Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

The Intel Museum

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I know, right? Who knew Intel had a museum?

Intro

Welcome

Well, they do — it’s at Intel’s headquarters over in Santa Clara, at 2200 Mission Boulevard. It’s a couple of rooms of intro to microprocessors, how chips are made, how computers talk, the Intel story —

(Spoiler alert: they invented everything and are the most amazing so phbbbbtttt!!!!)

— and that sort of thing. Looking at the photos of Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore and Andy Grove I was suddenly reminded of the time I interviewed Andy Grove for the Stanford Daily, a million and a half years ago.

The kids were mostly interested and happy. How could they not be? The museum has some real dinosaurs on display!

Ibmpc

A blast from the Mezozoic

That’s an IBM PC, kids. Scary, huh? Wait until your parents tell you how to operate that thing without a mouse. Wait until they describe the floppy disks. The tour guide did have a floppy disk as a visual aid…a three-and-a-half inch floppy disk. I called foul and insisted they bring out the five-and-a-quarter floppy floppy disks.

(My first job at Stanford was teaching students at the Graduate School of Business how to use IBM PCs. Good times. Man, seeing that little machine brought back some memories.)

Some of the exhibits were not very well focused (“Uh…which part of this is the transistor in relation to the size of a human hair?”), but they had plenty of interactive stuff for kids to play with. They had some exhibits that I liked.

Mooreslaw

Yes. I am a nerd.

And some that were just kind of silly.

Bunnysuit

One kid got to dress up in an actual bunny suit. She said it was “hot.”

During the part where the kids got to do some hands-on electronics, they built circuits from one of those kits you can buy at toy stores. Simon has a couple of these kits, so he’s really familiar with it. He did try to answer every single question the tour guide gave, but she was fair and made sure other kids got to answer questions too.

Well. Sometimes.

It’s a popular little museum with fourth graders in this area, because the fourth graders are studying magnetism and electrical conduction, and the museum is completely free, including the hands-on demo area.

And you know…this kind of thing is part of our cultural heritage around here.

Noyce

A nice quote to end the day with.

 

Keeping a diary, 2012 edition

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Remember back a million years ago when I was all about keeping a journal? I had pages about journals, I wrote Why Web Journals Suck, I maintained the Going and Going page?

(In case you don’t remember Going and Going…for a few years I actually maintained by hand via BBEdit a list of people who kept an online journal going for a year. There were no blogs yet. I know, right? And I checked every single entrant by hand…until I came to my senses said, I am so not doing this any more. I’m sure there are automated ways of doing that now, but I wasn’t aware of any of those then, and doing that kind of thing now….muahahahaha, no.)

My journal keeping over the past decade has been…spotty, let’s say. At a time when I probably should have been keeping a much more detailed diary (my kids growing up), I’ve had a blank book here, a book there… My handwriting, which used to be so gorgeous, has gone to pot. It’s hard to write by hand when you haven’t been. I actually still prefer writing a journal by hand, because I think using your hand to move across a page physically produces a different relationship with your brain than typing does. Yes, typing goes faster, but faster isn’t always better. Sometimes faster gets you stuck on “Oh, let me rewrite this over and over again” or retype this or whatever. Sometimes faster is just more shoveling of bullshit.

But keeping a diary on the computer can be useful, because I can type faster — much faster — than I can write by hand these days. Also useful: a diary on my phone. I kept a diary of all of the hair products I was using, in what combinations and in what amounts, to see what kind of hair day I got out of them. I’ll be out somewhere and want to write about something that’s definitely journal-like, and what do I have on me? I have my iPhone.

So, the three types of journals I keep at the moment: Paper, Computer, and iPhone.

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Timing

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This is not going to be the beautiful and pithy psychological investigation of the truism “Timing is everything” and it’s certainly not a treatise on the secret to comedy. No, this is a quick paean to the Mac app Timing. Timing keeps track of how long you spend every day in each application you have running. It only shows you how long you’ve spent actively in a particular application. Merely having the application open doesn’t add to the time total; no, you have to actually be using it.

This is both good and bad.

 

Timing can also show you specifically where you’re spending the time too. Kind of scary to see the three most popular applications I’ve used int he past week are Safari, Civilization IV, and Twitter.

All weekly

Everything during the past week

But what if I want to see how I’ve done specifically with my writing? I created a Group called “Writing” and put all of the applications I consider part of my writing into it. So let’s peek at that:

Writing week

Writing – this past week

Yeah. Kinda had a bad drop off there during the past few days. But it’s been better throughout January, right?

Writing month

Writing – all of January

I didn’t get so much done while I was in Hawaii, and it’s neck and neck with the time I’m spending in MarsEdit writing blog entries. I actually have done okay, writing-wise, throughout this month. (You’ll notice a couple of apps don’t show up in the weekly view but do in the monthly: yes, that’s because I didn’t use them at all in the past week. Also a good way to track whether or not you’re using those must-have apps.)

But I haven’t been wasting my time doing other stuff, have I?

Chat week

Too much chatting

Okay, so…yeah, I probably need to use my MacFreedom app a little more heavily at this point and stop chatting.

Anyhow — I don’t check Timing every day, but I find it really, really useful when I want to see how I’m doing at keeping control of my computer time.