Watching movies where an accomplished writer is typing their book by pecking at their keyboard with their index fingers

Ever noticed the typing scenes in movies? Almost every film has this issue: when a character is shown typing—be it on a keyboard or a typewriter—they're pecking away like a chicken with their index fingers. This is especially absurd when the character is supposed to be an accomplished writer. Instead of touch-typing, they're either mashing keys aimlessly or stabbing at the keyboard as if playing a piano concerto.

It’s as though no actor on the planet has ever learned to type properly. And by extension, neither have directors, since they're the ones orchestrating these typing disasters. It's got to be rare for someone to attempt to write an entire book, or even a college essay, by hunting and pecking.

Sure, some people might actually write like that, blissfully unaware of the agony they’re inflicting on themselves. But wow, what a punishing way to work!

(Originally posted on reddit.)

Tiktok has enabled...ignorance

 

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I'm super suspicious of Tom Westfall in Quantum Leap

 

I have no thesis or anything...I'm just super suspicious of Tom Westfall
byu/fcsuper inQuantumLeap

Remember in the 1980's when every other song was sung by a guy that looks like he was just someone's uncle?

 

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Golf is two minigames thrown together

Deep thought of the day: Golf is basically two marginally related minigames thrown together. A bit like if football required a round of Lawn Bowling once the ball enters the goal area.

Facebook seems to be broken as a record of past check-ins and other events

In the past, I fairly consistently made frequent check-ins as posts to Facebook for places I visited.  However, it seems Facebook is increasingly deprecating this functionality.  You can still check-in quite easily, but old check-in posts are breaking.  The issue seems to be getting worse over time.  

Facebook was very reliable at one point.  You could look back through your timeline to see what you did, where you did it, and when you did it.  There was even UI that made it easy to choose a time period to peruse.  This was useful for so many reasons, not the least of which is planning for further activities in places you already visited, or providing information to others who planned to visit those places.  Let's also no forget the value of being able to stroll down memory lane.  

Here's an example of one such broken check-in.  It's a post in 2012 that simply says "Surprisingly good and unusual".  The information about where this check-in took place, including the town and other general information has been completely removed.

The posting is useless, other than to verify I did something with Allie on that day.  Fortunately, I also maintain a blog (this blog).  For this particular event, I was able to go back to the day in question and see that Allie and I visited Salem, MA.  I'm not sure which place in Salem is represented by this check-in, however.

I am also finding posts on Facebook where uploaded photos no longer display.  No amount of troubleshooting has restored those photos.  This seems to be particularly problematic for Life Events, where posts which contain one more more photos no longer show those photos.  (These are my own photos that I uploaded to Facebook myself, so it's not an issue of someone else controlling privacy settings or removing their account from Facebook.)  When you edit the post to see what's going on, Facebook seems aware that photos were included in the post because Facebook shows a loading window, but yet that loading window never resolves. When you reupload the photos to the post, you will find that you cannot summit the changed post. Facebook just errors-out on you when you try.

Additionally, even more recently, when I've checked-in at movie theaters for specific movies I'm about to watch, those posts are losing information about the movie.  This is happening for posts that are only a few weeks old, if that.

As of this minute, Facebook is not currently adding post to the Life Events page for any posts dated in 2023.

Given all these issues, and Facebook's track record of similar buggy behavior for other deprecated tools in the past, it seems prudent to no longer rely on Facebook as a record of my past.  This means I have to fall back on my blog.  It's a bit more work to create blog posts than Facebook posts, but at this point, it seems worth the extra trouble.

I've already started replicating past Life Events posts from Facebook on this blog.  

I've been on many business trips, and many of these are interesting destinations. However, I add personal trips as Life Events, yet I don't typically create Life Events posts for common business travel. 

No one knows why humans have chins? Hmm, maybe I do...

"Humans are the only animal that have a chin, and no one knows why."  Well, I think know why.  Chins acts as a third hand to hold things against your chest when your actual hands are full or otherwise occupied in some sort of tool. Chins are very important for rudimentary tool use, or just lugging things from one place over short distances when your hands are full.  

The purpose of this blog has changed a bit over the years

The purpose of this blog has changed a bit over the years since Feb 2002.  Early on, I was fascinated by the idea of having an online outlet.  At the beginning, there are literal log entries about what was actually going on in my daily life.  After while, I started covering news items and provided my opinions about stuff.  All the while, there was some self-reflection as well.  I also started a few other blogs that were more focused, including the exploration of alien life, poetry and even my car.  

All of these other blogs have since been retired.  I took postings from those and placed them on this blog.  All but the poetry blog have been deleted.  In fact, around the time I closed down those other blogs, my interest in maintaining a blog waned.  During some of the biggest changes in my life is when I posted the least. 

Then I started using Instagram.  All of a sudden, it was much easier to post about my daily life again, but in a much different way...in the form of images.  Instagram and IFTTT combined allowed me to post every IG image directly onto my blog automatically.  The number of posts increased 10 fold.  I prolly posted text based entries even less than before while I flooded my site with stylized photos.  This continued for several years until IG locked down its API...and then even a bit after that until my other methods of automatically uploading IG posts vanished.

I still post on IG frequently.  Now, to get IG photos on my blog, I actually have to manually add the posts with those photos.  This has actually caused me to post less frequently on IG.  Often, when I transfer the photos, I'll combine related images into a single post on this blog.

In addition to IG, I posted my review of scientific papers about the likelihood of life outside of Earth within our Galaxy.  These posts were very popular and still attract a lot of attention. However, my two most popular posts (that still top my list of activity for this blog)?  Beeper Codes and the related Pager Codes. There's a lot of nostalgia about these codes for some reason.

I'm not writing this post for contemporary consideration.  I absolutely know that this information will not interest anyone today.  But, this ties back to my first sentence above.  The current purpose of this blog, and the one that will stand for here and on?  A while back, I realized I have recorded a snapshot of almost the entire 21th Century to date.  If I keep this blog going (assuming Google continues to support Blogspot), this blog will represent almost the entirety of the first half of the 21th Century.  Nature allowing, I'll try to keep posting until 2052 for a full fifty years.  Although my life may not be very interesting to contemporaries, it may be more interesting as this Century becomes ancient history.  300 years from now, this blog may still be available in some manner within whatever form the Internet will take.  Maybe electronic archeologists will discover my musings buried in archives.  Or, if the world purges the old in such an electronic realm, then this blog or portions thereof may be discovered on some derelict server by dirt-digging archeologists of the 24th Century.  Either way, this is my experience for you.  Yup...you, Magnolia, et al. 

I know the likelihood of the images being kept intact with this blog for a long time are not great, given how Google and other services store them.  I know the likelihood that videos being kept intact are even slimmer.  Here's to hope that somehow forces beyond my control will allow most (all) of this blog to be preserved as a glimpse into the early years of the Information Age.

The road you didn't take because of a lie

I thought of writing about Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken because many (most?) people misinterpret it.  Well, Today I Found Out covered the topic so well, there's no sense in my writing about the poem's meaning.  Please enjoy their video:

The Road Not Taken

BY Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference..

Do And Die, not Do or Die - common misquote

The poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson called The Charge of the Light Brigade is often misquoted.  Lines 14 and 15 are commonly spoken as "Ours is not to ask why, but to do or die", or something similar.  The key here is that a choice is present; "do or die".  In other words, we follow our orders or be will held accountable.  Or perhaps, do or die trying.

However, within the actual poem (below), such a choice never is present.  The lines are actually "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die".  The soldiers of the poem never question their order, even though the order is clearly erroneous.  For these soldiers, these six hundred brigaders, a choice is never even in their thoughts.  They would ride headlong into cannon fire, being cut to pieces, while knowing there was no hope of success nor life afterwards.  

When one applies this poem to one's own situation, the phrase "do and die" is far more powerful, potent and critical.  No choice is available, even though the required action surely leads to failure.  In this regard, one might be unintentionally critiquing their orders as folly.

Of course, the poem is poetic. Though the poem does mention some survivors, it romanticizes the sacrifice of the brigade on the whole.  In reality, many of the soldiers survived.  Further, history has characterised the order to charge as a misunderstanding or miscommunication.  However, the order being a mistake of some sort is not undermined by the fact that some brigaders survived.  The Light Brigade was decimated in their charge of the cannons, and that decimation was obviously inevitable. 

The Charge of the Light Brigade

BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

                    I

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!” he said.

Into the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

                    II

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldier knew

   Someone had blundered.

   Theirs not to make reply,

   Theirs not to reason why,

   Theirs but to do and die.

   Into the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

                  III

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

   Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of hell

   Rode the six hundred.

                   IV

Flashed all their sabres bare,

Flashed as they turned in air

Sabring the gunners there,

Charging an army, while

   All the world wondered.

Plunged in the battery-smoke

Right through the line they broke;

Cossack and Russian

Reeled from the sabre stroke

   Shattered and sundered.

Then they rode back, but not

   Not the six hundred.

                    V

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon behind them

   Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

While horse and hero fell.

They that had fought so well

Came through the jaws of Death,

Back from the mouth of hell,

All that was left of them,

   Left of six hundred.

                   VI

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

   All the world wondered.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade,

   Noble six hundred!