politics, sorry, but this is great...

On 2022-01-18 18:28, David Brown wrote:
On 18/01/2022 17:47, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 17:09:02 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
Was Phil\'s comment too subtle for you? Did you miss the smiley? Or did
you think that posting that drivel would somehow make it true, or that
it would raise the tone of the thread?

Going personal and emotional again. Can you address the issue?


What issue? Your imaginary straw men? It doesn\'t make sense to try to
\"address\" the kind of monkey-with-a-typewriter stuff you sometimes throw
out. It doesn\'t even have enough content to be called \"wrong\".

Will you stop this pointless bickering yet?

Jeroen Belleman
 
On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 1:37:55 PM UTC-8, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

The ideal discriminator finds the centroid time of noisy pulses of
varying amplitude and width. And has zero insertion delay of course.

That\'s nearly what a Wilkinson ADC circuit does. But, it\'s not exactly the centroid, it\'s
the peak that is detected. Current reversal into an integrating capacitor through a diode
gives a nice sharp edge for timing.

More accurate is an FFT technique that samples many points before and after the peak,
and deconvolves the shaggy peak shape from the sharp delta-function which is your
time-of-arrival. That\'s not zero-delay, though.
 
On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 9:04:00 AM UTC-8, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

I suggested that people who are experts at control
theory are better at understanding dynamic systems than people who are
not. Do you disagree?

Hypothetically, a governor claims not to be responsible for dynamics of a crowd
sent to confront a legislature in session. Is he likely expert at control, and DID
understand those dynamics, or is he inexpert at control, so couldn\'t predict a riot?

Inexpert at control :== incompetent
Expert at control:== guilty of malfeasance
 
On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 3:47:23 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 17:09:02 +0100, David Brown
david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 18/01/2022 16:35, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 16:10:45 -0500, Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamM...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
David Brown wrote:
On 17/01/2022 19:59, Phil Hobbs wrote:
David Brown wrote:
On 17/01/2022 15:44, Phil Hobbs wrote:
Pomegranate Bastard wrote:
On Sun, 16 Jan 2022 17:29:12 +0100, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 16/01/2022 16:25, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sun, 16 Jan 2022 13:49:15 +0000, Pomegranate Bastard <Pom...@aol.com> wrote:
On Sat, 15 Jan 2022 20:11:26 -0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:
John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in news:6nv3ugto7ejcn4lsd...@4ax.com:

<snip>

Were you trying to attack me personally by condemning millions of
professionals as incompetent at practically everything in their
profession or outside it? Is it just another aspect of your bigotry,
beating on anyone who is not exactly like you? I really find it hard to
understand what drives someone who is clearly intelligent to write such
wide-ranging, unjustified and unsubstantiated negative posts.

I thought the concept was reasonable and worth discussing. Systems are
best analyzed by people who are experts at quantitative time-domain
system behavior.

Except that the economy is a mathematically intractable non-linear system, and experts at quantitative time-domain systems behavior are experts on systems that are designed to be tractable and are mostly linear, or linearisable.

> Economists also seem to ignore control theory.

Probably because it is irrelevant to the systems they are trying to control.

> They spin big knobs too much, too late. No rational PID.

As Keynes pointed out, rationality isn\'t a feature of the real economy. This has spelled out in more detail more recently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

Daniel Kahneman got the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics for spelling this out in detail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman

You seem to be channeling James Arthur here, who does seem to be addicted to the kinds of mathematical models of the economy which are mathematically tractable, but unfortunately don\'t model the real economy.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
 
David Brown wrote:
On 18/01/2022 16:35, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 16:10:45 -0500, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

David Brown wrote:
On 17/01/2022 19:59, Phil Hobbs wrote:
David Brown wrote:
On 17/01/2022 15:44, Phil Hobbs wrote:
Pomegranate Bastard wrote:
On Sun, 16 Jan 2022 17:29:12 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 16/01/2022 16:25, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sun, 16 Jan 2022 13:49:15 +0000, Pomegranate Bastard
PommyB@aol.com> wrote:

On Sat, 15 Jan 2022 20:11:26 -0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:

John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in
news:6nv3ugto7ejcn4lsdte4jrduf6oag2o1ph@4ax.com:

Conservatives are better engineers too.


   You just can\'t stop spouting retarded, divisive stupid shit, eh?
You should have somebody sew that upper anus shut.

Best ignore the gullible old narcissist.

Several of them. They don\'t design electronics anyhow.


You do realise that people who actually /do/ design work - real
work, on
real products - rarely discuss details of proprietary designs with
random strangers on the internet?  The only people here who talk about
their work are amateurs (nothing wrong with that - it is not an insult
of any kind), retirees (again, nothing wrong with that) and people who
boast about how much better they are than everyone else, despite a
complete absence of any kind of evidence or justification.

Precisely. Couldn\'t have put it better myself.

Classically narcissistic behaviour.

Dunno--I discuss my proprietary designs here all the time, and put them
in books too.  It helps my business, as well as sometimes generating
useful info for me as well as others.

IME the folks who hold their \'crown jewels\' super close to the vest tend
to overrate said jewels\' actual value by a lot.  I\'ve had people tell me
\"in confidence\" things I\'d known for 20 years, such as that you need to
filter the drive to your TE coolers very carefully to avoid crap getting
into the cold-plate circuitry.


One big difference is whether the designs are your own property, or the
customers\'.  In my work, the majority of what we do is design for
customers - I could not possibly give out information about those
designs to others.  The same would apply to employees of a company.

If you own your company and make your own designs, then you have all the
rights and can discuss them as you want - but I think that would be the
case for only a very small proportion of professional engineers.

That\'s true, but it\'s a very different statement from the preceding.

I do a fair amount of code reading for patent and trade secret lawsuits.
  The legal protections for produced source code are enough to curl your
hair, so you\'d expect that the code would really be something special.

 From the tens of thousands of lines I\'ve seen of such \'crown jewels\',
the quality and the density of good ideas is far lower than on Stack
Overflow, say.


Sometimes that\'s why they want to keep it so secret :)

Could well be.  A lot of it is real genuine crudware--a clever
engineering manager could set his competition back years just by leaking
it to them.  \"Technical debt\", Venezuela style.

Most engineering - electronic or software - is not hugely innovative.
Good engineering is mainly about implementing solid, reliable and
cost-effective solutions.  Revolutionary new ideas are relatively rare,
but of course they can be very important.  (What is that saying?
Invention is 1% innovation, 99% perspiration?)

Edison said that because he was doing it wrong.  (Just ask Nikola Tesla
next time you see him--he\'ll confirm it.)  Edison introduced a very
important engineering metric--the inspiration/perspiration ratio--but
his quoted value of just over 1% shows a lot of room for improvement. ;)


Sure - I don\'t think the numbers are realistic (even if it were possible
to quantify them). My point is that most of the content of good designs
is not actually particularly new or exciting - a little bit of new idea
can go a long way. (And I don\'t disagree with your suggestion that a
lot of designs are neither good nor innovative!).

Larkin will claim his stuff is all new revolutionary ideas, but we all
know the value of his claims.

John and I have collaborated on several projects over the last dozen
years or so.  He\'s one of the two or three best designers I know, and
great fun to design things with.  I\'m hoping to do a bit of that next
week, in fact, when EOI is making a collective visit to Photonics West.

Maybe you move in more rarefied circles.


I have no reason to suspect that John Larkin is /not/ a good designer.
I simply see no reason to place any weight in his own opinions of
himself or his views on engineering. It is entirely reasonable to
suppose he is very good at a narrow and specialised field while being so
ignorant, biased or confused in so many other topics that turn up in
this newsgroup.

Well, you\'re a software guy, so I guess that settles it. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Good point. Consider what electronic designers deal with: basic
physics, a bit of QM, mechanics, electromagnetics, thermo,
signals-and-systems, filtering, control theory, noise, optics,
statistics, nonlinear system behavior, digital system behavior,
metastabity, speed of light effects, corner-case failure mechanisms,
market dynamics, data sheet deceptions, real-world electrical and
thermal behavior of parts and systems, reliability, manufacturing,
costs.

Consider what a programmer deals with: typing some high-level language
with little or no visibility down the abstraction stack. No theory
required. Usually no connection to physical reality. Little or no
math. Reliability is mainly patching the worst bugs that users find.
Essentially no relationship to \"computer science\", whose experts scorn
grunts who write code.


Which profession is more likely to give a person useful instincts and
analysis tools for the dynamic behavior of a tribe or an economy or a
society?

I wonder how many official EEs write decent code, and how many
official programmers design decent electronics.


Was Phil\'s comment too subtle for you? Did you miss the smiley?

Kindly don\'t rent my name for your stupid flame wars. My point was not
the same as John\'s, but ran along the same lines--it\'s pretty funny for
a pure SW guy to lecture SED at such length and with such warmth about
what constitutes good engineering-as-such.

I respectfully suggest that you stick to your knitting.

Phil Hobbs
 
On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 12:44:17 PM UTC+11, Phil Hobbs wrote:
David Brown wrote:
On 18/01/2022 16:35, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 16:10:45 -0500, Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamM...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
David Brown wrote:
On 17/01/2022 19:59, Phil Hobbs wrote:
David Brown wrote:
On 17/01/2022 15:44, Phil Hobbs wrote:
Pomegranate Bastard wrote:
On Sun, 16 Jan 2022 17:29:12 +0100, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 16/01/2022 16:25, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sun, 16 Jan 2022 13:49:15 +0000, Pomegranate Bastard <Pom....@aol.com> wrote:
On Sat, 15 Jan 2022 20:11:26 -0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:
John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in news:6nv3ugto7ejcn4lsd...@4ax.com:

<snip>

> My point was not the same as John\'s, but ran along the same lines--it\'s pretty funny for a pure SW guy to lecture SED at such length and with such warmth about what constitutes good engineering-as-such.

Not really. Electronic design does involve writing software - partitioning the solution into hardware and software elements is very much part of the modern electronic design I\'ve been doing since the 1980\'s. The code has to be engineered just as skillfully as the hardware.

> I respectfully suggest that you stick to your knitting.

So Phil doesn\'t write any software - and doesn\'t have to worry about the performance of the software incorporated into his systems? I didn\'t write much software after I\'d become a hardware engineer but I did spend a lot time talking to the software engineers about what my hardware was doing and what their software needed to do for it (and the system as a whole, wearing my systems engineer hat). Once they had real-time operating systems to play with that got to be quite productive and satisfying for both sides.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
 
On 19/01/2022 02:44, Phil Hobbs wrote:
David Brown wrote:

Was Phil\'s comment too subtle for you?  Did you miss the smiley? 

Kindly don\'t rent my name for your stupid flame wars. 

My apologies for that. You /did/ have a smiley, and John /did/ miss it,
and your comment is in this same thread. But it was inappropriate for
me to write in a way that appeared to be putting words in your mouth.


My point was not
the same as John\'s, but ran along the same lines--it\'s pretty funny for
a pure SW guy to lecture SED at such length and with such warmth about
what constitutes good engineering-as-such.

Sorry, but you have completely missed the point here.

First, I am an engineer - primarily software, but also electronics. I
have designed many boards (or parts of boards), mostly in industrial
control systems, and primarily digital parts. I do little these days,
simply, because others in my company do it better and I have other
tasks, but I am still involved. I don\'t do advanced analogue stuff or
very high frequency boards, and much of the topical electronics threads
here are of little interest to me. On the software side I cover a very
wide span, including lots of the theory and maths that John thinks are
beyond anyone who is not a analogue electronics engineer. My expert
knowledge is perhaps /different/ from your and John\'s, but that does not
make it any less expert.

Secondly, be clear that I have not been denigrating John\'s design
abilities or his knowledge and experience at the kind of electronics
design he does. I have seen nothing (significant) in any posts to
suggest he is anything but an expert in his niche.

What I /have/ commented on is his wide-sweeping generalisations about
what \"makes a good engineer\" and how that supposedly correlates to other
factors. These have been made with no justification, no data, no
references, no logic, no reasoning - nothing but pure prejudice and
contrary to reality. He has made wild political generalisations that
are equally asinine. His response to counter-arguments is to play the
martyr card claiming childish personal insults, and to make ridiculous
broad insults attacking my peers.

I\'m sorry, but I /am/ fully qualified to reject that kind of nonsense.
Everyone is - you don\'t need to be an electronics engineer to see the
irrationality in his writings, see how blinkered and limited his
understanding of the world and other people, and how little he cares for
anyone outside his bubble of rich kids.

My preference is always to attack arguments, not people. When someone
writes something baseless, irrational or nasty, I call it that. When a
person writes enough such nonsense, and I call it out enough, it\'s easy
for things to spill over into (perceived or real) personal attacks
rather than argument attacks.

I respectfully suggest that John sticks to his electronics, where he
knows what he is talking about.
 
On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 09:42:14 +0100, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 19/01/2022 02:44, Phil Hobbs wrote:
David Brown wrote:

Was Phil\'s comment too subtle for you?  Did you miss the smiley? 

Kindly don\'t rent my name for your stupid flame wars. 

My apologies for that. You /did/ have a smiley, and John /did/ miss it,
and your comment is in this same thread. But it was inappropriate for
me to write in a way that appeared to be putting words in your mouth.


My point was not
the same as John\'s, but ran along the same lines--it\'s pretty funny for
a pure SW guy to lecture SED at such length and with such warmth about
what constitutes good engineering-as-such.

Sorry, but you have completely missed the point here.

First, I am an engineer - primarily software, but also electronics. I
have designed many boards (or parts of boards), mostly in industrial
control systems, and primarily digital parts. I do little these days,
simply, because others in my company do it better and I have other
tasks, but I am still involved. I don\'t do advanced analogue stuff or
very high frequency boards, and much of the topical electronics threads
here are of little interest to me. On the software side I cover a very
wide span, including lots of the theory and maths that John thinks are
beyond anyone who is not a analogue electronics engineer. My expert
knowledge is perhaps /different/ from your and John\'s, but that does not
make it any less expert.

Secondly, be clear that I have not been denigrating John\'s design
abilities or his knowledge and experience at the kind of electronics
design he does. I have seen nothing (significant) in any posts to
suggest he is anything but an expert in his niche.

What I /have/ commented on is his wide-sweeping generalisations about
what \"makes a good engineer\" and how that supposedly correlates to other
factors. These have been made with no justification, no data, no
references, no logic, no reasoning - nothing but pure prejudice and
contrary to reality. He has made wild political generalisations that
are equally asinine. His response to counter-arguments is to play the
martyr card claiming childish personal insults, and to make ridiculous
broad insults attacking my peers.

I\'m sorry, but I /am/ fully qualified to reject that kind of nonsense.
Everyone is - you don\'t need to be an electronics engineer to see the
irrationality in his writings, see how blinkered and limited his
understanding of the world and other people, and how little he cares for
anyone outside his bubble of rich kids.

My preference is always to attack arguments, not people. When someone
writes something baseless, irrational or nasty, I call it that.

In other words you know everything and are always right. People who
disagree about causalities are irrational and nasty.

When a
person writes enough such nonsense, and I call it out enough, it\'s easy
for things to spill over into (perceived or real) personal attacks
rather than argument attacks.

\"Calling out nonsense\" is a personal attack. And it\'s easier than
rational debate.



--

I yam what I yam - Popeye
 
On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 9:26:25 PM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 09:42:14 +0100, David Brown
david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 19/01/2022 02:44, Phil Hobbs wrote:
David Brown wrote:

My preference is always to attack arguments, not people. When someone writes something baseless, irrational or nasty, I call it that.

In other words you know everything and are always right.

That is not remotely what he is saying.

> People who disagree about causalities are irrational and nasty.

You do it all the time. Your claims about anthropogenic global warming are nasty and you cull them from the climate change denial propaganda machine despite their irrational content.

When a person writes enough such nonsense, and I call it out enough, it\'s easy for things to spill over into (perceived or real) personal attacks rather than argument attacks.

\"Calling out nonsense\" is a personal attack.

It\'s primarily an attack on the nonsense, rather than the person peddling the nonsense, even if they should know better (and you certainly should).

> And it\'s easier than rational debate.

You don\'t respond to anything that looks like rational debate. It does seem to be easier for you to believe that Anthony Watts knows what he is talking about than it would be for you to realise that he gets paid by the Heartlands Foundation to peddle irrational climate change denial propaganda.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Watts_(blogger)

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
 
On 19/01/2022 11:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 09:42:14 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

My preference is always to attack arguments, not people. When someone
writes something baseless, irrational or nasty, I call it that.

In other words you know everything and are always right. People who
disagree about causalities are irrational and nasty.

No. People who write things with no logic, data or justification are
being irrational. People who write things that are attributing negative
characteristics to a group of people, without basis in fact, are being
nasty and bigoted. Get some factual basis or reasoning behind your
points, and then there is something to discuss. (Look at, for example,
the other thread that discussed Power Basic and programming - you were
talking from a position of knowledge and there was a nice exchange of
thoughts and opinions. I even agreed with you!)

It is important to distinguish between /being/ an irrational (or nasty,
ignorant, or whatever) person, and /writing/ something irrational. I
don\'t always get that right myself, but I try. (And everyone who writes
a lot also writes things that are wrong or thoughtless at times.)

When a
person writes enough such nonsense, and I call it out enough, it\'s easy
for things to spill over into (perceived or real) personal attacks
rather than argument attacks.

\"Calling out nonsense\" is a personal attack. And it\'s easier than
rational debate.

No, it\'s an attack on the argument. It might not necessarily be a
helpful attack, but it is not personal. An argument that is presented
without evidence can be dismissed without evidence - when one is given
without evidence, references, justification or rational basis, then it
is often hard to give a rational and serious counter-argument. If I
were to claim \"electronics engineers tend to prefer green apples to red
apples\", how could you respond with a rational debate? Your suggestions
about mixing politics and engineering are equally silly.

(Note that articles from obscure and outlying groups with a strong
agenda and heavy bias are not useful as general references, especially
for topics that are directly in their propaganda target. We might not
agree on exactly how biased or unbiased particular media sources are,
but I am sure it is possible to get better than articles from dedicated
advocacy groups.)

I did, however, give quite a bit of argumentative response showing why
you were wrong. You dismissed it as \"childish personal insults\" then
accused me of doing exactly that.


However, if there is a way to leave this behind us and return to arguing
the points and not the persons, I would be glad to do that. I will
still cry nonsense on nonsense points - and expect you to do the same if
you think it applies to things I write (assuming, of course, we are
interested enough to make the effort). I will try to avoid attacking
you personally - you can try to avoid taking non-personal comments
personally.
 
On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 2:26:25 AM UTC-8, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

In other words you know everything and are always right. People who
disagree about causalities are irrational and nasty.

Nonsense, of course. Concern about cause and effect is not irrational, and
disagreement is not nasty. Disagreement responds to evidence, or
argument, not arrogant dismissal.

Arrogant dismissal is just another tiresome sophistry.
 
On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 11:01:17 AM UTC-8, Dimiter Popoff wrote:
On 1/20/2022 20:29, John Larkin wrote:

I greatly prefer people in a conference room to Zoom things, which are
so one-dimensional.

Hmm, I am the opposite of that. I prefer discussing work over email,
gives the participants more time to think before they talk.

Maybe for a meeting, the email time-disconnect works well, but
sharing ideas in a one-on-one works better in person. There\'s a lot
of details that get worked out on a whiteboard, or in a hallway discussion,
that wouldn\'t work in conference, or Zoom, or e-mail.

All kinds of interaction (even dead-trees literature) have their benefits.
 
On 1/20/2022 22:50, whit3rd wrote:
On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 11:01:17 AM UTC-8, Dimiter Popoff wrote:
On 1/20/2022 20:29, John Larkin wrote:

I greatly prefer people in a conference room to Zoom things, which are
so one-dimensional.

Hmm, I am the opposite of that. I prefer discussing work over email,
gives the participants more time to think before they talk.

Maybe for a meeting, the email time-disconnect works well, but
sharing ideas in a one-on-one works better in person. There\'s a lot
of details that get worked out on a whiteboard, or in a hallway discussion,
that wouldn\'t work in conference, or Zoom, or e-mail.

All kinds of interaction (even dead-trees literature) have their benefits.

Well of course all kinds of interaction have their benefits.
Come to think of it I don\'t do much personal interaction just lately,
2-3 decades ago I did a lot more of that. I was (still am, I think)
pretty good at taking the knowledge other people have and I need.
It is just that I live a pretty isolated life lately, may be this is
the main reason.
 
On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 22:41:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com>
wrote:

I suppose it is just me, I prefer doing my brainstorming on my own,
typically taking a day\'s walk in the city (not birding with the
camera in the area as I used to do for years as well, the \"hunter\"
did not leave much room for anyone else in my head :).

If the people are right, brainstorming can be inspirational. Two
sessions, a couple of days apart, is even better, to let people sleep
on things.

One prissy, judgemental, inflexible person can poison a brainstorming
session. Don\'t invite them to the second one.

Brainstorming doesn\'t work well online, as in here. Few people want to
play and many instinctively inhibit thinking.


--

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end with doubts,
but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon
 
On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 22:58:48 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com>
wrote:

On 1/20/2022 22:50, whit3rd wrote:
On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 11:01:17 AM UTC-8, Dimiter Popoff wrote:
On 1/20/2022 20:29, John Larkin wrote:

I greatly prefer people in a conference room to Zoom things, which are
so one-dimensional.

Hmm, I am the opposite of that. I prefer discussing work over email,
gives the participants more time to think before they talk.

Maybe for a meeting, the email time-disconnect works well, but
sharing ideas in a one-on-one works better in person. There\'s a lot
of details that get worked out on a whiteboard, or in a hallway discussion,
that wouldn\'t work in conference, or Zoom, or e-mail.

All kinds of interaction (even dead-trees literature) have their benefits.

Well of course all kinds of interaction have their benefits.
Come to think of it I don\'t do much personal interaction just lately,
2-3 decades ago I did a lot more of that. I was (still am, I think)
pretty good at taking the knowledge other people have and I need.
It is just that I live a pretty isolated life lately, may be this is
the main reason.

I don\'t generally like people, but sometimes they have their uses.

Just talking about a thing seems to help. But I fell silly talking to
myself.

--

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end with doubts,
but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon
 
On 1/20/2022 23:42, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 22:58:48 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 1/20/2022 22:50, whit3rd wrote:
On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 11:01:17 AM UTC-8, Dimiter Popoff wrote:
On 1/20/2022 20:29, John Larkin wrote:

I greatly prefer people in a conference room to Zoom things, which are
so one-dimensional.

Hmm, I am the opposite of that. I prefer discussing work over email,
gives the participants more time to think before they talk.

Maybe for a meeting, the email time-disconnect works well, but
sharing ideas in a one-on-one works better in person. There\'s a lot
of details that get worked out on a whiteboard, or in a hallway discussion,
that wouldn\'t work in conference, or Zoom, or e-mail.

All kinds of interaction (even dead-trees literature) have their benefits.

Well of course all kinds of interaction have their benefits.
Come to think of it I don\'t do much personal interaction just lately,
2-3 decades ago I did a lot more of that. I was (still am, I think)
pretty good at taking the knowledge other people have and I need.
It is just that I live a pretty isolated life lately, may be this is
the main reason.

I don\'t generally like people, but sometimes they have their uses.

Just talking about a thing seems to help. But I fell silly talking to
myself.

I talk to myself all the time while working, not just lately. I usually
work alone - the only person I could have in the same room while doing
serious work was my wife, she did not mind it. Sometimes - mostly when
wrestling some stubborn hardware problem - I shout and scream, for many
years there was no one in the neighbour houses to witness my madness but
now that there are inhabitants I still don\'t care... one more reason for
them to think I am a nutter (in fact they know me and just accept me
as I am). Well I shut the windows during the night so I don\'t
wake them up, I work mostly between 3PM and 3 AM. And most of the time
I am just programming anyway, that gets rarely as noisy.
 
John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in
news:t9ljug9dd1jcgu8j0mcls0r6g0apdn4pjm@4ax.com:

On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 22:41:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff
dp@tgi-sci.com> wrote:

I suppose it is just me, I prefer doing my brainstorming on my
own, typically taking a day\'s walk in the city (not birding with
the camera in the area as I used to do for years as well, the
\"hunter\" did not leave much room for anyone else in my head :).

If the people are right, brainstorming can be inspirational. Two
sessions, a couple of days apart, is even better, to let people
sleep on things.

One prissy, judgemental, inflexible person can poison a
brainstorming session. Don\'t invite them to the second one.

Brainstorming doesn\'t work well online, as in here. Few people
want to play and many instinctively inhibit thinking.

Better still is to give folks an additional half hour after lunch for a
\'cat nap\'. That is, anything the person wants to sit in their
office/spot/wherever and contemplate. There are some companies in
Europe that give such an additional little block of time after lunch
each day. I do not know what they call it. I call it a cat nap.
I think I saw it on 60 minutes or something years ago.
 
On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 23:26:18 -0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:

John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in
news:t9ljug9dd1jcgu8j0mcls0r6g0apdn4pjm@4ax.com:

On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 22:41:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff
dp@tgi-sci.com> wrote:

I suppose it is just me, I prefer doing my brainstorming on my
own, typically taking a day\'s walk in the city (not birding with
the camera in the area as I used to do for years as well, the
\"hunter\" did not leave much room for anyone else in my head :).

If the people are right, brainstorming can be inspirational. Two
sessions, a couple of days apart, is even better, to let people
sleep on things.

One prissy, judgemental, inflexible person can poison a
brainstorming session. Don\'t invite them to the second one.

Brainstorming doesn\'t work well online, as in here. Few people
want to play and many instinctively inhibit thinking.



Better still is to give folks an additional half hour after lunch for a
\'cat nap\'. That is, anything the person wants to sit in their
office/spot/wherever and contemplate. There are some companies in
Europe that give such an additional little block of time after lunch
each day. I do not know what they call it. I call it a cat nap.
I think I saw it on 60 minutes or something years ago.

Overnight, better yet 2 days, seems to work for me to think things
over.

I tend to not like divergent suggestions at first, but sometimes they
make sense after a day or two. Sometimes, a year or two.

--

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end with doubts,
but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon
 
On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 00:19:04 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com>
wrote:

On 1/20/2022 23:42, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 22:58:48 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 1/20/2022 22:50, whit3rd wrote:
On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 11:01:17 AM UTC-8, Dimiter Popoff wrote:
On 1/20/2022 20:29, John Larkin wrote:

I greatly prefer people in a conference room to Zoom things, which are
so one-dimensional.

Hmm, I am the opposite of that. I prefer discussing work over email,
gives the participants more time to think before they talk.

Maybe for a meeting, the email time-disconnect works well, but
sharing ideas in a one-on-one works better in person. There\'s a lot
of details that get worked out on a whiteboard, or in a hallway discussion,
that wouldn\'t work in conference, or Zoom, or e-mail.

All kinds of interaction (even dead-trees literature) have their benefits.

Well of course all kinds of interaction have their benefits.
Come to think of it I don\'t do much personal interaction just lately,
2-3 decades ago I did a lot more of that. I was (still am, I think)
pretty good at taking the knowledge other people have and I need.
It is just that I live a pretty isolated life lately, may be this is
the main reason.

I don\'t generally like people, but sometimes they have their uses.

Just talking about a thing seems to help. But I fell silly talking to
myself.


I talk to myself all the time while working, not just lately. I usually
work alone - the only person I could have in the same room while doing
serious work was my wife, she did not mind it. Sometimes - mostly when
wrestling some stubborn hardware problem - I shout and scream, for many
years there was no one in the neighbour houses to witness my madness but
now that there are inhabitants I still don\'t care... one more reason for
them to think I am a nutter (in fact they know me and just accept me
as I am). Well I shut the windows during the night so I don\'t
wake them up, I work mostly between 3PM and 3 AM. And most of the time
I am just programming anyway, that gets rarely as noisy.

Sanity is over-rated. Dare to be goofy. It\'s good for design.

I fairly often wake up at 3AM and think for a while. I\'ve heard other
people say that too. If an idea seems good, I\'ll get out of bed and
explore it, or at least write it down so I don\'t forget.

--

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end with doubts,
but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon
 
John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in
news:7osjug94hvegccg635rou1orbe003j4199@4ax.com:

On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 23:26:18 -0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:

John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in
news:t9ljug9dd1jcgu8j0mcls0r6g0apdn4pjm@4ax.com:

On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 22:41:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff
dp@tgi-sci.com> wrote:

I suppose it is just me, I prefer doing my brainstorming on my
own, typically taking a day\'s walk in the city (not birding with
the camera in the area as I used to do for years as well, the
\"hunter\" did not leave much room for anyone else in my head :).

If the people are right, brainstorming can be inspirational. Two
sessions, a couple of days apart, is even better, to let people
sleep on things.

One prissy, judgemental, inflexible person can poison a
brainstorming session. Don\'t invite them to the second one.

Brainstorming doesn\'t work well online, as in here. Few people
want to play and many instinctively inhibit thinking.



Better still is to give folks an additional half hour after lunch
for a \'cat nap\'. That is, anything the person wants to sit in
their office/spot/wherever and contemplate. There are some
companies in Europe that give such an additional little block of
time after lunch each day. I do not know what they call it. I
call it a cat nap. I think I saw it on 60 minutes or something
years ago.

Overnight, better yet 2 days, seems to work for me to think things
over.

I tend to not like divergent suggestions at first, but sometimes
they make sense after a day or two. Sometimes, a year or two.

Oh yeah, and a four day work week with the cat nap lunch 1.5 hr. each
day. A 3 day weekend would settle all the jerks down a bit.

Instead we have the opposite. Slave drivers like Bosch where ALL
work ten hour, seven day work weeks and some 12 hour. And you cannot
be late or miss any time, because you get 1.5 points, and a late show
is a quarter point, and a missed day is half a point. And the idiots
that work for them are blind to the fact that they no longer have a
life because \'the money is good\'. You see someone that has been
there 10 or 15 years and they look like rag dolls from the homeless
village. But they have lots of money in the bank to give to bill
collectors and lots of gadgets like game consoles. No thanks. I do
work on a 40 or salaried. 10 x 7 or 12 x 7 no friggin way.
 

Welcome to EDABoard.com

Sponsor

Back
Top