We Are the Past

On 3/31/07 12:29, "Kenneth Prager" <pragerieee.org> wrote:

> Take a month off from running.
>
> I had a bad IT problem back in 2000, when I last did marathons (I
> primarily cycle now). I was training for the California
> International Marathon, which is the first week in December. I
> ramped up too fast in October and the IT bothered me all November. I
> got through the marathon but could barely walk the next day. I took
> the rest of December off--didn't run once and started again in
> January. The IT band never bothered me again and I was able to
> complete the Napa Valley Marathon in March, pain-free.

Adam, if your doc gives you the okay, find a Tai Chi or Yoga class. You're
in Ithaca, so with the colleges, it shouldn't be too hard to find one. The
slowness of the movements is great for flexibility and strength.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On 31-Mar-2007, at 11:29, Paul Welty wrote:
> At the risk of being speculative, I've often considered that your
> "Mac generation" (so to speak) is identifiable by which 2 pieces of
> "tech" software you use regularly.
>
> The older generation uses BBEdit and Interarchy.
>
> The younger generation uses TextMate and Transmit.
>
> [I use BBEdit and Transmit -Joe]

Oh my. I use BBEdit and ncftp.

I must be ANCIENT.

On Mar 31, 2007, at 8:46 PM, Google Kreme wrote:

>> The older generation uses BBEdit and Interarchy.
>>
>> The younger generation uses TextMate and Transmit.
>>
>> [I use BBEdit and Transmit -Joe]
>
> Oh my. I use BBEdit and ncftp.

Or emacs and scp (command line ftp if scp not supported).

   ;-)

   --John

Google Kreme wrote:
> On 31-Mar-2007, at 11:29, Paul Welty wrote:
>> At the risk of being speculative, I've often considered that your
>> "Mac generation" (so to speak) is identifiable by which 2 pieces of
>> "tech" software you use regularly.
>>
>> The older generation uses BBEdit and Interarchy.
>>
>> The younger generation uses TextMate and Transmit.
>>
>> [I use BBEdit and Transmit -Joe]
>
> Oh my. I use BBEdit and ncftp.
>
> I must be ANCIENT.

Nahh. You'd be ancient if you used vi and ncftp. You'd be dead if you
used ex and ftp.

I use both vi and ncftp pretty frequently, but I usually use emacs and
Interarchy. There is one machine that I need to ftp on occasionally
that doesn't have ncftp, so I use ftp. I haven't used ed or ex in years.

--
Paul Schinder
schinderpobox.com

On 1/4/2007 3:46 PM, "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com> spake thus:

> Oh my. I use BBEdit and ncftp.
>
> I must be ANCIENT.

I use BBEdit, vim, Interarchy, wget, scp, ...

Man am I confused :)

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://xri.net/=nigel.stanger

On 3/31/07, Google Kreme <gkremegmail.com> wrote:
> On 31-Mar-2007, at 11:29, Paul Welty wrote:
> > At the risk of being speculative, I've often considered that your
> > "Mac generation" (so to speak) is identifiable by which 2 pieces of
> > "tech" software you use regularly.
> >
> > The older generation uses BBEdit and Interarchy.
> >
> > The younger generation uses TextMate and Transmit.
> >
> > [I use BBEdit and Transmit -Joe]
>
> Oh my. I use BBEdit and ncftp.
>
> I must be ANCIENT.

I use Fetch and I'm currently wavering between BBEdit & TextMate. I
really like TextMate's macros.


[OK, it's funny, folks, but let's not turn this thread into a survey of your text editing and FTP habits. :-) -Adam]

On Mar 27, 2007, at 7:04 PM, Tom Robinson wrote:

> Appropriate new article on Ars, Study says: leave the multitasking to
> your computer
>
> <http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070327-study-says-leave-the-
> multitasking-to-your-computer.html>

The article is very interesting, and the subject needs more research.
Probably the best subjects for the research would be mothers with
at least three children.......

>>> The older generation uses BBEdit and Interarchy.
>>>
>>> The younger generation uses TextMate and Transmit.
>>>
>>> [I use BBEdit and Transmit -Joe]
>>
>> Oh my. I use BBEdit and ncftp.
>>
>> I must be ANCIENT.
>
> Nahh. You'd be ancient if you used vi and ncftp.

oh. Ah.. yeah, well. <looks around> well, yeah.

> I use both vi and ncftp pretty frequently, but I usually use emacs and
> Interarchy. There is one machine that I need to ftp on occasionally
> that doesn't have ncftp, so I use ftp. I haven't used ed or ex in
> years.

I never got into the cult of Emacs, and use vi for all of my remote
editing. I also use it for short simple stuff on my own machine, or
for editing system files on my won machine. For stuff like HTML and
PHP though, it's mostly BBEdit.

Of course, when I say 'vi' I actually mean vim or nvi.

On Apr 2, 2007, at 19:43 PM, Google Kreme wrote:

> I never got into the cult of Emacs, and use vi for all of my remote
> editing.

I never got into the cult of vi, and use emacs for all of my remote
editing.

(And -- on a serious note -- I find emacs's HTML editing mode a lot
more helpful than BBEdit's.)

--
Chris Page - Super Happy Fun Programmer

  Do not taunt Super Happy Fun Programmer.

r2ggentlysloping.com wrote:
>> And I think that's also the OP's point about his mother-in-law,
>> which I don't
>> think 'r2' quite caught; even when she does know the URL off the
>> top of her
>> head, she puts that into Google, rather than the address bar. Now
>> that can't
>> be faster!
>>
> Of course I caught it -- I was just kidding with the OP. But
> generally, I find these kind of stories unfair when they're used to
> generalize about a population. Even if the mother-in-law is dense, it
> doesn't mean that the majority of people in their 70s are too. My 74
> year old sister isn't afraid of technology, and I have no doubt she
> wouldn't need to wait for anyone to replace her ink cartridges. On
> the other hand, our mother, who I think was just as technically
> capable, used to ask me when I was a teenager to change the ink
> refills in ball point pens -- they were the new thing then. So she
> would be considered over-the-hill at a much younger age than the OP's
> mother-in-law by these standards.

My MIL is NOT dense. But this quote from the last Tidbits explains the
issue.

> **Setting It Up** -- I knew that just sending my mother a blank iMac
> wouldn't be the best idea in the world. It's taken me many years to
> get her comfortable on Windows and I've learned that her way of
> navigating around a system is pure memorization. This is a trend
> I've seen in a lot of people who weren't raised on technology -
> while most of us understand the contextual information of modern
> graphical operating systems, many people still don't understand the
> little boxes, symbols, and other hints we use to get around. Like my
> mother they rely on nearly rote memorization of exactly where to
> click and when. By buying her a Mac I was removing both what little
> context she relied on, and all of the process paths she used from
> day to day.

I'm the OP. :)

Those of us who read Tidbits have a very hard time understanding folks
who's only use of a computer has been the ATM and Debit card station in
the check out line. They have absolutely no understanding of what's
going on "under the hood" or what the metaphors are all about.

Think of teaching someone to drive. If they grew up in the US in areas
like mid-town Manhattan and didn't ride taxis regularly then they
literally don't know what is going on. I grew up around riding lawn
mowers, (one built by my dad and his uncle that was almost licensable),
farm tractors, and rode in a car or truck everywhere from age 0 to 14.
So when I started to learn to drive at that age (off road) I knew how
the car worked and what all the controls were for. And even if you grew
up in affluent suburbia you still go a good experience in cars for 12 to
14 years before you started to try and drive.

For many older folks computers are almost like the lunar lander in terms
of understanding.

David Ross

> Think of teaching someone to drive. If they grew up in the US in areas
> like mid-town Manhattan and didn't ride taxis regularly then they
> literally don't know what is going on. I grew up around riding lawn
> mowers, (one built by my dad and his uncle that was almost licensable),
> farm tractors, and rode in a car or truck everywhere from age 0 to 14.
> So when I started to learn to drive at that age (off road) I knew how
> the car worked and what all the controls were for. And even if you grew
> up in affluent suburbia you still go a good experience in cars for 12 to
> 14 years before you started to try and drive.

I can vouch for that. I grew up in NYC and didn't learn to drive until
I moved to L.A. in my 20s.

Paul Schinder wrote:
> Google Kreme wrote:
>> On 31-Mar-2007, at 11:29, Paul Welty wrote:
>>> At the risk of being speculative, I've often considered that your
>>> "Mac generation" (so to speak) is identifiable by which 2 pieces of
>>> "tech" software you use regularly.
>>>
>>> The older generation uses BBEdit and Interarchy.
>>>
>>> The younger generation uses TextMate and Transmit.
>>>
>>> [I use BBEdit and Transmit -Joe]
>> Oh my. I use BBEdit and ncftp.
>>
>> I must be ANCIENT.
>
> Nahh. You'd be ancient if you used vi and ncftp. You'd be dead if you
> used ex and ftp.
>
I'm not dead. But I did spend an all nighter in the 70s transferring a
file via a 300bps modem from one mini-computer to another across town.
FTP was way into the future. We didn't have the $10,000 in vendor
software (not even sure if that was an option at the time). So we were
on one phone line patching machine code till we got the file through
unmangled. We HAD to get it done that night and there was no compatible
media between the boxes.

My point is really old farts wrote their own FTP in machine code. :)

David Ross

Dan Hardt wrote:
>
> On Mar 27, 2007, at 7:04 PM, Tom Robinson wrote:
>
>> Appropriate new article on Ars, Study says: leave the multitasking to
>> your computer
>>
>> <http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070327-study-says-leave-the-
>> multitasking-to-your-computer.html>
>
> The article is very interesting, and the subject needs more research.
> Probably the best subjects for the research would be mothers with
> at least three children.......
>
Actually only 2 or 3. Only 1 is trivial compared to 2 or more. (As hard
as that might be to believe for those with only 1.) But with 4 or more
they tend to keep each other amused and out of many (but not all)
Bizarre situations. At least as long as the ages aren't too far apart.

On Apr 11, 2007, at 4:20 AM, David Ross wrote:

> My point is really old farts wrote their own FTP in machine code. :)

Not many others on this list have punched Hollerith (not "IBM") cards
on an IBM model 010 punch.

The 010 (both round things are zeros) had a button for each of the 12
rows on the card, and a "hold" button so you could multi-punch, and
an advance button so you could leave a column blank. It helped to
know the encoding cold. But the 010 sat there unused, while the 026s
had lines, so I got a lot of quick punching done.

   --John
  

Hi,

It brings back memories of long trays of cards. Our engineering class
soon learned to us colored markers to devise reconstructing the
Hollerith card sequence if dropped! We had to write our own compliers
and programs which could be tedious even if you were sure about what
you intended to do. Our first homework assignment was to write a
program that could calculate square roots which turned out to be a
stinker.

Just think, computers without monitors!

Terry

On Apr 11, 2007, at 7:20 AM, David Ross wrote:
> I'm not dead. But I did spend an all nighter in the 70s transferring a
> file via a 300bps modem from one mini-computer to another across town.
> FTP was way into the future. We didn't have the $10,000 in vendor
> software (not even sure if that was an option at the time). So we were
> on one phone line patching machine code till we got the file through
> unmangled. We HAD to get it done that night and there was no
> compatible
> media between the boxes.
>
> My point is really old farts wrote their own FTP in machine code. :)

Remember FTP by email? You know, not all computers were networked to
"The Internet". Most people did have email access, so those folks use
to use an email gateway for FTP. The old O'Reilly books use to have
instructions on how to download files for the book by their FTP email
gateway. I setup one of the first "universal" FTP email gateways.
This meant that not only could you download files on that particular
machine, but you could request FTP files on other systems.

Of course, before FTP (which assumed an IP network), there was UUCP
(Unix to Unix Copy). UUCP made no silly assumptions that two
computers were actually connected. When you UUCP'd a file to another
machine, you had no idea how the file would actually get there. It
could be by some network, using Kermit, or someone physically moving
a magnetic tape from one machine to another. Setting up and running
UUCP networks was my specialty. Even after UUCP died, sending files
in email via the uuencode and decode commands was around for quite a
while before MIME capable emailers became popular.

Then AOL let all those Newbies on the Internet and everything went
downhill from there. Now, leave Grandpa in peace while he downloads
porn from the alt.binaries newsgroups.


[OK, folks, let's wind down the reminiscing. We're just proving the thread subject in spades. -Adam]


--
David Weintraub
davidweintraubworld.net
davidweintraub.name

We who are the past would not have considered tracking part of a new
bridge as it travels across the state, using a combination of GPS,
cell phone, and Google Maps.

<http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/projects/sr16narrowsbridge/track/>

   --John

John W Baxter wrote:
> We who are the past would not have considered tracking part of a new
> bridge as it travels across the state, using a combination of GPS,
> cell phone, and Google Maps.
>
> <http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/projects/sr16narrowsbridge/track/>
>
> --John

Actually some of us did. We just thought it would be more based on
inertial systems, not a satellite system of incredibly low powered
radios. The background noise in the frequencies used for the US GPS
system is stronger than the received signals.

DSP (Digital Signal Processing) is what makes this and much of our
current digital (and what many think of as analog) world work these
days. That's the other one that many of us never thought of "back in the
day". It removes 1000s of components by turning filtering and signal
extraction from a "how do we build this filter" into "what's the
equation we want to solve"? Amazing to many of us how it has simplified
things.

Phones (of every kind), disk drives, modems, GPS, TVs, radios,
networking, almost anything where information of some kind needs to get
from one place to another.

At 5:46 AM -0700 2007/03/26, Alexander Hoffman wrote:
>>>I am trying to get back into the habit of them with google bookmarks,
>>>but it's hard. The fact of the matter is, typing something,
>>>anything, into goolge is generally faster than finding it in the
>>>bookmarks.
>
>Bookmarks act as an autocomplete database for URLs. That's makes
>saving them them faster than going to google.

        I believe this also works based on history in Safari, so
bookmarking isn't actually necessary.

--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
                              <http://www.extrapepperoni.com/>
The Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

At 7:43 PM -0700 2007/04/02, Google Kreme wrote:

>>I use both vi and ncftp pretty frequently, but I usually use emacs and
>>Interarchy. There is one machine that I need to ftp on occasionally
>>that doesn't have ncftp, so I use ftp. I haven't used ed or ex in
>>years.
>
>I never got into the cult of Emacs, and use vi for all of my remote
>editing. I also use it for short simple stuff on my own machine, or
>for editing system files on my won machine. For stuff like HTML and
>PHP though, it's mostly BBEdit.

        I've switched to doing remote editing in BBEdit for
nontrivial tasks, something like:

for h in host1 host2 ... host12; do bbedit sftp://root$h//etc/shadow ; done

        Then repeat for /etc/passwd. This makes it easy to reconcile
accounts across substantial numbers of machines (lots of cleanup
going on this month; yes, I do make backups of the remote files; and
yes, it does freak me out a bit).

http://www.extrapepperoni.com/2007/04/03/todays-accomplishment-sso-ssh-upgrades/


--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
                              <http://www.extrapepperoni.com/>
The Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>