Month: July 2023

A Nice Radio Programming Program

I recently purchased some handheld radios. Now it is time to program them. The vendor recommends RT Systems, Inc. for the programming software.

So far, the company, website, and program are impressive. There’s a huge list of radio brands their products will program. Their website has how-to videos and nice knowledge base section.

Although I’ll use the software to program the radios now, I’ll still take the time to familiarize myself with how to program them in the field. While listening to an ARRL On the Air podcast, they mentioned the importance of knowing this. Getting it programmed just right, at home, is great. But sometimes I’ll want to change that when I’m not at home. It’s better to know how to do that before I need it.

It’s Old, But It’s Still the Best: Email Part 2

I listened to episode 699 of Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income podcast. He interviewed Matt Giovanisci. They talked about online businesses. At one point, Giovanisci said what he’d learned was “Content Is King and Email Is God”.

I wrote last week about going through bunches and bunches of old emails.

The one which were the most meaningful to me, in some cases several years after they were sent, were the text-only emails.

Email which sent images or video now had broken links. In many cases, the broken link was the entire content of the email. Those emails might have meant something in the moment (maybe). But now that the links no longer work, they were not much use.

I kept many of the text only emails. The emails I kept had context, are self-contained, and don’t depend on any server besides the email server. Email was king.

It gave me a lot to think about. It also gave me a lot to think about when it comes to any lists I might subscribe to.

Khan Academy, Second Week Observations

This is my second week of working through Khan Academy classes on computer programming. Today, I was looking forward to possibly getting in some extra time watching classes this weekend.

I’ve watched lots of online classes. It’s not unusual for me to like a subject so much I look forward to learning more. But I didn’t expect that to happen with computer programming classes, especially not after only two sessions of classes.

I sat and thought about that reaction for a while.

My Observations, After Two Weeks and a Few Hours

There’s a bit of gamification with badges on my user profile. It’s not an oppressive or annoying amount, but it’s enough to be a little extra bit of fun.

There’s lots of opportunities to interact with other students. There’s a questions section below most of the lessons and it’s fairly active.

Khan Academy is very good about providing opportunities to practice what was learned. There are frequent challenges to create various programs and functions. I think that programming is like many other skills where there’s a big difference between learning the theory and applying it. So I appreciate the challenges and projects. I really appreciate that the programs are run within Khan Academy’s own site. With programming, it’s easy to go through a teach-yourself book or video and get sidetracked or stumped by system-specific problems on the local system.

I’m going to assume the discussion areas are moderated. There’s also a bit of friction to be able to comment on other user’s posts. I think it’s the account has to be at least three days old and has to have a minimum number of points. Points are earned by finishing videos, projects, and challenges. After years of being on different forums, there’s something pleasant about the atmosphere on forums where it takes some work to be able to post. It’s as if the requirement for time and work to be able to post results in a more thoughtful and deliberate user base.

Like Going Through Old Pictures, Good Memories and Embarrassing Memories: Old Emails, Part 1

Advice Which Occasionally Comes Back To Bite Me

I sometimes talk to small business owners who tell me that they are planning to get a computer inventory system “someday.” Usually I tell them to regularly take a look at all their inventory in one place, physically. It’s easy to look at a spreadsheet or database and not realize how much is actually there.

Well, today I got to tell myself that when I went through some old emails. It was the emails from a content subscriber platform. I had thousands of emails going back five and a half years, to January 2018. I didn’t realize it had been that long, or that I had that many emails from this platform.

(There will be a part 2 to this, where I talk about “Content Is King and Email is God.”)

The Good, The Bad, And The Embarrassing

Right now, I’m still bemused by the old memories. On this platform, I mainly subscribed to and supported podcasts. There were some visual artists and writers, but mostly it was podcasts.

I had the same feeling as when looking through old photographs. Some now-defunct podcasts were like old friends who had drifted away. Life had gotten busy for them and they didn’t have time to record. And I missed those. There were a few where the podcast had multiple hosts and it was pretty clear at the end that those hosts would not be working together again. Those still had some good memories, but I also knew those were moments in time which can’t be recovered. And there were a few that were like looking at a part of my life I’ve grown beyond. Damn, I really used to listen to that? I spent time and money on that?? Really?

There’s a joke about there’s two types of people when it comes to email. One type has only a handful of emails in their inbox. The other type has thousands. I am definitely a “thousands” type. I’m trying to get better at getting the old emails sorted out and either deleted or put into a subfolder. I’m working through one of David Allen’s Getting Things Done workbooks. That’s what lit a fire under me to start cleaning out old emails.

And Here’s Where It Bit Me

And just like I’ve told other people, computers fooled me into not realizing how much stuff I had squirreled away.

Footnote

* When a musical group breaks up, there’s ownership and rights to to band names, recordings, and residuals. What it’s like for podcasts with multiple creators?

Khan Academy, First Impressions, First Lessons

I mentioned a while back that I wanted to learn more about how websites are built and how they work. And that I’d chosen Khan Academy as a place to start.

Well, I signed up. After spending an hour going through some beginner lessons, here are my impressions.

  • It’s easy to sign up as an adult. They do ask for birth date. I’m assuming for younger ages there may be more restrictions or requirements for signing up.
  • It’s free, although they do politely ask for donations.
  • They have a lot for adult learners, but it’s clearly aimed at school and college students.
  • Their lessons on website programming are under “Computer Programming,” not under anything with “web” or “internet” in the name. (Is this because they felt a good way to get kids interested in programming in general was through website construction?)
  • Their Computer Programming course starts with Javascript. That surprised me. After going through some lessons, I can see why it would be a good introduction for kids and new learners. They focus on using Javascript to draw, with ellipses, rectangles, and arcs. And they use that as a way to introduce concepts such as syntax, parameters, checking documentation, and relying on documentation instead of personal memory.
  • They regularly have exercises to use newly learned concepts. The exercises do have some hints for students who might not be sure how to start. (Memories of C/C++: a semicolon has to go at the end of every line. It’s nice to be told right away that a semicolon is missing, not after the entire thing is written out and compiling is attempted. That used to irritate me greatly with C/C++.)

Overall, I’m very favorably impressed.

Choices, Part 1: 15 dollars per hour Versus 150 dollars per hour

This is based on a speech I’ve seen Brian and Darren Hefty give multiple times at their farming and agronomy seminars. I’ve updated it for inflation, the original figures were $10/hour and $100/hour.

The Hefty brothers said their father would tell them to find the “$100/hour” jobs and focus on those. That most farmers would rather paint a fence themselves than pay someone else $10/hour to paint the fence. But that only saves at most $10 per hour.

It does not account for the opportunity cost, which might be much higher. So, the question becomes: can the farmer find something to do with that fence-painting time which would be worth more than $10/hour.

Can the farmer identify jobs which will make or save the farm $100/hour? If so, then someone else can be paid to do the $10/hour jobs. But likely no one else can do the $100/hours jobs.

A Good Idea Used as a Sales Pitch Is Still a Good Idea

Brian and Darren Hefty were using this speech as a sales pitch for their soil and tissue testing services. The logic is still valid. Their next part of the speech, to a room of farmers, would be to ask the audience members to consider how much they expected to spend on fertilizer over the next ten years? And if they could save even 10% of that number, how much would that be? If it took 20-30 hours of time to save that 10%, how many dollars per hour would that savings come out to be. Put that way, the figure was well over $100 per hour (this was over 10 years ago).

They went through this sales pitch because most farmers do not enjoy paperwork. Most farmers dislike paperwork. If someone enjoyed paperwork they’d get a simpler office job than the risk, complexities, and physical labor of running a farm.

So, to ask a farmer to spend the time to take multiple soil and tissue samples, keep a record of where the samples were taken from and when, and maybe what stage of the plant’s growth, to send it off to a lab for testing, then to take the results and spend another few days matching up the results to individual fields and figuring out where the soil needed to be amended and where it didn’t need to be amended, is a big request. But, is there even a chance that 10% of the current fertilizer program isn’t needed for the next five to ten years? If that answer is yes, then the savings could easily be in tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

How This Relates to Using Technology

This seems unrelated to the question of how to make a person’s technology work for them, instead of the person working for their technology.

Yet, it has everything to do with that question. If the approach to technology, whether it’s a spreadsheet program, voice recorder, or anything else, is to fight with it every step of the way, that’s a lot of lost opportunity. If the person instead steps back and asks “what is the $150/hour job I am missing?” it’s likely they’ll realize there is an easier solution. Maybe the entire tool doesn’t have to be mastered, only one function. Perhaps there’s a much simpler tool which can be used. Or maybe it is the exact right tool for the exact right purpose, so it will be worth the time to spend two to three days learning the tool extensively.

Well, Now I Feel Silly: Handles, Revisited

Just a day after I wrote a post about not finding much information on handles, handle design, or handle shape, my inbox received one of AAW’s regular emails. This was a showcase all about handles and AAW articles and videos about handles.

So, my gripe has been answered by God and cosmos, with a bit of a chuckle at my expense.

If I can get some good information about the how’s and why’s of handle design, I’ll be fine with the ironic timing.

The Paradox of Specialization, Too Little and Too Much Are Both Fragile and Unusable

Handles: How Do Companies Decide On The Design?

I originally started thinking about this while contemplating handles. Handles are something we ignore when they fit our hands well, and hate when they don’t. Yet, I cannot find much information on study of handle design. There are specialty handles, like various grips for fencing weapons. There are ergonomic handles for specialty carpenter’s hammers.

But when it comes to the simple round handle on many hand tools, I don’t find much information on the design of those handles.

Then I realized this sort of makes sense. Yes, at one time it might have been possible to go to a local woodturner, explain what a person wanted in weight, balance, size, and so on, and get a good fit for their own preferences.

Now, most handles are mass produced. There’s the occasional shovel, broom, landscaping tool, or gardening tool with wooden handles. But I think they are becoming rarer.

Once a station is set up to mold handles out of resin or plastic, handles can be produced far faster than any woodturner could produce them.

Once that station is set up.

Getting to that point is a long process of decades of scientific and chemical research to create the resins and plastics. And decades of scientific, chemical, thermodynamic, and mechanical research to know how to create the molds, heat the plast or resin up to the correct temperature, inject it, take it out of the mold, and so on .

This is an example of overspecialization. It does what it does, very well. But it can’t be easily changed to anything else without a new mold being made. And there is a long supply chain between the natural precursors of resin or plastic being gathered, and the resin or plastic coming into existence.

On the far end of under specialization, there is a hunk of wood and a knife. Yes, a person probably could make a handle for an implement out of that. It would take quite a while, and probably be fairly crude.

Another example: Writing Programs

Another example is writing programs. Microsoft Word tries to be all things to all people. And it is amazingly annoying and bloated because of that. Scrivener is so specialized, I have tried to use it and like it several times. But it is just a bit too specialized for the more general purpose use I want to use it for. And LaTex is definitely too specialized.