. The Beatles were and are still a huge force for good. But they were also people.
#
Poll: Will Tesla be Apple, or Blackberry?
#
Really interesting blog post from a new Tesla user who switched from a Subaru. I also assumed the car was going to alert me if there's a car in the left lane. I caught myself switching lanes without looking the other day, based on being trained by the Subaru. I have decades of experience that I had forgotten. Also Tesla makes a visual promise with that huge screen in the middle of everything, but then you find out it doesn't do any of the things you expect from Apple Car Play. All that promising screen real estate -- it doesn't deliver what you expect it to. How much would it cost for Subaru to add a huge screen to their 2023 or 2024 models? Heh, they
have to be doing this.
#
Apple and Google can get other companies, large and small, to do things for them. That goes for huge automakers to individual developers. Tesla is a loner company, and ultimately there is an ecosystem already growing around Google and Apple. I know very well what they're going up against. Back in the early 90s I built a great system-level scripting product, around simple open protocols. Apple swooped in, and first took over the protocols, and then took over scripting systems, with, imho demonstrably inferior products. Didn't matter. When Apple had a developer meeting they all came. I knew it was over when they had a meeting and I wasn't even invited. I think Elon Musk is going to know that feeling pretty soon.
#
- Probably the worst thing to happen to the web is the gradual degradation of Google's search engine. #
- Ever since I started in tech, I assumed everyone was at least trying to move forward. Then it hit me, quite the opposite. The biggest companies monetize the de-upgrading of tech. #
- Reminds me of that great Dale Bumpers interpretation of the great HL Mencken saying during Clinton's impeachment in 1999.#
- When they say it's not about the money, it's about the money.#
- When they say it's not about sex, it's about sex.#
- And when they say don't be evil, they're being evil.#
Occam's News says the DoJ and Congress aren't more aggressive with the insurrectionists because they think if they push too hard they'll end up in jail when the Repubs take over. Which is a real loser attitude because obviously they're going to end up in jail either way.
#
What if journalism reported on the end of American democracy with the same zeal the reported on Facebook's depravity.
#
SMS: "Over the years since 2000 I've been using outliners of some form for my notetaking. The last 3 outliners/notes apps that I still use all support OPML as transfer (Logseq), backup (Checkvist) or native (Drummer) formats. I guess OPML is already one useable standard format."
#
- When people ask how I get so much work done I say it's the tools. I invest a lot in having the best tools. As Mr Natural says. #
![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2021/03/31/mcCartneyAbbeyRoad.png)
My
one-tweet manifesto for users of note-taking outliners. "There should be a standard format for notes apps so that switching is something you could do as often as you like, so that you can always use the best tool for the job."
#
Outliners should support
OPML, then users will be able to switch between products without having to convert their work. OPML is the best candidate for interop between outliners, and we are
not a long way from that. It's a mature format, widely deployed. it's something I think the users are going to have to ask for because the developers are either too busy, or are not on board with the idea of people being able to use their work independently of the tools they use. I'm not looking to profit here, any more than I profited from RSS or podcasting. I want the users be empowered, because we need better-organized thinkers more than anything. I'm here to help.
#
What got me going on this was a
tweet from the editor of Protocol, about the pain in switching from different outliners, and a
subsequent tweet in the thread where he said the answer was a
long way off. Emphatically it is not a long way off. This isn't that new. We were doing outliners 40 years ago. These problems have been solved. Let's work together, users and developers.
#
In journalism there's conventional wisdom and there's what everyone knows. Sometimes they are at odds. When that happens, they report the conventional wisdom. It's
like "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM."
#
![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2021/12/06/25rudes.png)
25 rides.
#
- I got an email from Peloton yesterday congratulating me on 25 rides. #
- I've got a groove all righty. Here's how it works. I have my teacher, Emma Lovewell. Such a sweetie, she's like a neice to me, so nerdy and she has a lot of things right. I don't have to do this ride, I get to do it, she says. I am becoming something, let's find out what it is, she continues. Anyway, I found this 20-minute ride of hers that I really like, so I just keep doing that ride very day, over and over. I really like the tunes, there's a Tom Petty song (American Girl), and Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, even a Beatles song. I know them in order. I pay attention to her instructions, somewhat, but I do what I want to do. I take a break after every song, even though she wants me to keep going. As long as the music is off I don't have to pedal. I take a sip of water and let my legs recover a little. And then I'm back at it. I sing along. Close my eyes a lot. And before you know it, the ride is over. And I always feel great after the ride. Like Superman. Mind is clear, body strong, I'm directed, going somewhere. #
- Now people say it's hard to get the shoes in and out, but I find it really easy to get them in, a little more difficult to get them out. It's like snapping ski boots into the bindings. I have the official Peloton shoes. I can't figure out how the top strap works so I leave them undone. #
- Another thing -- I can't ride standing up. I don't feel balanced. But I think I will get it. #
- This works. I am getting a daily exertion, no matter the weather, day or night, and am getting stronger. I only wish I had started this regimen 20 years ago, imagine how my body would have responded, but it is what it is. I'm doing great for an old dude! 💥#
Is "Web3" the web, or just a scheme to make VCs richer?
#
ACB stands a good chance of wiping out what
RBG did, and more.
#
- I finished Get Back, and I kind of hated the way it ended, but it is what it is, it's not like there were screen writers who chose the wrong ending. The rooftop concert was a Ouija board thing. Something Ringo could have an opinion about, so they had the concert. I thought it was awful, esp for the last live performance of the Beatles. It wasn't really a concert, it was cheap, they used London, acted like dicks, it made the whole Let It Be process suck. #
- At one point the idea of going back to The Cavern was brought up, and I thought that would have been great. They clearly have very strong feelings for that period of the Beatles, even though it's something most of us never experienced (it was before the mania). Or they could have arranged to be surprise guests at a London club. I'm sure they were there, and any of them would be happy to host the Beatles. Then it would have been legal, the enthusiasm would have been there, and they could have fucked around and everyone would've loved it. #
- Or maybe there was just no place for the Beatles to go in 1969. I've noted this about superstar basketball teams. Once they win a couple of championships, I felt, they should just disband the team, because there would be no joy in a third or fourth. It seems like everything they did in the album Let It Be was no more interesting than what they did in Magical Mystery Tour or the White Album or Sargent Pepper, Revolver, they were all huge leaps. Let It Be -- no -- it's great stuff, historic -- it all really matters, but none of it was necessary. Anything past that, well there was no vision for it. #
- Another thing I learned, over the whole three episodes, is how little the Beatles cared about business and how much of it they delegated. I had read the story of Billy Joel, and was amazed about how he kept money far away, and had gotten ripped off massively by someone he trusted. Lennon was in awe of Allen Klein, but he sounds like a schmuck. I think if the Beatles had a manager who loved them, and cared about them, they might have continued writing music together for many years, and gotten what they wanted out of independence. It doesn't seem like it had to be either/or, and what's also clear is how much love there was between them. It's a common pattern, something great happens, and the assholes move in and squeeze the life out of it. How strong the Beatles were that they got so far. Or how much their manager, who had just died, must've loved them. #
- PS: A good movie to watch after finishing Get Back is the Ron Howard documentary about the touring Beatles. It's on Hulu. #
![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2021/12/05/takeAMoment.png)
Saw this on Facebook. Seems like an idea worth sending around.
#
Poll: Does your mouse have a scroll wheel? Do you use it?
#
Poll: Should the US pay reparations to descendants of slaves?
#
Andrew Sullivan wrote a
piece where he wonders why men don't have as much at stake in abortion as women. This is like imho "all lives matter." Fact: You and I have already been born, not aborted, so we do not have a personal interest in abortion.
#
Going forward, I don't expect to be using the relatively new
tagging functionality on
Scripting News. I think that's over. I have something I believe is better that requires no effort, no forethought, no decision-making. It's one of those things that Just Works. Yes I plan to share it. And it's not just for blogging, and it's not just for
Drummer.
#
I'm now on the third segment of the Beatles show on Disney. The amazing thing is how much fun they had doing Let It Be. And you can see the process, they talk about it. I had the wrong idea about the Beatles as people. I love them now even more than I did when I was a kid.
#
My Tesla endorsement: I haven't had a car that was this much fun to drive since I had a
Mazda Miata in the early 90s.
#
- I had a radical idea about patents many years ago, when they were starting to spoil the software world.#
- The idea -- open source patents.#
- Develop something new. Document it, have it evaluated by a panel of experts. If it's new you get a "patent". #
- The ersatz patent does a few things.#
- It prevents Google or Apple from patenting it. #
- It gives the inventor proper credit for their work.#
- It makes the idea useful to other software devs because it isn't just some random feature ready to be patented by Microsoft or Amazon.#
- You can find out if something you did really is unique or if someone did it 25 years earlier (this has happened to me, I thought I had invented outlining until I read Ted Nelson's book and leared about Doug Engelbart).#
- It's good publicity, giving people an incentive to participate. #
- Unlike non-open patents, everyone is free to use the idea for free. However they can't claim that they invented it. It's like Creative Commons for patents. #
- I must not have been very good at explaining it, I thought it was something my friends at Harvard Law School would help with, but we're still stuck in this horrible situation where inventors of new ideas are forced to put up gates to simply get credit for their work. I'm never willing to do this myself, so I've seen many of my works being ignored or even undermined (notably podcasting by the f'ing EFF) or patented by IBM or Salesforce.#
I had a nice thought that maybe when you die you wake up as from a dream. And you resume your higher level reality. Life is like a procedure call. This was one of the ideas in the movie
Inception. When you die in a dream you wake up. I think that's how it worked.
#
- I wrote in a tweet yesterday that the Tesla needs to run Apple Car Play. This was a short statement with a lot packed in it.#
- My Tesla is both a car and a computer system. #
- Almost all the controls for the car are on a big screen in the middle of the dashboard, between the driver and the passenger, slightly tilted toward the driver. #
- There are other controls, a stick attached to right side of the steering wheel that shifts between Reverse, Neutral, Drive and Park. A stick on the left signals turns and I think adjusts the brights, but honestly I'm kind of confused about that. I think the car decides when you need lights and what intensity, and it's not possible to overrided it? #
- There are two pedals on the floor, roughly analogous to the brake and gas pedals in a gasoline-powered car. When you press the gas pedal the car accelerates, but unlike previous cars when you let up on the gas pedal, the car slows much faster. You only need to use the brake pedal when you need to stop quickly, otherwise all your acceleration and decelration is done via the accelerator pedal.#
- There are also controls on the outside of the car. Handles on each of the doors and the two trunks (front and rear). If you tap the charging port door, it opens. There probably are other outside controls that I'm not yet aware of.#
- Otherwise, everything is done through the UI of the big screen in the middle of the passenger compartment. It works as it would if it were created by Apple, Google, Amazon or Microsoft. There are tech industry norms, and people move around between the companies. This is a standard tech industry UI. But the design is radically different from every other car anyone has ever driven. And it works, but -- and this is important -- there is no app ecosystem. I can play music from my iPhone via Bluetooth, but I can't control the music via the car's screen, I have to use the screen on the iPhone. Since my Subaru has Car Play and Android Auto, I've gotten used to controlling music, podcasts, and anything else -- directly on the car's screen, and this is imho a must-have feature that Tesla does not have. #
- For right now this doesn't seem to be an issue for most Tesla users. I'm happy to drive my new wonder machine knowing that it's missing its app ecosystem. Tesla (again imho) has to have one, either they start to develop it now, or they hook up with Apple and/or Google, and allow their apps to run in TeslaLand. In a few years I think it will be necessary, because esp luxury car makers are going to feel the pressure to do what Tesla does in terms of controls. I'm pretty sure Apple and Google will offer it to them. And I think both of them are capable of doing what Tesla does. And they both have app ecosystems. #
FAQ: How to get started blogging in Drummer.
#
Good morning and welcome to December. One more month. And then another year and another, and on and on.
#
A short podcast about the Beatles and Get Back and what it must've been like to be Paul McCartney and meet John Lennon and vice versa.
#
I'm sure others have noticed that today is a symmetric day -- 12/1/21. It might be the last one in this century? Have to think about this. 😀
#
- The Beatles, I realize now, have played a really important role in my life going back to when I was eight years old and in the hospital recovering from a ruptured appendix. She Loves You was the big hit. I only had the vaguest idea of how they made such a song, I didn't think about it too much, but after watching Get Back (I'm now on the second installment) I see the magic. #
- They invented The Beatles, it was a real thing, you can see it in the relationships and the end result. A song starts as an idea, and they hack at it, over and over, and gradually the song emerges. I kept wanted to say it's "Tucson Arizona!" but of course they didn't know that yet. #
- I recognize the dissatisfaction of people who don't share the bond that Lennon and McCartney did. Ringo accepted his role as an onlooker, George struggled against it. And all the hangers-on with opinions about this and that. They remind me of the VCs and execs in tech. #
- The magic was Paul working out a hit song on the bass, with Ringo and George looking on. Then John coming back and loving it, and adding his bit. #
- The conversations reveal so much. If only we had understood all this less than 50 years after the fact. I think of all the young creative people who can watch this, and how it will help them understand, and how we got by, feeling our way around this the way the Beatles. #
- I wrote to a friend yesterday that this feels biblical. This is how it all began. I expect we'll be talking about this for years to come #
- I wish we had the equivalent video for all kinds of other seminal events. I'd love to see a video of all that Trump did on January 6, for example, while the Capitol was under attack. Who was he calling on cell phones, threatening them in not so subtle ways while they were feeling so vulnerable?#
- Listening to She Loves You reinforces the point made by Paul McCartney in a recent Fresh Air interview. He said when they were young, when the Beatles were starting out, mostly what they wanted was girlfriends. #
- At one point, in the struggle over George Harrison's departure, Lennon talks about how they'll feel about all of it when they're old. How profoundly sad that he didn't get to be old, and we didn't get to learn from an older John Lennon. #
- In the music Lennon and McCartney produced separately after the breakup there was (evidently) a lot of bitterness between them. But in this movie you feel the love they had between them. I wonder where the bitterness came from, or if it was just an illusion. Maybe we imagined it. #
- Update: A podcast about the invention of the Beatles. #
Poll: When will you watch
Get Back?
#
![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2020/04/19/coronavirus.png)
I'm glad I read the
book about the
1918 pandemic last year, because I understand something that most people should and don't. Mutations aren't necessarily bad, in fact over time the mutations will make the virus less deadly. It's all about evolution and survival of the fittest. Mutation is how evolution happens. A new variant shows up and if it is in some way more likely to propagate and survive than previous variants, it will stick around and thrive, and continue to mutate. If a virus kills its host -- that's not good for survivability. So what happens over time, a virus like Covid becomes less harmful and more transmissible, that's how it becomes "the flu." The 1918 influenza virus is still with us today. But it doesn't kill people in the numbers that it did a hundred years ago. Over time Covid will get less deadly too.
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Heather Cox Richardson confirmed
something that I had been wondering about -- do Congresspeople in the US, esp Republicans, worry about the safety of their families if they were to act independently of Trump. I was sure that some of them do, but I had never heard this reported on the news. So far they only talk about threats involving losing their jobs. But if the threats were about physical well-being, that's another thing. That's how it works in Russia for journalism and politics. The one year I was at Davos I spent some time hanging out with Russian journalists. This was in 2000, when Russia had supposedly liberalized. I went to a big session in the main hall where one of the officers of the Russian government was speaking, someone who I had been introduced to by my sponsor, the person who got me my white badge (a journalists' credential, the best one available, got me entry to every session, unlike most journalists attending). At one point I stood up and asked a challenging question of the Russian. He gave me a typical evasive answer. But here's the thing -- after I did that, none of my Russian journalist friends would talk to me. Obviously their political system didn't work like ours. Today when there is no pretense at freedom in Russia, I imagine it's much worse. And according to HCR's reporting, we're headed down that path in the US. The next year seems to be our last chance to turn it around.
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I have continued watching
Get Back. Everyone should watch this, if you're a creative, or your work involves creative people. Creativity needs to be nurtured and protected. I'm sure there are other lessons coming, but I'm going through it slowly, I'm still on the first segment.
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- On Thursday it'll be two weeks since I got the Tesla Model 3. Here are some thoughts. #
- I haven't been using the autopilot more than just trying it, seeing it veer into a head on collision, I quickly took control. i'm pretty sure it wasn't actually going to kill me, it was a simple situation, Highway 28 from Boiceville to West Hurley, a wide road, easy for the autopilot.#
- But here's the thing -- like the self-driving features of the Subaru, the self-driving features of the Tesla are always there, ready to take over if it thinks you're fucking up. It did a thing weird on a drive out my little dirt road, it sounded an alarm that I was driving off the road. loud screeching sound. I was doing no such thing.#
- The thing that really distinguishes the Tesla as far as i'm concerned isn't the power, or battery, those are nice -- but the full integration of the computer system in the experience. The Subaru is a hodgepodge of different systems that don't know about each other. Very confusing. i've gotten to just using Car Play for everything and ignoring the rest. #
- What this says to me is that in a couple of years, there will be a Mercedes EV with a big screen like Tesla's and no dashboard again like Tesla. And the same or better integration. It'll be running Apple, Amazon or Google software. and it will be as good as Tesla's software because they hire out of the same talent pool. #
Jack Dorsey is leaving Twitter again. All kinds of paranoid thoughts go through my head. Meanwhile, he posted his announcement
as a tweet, not in text but as a
screen shot because Twitter
still doesn't support text in a reasonable manner, even though they support video, images,
Clubhouse-style conferences, and email newsletters. This is insane. Twitter is an important platform. Not supporting text is a religious thing, as if they didn't have water fountains in The Vatican. (I just came up with that randomly.) I hope the first thing the new CEO does is fix this situation. Let's move outlines over Twitter. Whatever. Text isn't a new innovation, the blogger said ironically.
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![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2021/11/29/letItBe.png)
I didn't give up on the
Beatles on Disney. It is totally worth watching. The Beatles were falling apart, but all they needed was a little help. A manager. Someone to keep the assholes away. So many jerks were wasting their time and talent. And someone to make sure that George Harrison felt loved, and they were focusing on the music, which is what they were so incredibly great at. At one point, John Lennon is getting briefed on some bullshit plan for a concert, it's all nonsense, and in the background Paul McCartney is working out the music and lyrics for one of the greatest songs of all time --
Let It Be. I always wondered what their collaboration was like, they really did like each other. Such a shame. They had something incredible, and they just needed a little help.
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Yesterday I had one of my
Drummer outlines overwrite another. There were no instant outlines updating while this happened, so that's not the source of the problem. If you've had this happen: 1. I am sorry this is happening, that's first. 2. Make sure you do backups. 3. Were you by any chance editing
the Scripts menu when this happened? If so, please comment
here. I'm looking for more clues. I added more debugging code so if it happens to me again, I'll get closer to knowing that the cause is. I really want to get this bug out of there.
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![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2021/11/29/instantPot.png)
I hear there's some kind of controversy over a frying pan that VP Harris bought. I also hear this is getting a lot of play on the news. My filters must be working, because all I've heard of it are ridiculous rebuttals from people trying to argue somewhat logically that this is an illustration of old white men in charge of the Republican Party. I'm sure that's not it. It's marketing. They are always focus-group-testing bullshit like this to see if the people will pick it up, and then they shoot blasts of this bullshit at news people, and 1-in-10 of the focus-grouped bullshit gets picked up by the press. It's worth it, because it keeps the real news off the air, and helps people forget that Trump paid for his golf vacations at his own resorts with taxpayer money. Hundreds of millions of dollars. There's no logic to any of this. And they're not old white menu, that's bullshit. It's just marketing people, and computers.
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I have a new project in the works that hooks up to
Drummer outlines (really any outlines in OPML) and puts all the items in a relational database and lets you do searches. I have a few applications in mind for this stuff. The codename of the project is Daytona. Coming soon to a theater near you.
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If you could make an open Facebook without using carbon-spewing blockchain tech
why would you burn all that carbon? Do
you care about the survival of our species?
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New Drummer
verb that generates Markdown from an outline or part of an outline.
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- Yesterday I wrote a bit about BingeWorthy, the app I wrote a couple of years ago that helps you find new shows to binge based on the ones you and your friends like. We need more users for it to really achieve its potential. #
- I would be happy to do a deal with a tech company on this product. I think Twitter would be great, but there are lots of companies where it could find a good home. I just want to see millions of people using so I can meet all the people who like the same stuff I do. I think we'd take over the world, figuratively. 😄#
- A network of people based on their entertainment tastes would make sense for a growing service like Hulu with lots of highly rated shows, that wants to grow their service. Part of the philosophy that "people come back to places that send them away."#
- BTW -- here's the readout of people most like me in their ratings. I don't know @alisonjfields but we seem to like the same stuff. @jsavin is #1. I also like to see @nakedjen and @leolaporte high on the list.#
![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2017/09/01/mrFrog.png)
I wonder why the tech industry hasn't done something like
BingeWorthy. I think it's because they create data mining tools for advertisers. This is a data mining for users. The more users, the better the data. A real incentive to get your friends on board. BW should really be a product offered by Netflix, Metacritic, Twitter, Facebook, even Google. What show to watch is a question millions of people have, esp this time of year. This is what the platform should look like. Share profiles w friends. An interesting twist, it's not just about finding shows to binge, it's about finding friends with similar taste.I was surprised to find that Jake Savin, who I worked with a long time ago, and I, have very similar taste. We like and dislike the same things.
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Maybe they should do interviews with
Covid doctors on CNN from the room where intubated patients are waiting to die.
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Sometimes people deliberately mispronounce or misspell my name, I guess theyre trying to embarrass me? I have a name almost as bad as the
Boy Named Sue. It’s hard to get under my skin that way. 😀
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I tried watching
Get Back, but after five minutes of holy shit those are the young Beatles acting like normal people it became fairly boring. I guess I like a plot? Did it get better?
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Twitter Blue gives you a pretty lame undo command. I guess it’s impossible to do it for real with their server architecture.
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One of the stars of
The Great, the guy who plays emperor Peter, is a dead ringer for a young Elon Musk. Same mannerisms and look, but he’s funnier and of course a better actor. One of the tech companies or car companies should hire him to do ads.
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![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2011/11/24/turkey.gif)
I just started
Get Back, the first few minutes of the first episode, enough to know that it's going to be a heavy emotional experience for me. As a kid I had so much invested in
the Beatles. Each period of their existence marked some big period or event in my life, things that I've mostly buried, but come right to the surface with (for example) Paul and George
flopping their heads in the chorus to
Twist and Shout. To see the Beatles, alive and young and at the peak of their creativity, in a way we couldn't see them at the time, that's like reading a letter from a long-dead relative. The people are gone, the experiences were seminal, and recoverable.
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I'm watching
The Great on Hulu, and it's really good. Didn't get the best
reviews. I'm only on episode 4. It's about
Catherine The Great of Russia. The story is pretty heavy, but believe it or not, it's a comedy!
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I am a NYT subscriber, but can't access Wirecutter. It's weird, the site seems broken -- when I try to log in it just sends me back to
the page that says I have run out of free articles. It could be they want more money for WC, if so, the answer is no. I don't read a lot of NYT articles as it is. I have a very bad feeling about them, and it gets worse every year. That took a lot of work on their part because I was raised on the NYT.
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- An example of a social custom from two points of view.#
- It's wrong to bring sex into a work relationship. #
- I think it's equally wrong to bring business into a sexual relationship.#
- It has happened, esp in Silicon Valley or New York, when a woman I was dating, or interested in dating, revealed that she was really there for the business. I want to understand up front. If it's business, fine -- I'll evaluate it one way, if it's sexual, another. It's a really awkward situation where someone I was attracted to sexually, wants to do business -- and wouldn't have gotten a meeting if it were clearly about business. #
- Honestly I think the two sides are the same thing, but we view one as wrong, and don't have explicit rules for the second. #
- Another example.#
- If you work for me, or we're equals in a business relationship, either way -- no one is accountable to the other for what they do with personal time. Your boss can't call you up on the weekend and expect you to tell them what you're doing. You don't have to tell them anything, unless it impacts your ability to do the work. #
- I think it's equally wrong when a person who reports to me, or is an equal, reports to me on what they're doing in their personal time. It creates a conflict, am I expected to reciprocate, because I won't. I draw a solid line between work and personal time. If I share personal things in a work context, they are no longer personal.#
- These concerns are spelled out more carefully in professions like medicine, academics, law. A therapist isn't allowed to date a patient. A lawyer can't represent both sides in a legal battle. When the lines cross, there's trouble ahead. #
- Last year on Thanksgiving we were in the midst of the worst of the pandemic, and the best we could do is stay home and hope we don't get infected. This year it's very different -- thanks to the vaccine. I got my first dose of Moderna on January 20, the day we inaugurated the first post-insurrection president. What a relief, in two ways. The Orange Tyrant who tried to overthrow the US government was gone, and I was on my way to being protected from the virus he let run rampant through the country we all have been told is the greatest on earth, but did the worst job of protecting its citizens. I hope that was the low point, but who knows!#
- I also was thankful for my car. It's funny that I thought about that post just the other day driving my new Tesla around the neighborhood, marveling at its intelligence, muscle, and how much it is like the computers I use, the exercise bike I just bought, and the phone I carry everywhere with me. The Silicon Valley design ethos, which I am schooled in and in a small way helped develop, is eating the world, as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said so well. The Subaru I drove last year is a fine machine, and in some ways it's more comfortable than the Tesla, and it'll probably do better if we get a blizzard in the mountains. But its software is a jumble of poorly designed components that don't work well with each other from a UI standpoint. In that area the Tesla is perfect. It's a system designed to be understood by a modern user. The pre-Tesla car manufacturers have a long way to go to catch up to Tesla. #
- I am thankful for the first users of Drummer. We have reached a critical mass where I can add features, and get feedback from users, and that gives us the ability to move forward. I think this happened because I decided to put my head down on Drummer and work until it was really ready. There still are problems with the software, it is far from perfect, and I'm thankful for the users' patience, but mostly I'm thankful that there are users to be patient. #
- At 66, health is no longer something I can take for granted. it takes work to keep going, and I've had my troubles this year, but basically I'm still here, and most of my body is working fine. I'm thankful for that. #
For whatever reason I'm not very talkative this week. Not sure why. Often when this happens it's followed by a period of idearrhea. No apologies, I'm still here, feeling more pensive. Happy Thanksgiving! :-)
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- This time I think I have it, for real. I swear. ;-)#
- Here's the deal...#
- All the action is in Old School.#
- A new head-level attribute, flSinglespaceMarkdown.#
- Default: false -- which means we generate two newlines per outline node, with one exception.#
- If a node has an flSinglespaceMarkdown att set true, its subs are single-spaced. #
- The assumption is that most often people will write in the outliner one paragraph per headline. but there are exceptional cases where you need more control over the markdown text we generate, and need to do your own double spacing, so you tell Old School to just do one.#
- Comment here. #
A
script that generates
the list of Drumkit verbs. For people who worked on outlines in Frontier, have a look. I found a way to work on outlines as JavaScript structs. It's very efficient and much easier to program.
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I love
my new Tesla. I'm looking for excuses to drive places. I haven't felt this way about driving since I was a teenager with a new license.
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![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2021/11/21/tesla.png)
There are so many interesting things about the Tesla, and I'm just getting started learning about them. It's as if I didn't get a PC until the IBM PC came out. Or maybe later. Here's something I figured out the other night, driving on a mountain road with lots of turns and ups and downs, a road I'm quite familiar with -- the Tesla makes you a better driver. This is something my Subaru does too, you only have to hold the steering wheel loosely while navigating the turns and ups and downs. The road is well-marked and the car knows what to do. The Tesla even more so. It's like my iPhone which takes better pictures in 2021 than the 2011 model did. We like to say "no filters" but the truth is they're just really good filters that make you think you're the photographer, but the phone did the hard work. Same with the Tesla. I like driving it in the same way. It flatters me to think I'm that good a driver. I know the truth though -- I didn't become a better driver, I just got a car that makes me feel that I did. And who wouldn't love that.
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Here’s a
thread reader integrated into Twitter. Next: eliminate the numbers, add links, simple styling, let me give it a title (optional) and we’re ready to rock. Think they’ll have that by say 2030?
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Google's search engine really doesn't like this blog. I tried
searching for
Scott Love on my blog. It didn't find the instance where I wrote about him
here earlier this month.
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![](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20211216185652im_/http://scripting.com/images/2021/11/21/peloton.png)
Yesterday I did my tenth Peloton ride. The exercise is making me stronger. I don't know why I didn't want to do the classes. I love my teacher,
Emma Lovewell. She's super nerdy. When we're doing something particularly strenuous, I close my eyes, focus on my breathing, in through the nose, out through the mouth, and I listen to her say that this pain is worth it because it'll become strength when the workout is over. It's so true. I don't particularly care for the music she chooses, I don't know any of it, and it's not catchy. But she's a lot younger than I am, so I guess this is the kind of music the young folk listen to? I'd love it if there were a Tom Petty ride or a Grateful Dead ride. I can see riding to
Refugee or
US Blues.
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Drummer, an outliner, now allows you to write blog posts in Markdown.
The question was -- how?
This is what we came up with:
- One newline per outline node.
- Indentation belongs to the author, generates nothing.
I think this works and is true to the philosophy of MD.
- Going to do some more cleanup work this morning on Markdown support in Old School. #
- In the meantime, the thread continues. If you're planning on using Markdown to write blog posts in Drummer, you might want to tune in, because things are being locked down today. #
- There are only two rules that govern how Old School generates source for the Markdown processor:#
- One newline per outline node. #
- Indentation belongs to the author, generates nothing.#
- I sent a private note to John Gruber a few days ago, letting him know this discussion is going on. As far as I know we are setting prior art for outliners used to generate Markdown for publishing. If there is prior art, I would love to know about it now, asap. #
- This is different from the Obsidian model also used by LogSeq -- which uses Markdown as a file format for outlines. #
- Update: Here's a list of this morning's changes to Markdown support for publishing. #