- What if Apple had spent ten years perfecting some fundamental capabilities in Siri:#
- Giving directions and explaining multistep processes clearly.#
- Asking questions and prompting for answers needed to fulfill a request.#
- Maintaining a transcript of previous queries and answers.#
- Organizing queries and answers into a personal corpus and knowledge base for the user and being able to draw on the corpus when replying to requests.#
- Integrating into other subsystems and mediums, such as the file system, notes, tagging, text, audio, and video.#
- Understanding and speaking in multiple languages.#
- ...The foundation would be set for Siri to be truly helpful and extraordinary and a demonstrable advancement in the art and science of User Interface and information architecture.#
- But Siri is more like a glorified input field on a Search web page.#
- Without an Internet connection, Siri cannot even answer a simple question, "What time is it?". At some point, Apple folks made architectural decisions and set business priorities that fixed Siri on a path that neither delights customers nor advances the state-of-the-art.#
- The antidote to Trump is to build a legal case for his imprisonment and go hard after his coterie. The antidote to Trumpism is more complicated, but I'd start with fundamentals: #
- ➊ Comprehensive campaign finance reform and new ethics guidelines in Congress. Nothing will change the dynamic more than taking control of the purse. #
- ➋ Imposition of a rational "safety net" that secures essential services needed by all, young and old, poor and wealthy. Of course, I'd start with healthcare and childcare. I guarantee you even the most ardent opponent will become its most red-blooded defender a few years later. #
- The antidote to Democratic Party stupidity is maybe even more complicated.#
- ➊ I'd focus on the "local"––rural to urban––and the obscure Democratic candidates that work those beats. I'd cultivate people and ideas emerging from the local. And, on the ground, in local elections, year by year, I would build support for dem and Dem values, while championing differences and debate as the cornerstone of a healthy civil space. #
- ➋ Surely someone in the DNC can see how fucked up they are? Look no further than the brilliant power of The Lincoln Project and go hire a down-to-earth marketer/"influencer" and a sales executive who can translate "tax credits" and other policy-wonk mechanisms into the tangible. Explainer videos and long-form writings would go a long way to providing the why's, what's, how's, who's, and where's in a level of detail that would inoculate us from fake news and actually inform and excite people to take positive action. Obviously, journalism and politicians alike fail miserably with the most basics.#
- ➌ As a corollary to the above, stop the madness and change the political discourse. Do an "Apple Think Different" about your brand and how you conduct your politics. Change the messaging, stop the business-as-usual, and fire the media consultants. Stop reacting to the GOP bullshit on its own terms. The truth is, both parties are to blame here. So, unshackled by campaign finance reform, you can and should take the high-ground and win.#
- Imagine if such comms had been in place since Day 1 of Biden's administration. Imagine a one-stop website explaining and debating the policies (moderated debate, of course).#
- Biden would have defeated or greatly softened the Manchin effect, if people actually had a clear idea, specifically and not just generally, of what the heck the legislation was about and how it was funded. Photo ops and one-liner platitudes are not appropriate tools in a hyper-connected Information Age.#
- But a YouTube channel and associated website would have helped.#
- Details about public policy do matter. Messaging equally so. Dems did a horrible job on explaining and selling their vision. They allowed others to define it and hijack the discourse, and in the process we are left with inane commentary from pundits and 'ordinary' people. Meanwhile, Trump is still on the scene, and next time, Trumpism might actually prevail.#
- It is one of my favorite places on this planet. Ok, I can't say I have travelled widely, but in my travels, there's not quite a place like it. Over the past 30 years, I have visited countless times, and each visit is an eye opener and familiar at the same time. There's no other place that blends so many traditions into a quirky British and Chinese fusion, and moves with such dynamism and smarts.#
- But I have learned to keep quiet about what transpires in the territory, because the long arm of the national security law now trumps the Basic Law. Clearly, the government uses it to destroy and dismantle opposition, high and low. I would not only like to visit but also continue to transit through her wonderful airport on her wonderful hometown airline without fear of reprisal. That's a shitty way to live and a compromise one should not need to make.#
- Newspapers are full of daily reports about some police action to root out opposition or snuff out any last vestiages of freedom guaranteed by the Basic Law. Today's action only adds emphasis to these facts:#
- Attaining "universal suffrage" has been a main issue at the basis of demonstrations and political activism since the handover in 1997. What "universal" means is the important bit.#
- It is worth pointing out that leading up to the handover, the British colonial govt pushed through a number of reforms meant to strengthen democratic principles and make room for direct participation in local government, all with the aim of adding more safe guards to the territory. This was not without controversy among elites there, and in Beijing which obviously did not want divergence from agreements, and among some in London. But the reforms survived the opposition, and I think we can see how those changes opened a kind of deliberately "self-inflicted" chink in the colonial armor that gave standing to, and made room for, the political self.#
- That political self may now be keeping quiet and minding its own business in face of obviously politically corrupted policing and repression, but let's be real: despite what many want to believe, esp. among the well-healed financial services industry cadres, the number of people who participated in demonstrations and other actions was, to be precise, huge. Eventually, in some form of creative expression, that force will emerge again.#
- I find this sort of process by which one language is used to serve another to be so interesting.#
- The creation of Taiwanese characters flourishes: character unification takes center stage | PeoPo 公民新聞peopo.org#
- Many advertisements are filmed in Taiwanese, but did you know the characters "拍謝 (Sorry)" used in subtitles are Taiwanese “Martian” script? So-called Martian script is the common nickname for the unconventional representation of Chinese characters found online. In fact, Taiwanese has its own Romanized alphabet system. With the hope of unifying the writing style of Taiwanese, the Ministry of Education has released a list of Chinese characters which it recommends for writing common words in Taiwanese.#
- I am not sure about the mechanics in Old School and Drummer. But it seems housekeeping will be up to me. At some point, will I have to establish "policy" regarding when to archive the current blog OPML and start anew. Do I then link to the other other OPML doc, and will Old School render it?#
- I can see two different versions indexed on the OSD news river for today's previous post about tree removal actions. #
- The problem is, as I hack on Drummer and Old School, I find myself publishing and re-publishing to fix formatting errors or to edit the text. I like to program incrementally, testing and seeing results as I go, and the same is true of writing. Having an official way to publish a preview for my eyes only would be very helpful.#
- The public works administration's uprooting of trees along Zhongzheng Road has been a mini-controversy for a few months. The old trees were removed to make way for the underground construction of a new MRT train line. The city also said they were sick.#
- The section of the road affected by the tree removal is an area I know pretty well. Pre-COVID, I would be there regularly. I happened to find myself there last night for a dinner event, and it was a strangely disorienting experience. Bare of the lovely trees, the road had been reduced to its ugly roots of concrete and stepping out of the restaurant, I could not figure out where I was or which way to go.#
- The new reality is both saddening and enraging at the same time. If I were a resident of the area, I would be miffed by the removal action. For suddenly, my lovely neighborhood looked like any old, dilapidated concrete shit hole in Taiwan.#
- I cannot help thinking that the city officials at some deep level must hate themselves to cancel out one of the success stories over the decades. I mean, simply, whoever planted them there (and around the city for that matter) both beautified and preserved a bit of green in what is a typical Concrete Urban Monster. For decades, the "developmental" mindset of "more concrete the better" has been the practical urban planning and economic development tool. I also mean, Taiwan and Taipei have spent tons of money on vanity architecture projects that were never completed or simply proved too complex for local firms to deliver. But these trees were a success.#
- Anyway, I started this post to test how Drummer and Old School would embed an iframe into the page. Will it work?#
- #
- The news report is produced by a citizen's news station. #
- The news report reminds me that citizen journalism is needed more than ever all over the U.S. both as a countervailing force to corporate media but also as a curative to the "QAnon"-conspiratorial lines of communication fracturing the body politic and destroying the country. Reconnecting national news back to its roots in the local would help people understand each other and motivate them to seek truth and positive action for change. Getting officials and others to listen and to respond would be the next step. #
- It's difficult to describe to friends and family in the USA how utterly broken the medical system is there. For many, who have decent insurance, there is little appreciation for how much better, fairer, and cheaper it could all be. Until you have experienced the Taiwan medical system, you realize that the US has not a system but rather a hodgepodge of medical markets, broken ones at that. I can and will expound on this topic some other day.#
- But for now, my motivation for writing this brief entry is to express a bit of delight for today's latest "hack" (and to give some praise to the National Health Insurance administration). Consider this bit of XML:#
#<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <myhealthbank> <bdata> <b1.1>A**********</b1.1> <b1.2>20211029</b1.2> <r0>【民眾下載健康存摺資料之聲明書】健康存摺有您的詳細就醫醫療資料， 下載後請妥善保管，資料如有需要轉交第三人或企業、公司使用， 應請自行評估風險及責任。提醒您：資料提供給第三人時請留意 是否只提供部分資料、並約定使用期間及日後可要求刪除資料的權利。 </r0> <r1> - That's the opening bits to my comprehensive health records detailing office visits, prescriptions filled at pharmacies, test results, etc. Every interaction with doctors, clinics, hospitals over the years is recorded and available to me and my doctors. The data is available in a variety of formats for human and computer consumption, and I can download it on demand by logging into my account on the NHI website.#
- Logging into the website is not a mere matter of username and password. Taiwan has put in place a system based on crypto smart cards. My company has one for interacting with government services and fulfilling regulatory requirements. And just about everyone living here has an NHI photo ID smart card. The crypto chip on board provides a secure means to establish identity and authorization to my records and NHI services. The same card is used when visiting doctors and paying for services.#
- (Now, I wonder, why cannot I have a simple means to import the data into the Health app on my iPhone. These walled gardens of corporate "innovation" are really boring in how utterly self-serving they are. But that's another topic for another day.)#
- Testing 1,2,3#
- [%pagetitle%] -- based on the head-level title attribute, it might contain the data for archive pages.#
- [%rssLink%] -- HTML <link> element pointing to your blog's RSS feed. #
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="http://oldschool.scripting.com/sinclairday/rss.xml"> #- [%facebookmetadata%] -- Open Graph metadata for Facebook.#
#<!-- Facebook metadata --> <meta property="og:type" content="website" /> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Mountain Notes" /> <meta property="og:title" content="Mountain Notes" /> <meta property="og:url" content="http://oldschool.scripting.com/sinclairday/index.html" /> <meta property="og:description" content="" /> <meta property="og:image" content="https://www.mingfu.tw/photos/xindian.jpg" /> - [%twittermetadata%] -- metadata for Twitter.#
<!-- Twitter metadata --> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"> <meta name="twitter:site" content="@sinclairday"> <meta name="twitter:title" content="Mountain Notes"> <meta name="twitter:description" content=""> <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://www.mingfu.tw/photos/xindian.jpg"> #- [%now%] -- a formatted string representing the time the blog was built#
- Saturday September 17, 2022; 1:52 AM EDT#
- I couldn't find docs on how to add the About tab, so I just found someone's OPML and inspected the headers.#
- Work intruded today, and hacking on Drummer had to wait. But I did manage to take a moment and respond to a notification on Twitter that this blog has been added to Andy Sylvester's Old School Drummers news river. It makes me consider setting up my own river server...#
- Perusing headlines on OSD news, I came across a couple posts about scripting and workflows in Drummer. Clearly, this is where the magic will happen, and when I have more time and a bit more energy, I shall explore some ideas.#
- How can I tie together automation on macOS to generate OPML that is consumed by Drummer; or automation to export OPML from Drummer into other systems like the homegrown SSG that manages the company website.#
- Another area to explore is re-tooling Old School to use my style sheets and making this house a bit more of my own.#
- Drummer is going through that shaking-out period that new software experiences, esp. software developed "live" in-the-moment. My posts from October 25 have suddenly disappeared, and this one from the future has yet to show up on the front page. Problems are lurking down in the machinery responsible for deciding when time has arrived for a dated post to be published. The machinery has been ambivalent, unsure or inconsistent in handling timezone differences. #
- Time is time and constant, but my time relative to your time is different. Being a good 12 hours ahead of New York and 8 hours ahead of GMT, my days start before their's. But machinery stuck on EDT or GMT, or inconsistent in its internal bookkeeping practices, might erroneously conclude that a post is not publishable.#
- Coding wise and conceptually speaking, none of this is difficult to solve, but on the practical level these kinds of date-time calculations fall into a class of programming challenges that can confound the most capable and experienced software developers.#
- I think this is due, in part, to shortcomings in computer languages to expose a full-stack of APIs, from the high-level "solve-the-common-use-case" to low-level "time-is-complicated" APIs. Most languages do not provide a good enough high-level API. There's a reason why one often looks for a third-party date-time library.#
- (Money and Currency are another big omission in most computer languages, which is surprising given how central they are to our world.)#
- I am not sure what the underlying issue in Drummer is or entirely clear on how the publisher is intended to work, but from my experience with date-time problems in general, I know they can also result from overloading data with too many meanings or responsibilities, especially when the system needs to make decisions based on both meanings at the same time.#
- Blog time and Publishing time#
- One way around this is to separate out the blog's local time from the blog's publishing time.#
- "Blog time" would be expressed in my timezone, and "Publishing time" would be expressed always in UTC. The two datums are tracked together but independently in the OPML.#
- The publishing machinery would use "Blog time" to create URLs (i.e. ".../2021/10/24.html") and use "Publishing time" to decide when the entry can be made available; the publisher would always run in UTC.#
- The two values for each would be calculated when "Build my blog..." is run, and they would be effectively immutable values. No other conversion would be done later, as the publishing system would just read the values, do a bit of date comparison, and that would be that.#
- Even if the Old School publisher actually dynamically renders the blog (not publishes static files), the model would work equally well:#
- 1. Request for ".../2021/10/26.html" is received.2. Does it exist? Check entries for "Blog time"#
3. If it exists, is it publishable? Check "Publishing time"4. If yes to both, then render the page.
5. Else handle 404 - Immutability and separation of concerns#
- The data being immutable also means debugging is easier. (You can inspect the actual data used by the machinery to make its decisions without having to compute it first.)#
- The data being pre-computed and separated into two datums eliminates a whole level of second-order debugging to determine where and when in the code the local time is not being converted to UTC for purposes of publishing and being converted back to local time for purposes of URL creation. The system's state is constant in this regard.#
- The two values can be stored in the OPML or, perhaps, in a separate "publishing" manifest. The manifest would be created by the publishing machinery on receipt of the "Build my blog..." command.#
- Noticing that the time stamp on the blog is correct, but the time zone is stuck in EDT (it should be CST; +8 GMT). Let's see if publishing again resolves the problem.#
- Taipei was rocked by a big quake today. Living on the Ring of Fire, quakes are a regular occurrence, but this one was an unusual "Oh, shit" moment. I had in fact just arrived home and was still sitting in the car when it hit. The car's suspension bouncing up and down and side to side, as my house creaked, and literally at the same moment, an Emergency broadcast message hit all of our phones.#
#
- I integrated this blog into micro.blog and now can publish in Old School and there. That was quite satisfying as a proof-of-concept for how OPML documents can be used as a universal data type, each publishing system handling the document in its own way. I have more thoughts about this, which will have to wait until another time. But in brief, I also have my own homegrown publishing system, and I would like to teach it OPML. #
- At my company, I have been on a quest to find a way out of unstructured, semantically void document formats Plain text, HTML, and Markdown, as well as any word processor document type. But I do not want to spend my days writing in something like DITA. That space seems way too big and complicated. What I am after is something like an Outliner (hierarchical organization) plus Metadata.#
- In Drummer and OPML, the Metadata are XML attributes placed on the XML element. Presumably, it would be possible to define entire dictionaries of attributes as a way to describe data structures, concepts, and fundamental "truths" and characteristics.#
- #
- A publishing system would, by associating dictionaries with style sheets and other markup, be able to lay out the OPML.#
- A CMS would be able to import the data and provide relevant functions and editing controls.#
- A machine-learning model would be able to share its knowledge (its universe of mind maps) as OPML documents.#
- #
- (Does Drummer have special directives for making a list, ordered or unordered? I tried inserting HTML markup, to no effect.)#
- This entry brought to you by Drummer, Dave Winer's latest publishing system. A lifetime ago, I was a heavy Frontier user, having built and published China Informed entirely in Frontier's immersive environment. Frontier was to Internet and 'scripting' as Smalltalk was to desktop UI and object oriented programming. Both were blazing new ground, and both were ahead of their time. Drummer is a re-start built on modern web tech and infrastructure, and it is inherently cross-platform and open.#
- This entry brought to you by Drummer, Dave Winer's latest publishing system. A lifetime ago, I was a heavy Frontier user, having built and published China Informed entirely in Frontier's immersive environment. Frontier was to Internet and 'scripting' as Smalltalk was to desktop UI and object oriented programming. Both were blazing new ground, and both were ahead of their time. Drummer is a re-start built on modern web tech and infrastructure, and it is inherently cross-platform and open.#
- What if Apple had spent ten years perfecting some fundamental capabilities in Siri:#
- Giving directions and explaining multistep processes clearly.#
- Asking questions and prompting for answers needed to fulfill a request.#
- Maintaining a transcript of previous queries and answers.#
- Organizing queries and answers into a personal corpus and knowledge base for the user and being able to draw on the corpus when replying to requests.#
- Integrating into other subsystems and mediums, such as the file system, notes, tagging, text, audio, and video.#
- Understanding and speaking in multiple languages.#
- ...The foundation would be set for Siri to be truly helpful and extraordinary and a demonstrable advancement in the art and science of User Interface and information architecture.#
- But Siri is more like a glorified input field on a Search web page.#
- Without an Internet connection, Siri cannot even answer a simple question, "What time is it?". At some point, Apple folks made architectural decisions and set business priorities that fixed Siri on a path that neither delights customers nor advances the state-of-the-art.#
- The antidote to Trump is to build a legal case for his imprisonment and go hard after his coterie. The antidote to Trumpism is more complicated, but I'd start with fundamentals: #
- ➊ Comprehensive campaign finance reform and new ethics guidelines in Congress. Nothing will change the dynamic more than taking control of the purse. #
- ➋ Imposition of a rational "safety net" that secures essential services needed by all, young and old, poor and wealthy. Of course, I'd start with healthcare and childcare. I guarantee you even the most ardent opponent will become its most red-blooded defender a few years later. #
- The antidote to Democratic Party stupidity is maybe even more complicated.#
- ➊ I'd focus on the "local"––rural to urban––and the obscure Democratic candidates that work those beats. I'd cultivate people and ideas emerging from the local. And, on the ground, in local elections, year by year, I would build support for dem and Dem values, while championing differences and debate as the cornerstone of a healthy civil space. #
- ➋ Surely someone in the DNC can see how fucked up they are? Look no further than the brilliant power of The Lincoln Project and go hire a down-to-earth marketer/"influencer" and a sales executive who can translate "tax credits" and other policy-wonk mechanisms into the tangible. Explainer videos and long-form writings would go a long way to providing the why's, what's, how's, who's, and where's in a level of detail that would inoculate us from fake news and actually inform and excite people to take positive action. Obviously, journalism and politicians alike fail miserably with the most basics.#
- ➌ As a corollary to the above, stop the madness and change the political discourse. Do an "Apple Think Different" about your brand and how you conduct your politics. Change the messaging, stop the business-as-usual, and fire the media consultants. Stop reacting to the GOP bullshit on its own terms. The truth is, both parties are to blame here. So, unshackled by campaign finance reform, you can and should take the high-ground and win.#
- Imagine if such comms had been in place since Day 1 of Biden's administration. Imagine a one-stop website explaining and debating the policies (moderated debate, of course).#
- Biden would have defeated or greatly softened the Manchin effect, if people actually had a clear idea, specifically and not just generally, of what the heck the legislation was about and how it was funded. Photo ops and one-liner platitudes are not appropriate tools in a hyper-connected Information Age.#
- But a YouTube channel and associated website would have helped.#
- Details about public policy do matter. Messaging equally so. Dems did a horrible job on explaining and selling their vision. They allowed others to define it and hijack the discourse, and in the process we are left with inane commentary from pundits and 'ordinary' people. Meanwhile, Trump is still on the scene, and next time, Trumpism might actually prevail.#
- It is one of my favorite places on this planet. Ok, I can't say I have travelled widely, but in my travels, there's not quite a place like it. Over the past 30 years, I have visited countless times, and each visit is an eye opener and familiar at the same time. There's no other place that blends so many traditions into a quirky British and Chinese fusion, and moves with such dynamism and smarts.#
- But I have learned to keep quiet about what transpires in the territory, because the long arm of the national security law now trumps the Basic Law. Clearly, the government uses it to destroy and dismantle opposition, high and low. I would not only like to visit but also continue to transit through her wonderful airport on her wonderful hometown airline without fear of reprisal. That's a shitty way to live and a compromise one should not need to make.#
- Newspapers are full of daily reports about some police action to root out opposition or snuff out any last vestiages of freedom guaranteed by the Basic Law. Today's action only adds emphasis to these facts:#
- Attaining "universal suffrage" has been a main issue at the basis of demonstrations and political activism since the handover in 1997. What "universal" means is the important bit.#
- It is worth pointing out that leading up to the handover, the British colonial govt pushed through a number of reforms meant to strengthen democratic principles and make room for direct participation in local government, all with the aim of adding more safe guards to the territory. This was not without controversy among elites there, and in Beijing which obviously did not want divergence from agreements, and among some in London. But the reforms survived the opposition, and I think we can see how those changes opened a kind of deliberately "self-inflicted" chink in the colonial armor that gave standing to, and made room for, the political self.#
- That political self may now be keeping quiet and minding its own business in face of obviously politically corrupted policing and repression, but let's be real: despite what many want to believe, esp. among the well-healed financial services industry cadres, the number of people who participated in demonstrations and other actions was, to be precise, huge. Eventually, in some form of creative expression, that force will emerge again.#
- I find this sort of process by which one language is used to serve another to be so interesting.#
- The creation of Taiwanese characters flourishes: character unification takes center stage | PeoPo 公民新聞peopo.org#
- Many advertisements are filmed in Taiwanese, but did you know the characters "拍謝 (Sorry)" used in subtitles are Taiwanese “Martian” script? So-called Martian script is the common nickname for the unconventional representation of Chinese characters found online. In fact, Taiwanese has its own Romanized alphabet system. With the hope of unifying the writing style of Taiwanese, the Ministry of Education has released a list of Chinese characters which it recommends for writing common words in Taiwanese.#
- I am not sure about the mechanics in Old School and Drummer. But it seems housekeeping will be up to me. At some point, will I have to establish "policy" regarding when to archive the current blog OPML and start anew. Do I then link to the other other OPML doc, and will Old School render it?#
- I can see two different versions indexed on the OSD news river for today's previous post about tree removal actions. #
- The problem is, as I hack on Drummer and Old School, I find myself publishing and re-publishing to fix formatting errors or to edit the text. I like to program incrementally, testing and seeing results as I go, and the same is true of writing. Having an official way to publish a preview for my eyes only would be very helpful.#
- The public works administration's uprooting of trees along Zhongzheng Road has been a mini-controversy for a few months. The old trees were removed to make way for the underground construction of a new MRT train line. The city also said they were sick.#
- The section of the road affected by the tree removal is an area I know pretty well. Pre-COVID, I would be there regularly. I happened to find myself there last night for a dinner event, and it was a strangely disorienting experience. Bare of the lovely trees, the road had been reduced to its ugly roots of concrete and stepping out of the restaurant, I could not figure out where I was or which way to go.#
- The new reality is both saddening and enraging at the same time. If I were a resident of the area, I would be miffed by the removal action. For suddenly, my lovely neighborhood looked like any old, dilapidated concrete shit hole in Taiwan.#
- I cannot help thinking that the city officials at some deep level must hate themselves to cancel out one of the success stories over the decades. I mean, simply, whoever planted them there (and around the city for that matter) both beautified and preserved a bit of green in what is a typical Concrete Urban Monster. For decades, the "developmental" mindset of "more concrete the better" has been the practical urban planning and economic development tool. I also mean, Taiwan and Taipei have spent tons of money on vanity architecture projects that were never completed or simply proved too complex for local firms to deliver. But these trees were a success.#
- Anyway, I started this post to test how Drummer and Old School would embed an iframe into the page. Will it work?#
- #
- The news report is produced by a citizen's news station. #
- The news report reminds me that citizen journalism is needed more than ever all over the U.S. both as a countervailing force to corporate media but also as a curative to the "QAnon"-conspiratorial lines of communication fracturing the body politic and destroying the country. Reconnecting national news back to its roots in the local would help people understand each other and motivate them to seek truth and positive action for change. Getting officials and others to listen and to respond would be the next step. #
- It's difficult to describe to friends and family in the USA how utterly broken the medical system is there. For many, who have decent insurance, there is little appreciation for how much better, fairer, and cheaper it could all be. Until you have experienced the Taiwan medical system, you realize that the US has not a system but rather a hodgepodge of medical markets, broken ones at that. I can and will expound on this topic some other day.#
- But for now, my motivation for writing this brief entry is to express a bit of delight for today's latest "hack" (and to give some praise to the National Health Insurance administration). Consider this bit of XML:#
#<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <myhealthbank> <bdata> <b1.1>A**********</b1.1> <b1.2>20211029</b1.2> <r0>【民眾下載健康存摺資料之聲明書】健康存摺有您的詳細就醫醫療資料， 下載後請妥善保管，資料如有需要轉交第三人或企業、公司使用， 應請自行評估風險及責任。提醒您：資料提供給第三人時請留意 是否只提供部分資料、並約定使用期間及日後可要求刪除資料的權利。 </r0> <r1> - That's the opening bits to my comprehensive health records detailing office visits, prescriptions filled at pharmacies, test results, etc. Every interaction with doctors, clinics, hospitals over the years is recorded and available to me and my doctors. The data is available in a variety of formats for human and computer consumption, and I can download it on demand by logging into my account on the NHI website.#
- Logging into the website is not a mere matter of username and password. Taiwan has put in place a system based on crypto smart cards. My company has one for interacting with government services and fulfilling regulatory requirements. And just about everyone living here has an NHI photo ID smart card. The crypto chip on board provides a secure means to establish identity and authorization to my records and NHI services. The same card is used when visiting doctors and paying for services.#
- (Now, I wonder, why cannot I have a simple means to import the data into the Health app on my iPhone. These walled gardens of corporate "innovation" are really boring in how utterly self-serving they are. But that's another topic for another day.)#
- Testing 1,2,3#
- [%pagetitle%] -- based on the head-level title attribute, it might contain the data for archive pages.#
- [%rssLink%] -- HTML <link> element pointing to your blog's RSS feed. #
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="http://oldschool.scripting.com/sinclairday/rss.xml"> #- [%facebookmetadata%] -- Open Graph metadata for Facebook.#
#<!-- Facebook metadata --> <meta property="og:type" content="website" /> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Mountain Notes" /> <meta property="og:title" content="Mountain Notes" /> <meta property="og:url" content="http://oldschool.scripting.com/sinclairday/index.html" /> <meta property="og:description" content="" /> <meta property="og:image" content="https://www.mingfu.tw/photos/xindian.jpg" /> - [%twittermetadata%] -- metadata for Twitter.#
<!-- Twitter metadata --> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"> <meta name="twitter:site" content="@sinclairday"> <meta name="twitter:title" content="Mountain Notes"> <meta name="twitter:description" content=""> <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://www.mingfu.tw/photos/xindian.jpg"> #- [%now%] -- a formatted string representing the time the blog was built#
- Saturday September 17, 2022; 1:52 AM EDT#
- I couldn't find docs on how to add the About tab, so I just found someone's OPML and inspected the headers.#
- Work intruded today, and hacking on Drummer had to wait. But I did manage to take a moment and respond to a notification on Twitter that this blog has been added to Andy Sylvester's Old School Drummers news river. It makes me consider setting up my own river server...#
- Perusing headlines on OSD news, I came across a couple posts about scripting and workflows in Drummer. Clearly, this is where the magic will happen, and when I have more time and a bit more energy, I shall explore some ideas.#
- How can I tie together automation on macOS to generate OPML that is consumed by Drummer; or automation to export OPML from Drummer into other systems like the homegrown SSG that manages the company website.#
- Another area to explore is re-tooling Old School to use my style sheets and making this house a bit more of my own.#
- Drummer is going through that shaking-out period that new software experiences, esp. software developed "live" in-the-moment. My posts from October 25 have suddenly disappeared, and this one from the future has yet to show up on the front page. Problems are lurking down in the machinery responsible for deciding when time has arrived for a dated post to be published. The machinery has been ambivalent, unsure or inconsistent in handling timezone differences. #
- Time is time and constant, but my time relative to your time is different. Being a good 12 hours ahead of New York and 8 hours ahead of GMT, my days start before their's. But machinery stuck on EDT or GMT, or inconsistent in its internal bookkeeping practices, might erroneously conclude that a post is not publishable.#
- Coding wise and conceptually speaking, none of this is difficult to solve, but on the practical level these kinds of date-time calculations fall into a class of programming challenges that can confound the most capable and experienced software developers.#
- I think this is due, in part, to shortcomings in computer languages to expose a full-stack of APIs, from the high-level "solve-the-common-use-case" to low-level "time-is-complicated" APIs. Most languages do not provide a good enough high-level API. There's a reason why one often looks for a third-party date-time library.#
- (Money and Currency are another big omission in most computer languages, which is surprising given how central they are to our world.)#
- I am not sure what the underlying issue in Drummer is or entirely clear on how the publisher is intended to work, but from my experience with date-time problems in general, I know they can also result from overloading data with too many meanings or responsibilities, especially when the system needs to make decisions based on both meanings at the same time.#
- Blog time and Publishing time#
- One way around this is to separate out the blog's local time from the blog's publishing time.#
- "Blog time" would be expressed in my timezone, and "Publishing time" would be expressed always in UTC. The two datums are tracked together but independently in the OPML.#
- The publishing machinery would use "Blog time" to create URLs (i.e. ".../2021/10/24.html") and use "Publishing time" to decide when the entry can be made available; the publisher would always run in UTC.#
- The two values for each would be calculated when "Build my blog..." is run, and they would be effectively immutable values. No other conversion would be done later, as the publishing system would just read the values, do a bit of date comparison, and that would be that.#
- Even if the Old School publisher actually dynamically renders the blog (not publishes static files), the model would work equally well:#
- 1. Request for ".../2021/10/26.html" is received.2. Does it exist? Check entries for "Blog time"#
3. If it exists, is it publishable? Check "Publishing time"4. If yes to both, then render the page.
5. Else handle 404 - Immutability and separation of concerns#
- The data being immutable also means debugging is easier. (You can inspect the actual data used by the machinery to make its decisions without having to compute it first.)#
- The data being pre-computed and separated into two datums eliminates a whole level of second-order debugging to determine where and when in the code the local time is not being converted to UTC for purposes of publishing and being converted back to local time for purposes of URL creation. The system's state is constant in this regard.#
- The two values can be stored in the OPML or, perhaps, in a separate "publishing" manifest. The manifest would be created by the publishing machinery on receipt of the "Build my blog..." command.#
- Noticing that the time stamp on the blog is correct, but the time zone is stuck in EDT (it should be CST; +8 GMT). Let's see if publishing again resolves the problem.#
- Taipei was rocked by a big quake today. Living on the Ring of Fire, quakes are a regular occurrence, but this one was an unusual "Oh, shit" moment. I had in fact just arrived home and was still sitting in the car when it hit. The car's suspension bouncing up and down and side to side, as my house creaked, and literally at the same moment, an Emergency broadcast message hit all of our phones.#
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- I integrated this blog into micro.blog and now can publish in Old School and there. That was quite satisfying as a proof-of-concept for how OPML documents can be used as a universal data type, each publishing system handling the document in its own way. I have more thoughts about this, which will have to wait until another time. But in brief, I also have my own homegrown publishing system, and I would like to teach it OPML. #
- At my company, I have been on a quest to find a way out of unstructured, semantically void document formats Plain text, HTML, and Markdown, as well as any word processor document type. But I do not want to spend my days writing in something like DITA. That space seems way too big and complicated. What I am after is something like an Outliner (hierarchical organization) plus Metadata.#
- In Drummer and OPML, the Metadata are XML attributes placed on the XML element. Presumably, it would be possible to define entire dictionaries of attributes as a way to describe data structures, concepts, and fundamental "truths" and characteristics.#
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- A publishing system would, by associating dictionaries with style sheets and other markup, be able to lay out the OPML.#
- A CMS would be able to import the data and provide relevant functions and editing controls.#
- A machine-learning model would be able to share its knowledge (its universe of mind maps) as OPML documents.#
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- (Does Drummer have special directives for making a list, ordered or unordered? I tried inserting HTML markup, to no effect.)#
- This entry brought to you by Drummer, Dave Winer's latest publishing system. A lifetime ago, I was a heavy Frontier user, having built and published China Informed entirely in Frontier's immersive environment. Frontier was to Internet and 'scripting' as Smalltalk was to desktop UI and object oriented programming. Both were blazing new ground, and both were ahead of their time. Drummer is a re-start built on modern web tech and infrastructure, and it is inherently cross-platform and open.#
- This entry brought to you by Drummer, Dave Winer's latest publishing system. A lifetime ago, I was a heavy Frontier user, having built and published China Informed entirely in Frontier's immersive environment. Frontier was to Internet and 'scripting' as Smalltalk was to desktop UI and object oriented programming. Both were blazing new ground, and both were ahead of their time. Drummer is a re-start built on modern web tech and infrastructure, and it is inherently cross-platform and open.#