Updated: 3/07/2003; 6:09:26 PM

Have a group of guys from church who want to communicate collectively coming around tonight. I prepared a site in Bloki for this purpose called Microdoc - Increasing Personal Power. I will use this as a starting point and then we will work to specifics. This idea of a blog turning people into web pages is a powerful concept. I think Bloki might serve their purposes better than Radio, Blogger or one of those.

1:11:29 PM   

Reading John Grisham's King of Torts. Haven't got very far in yet. Seems good so far. The central concept of the book is just being revealed and is at a must read more stage.

1:06:43 PM   

Saw The Pianist, a Roman Polanski Film. Great movie. First time in a long while I have seen everyone in the theatre watching the entire credits. The piano playing was superb and everyone just wanted to see those hands playing so incredibly!

1:03:08 PM   

Today, I have decided to take up writing a personal blog again. I stopped for some time while I developed Microdoc News and Blogging Headline News. What made me start the personal blog again was the quote from Seb:

Seb's Open Research
Finally, I note that blogging itself is actually in the process of making people as easy to find as web pages on Google -- it turns them into web pages!

Yep, my personal blog should be more about what I do.

12:52:15 PM   

On the idea of text chunking . . .

In the regime of writing that we have today, there is a political prohibition that causes us to think that the largest textual element we can use of other writing outside of the current text I am writing is the word or phrase. We have databases of words; these are called dictionaries. We even have databases of phrases that when I start writing a phrase, the computer can suggest a completion of that to save me from having to type every key.

To think that there are sentences and even sections of a chapter that could be re-used is unthinkable, and is not practiced by most writers or authors. Each sentence and each paragraph, as well as any other larger grouping of words, belongs to a particular text. Therefore, it is not a concept that most people would use. There are of course political reasons why this is the case. There are copyright laws and laws of ownership that we have in out society that precludes use from this type of activity.

In the world of information delivery, though, it makes sense, that if someone has invented the perfect explanation for some little idea that is in the public domain, and I wish to invoke that explanation, why cannot I obtain that explanation from a database and included it in my current text? There are quotation and ascription ways of handling such that are used in academic circles. And this is one viable way of working on such.

However, when it is my own writing and I own the copyright, why cannot I database everything I have written and then if in this current text if I have written the text before in a paragraph or a chapter section, why I cannot pull from that text and simply copy it into this text? There is nothing stopping me from doing this except the problems of locating the text, and copying and pasting that text into the current format.

Simply put, a good writer can produce text at the rate of ten finished pages a day when ‘think-producing’ text. That is more than one page an hour, or about 600 words to 700 words of finished production an hour. There are some questions of efficiency here that must be answered for this text chunk sharing to be viable.

If it takes me longer to find the text than to actually produce it again, then the task of finding and simply copying that text into the current document is not viable. However, if there is an efficient way for me to find that text, and it takes just a fraction of time to locate it again and simply add it into the text, then, it is worth the task of locating it again.

This is where PersonalBrain comes in. If all of my text that I have ever written is stored in a system where thoughts are linked to each text chunk, and that I can either search all chunks, or search all thoughts, or I can simply step through from one thought to the thinking process that generated that text in the first place, I can then locate my text chunks efficiently. Second, if all text chunks are formatted in a similar manner to all my other text chunks, then it is a simple matter of including that file containing that text chunk in my current text.

Using the text chunk idea, and using PersonalBrain to database them, I can search to find out whether I have ever written a text chunk about an idea, locate that text chunk, read and assess its applicability for that location and include that text chunk in my current text in about 3 minutes. On average, my text chunks tend to be about 500 words in length and that would take me approximately 45 minutes to complete in a normal writing day. So, if I have written about it before, and that explanation or information delivery is useful in this text, it takes me 3 minutes to insert that text in my current document; this is a saving of at least 40 minutes for this current document.

This means to say that if I have written chapter sections before and that I am simply calling on previous chapter sections, I can build a text of 100,000 words in let’s say 10 hours – a little over a day’s work. If this was built from absolute beginning at ten pages a day, it would take me 20 days to produce this text.

Now the reality is that there is no text that I can ever build that is completely a text built from previously written paragraphs. There are, however, texts that I can build that are quite different texts using 70% of pre-written material and 30% brand new material. I have experienced this on many, many occasions. I have even produced a text that it 80% previously written material constituted in a different logical arrangement with 20% from previous texts. Even if it was simply just 50% of the current writing assignment that is based on pre-written text chunks, it is still a massive saving.

8:00:15 AM   

     Symbolic activity based on the activities of a machine could be passed off as a text building device rather than considering it as site that sponsors a fully functional language. It is this notion that causes new computer users to miss the cues that the computer gives as to what should be done next, and misunderstands what it is that is going on between human and computer. Of prime importance is for people to understand how a machine relates interpersonally with its user, and how humans relate to each other through the mediation of electronic language. While we can also learn from the highly complex representational and textual functioning of the language the greatest lessons for new users is to learn how the machine provides a personal space for the user.

6:37:06 PM   

Until arriving by accident on this great little software gem, I had no idea that my computer was so slow because of unwanted links, cookies, files left over from programs long gone and the like. Since cleaning my computer up with Ace Utilities v1.65, I have not enjoyed so much pristine life out of my computer since buying it new.

Over a period of about an hour or so, I found 2,651 unwanted files, 4,537 shortcut links that no longer work, fifteen programs that annoy me greatly every time I start my computer up, and I found 357 files taking up nearly 1 gig that were totally duplicated files. Ace also has this great uninstaller that works much better than the Windows uninstaller. Here I reclaimed another half gig.

Particularly if you are a Personal Brain 2.1 user, such as I am, you will need to use something like Ace Utilities to get rid of the unwanted shortcut links. When you build Brains and do not move files into your Brain, I often move a file and do not realize that there is a link in one or more of my Brains that point to this file. This is where Ace is great -- it will repair those links making your Brain even more useful for another day.

Let me give you a summary of all the things Ace Utilities v1.65 does for you:

REMOVE UNNEEDED FILES
Over the period of eight months I have had this particular computer, I have installed and tested maybe some 250 or so programs. Over that period of time, each of these have been uninstalled. So uninstallers are more efficient than others, and so there is always a residue of some programs each time you uninstall. Additionally, there are those data-type files that are created as working notepads for some software, those need to be erased as well. Every computer system has some unneeded files and could do with a clean-up here.

CLEAN SYSTEM REGISTRY
This is perhaps the most serious one. Through Ace Utilities, there were 2,920 unwanted registry entries that Ace deleted without a single problem caused afterwards. This alone has given my computer a new lease of life. Any computer that has been operated for more than a few months should be cleaned using Ace. It adds to the speed of operation.

AUTO START PROGRAMS
This is one of the cool utilities. I know you can edited these using Windows. However, this utility located two programs of the same name that always drives me crazy with two of the same programmes starting each time I boot my computer. Windows never ever showed me I actually had two shortcuts that would start two instances of the same program. Ace showed me and presto, this double start has ceased.

FIX INVALID SHORTCUTS
Now this was a surprise to me. I did not believe I had so many of these invalid shortcuts. Still, I can see how they have been generated -- using PersonalBrain is one of the main reasons for these invalid shortcuts. The only problem here in working with Ace Utilities is that this process is very time consuming. The program asks for each shortcut whether I wish to delete it or if it can be fixed asks if I wish to fox it. I looked all over the program to see if I could set a global setting that it should fix those that it can and delete those it cannot fix. This is perhaps the biggest drawback to Ace. Be ready for a time consuming job of answering 4,500 times to the same questions -- two answers per shortcut usually.

ERASE YOUR HISTORY
Now this I did not do, as I rely on m history so much for everything I do. However, I can see that many people could very well do this and make so much room on the hard disc.

FIND DUPLICATE FILES
What a good utility. I have seen this utility elsewhere, but this one works so well. It even distinguishes a file that is 1% similar and tells you so. This created lots of space for me.

UNINSTALLER PLUS
This is great. Ace actually found things for me to install that Windows did not show me. However, what Ace is not big on is explanation of how to use these tools. I learnt the hard way that I needed to run uninstaller first and then go back and do the rest. More unwanted files can be found after uninstalls, and more shortcuts can be found as well. So the trick is to get in there and uninstall anything you need to unintall and then go and do the other things.

You can download Ace Utilities v1.65 from Download.com. However, download takes you to Simtel. Ace Utilities v1.65 costs $29 to register. It is well worth the money as it is simple to operate and is efficient to use.

6:23:11 PM   

Since installing the Google Search tool on this site, I have started searching through weblog land to see what people are doing with their weblog sites. Some are imaginative, others seriously collecting links on particular topics, some writing serious themes and then there is the mass of junk collections everywhere.

Since beginning to be a weblog wanderer, I have begun asking myself the question as to why we are all so busily logging. My personal enquiry led to to understand exactly why I do it. To me, the world of knowledge managment, software tools, new ways of doing things, invention and plain doodling provides me with a playgroun where I can test ideas, develop concepts and have some readers along to provide feedback. I know when something hot is happening when I see the readers coming by the droves. Then, when they melt away I know that my experiments are simply not interesting.

I do not know that it is simply a matter of writing better as Mahoney suggests, it is a matter as to whether you have something to say, to demonstrate, or whether you have been busy to add some real value to the wealth of knowledge out there. For me, it is about playing with the tools, building information along the way and promoting the idea that there is a new way of making meaning that has little to do with literacy and lots to do with techancy -- the new way of making meaning since we have adopted electronic devices connected across a large-scale network.

The latest interest in the world of technacy centers on rapid text construction techniques. I am now employed as a writer and getting sick and tired of composing texts at 7,000 words per day. So, using all the tools I could muster, I devised a way to make my job easier. Download a copy of the book for yourself and see what I mean. Even this weblog I am now writing took me half the time as I used text chunks rather than writing this from complete scratch. Anyway, now that we have the tools to store and retrieve larger items that letters and word, why not build text from text chunks? 

Copyright a problem? How about it if I build you are text chunk library? And give you the right to copy any text from the library as long as you pay me a fee of say, $25 per month for access to any number of chunks. Drop me an email and tell me what you think. And if you liked my text on Rapid Text Construction, let me know too.  

5:10:03 PM   

Copyright © 2003 Elwyn Jenkins