Category Archives: Development

19-Pert

The WordPress Cupertino Meetup is still going strong (not true – barely limping by) and what you see above illustrates the user interface for website developers starting to use the new block-based page editor, now integrated into core.

Few of you might find this interesting.

The tiny portrait is of Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress.

17-Fess

New Mexico

Silver City – Gateway to the Gila National Forest (3 million acres!)

Ideas are like stars; untouchable. But choose them as guides like a seafaring man on a desert of water follows them to destiny.

Carl Schurz, human

Life is a journey, keep moving. Don’t get stuck or complacent. Embrace change, learn from experiences, and constantly move forward towards personal and professional development.

Chat GPT, machine

04-Vera

Circumstance

When you look at an object, you see one side of it at a time; the nature of vision. When you think about something, you think about it in one context at a time; the nature of thought.

Context determines what your mind thinks just as viewing-angle determines what your eye sees.

02-Will

Juggling

Way Up the Steps

I choose to juggle this year and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

That goal will serve to organize and measure the best of my energies & skills. That challenge is one that I am willing to accept, one I am unwilling to postpone, one which I intend to win. -thank you John F. Kennedy

29-Sign

Consciousness

Mental activity in the pink matter (wet) comes up with an idea that drives the hand that picks up the pencil & paper (dry) and writes the idea down. From there it gets uploaded across the firewall into (air) cyberspace.

Daniel Kahneman refers to Fast and Slow thinking as System One and System Two, respectively. System One defines the effortless, intuitive part of our thinking while System Two explains the kind of concentration that involves effort.

The time & energy required to train your mind to STOP thinking is even greater. That higher level of control over your thoughts is achieved through the practice of meditation.

12-Gage

Last night G stepped into a conversation between R and M. The problem R was expressing to M was exactly the same problem G was experiencing.

It seemed R and G might commiserate to find the one right solution for both because, although M and R were on the same team and G was leading a distinctly different team, any answers found would be to their mutual benefit.

But, G was outside R & M’s coupling and so easy to dismiss.

05-Plem

Implementation

Focus on situations with change potential:

  • High stakes – responsible for the outcome
  • Novelty – not drawn from the past
  • Challenge – done faster and/or better
  • Interaction – work with people

This approach requires serious commitment. Development requires time. The secret is to invest a few moments every day to maximize learning.”

Development First by David Peterson & Mary Dee Hicks

27-Shor

Pathway

Adrian du Buisson for Quanta Magazine – March 12, 2019

Cells in embryos make their way across a steep “developmental landscape” to their eventual fate.

Embryonic cells continuously monitor their changing surroundings and make small corrective adjustments, optimizing as development proceeds, locking in on their planned identity relatively late.

Processing positional information makes genes variously switch on and off throughout the embryo, giving cells distinct identities based on their location. (Some cells unfortunately take the wrong paths and are unable to get back on track.)

All the information is there in the landscape and processing that information effectively may be the phenomenon that makes a bunch of loosely stuck-together atoms behave like the thing we call life.


Had I been like a man living in a wood from which he knows there is no exit, I could have lived; but I was like one lost in a wood who, horrified at having lost his way, rushes about wishing to find the road.”

-Leo Tolstoy