Turns out that's called 'Reverse Logistics'

Per usual, a line of thinking which struck me as somewhat original, did so only because of my ignorance. Dealing with bills of materials is called logistics, if you start with the stuff and are tasked with putting it to use, that's Reverse logistics.

The definition talks about surplus and returns, the footnotes do include a link to Waste management concepts, but the primary concern is with pre-consumer supply chain issues. The challenge, and prize, is post-consumer.

IBOM - Inverted Bill Of Materials

I'm forever trying to describe my fixation on the waste stream. I can't get away from the core issue: most all our resources go into stuff, most all stuff ends up in the waste stream. So, after a brief interlude of use, the stuff and energy we extract from the earth is returned to earth, air and water in noxious forms.


Extract -> consume -> discard

Engineering and design which follow that pattern bring us closer to the point where there is not enough left to extract.

We convert the treasures of the earth into stuff, only to use the stuff to degrade the earth.

===============================

A better way to design would look to for materials and resources post-consume, so instead of depleting the earth, it is diverting the stream which degrades the earth.

When I've tried to frame what this might look like, I've ended up with the phrase 'solutions looking for problems', which implies an inversion. The waste stream is where our resources are, the materials we've invested engineering in. We need to extract from there.

===============================

I see a parallel to search technology. An index of a document identifies where words are. An inverted index identifies the documents containing a word. An index is easy; an author can index a book, it takes Google to tell us where all the documents are containing the word we are interested in.

A bill of materials tells us what resources we need to gather.

An inverted bill of materials would tell us what we can build with these resources.

A bill of materials is easy, the limited problem domain of the project defines the materials required. It's indexing a book.

An inverted bill of materials requests familiarity with all projects and processes, and the resources required by them. It's Google scale.

Where should I put this stuff?

I just figured out a couple tedious little niggles: Why doesn't my samba mount line in /etc/fstab work in 12.10 like it did in 12.04? Why isn't git responding correctly to entries in .gitignore?

They both are annoying to track down, and I won't need either one again for a long time. They are arbitrary bits, don't fit into a visualized construct which would aid memory, so I need to store them outside my little head.

How can I minimize the effort required to retrieve the bits next time they are required?

"Don't bother, that's what google is for" I hear.

Well, it took a good 15 minutes of googling and testing to resolve, it could easily take longer next time ... boring ... and, exactly this problem is one I'm most interested in addressing.

Things I've tried:

- my 'docubi' gmail account using plus addressing: docubi+git at ...
- A Leo node
- bookmarking (doesn't work here, it took trials and errors on top of found info)
- Zotero: powerful, can create local copy of info page, associate notes or files
- Stackoverflow

and many others over the years.

How best to combine ease of entry and retrieval with  stability and flexibility?

I think using this here blog dealy is a step in the right direction, got your googleability, ownership with shareability, API for eventual automation of CRUD ...

So, as is my habit, next step is branding for differentiation. (try searching for info on the 'Processing' language, 'Go' makes a bit of sense given the convention of 'golang' but ... puh-leeze)

So, what cutesy invention is called for?
SAQ: Seldom Asked Questions (frequent ones are the ones I need to commit to memory) about 9,710,000 results
INFRAQ: INFRequently Asked Questions: about 40,000 hits
RARAQ: RARely Asked Questions: about 7.950 results

eight thousand results can be rounded to 0

google images RARAQ: about 1,480 mostly people, a guitar, anim, a white mouse that doesn't appear until the blank thumbnail is clicked ...

raraq dot com not registered ... resist ... urge ... to ... squat ...

Woohoo, getting published

One of the Gumpagraphs

will be on the 'Working class consciousness' card
of the Public Sphere 'Pattern Language' project,
http://publicsphereproject.org/drupal/node/211

It's available from wikimedia.org
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Well_repair.JPG

I'm tickled they picked it.

Before there were maps

Back then, I would describe the place I traveled to with a linear narrative. I would describe what I saw as I walked along ... a grove of trees to my left, further along a cliff to my right ...

Frustration with communicating via linear narrative resulted in picking up a stick and making marks representing a visual model of the landscape in my head. These scratches evolved into the world of cartography and GIS we now enjoy.

We deal with a lot of complexity today, cognitive complexity, complexity rooted in relationships between concepts. We explain these complex relationships via linear narrative, describing a journey along a path, pointing out the landmarks. The audience must build this cognitive landscape, registering each component and they way each connects to each other. Given the difficulty of this exercise, many get lost along the way.

We need maps, visualizations which place the concepts in space such their relation to each other is understood at a glance.

This is a fairly well known concept, and currently implemented as marks with a stick. My conviction is that it will evolve into tools which spatialize knowledge such that more is more quickly understood by more of us.

On linking

The Unix filesystem concept of ``links`` is quite wonderful. I remember a couple conversations with my father which touched on the question "is anything possible". For some reason my example to prove that, in fact, not all things are possible, was to state that I can't be both here, downstairs, and upstairs at the same time. It seemed irrefutable that a thing can only be in one place at one time.

That may or may not be true, but filesystem links offer cool magic.

However, the quality of explanans offered by Unix could be improved, and
the Python equivilent is flat out confusing.

$ man ln
...
SYNOPSIS
ln [OPTION]... [-T] TARGET LINK_NAME (1st form)
ln [OPTION]... TARGET (2nd form)
ln [OPTION]... TARGET... DIRECTORY (3rd form)
ln [OPTION]... -t DIRECTORY TARGET... (4th form)
...

Target and link_name are reasonable names, although a bit of a mixed metaphor, target implies an arrow or bullet, not link name. I also don't like the order, I approach the link and arrive at the target, why put the target first?

Python is much worse:

>>> help (os.symlink)

symlink(...) symlink(src, dst)

Create a symbolic link pointing to src named dst.

Huh? the destination points to the source? Just Plain Nuts, Don't Make Sense, Oh Puh Leaze.

***********************************************************

I've been for some time futzing with code to wrap link management, eventually want a buildout recipe which describes link wrangling, particularly the ``gather`` idiom, which moves a file to a managed location, replacing it with a link. Useful for versioning configuration.

I like the following spelling to describe links and files:

['ln1', 'thefile'] or ['ln3', 'ln2', 'ln1', 'thefile'] which could also look like: "ln3 -> ln2 -> ln1 -> thefile"

I think it would make me happy to specify links this way, both in arguments and and reports.

That is so wrong!

Since I seem to be settling on 'Gumpa' as my primary brand* it seems only right to act my age and channel some codger energy. Hey you kids, GET OFF MY LAWN. This is my first post which will be tagged TISW.

The metaphors used to discuss hierarchal data organization are SO wrong.

Take the file system.

It's often described as a tree, a tree with the root at the top, you descend to the files, which I've seen analagized as leaves.

Im my world trees don't have roots at the top and leaves at the bottom, in my world 'to descend' is to go down.

No wonder I've always felt somewhat slow in understanding explanations of file hierarchies, a small matter of their up being my down and visa-versa. Not to mention that file systems are not tree-like, they are container-like. Files are 'in' directories, not 'attached to' as leaves are to a branch.

I don't currently have suggestions for improvements, but it seems like it should be possible to provide a mental image that doesn't require hanging upside down to resolve the cognitive dischord.

Maybe the original work on this was done by bat-geeks at night, when they are upside down. No, they tend to be in caves, no trees in caves. I Know! it was the sloths. Of course, sloths live in trees, upside down, trees with roots at the top would make perfect sense to them.

Darn you sloths, TISW

* TODO acronymize gumpa

Better if used before

I've long been a fan of the `Better if Used Before` movement. A sustainable future clearly will require rethinking our relationship to reuse, repair, restore, repurpose, and, if all else fails, recycle. The Better if Used Before folks have been around for a long time. They do a great job of getting their message out, the tagline can be seen on lots of packaging. They understand the value of timestamping, along with the slogan will be a date.

As pervasive as their PR effort is, they keep a very low profile otherwise. All that Google seems to know is the work of an artist, looks wonderful, but it seems unlikely she's to thank for all the boxes proudly declaring 'Better if Used Before'

They evidently are deeply old school, however I think their mission is of such importance that it needs to leverage the advantages of the Web.

I hope to act on that thought.

BIUB has spawned many Web-based initiatives; Make, Instructables, Hackaday, etc., it's time they dipped a toe in the waters of the cloud.

Time as connective tissue

An expansion of applied synchronicity. The principle can be applied more widely, premised on logging timestamps on the following

- audio file playing
- web page focused
- image(s) focused in viewer
- phone # active on phone
- email message currently focused

Voice recognition input provides metadata for one of the above resources, in a format like::

audio put artist bob and ray id hard as nails tag interview tag staply

meaning

- audio = determine currently active audio file
- put = create a new chunk of data about the current audio file
- artist = active field of chunk is 'artist'
- bob and ray = key:artist, value:bob and ray
- id = create a new indexed entry key:id, value:'hard as nails' pointing to this record
- tag = append interview and staply to the list of tags on this audio file

or::

image put category sunrise tag frost

- image = determine currently focused images(s)
- put = create new data for these image(s)
- category = active field of image record(s) is category
- sunrise = key:category, value:sunrise
- tag = append frost to the list of tags on this(these) images

The magic is in *currently*. We know the timestamp of the voice, we've stamped it's begin time, the file knows time offset at any point.

We parse the logs to determine the correct association to make with the voice commands, the logs tell us what audio, web page, images ... we are referring to.

I think there is real potential here, the voice recognition demands are not too great, controlled voice and vocabulary, the logging and persuant matching up seem fairly doable.

Applied synchronicity

I'm relishing the brilliance of Bob and Ray, listening to a collection of mp3's: 5 days and 22 hours of them.

They should be indexed, I don't have 6 days to devote to the project.

How could I multitask, do the indexing efficiently in the background?

It seems it could be done via time-based data matching. The audio player logs timestamps with filename as it plays the set of files. I record voice messages describing what skit is being played, these voice files are timestamped. An application matches words in my voice recording with the index into the file being played.

The ideal would be a wearing a bluetooth mic, speak into it to record an index into the currently playing file.

A more accessible start towards that goal would be to provide the index info via keyboard instead of voice.

Poetic Inventions

When I was a child, at family gatherings, we
would often play "The Game" our version of
charades. We didn't use the sign language I've
since seen charades players use, and we had
no restrictions on the choosing of phrases.

We took a primitive approach to acting out.
Oh, sometimes it was a movie, book or quotation
which we could symbolize with gesture,
but the good ones were usually the PIs.
Poetic Invention. Phrases invented purely for
the pleasure of watching the opposing team
members struggle to silently explain.

We allowed a VERY generous amount of time
to squirm, and there was none of this drawing
from a hat to get your assignment, you were
gleefully drawn taken from the room to receive
your assignment, it had your name on it.

Sure, there would be an occasional complaint,
"... really now ...", but they were never outlawed,
and provided a great deal of entertainment.

I've continued to take pleasure in new words,
phrases, usage. Up til now, a self-indulgent
proclivity without value.

But the world has changed.

In yesterday's post I used the word 'gleanage' which
doesn't isn't currently considered a word,
but which I think is needed to fill a void in our language.

That was yesterday, today I typed 'gleanage' into
a Google box. The first result is my blog entry.

Out of the ?? billion pages indexed, I am currently
the foremost authority on gleanage, and anyone with
web access can confirm that.

Wow.

Gleanage

I've long been frustrated by the words available to talk about the waste stream.

Waste, garbage, trash, refuse, junk ... all these words are
rooted in the premise that there is no value in the discarded.

A dictionary definition of glean:

"To collect (something) bit by bit."

Glean comes from the ancient tradition of gleaning:

"Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers'
fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields
where it is not economically profitable to harvest."

So,to glean is to recognize and harvest the value in the unwanted.

Gleanage is that which has been gleaned, that which has to do
with gleaning.

What if

For those interested in writing documentation, what if you
you could place images in your content with the same ease
you place words? I'm not talking about desktop publishing.
Don't think Publisher, think Vim, Emacs, Eclipse raising
images to the level of words. Rich metadata wrappers for
your growing library of images, which you now refer to as
'visual explanations'

I for one would be tickled pink by such an authoring
environment.

What if your document contained layers like programmer,
administrator and user. You could, at any point place your
content on the layer targeting the appropriate audience.

Me, I'd grin ear to ear.

What if your environment understood how to manage your
content as chunks which would become available for
repurposing, What if it also understood how to run code and
knew it's way around your filesystem?

I'm thinking "cat's pajamas"

What if this tool understood that there's a Web out there,
that folks are creating and sharing at a breakneck pace,
knew how to publish and subscribe?

--Wiggle with delight--

What if the toolchain existed as an open source project
which, via global collaboration, was assembled using
existing best practices, tools, and standards-based data
management principles?

I want one.

What if audio chunks were similarly elevated?

Woof. As BB King says in So Excited,
"I better stop now because I got a weak heart"

An example

I yammer about documentation, combining images and text.

I have posted a primitive example here:
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/KentTenney

It is about the mechnism to add capability to Inkscape with Python code.

I like the connection of code to the result in the GUI.

I like the triangle between the 3 uses of "text" in the code, illustrating the requirement for synchronization.

I like the screen grabs of using the application; setting password in winpdb, attaching to demo.py, with a highlighted connection to the germane line in the script. I consider screen grabs of what is being done much more informative than a textual description.

Toolchains

So I want to change the name of a Python module. It requires a bit of search and replace, brings me to a familiar fork in the road. How much effort should I put into learning tricks which increase editing efficiency? Should I slog through changing `grab` to `grabber`, or should I study up on regex in Vim so that the process is automated to some degree? I think it was Douglas Adams who described his (geekdom's) propensity to spend several days tuning a bit of code that avoided 15 minutes of tedium.

Here's the toolchain:

thought -> fingers -> keyboard -> Vim -> file -> code -> interpreter -> action

There are toolchains within each of the elements above.
Can toolchains be generalized into a cognitive equivilent of timelines?
Hope so, generalizations and equivilence are always good.

Each element of the chain offers opportunity to consider the trade off between getting 'er done, and adding or improving a tool. Abraham Lincoln is credited something like "If I had 6 hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend 4 sharpening the axe"

A story

I'm attempting to come out, establish my identity out there. Here's a retelling of a story which I consider really important. I wish I could find the original, I try periodically, no luck.

It was told as being a description of an actual event.

A researcher was administering evaluation exams to members of an Indian Nation, I think it was in the southwest. Exams like SAT, meant to determine knowledge level.

The researcher passed out the exams, said he'd be back to check progress in 1/2 hour.

Upon his return, he was shocked to find everyone in the room discussing the questions, comparing answers.

"This is all wrong, you are cheating, the purpose of this test is to determine what each one of you knows, you MAY NOT talk to each other during this test."

The next time he checked in, he found the examinees making paper airplanes from the tests, telling jokes, they had abandoned any pretense of taking the test.

The examiner asked what was going on.

"What your requested makes no sense, has no meaning. You don't understand how knowledge works. Knowledge is held by our community, not by individuals. Your interest in individual knowledge is foolish and we won't participate"

An analogy might be a contest among pianists, they are only allowed to use one finger. Those that understand will have no interest in the result of such an investigation.

This is from the same culture which honors giveaways, the quality of one's gifts determining level of respect, not the amount one accumulates.

I think these are principles which are taking on new life in the infoworld. Cooperation and collaboration are being valued over competition. The open source world is a gift culture.

Designate 'catcher' for selections

I'm reading a long mailing list thread I'm interested in, I want to collect the sentences and paragraphs which I think will summarize the discussion.

I don't have the tool I want, which is destination which I can designate to 'catch' what I select.

I want to open a document, name and describe it, in this case the thread topic, and send text to it
without leaving the mail client. Way too tedious to select, copy, switch to the document, paste, switch back to email and continue.

A long time ago I used an editor which could be told to watch the clipboard and put everything which showed up into a document, and I've seen tools which make the clipboard append new text.

Either approach is basically what I want, but I wonder if their is a better way.

Sources of content

- browser
- pdf files
- other documents

I think most would come from a browser.

How long?

Not long.

Names these days

Explanans.

There, I said it again.

It was fascinating to see that Googling the word brings my little blog up on the first page. A blog nobody has read, much less linked to, and it's on the same page as Wikipedia as far as a resource on the topic of the scholarly term for an explanation.

There's a highly regarded templating tool project named Deliverance. Try finding information on that.

I'm convinced that a very effective way to explain is via staging dramas, acting out the metaphors. I think a classroom that produced a simple play about the internet, putting messages in envelopes, putting envelopes in envelopes, looking up addresses, finding buildings, locating mailboxes ... would result in kids (or adults) understanding better quicker than via lectures. And having more fun in the process.

For this idea I'm not taking any chances, I'm making up a word. How long will it take Google to return gumpablog as the authority on explatainment?

strace

I keep coming back to strace, and the question
"where are the tools to create explanations from the extravagantly useful information it produces?"

Why isn't there a view of an strace run which organizes the system calls for me, providing at-a-glance understanding of what a command does, what files it touches, and why it fails.