Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I express a bit of angst over the use of “geo.”

This post may mean nothing to everyone else in the world, but I have to get it out of my system.

I have been overwhelmed with the use of the term geo the past ten years. Just my personal problem, but his is my personal blog, so here goes.

Definition: geo, relating to the earth. Okay. Got that. No problem with that.

Let’s try the term geolocate. That means to locate something on the earth, which is otherwise known as “locate.” Why do folks say “geolocate?” I guess they sound smarter and are paid more money for saying “geolocate.”

Next we have geospatial.

Definition: spatial, relating to or occupying space.

Okay, let’s combine geo and spatial to have occupying space on the earth. Hmm, I am geospatial as I sit here in the coffee shop typing these words. Good for me.

Then we go to geospatial intelligence or GEOINT. Everyone does GEOINT. If you don’t have 20 years experience in GEOINT you can’t get a job in some neighborhoods. So GEOINT is intelligence or knowledge about occupying space on the earth. In other words, where are you?

Why don’t we just ask, “Where are you?” Again, GEOINT sounds smarter and causes more money to flow.

Again, my blog—my rant.

by Dwayne Phillips

It seems there is a fundamental misunderstanding about the product of research.

There seems to be a misunderstanding about the product of research. I saw this article about risk in research. The idea is that researchers are often risky. Huh?

Risk management asks, “What could possibly go wrong?”

That is something we do when managing a project that is supposed to produce a system, service, or something like that. Build a new car in six months. Whoa, that isn’t much time for that task. What are the risks? There are many things that could go wrong given the short span of time for that task.

Now let’s move to research. Let’s try a new idea on an old problem. We are trying to produce a system, service, or something like that. We are trying to understand if the new idea works on the old problem. What might be wrong with the new idea? Many things. Let’s try it and see.

I research: I try a new idea on an old problem. The idea doesn’t work. That is successful research. We learned that this idea doesn’t work. Great. Let’s use that knowledge. For example, we have learned that standing on the top of a step ladder is dangerous. That idea for gaining more height failed. The knowledge of that failure and danger is good. We know not to do that.

Trying new ideas on old problems when the ideas fail is not risk. That is good research. It seems that the people at that publication I linked would know that by now. Shame on them for not understanding research and risk.

by Dwayne Phillips

We are in a hurry. We still need to do this well.

Basketball coach John Wooden, his UCLA teams won 10 national championships, had many sayings. One was, “Be quick, but don’t hurry.”

Hurry means to move or act with great haste. There is some implication in there about moving or acting so fast that mistakes are bound to happen. (Mistakes often happen when going slowly, but that is another thought for another day.)

Then there is be quick. I like to be quick. I like to get things done in a short span of time. Sometimes we have work to be accomplished and due to circumstances beyond our control, we have an extra-short span of time.

HURRY UP!

Well, maybe not. Hurry tends to restrict breathing. Restricted breathing tends to limit oxygen intake. Lack of oxygen tends to restrict thinking. Restricted thinking, well, that’s just not good.

Count to five slowly and breathe slowly while counting. Now, what is it we needed to do in an extra-short span of time? Oh, that. Okay. Let’s do it well.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes it is best to go back to the old practice of putting everything on a wall so we can see the entire thing.

We used to do this. We would print a document and tape the entire thing to a wall. We would walk along the wall and glance back and forth over a distance of pages. We could see the entire thing. We could ensure things flowed and connected. We did pretty well.

“Oh, but now we have better technology. We have fill-in-the-blank-with-a-newer-computer-technology,” says another person with an encouraging smile.

“Yes, but I can only see half a page at a time on my computer screen,” says me with disappointment in my voice.

I read a statement. Hmm. That sounds like something I read somewhere else. Where was that? Search, find, oh, here it is. Why is it repeated? I don’t know. I can’t see enough of the document.

I once taped the framework of a book on a wall. I wrote that book. It sold well. That technique worked. All in the past. Perhaps I am just too old for this stuff. Or perhaps, we could do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Wait. Stop. Someone grab that person. That person is about to fall into the pit of endless details. Oh no. It’s too late!

I know it’s about to happen. I should be able to do something to stop it. Oh no. It happened too fast. There is nothing I can do.

The other person fell into the pit of endless details.

I asked for an overview of a constellation of satellites. The other person is drawing a diode, an RLC circuit, and their is ground. Details. Details. And more details. The details are endless. What about the overview? It is gone. Now we are discussing the color code on the resistors.

Is there any way to climb out of this pit? I haven’t found one yet. I should not have asked this person a question. This person lives too close to the edge of the pit. As much as the conversation is often entertaining and enlightening, there is always that danger. That pit is right there.

Stay away. Stay safe. We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

To be effective in one way or another, gather resources.

resourceful: adjective, having the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties.

Hmm. That is not the definition I expected, but that is what comes from Google’s English dictionary provided by Oxford Languages. You know, that place in England where they invented the English language or at least wrote that dictionary that would fill my den if my wife let me buy a copy (but I digress).

I like that definition. I like, “quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties.” (I was expecting resourceful to mean full of resources.)

I’ve always liked the idea of tools. A screwdriver is good for this. A hammer is good for that. I recently learned of a tool that helps install a garbage disposal. I will buy one of those the next time I install a garbage disposal. Yet another tool good for something. It is clever and it will overcome the difficulty of neck and back pain for only $10.

Tools are resources. Ideas are tools. Gather and save them. Apply them in a clever manner to overcome difficulties.

Books are full of ideas; blog posts are full of ideas. Social media is full of ideas. What? Yes. Seek the more outlandish sources. Seek the lowliest sources. Look in places you never look. Look in places that would embarrass you if you told your friends and colleagues that you looked. Find the resources that are in those places.

Let’s be more resourceful. Let’s overcome more difficulties. We can do this.

by Dwayne Phillips

We have come a long way with AI aiding in decisions. The machine is powerful and new. Or is it?

AI is helping us decide what to do. It performs analysis in seconds that would have taken weeks or months. Wow! Look at us now—machine-aided decisions. Great new stuff.

Or is it? Seems that we have been using machines to aid decisions for … well, several thousand years. And these machines aiding decisions use probability to predict the future and aid our troubled minds just like today’s approach to AI predicts the next word based on the probability of all words gathered during training.

Hmm. What ancient machine-aided decisions? Flip a coin.

A coin can be used as a lever, so it is a machine. The two sides of a coin are different and that difference is easily distinguished on sight. Which side will appear is based on probability. The next side up depends to some degree on all the results of all the prior tosses into the air.

Flipping a coin is artificial intelligence. The decision the coin flip helps determines depends on the question we ask before flipping. Hmm. Sounds like prompt engineering.

Wait. Stop. Nope. There must be something wrong with this analogy. Good grief. A penny only costs a penny and I can use that penny again and again. An AI datacenter costs a few gazillion pennies. Could it be that we are … naw. Can’t be. We’re too smart for that.

Now, what’s the next word I should type in this little blog post. Hmm. Sentences start with either a noun or verb, so heads is a noun, tails is a verb, and then…wait a minute. A coin flip didn’t write this. Or did it?

by Dwayne Phillips

The one great advantage to working with a chatbot.

curt: adjective, using or expressed in few words, in a way perceived as rude.

Ah, that’s it. That’s what I like about working with a chattering bot: I can be curt and I won’t hurt anyone’s feelings.

I was attempting to create a family tree picture yesterday. I tried several different chattering bots. None of them did anything worthwhile. The answers were wrong. The pictures were junk. Good grief.

And you better believe that I laid into these chattering bots about what a lousy job they were doing! I told them again and again that they were making stupid mistakes and they needed to do a better job. I didn’t mince words. I WAS CURT!

It was okay. No one cried. No one pouted. No once stormed out of the room or whatever people do this days when someone is curt with them (does anyone use “curt” anymore?).

I knew there was something good about these chattering bots. Now I know.

by Dwayne Phillips

Software that writes software is quite helpful. Well, maybe sort of not.

MIT jumps into the fray and asks a few dozen programmers if AI that writes software is helpful to people who write software. First, the folks at MIT are smart enough to not base a survey piece on a survey of a few dozen people. The sample size, as is often repeated, is not big enough.

Anyways, is software that writes software helpful? It certainly is helpful to those folks who don’t like the folks who write software as a profession. Those programmers are difficult to talk to and get along with and all that stuff. The machine is much easier to disdain.

But how about those folks who write programs professionally. Do they like the machine helping them? Of course they do. Good grief. If there wasn’t a machine, they wouldn’t have any machine to program. And compilers, software that writes software, are the greatest invention since 1s and 0s. And editors, like vi and emacs and such, are great software that writes software. The “modern” systems have auto-complete so you don’t have to remember all the names of all the functions and variables that you have to use. These new IDEs predict the next character or ten for the programmer.

And speaking of predicting, these chatbots predict the next character over and over and over until you have 100 lines of code predicted. Programmers understand the loop concept. Do one good thing. Loop over that N times. What’s the difference between predicting one character and predicting N characters? Nothing.

So all this software writing software is great stuff. You just have to specify what you want correctly.

Wait a minute. Specify what you want correctly. That is what computer programmers have always done. Instruct the machine to do something. Do this in assembly language or Java. Well, maybe now we do it in … what do you call that specification language we use with these chattering bots? Oh, English. Well, its sort of English.

Wait a minute. Are these chattering bots are nothing but new compilers? No one told me about that.

Back to the drawing board (does anyone use a drawing board any longer?). We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

This current AI boom all comes down to the cost of providing bathrooms for people. Or so it seems.

I think we are over thinking the idea of what we think about these chattering bots. Folks, the chatbot is just software running on a computer. Yes, some of that software makes me think I am talking to someone. I frequently hear people describing their interactions with Claude as “talking to Him” and “He gave me these ideas” and “He put this data into a table for me” and so on. What a great name for a piece of software: Claude. That is so much nicer than ChatGPT. Oops, is software nice?

Why does a company have software to “talk to me” instead of a person? The software runs 24 hours a day and doesn’t “get tired.” If the software has errors, it always has errors. It doesn’t have more errors after not taking a nap or not eating enough protein. And the software doesn’t need to take a break and go to the bathroom.

Ah, we’ve hit the bottom line: chattering bots don’t need bathrooms. Bathrooms are the most expensive room in any building. They have all that extra plumbing and hardware. Bathrooms need cleaning often and that costs money.

The AI boom? It is all due to the cost of the bathroom. Remove the need for the bathroom, and you really have something. Claude never goes to the bathroom. He has a job for life.