Tek in Hindsight

Dr D had mentioned this vid, and I'd mentally queued it, so yesterday I watched it for the first time. Edifying. Having visited VintageTek with Dr D and another geek earlier, I was already primed to get a more developed picture. Tek (Tektronix) was the premier cathode ray tube (CRT) innovator and manufacturer for quite long spell, and grew to have around 23K employees. Tek’s culture was of, by and for engineers in a way that shaped the larger surrounding Silicon Forest culture, for the better we like to believe (with some justification).

My particular slant on the Vollum story (Tek founder) was I noticed at his award ceremony at Fort Evans he was surrounded by DDUs, Dymaxion Deployment Units, what Bucky & Co were testing as a quickly deployable sheltering solution at the time. Butler grain bins had been an inspiration. This was pre dome and even pre his Wichita House (the one suspended from a utility mast). Or did I get that backwards? The Dymaxion car, house and map were all part of a science fiction projected lifestyle built around education automation i.e. the internet, around which MEMEX (Dr V’s vision) became AI (umbrella term for natural language models, which includes the visual “semes” from semiology).

Another slant I take is through the history of a partially overlapping company: Electro-Scientific Instruments (ESI), former owner of what became the Quaker Meeting House on Stark Street (since then greatly remodeled), in southeast Portland. Doug Strain, ESI’s founder, got a boost from what would become Hewlett-Packard, which ended up competing in the CRT market. ESI, like Tek, was in the business of precision measurement (metrology) and they created some products in partnership. Doug also endowed the Linus Pauling Center on SE Hawthrorne in Asylum District as well as the LP reading room at OSU, as well as supporting Pacific University in Forest Grove.

Public Transit

I’m giving high marks to the transportation machine, by which I mean the combination of planes, trains and automobiles (which includes buses) that participated in ferrying me to and fro this trip, not forgetting the ferry itself, from Kingston (Olympic Peninsula) to Edmonds, north of Seattle.

I thought I really got my money’s worth riding SoundTransit Link, Line 1, both ways ($3 each way), Lynnwood to Federal Way,  almost the whole distance, getting off and on at SeaTac. The Lynnwood to Stanwood bus is only $2.50.

In LA: Metro C line, all the way to the end (Norwalk) and back, with a connecting bus right to my destination. Pretty painless. Everything went smoothly. I was able to add funds to the Tap card at the Whittier Senior Center (my iPhone directed me there). 

Although I traveled light, Group 6 borders on United don’t get to bring a complementary carryon beyond the one personal accessory, like a brief case, so I did have to check a bag ($50), even though it was small enough to be a carryon. 

All these systems, including the airline and airport, the LAX Hilton with the shuttle, seemed to be humming along, getting the job done. The transportation machine is a vast global enterprise. I was experiencing a tiny sliver of it. 

Tomorrow I’m back to the adjoining network: the freeway system with its privately owned cars and fleet vehicles.

Wandering Around

So “wandering in LA” proved to mean “mentally” more than in 3-space (as some call it), as we tick along through that fourth dimension (As the World Turns was a soap on TV when I was a kid, that I avoided). 

[ Note to new readers: our “time tunnels” (world lines) tend to be more tetrahelix-modeled at FSI (successive tetrahedral movie frames, action packed), which, to a “Quadrays head” at least, may translate to “4D” (embedded as “chariot” or “car”) times the Heraclitus Effect (time) ]

The metaphor of finding the deepest valleys along which to travel, also has a “least action” flavor to it. Why take the twisty-turny scenic route when you could barrel along at a better clip by sticking to the “Roman Imperial” ones (another metaphor for “paths most frequented by the normies”)? It all depends on exactly what you want to minimize. Time? What if only death awaits? Keep it waiting?

A well-appointed path, to take one example, leads from Leibniz-Newton to Euler-Lagrange, and on to Hamilton-Tait. A path between their maths. 

Calculus funneled through this time tunnel, gaining in sophistication (fluxions, Lagrangian, Hamiltonian), feeding into our present day quantum mechanics. Terry wants us to retrace to the Carnot branch as well, remembering that thermodynamics (the discipline) aka economics, springs from many sources. Lets add information theory while we’re at it.

So what does the Principle of Least Action really tell us about the Oregon Trail, the pathways followed? Clearly the settlers were hoping to minimize risk, meaning maximizing chance of survival. Safety in numbers represents one of the principles (not fully generalized). 

But what if a family just couldn’t go on?  What was the calculus? Don’t waste supplies. Who were the bad apples? As the World Turns. From such migrations we get a whole genre of trekker lit. What physics applies? What movie-making techniques?

Wandering in LA

Mt. Hood from UA 1218

As some of you already know, I’m kicking around in Greater LA, widening my pattern from Portland, meaning Wandering, capital W, and that entails tackling (as in learning about) the local public transit system. 

Yesterday, after getting dropped off in Lynnwood, I rode Link through (under) Seattle to SeaTac airport. I’d been wanting to ride this light rail system for quite a while. A dream come true.

Link Passenger

Civilian Life

I'm imagining a magazine by that title: Civilian Life. I'll be turning to Gemini after this, to conjure a picture. The conspiracy theory we’ll float behind it is the Quakers are behind it, as it’s clearly designed to entice people away from signing up for tours of duty managed by organized crime, or do we call it a religion in your neck of the woods? Something to do with Manifest Destiny perhaps?

For a senior in my age bracket, a Joneser (a subtype of Boomer), pumping the pedals of an elliptical (piece of gym equipment) and / or of a bicycle, is a way to keep fit, which is an economic move (but then what isn’t?). I’m glad of my Food Not Bombs chapter around the time of Occupy Portland, but also before and after, as that got me out pulling bicycle trailers full of rescued food, from warehouse to church kitchen.

Today I would’ve locked up the bicycle and dipped into Voodoo Donuts again (they use the longer spelling of donuts: doughnuts), prolly getting the same thing I got Saturday Morning. But the demographics of early Saturday differ from those of a late morning Wednesday: I encountered a line at the door. They’re set up for that, with clearly cued queuing, and the line would’ve moved quickly, but I took it as a sufficient deterrent to keep me headed to the Orange Line, which came almost immediately.

This is what I call Wandering, and part of the mental state the Wanderer seeks to achieve involves a high degree of suggestibility, but with built-in biases and opinions. There’s a Bayesian quality to cycling the OODA loop quickly, continuing to reassess. 

I feel drawn to the Russo-Ukrainian-Baltic grocery store further out SE Division, but going there with a bicycle seems like overkill. That’d be for a next pedestrian adventure.

Upon arriving at the OMSI / Water Avenue station, I made my choice: I opted for the Sellwood loop, meaning Springwater Corridor to Tacoma / Sellwood and back on Max, to right where I was standing, so a true loop in other words. Riverrun… (that’s a Finnegans Wake allusion — I hadn’t really realized how deep into that work Terrance McKenna could take us). 

However, on my way to Sellwood, I made an impromptu decision, partly based on the sounds, those of an open-for-business amusement park, to wheel my bike through Oaks Park, taking pictures to add to my Oak’s Park album, to which I’d not added in quite awhile. 

The demographic this time of day (around noon) was young kids and their guardians. Rides for this age group include the merry-go-round of course. The crowds were at the north end of the park, where rides for younger kids are concentrated.

Portland is chugging through its summertime schedule, which includes such amusements as Oregon Rail Heritage Museum running their joy-rider down to Oaks Park and back. It seemed this was a round trip experience, much like the Zoo train. People were not getting on and off at the Oaks Park terminus. This is another theme park ride, not a piece of the transit network.

At the entrance to Springwater Corridor around OMSI, one encounters the abandoned Ross Island Cement Factory. I’ve been ogling that archeological phenomenon as a potential Parks n Rec drone course, one of many. 

There’d be risk management involved. I was suggesting the only permitted drones be ones checked out for that course. Parks n Rec might wanna issue wallet cards indicating a person’s level of training, akin to a pilot’s license. Complete noobs shouldn’t seek to start out in a pro setting. I drawing on my experience of sports diving for analogies here.

The Odyssey (movie review)

I took in The Odyssey at a packed 2 PM showing at Hollywood Theater in the Hollywood District of Portland, Oregon, AD Aug 15 2026. 

I’d recently had a conversation at Sapphire Hotel in which I agreed a lotta movies these days were sequels of sequels, and inside some Universe of partially overlapping sagas, leading many would-be viewers to feel left out (my attitude toward Game of Thrones, which still sits unwatched in my DVD collection).

The commitment to get into a whole fictional universe-in-progress seems too big, especially in light of RealWorld [tm] making its demands. For example, I was gonna stay outta first run movie houses til the war was over and prioritize doing homework around nonfiction, also harder to find during wartime.

Well, I decided pretty quick the war was over, at least in terms of knowing who the losers were, although that had been pretty clear going in. Back to Plato’s Cave — a place eerily foretelling regarding our ScreenWorld of today.

However, back to that conversation, I drew a distinction between sequels to sequels in a contemporary World (a lotta philosophers say World instead of Universe, meaning the whole shebang as well), versus remakes of the major epics, such as the Odyssey, the Ramayana, and the Gilgamesh epics, just to take some examples. 

Gilgamesh (Sumerian epic) has maybe faded a bit, but we’re going over it in my book club, and I’ve been doing some homework on it, so I’ll list it here as one of the perennials. 

These latter so-called “timeless” tales have distinguished themselves in terms of their ongoing popularity and longevity. We’re talking thousands of years, via many social media platforms.

A subculture’s perpetuation doesn’t happen by accident. Taking it forward is what we call work. Every so often, a living culture, a set of synchronizing lifestyles, needs a signal booster, a repeater, to rebroadcast a core story, its memetic DNA, onward through time. The Odyssey is one of those. The Iliad with its Trojan Horse gets bundled in. 

Every religion likewise has core stories and pantheon. The Odyssey, in this retelling, features Zeus, Athena and Poseidon specifically, with Athena appearing on camera, privately to the protagonist. Poseidon and Zeus are more off camera influencers, reflective of what’s going on in the moods of men.

Imbalance vs-a-vs the gods means aberrational with respect to the generalized principles, and when the divergence gets extreme, there’s hell to pay, in the form of nightmare scenarios, many of them surreal. 

As the movie opens, Odysseus is already in an afterlife of sorts, a kind of heaven, yet he’s haunted by flashbacks, and tormented by his own role in bringing an end to civilization. 

He feels personally responsible for the destruction of Troy, and for creating so many loose ends in the form of insufficiently honored dead. 

Calypso is his healer and therapist. She feeds him ancient wisdom, symbolic lotus leaves, which he craves.  She teachers him to let go, meaning to be less of a control freak. Big wheels are turning. Like Odysseus don’t be so vain as to think it’s only about “little me” (Odysseus does have a big ego, befitting a dude of his status and stature).

To heal, Odysseus must first just forget for a while, and enjoy some R&R. Then, once he’s recovered sufficiently to due process work, a re-enters the nightmare to rescue his loved ones: his wife, son, dog, and loyal servant. 

This time he must not allow himself to get detoured by Agamemnon’s path, which didn’t end well for Agamemnon either. The plot line focuses a lot on Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, and the latter’s quest to figure out if his dad is ever coming back. A lot rides on that question. Telemachus gets to chat with Agamemnon’s brother. 

Catering to Agamemnon’s ego is what got all those soldiers stuck living as beach bums for ten years, their seige of Troy, before Odysseus managed to think up the Trojan horse ploy, which involved taking advantage of the Trojans’ love for Athena. He’d abuse their loyalty to Athena against them. That move would take its toll.

Once Athena personally witnessed his later (much later) confession to his wife, that he had been an evil perp who had needed therapy (seven years with Calypso), he was eligible to take the next step, this time with Penelope, to sail away westward (her idea in the first place), leaving the throne of Ithaca to their son, and tying off any any loose ends. After vanquishing the suitors, who had it coming.

In the closing scene he foretells of new civilizations that would arise to replace his dying civilization of readers. His story would in the meantime be passed ahead by means of song by the illiterate. And as we know in hindsight, the art of reading would arise again, along with this new art of making movies. Some applause at the end.

Laika Crows

I use this Gmail app that insists on knowing that formatting text into a narrower column is not OK, and the first letter of the next line must be capitalized, because of the hard line break. 

There might be a buried setting to turn that off. A lotta software engineers make their living being way too helpful, cuz their job depends on feature bloat. This might be my opportunity to get back into using Vim — but is there a Vim app for the iPad. 

Something primitive, then cut and paste to Gmail for adding pix? 

Part of it is Gmail seeks to be faithful to HTML under the hood and line breaks were always dicey on a web page of indeterminate dimensions.

OK, boring. What’s been happening (also boring, to a lotta browsers flitting by — at a “hi bye” rate)?

The Laika Crows (about 30) were unveiled and I encountered four of them in one outing, scoring pictures of the first three, the last espied through a Max train window, in the plaza next to Big Pink (rose-colored office tower).

Cutting and pasting from my Gmail outbox:

Zooming way out, I see a sort of battle twixt two subcultures: that of the legal profession, and that of social engineering. That won’t be the favored terminology though, as “social engineering” is considered a no-no, even through it’s a big bucks industry to get women to smoke more, and make fat people fatter. Then they have resulting healthcare issues. Got milk? I only drink half and half nowadays, but sparingly. I cut way way back on cold or hot cereal. The cream goes into my oyster stew (Winco oysters from the Tunas aisle, in a can).

Here I’m taking the line breaks back out, a Blogger provides its own margins.

The crow pix were from my bicycle-based Wandering with another Wanderer yesterday. Another Gresham Loop.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (movie review)

I’d declared a moratorium on having frivolous summer fun enjoying first run blockbusters as long as the City of Morons was on a global rampage to prove itself relevant. Today though, I got the same vibe Tim Dillon was sharing, that we’d turned a page and smarter cities were taking over the decision making, so I dipped into The Bagdad for the latest Spidey movie (I’ve seen a bunch of em).

I saw a lotta plot parallels with the latest ET movie, in that the Department of Damage Control was much like the evil agency seeking to exploit ET tech. 

That’s a common theme: anything powerful, like the Nazi ideology, needs to be harnessed and redirected, hence Operation Paperclip and the birth of NASA, which JFK then refocused away from Los Alamos style phallic missile play to a moon-focused Apollo Program, effectively making the most admired job (that of astronaut) seem civilian instead of military. 

Apollo-Soyuz threatened a lotta personality cults, distracting the rank and file from wanting military style glory. Vanity dictated a solution be found. But I digress.

Peter Parker is very lonely, because he has these unrealistic spidey powers no one else has. Sure, there are other circus freaks out there. 

He’s got company. Just no good friends, as anyone with superpowers is likely villainous (back to Department of Damage Control), whereas Parker is a stereotypical “good guy” (his character has always been “a protagonist” in the Ancient Greek sense of the word i.e. noble, heroic).

Peter really wants to get back with MJ and is somewhat the obsessed stalker. But in wiping her mind for her own protection, he wiped out the old MJ. The new MJ is kind to him, but not madly in love, not up to reciprocating his tender feelings (I shoulda said “spoiler alert” but y’all coulda predicted this twist). 

Then Peter meets a different girl with powers rivaling his, and so another villain at first, predictably. 

But after a Vulcan mind meld of sorts, they both realize they have more in common than not, so why not be on the same side against the City of Morons (or the NYC-based equivalent)?

The subplot is Peter is entering a next chapter in becoming more like an adult spider, which is kinda gross. Younger viewers will recognize the onset of puberty is being alluded to, much like in Inside Out 2. Hormones. 

Peter is doing his best to tamp it down, by means of a neck implant (he and MJ are both genius level in biochemistry), as his becoming more spidery is really messing up his game, and taking a toll on his self control. He even hurts (not fatally) an innocent cop, one of the good guys, in a blind rage.

What he really needs is some R&R, but the situation he faces (MJ is in danger) is way too dire. Heroes need an heroic journey, ways to prove (and develop) their metal. Marvel comics (akin to manga) know the formula. 

Did I mention the Hulk gets to be a star too? This is the MCU (Marvel Comics Universe) after all.

I’m not being negative or dismissive when I say “formula”. Movie alchemy is based on casting the right spells at the right time, thereby being bewitching and giving audiences their money’s worth (as a dude with a senior-priced ticket, in a cool theater on a hot day, I did not feel ripped off).

Upon discovering his female counterpart (his anima in Jungian terms) he’s freer to loosen up about his true identity. His closest friends get to know what’s behind the mask. He reintegrates into society more successfully, realizing he’s appreciated (so not so alone after all). 

By the end, he has regained his equilibrium, and is ready for a next movie, perhaps with more friends. The franchise must go on. Stay tuned.

Manga Views

Crisis Management

Remembering the History (1959)

Planning Multiple OMRs 

Making Manga