the Adjunct: Garry Hamilton

Garry Hamilton (imported from my C2 home page)

A Brief Bio

Hi. I'm a programmer (since 1981).

I cut my teeth on 8080 assembly language. Since then, I've made my living brainwashing computers.

I've written applications, tools, drivers, a data warehouse, language variants, and a language or two.

I have a passion for information management - more particularly KNOWLEDGE management. To this end, I have invented a transmission, storage, and retrieval model which I call "TNF" (Tagged Narrative Format) as one of its working names. And, no, I'm not going to try to describe it here. I've been working on this concept since I taught computer languages at the local college some 15 years ago. Life (what happens to you while you're making other plans) has a way of providing a significant amount of distraction for one's "Great Ideas" so that things that are not really all that hard nonetheless drag on forever.

I live in the Southwest United States (currently - Nov 2003: Carson City, Nevada). I've finally transferred to the Reno branch of [company name here]. Still here - Dec 2004.

I have kids - some grown, some teens. UPDATE 10/22/2002: I'm officially a grandad, my oldest daughter having established her own progeny. Am I really that old? Another update 12/02/2004: Looks like another grandkid is pending. And as of 07/10/2005 granddaughter #2 arrived. (I guess it's official. I'm a real grandad.)

I've traveled a bit and lived in Europe and the UK for a while.

I've done work in rehab, remedial and advanced educational techniques, business analysis and troubleshooting, communications, electronics, and publishing.

I enjoy chess, Scrabble, Abalone, Othello, and other board games. I fenced for a few years, but I haven't picked up a long blade in two decades. I ran the long distance races in school. I ride bikes when I can, but not at the "everywhere, every day" level that I did while I was in Europe. I miss that.

In one life, I did some military time (for those who accept that the Air Force is "military"), which took me to England, Germany, and Greece, and which provided my grounding in basic and radio electronics.

In another life, I spent a decade and a half doing volunteer rehab and educational work - most of it overseas. Consequently, I speak really awful pidgin German, pretty good conversational Danish (better than I write it), and 3 dialects of non-American English (given a few weeks in England, I sound like a native), and 12 words of 5 other languages. I got a feel for how the U.S. is seen from without. I went through (and recovered from) "Ugly American" syndrome. I am well versed in applied educational technology - the kind that gets results in spite of the theories. I know something of the human condition (10 years of volunteer work will do that).

I can be reached at kidrhino(at)wizard(dot)com. Well, not for much longer; the domain's going away.

For the time being, please instead use garry-wiki (at) noisyroom (dot) com while we sort that out.

Wiki Mail & Abuse Section

Questions, answers, comments, general abuse, whatever. I'll try to answer as priorities and time slicing allow.

(Some remarks made on my C2 homepage are retained below, though they may lack context here.)

Garry, have you heard the joke: "What do you call a person who speaks 3 languages? --- tri-lingual. What do you call a person who speaks 2 languages? --- bi-lingual. What do you call a person who speaks one language? --- an American! BrucePennington

Yup. There was a time when I did fit that definition. I was awful at languages in school. Once I moved to where the language was spoken I was able to learn it, and in fact found I have a knack for learning it as the locals speak it (complete with, in the case of Danish, a Vesterbro's (West Copenhagen) accent).

What was really enlightening was that the Scandinavian tongues are clearly the immediate "ancestors" of English. The grammars of the "Norse" languages almost completely match the English of today. The vocabularies differ, but there are words and word patterns that explain a great deal about why English is the way it is.

German is part of the story, and the various Latin derivatives are another part, but the substance and structure of English derives directly from Nordic roots.

Living there for several years did more for my appreciation of my own Mother tongue than all my years of schooling. I can't say I'm a big fan of the Socialism they've adopted there, but the time in-country was worth a great deal to me. -- gh

Garry, re: your response to Juan Pablo ... the media doesn't help. My daughter was 5 before she knew what broadcast TV was. It gets worse every year, seems to me... I don't think it is just me getting older. I can't bear the thought of my kids being so bombarded by valueless crap. Or worse, crap that promotes very poor values. I do think that healthy values can be instilled without being part of a church, though. (at least I hope so)

I went to church when I was young. I picked up some useful values. Since that time I've lived a fairly respectable slice of life (by some standards). Somewhere in that process I stopped being a "church on Sunday" guy. For several years "church" was what I lived (daily active application of values and the methods to achieve them). Sundays-only people didn't impress me at all. I still don't do Sundays-in-the-pew. But nobody can shake what I know. Something I have always told my kids when asked whether such-and-such was okay is, "DoWhatYouKnowIsRight?." If they didn't know whether such-and-such was right/wrong, we worked through it from causes and effects, benefits and detriments. It hasn't been perfect, but I never gave them "just do this; God says so." -- gh

Your homeschooling anecdote was very interesting. My kids began elementary school in Seattle. I was very pleasantly surprised to find (at least at Coe Elementary that we chose to attend) that a public school DID seem to provide a very thoughtful and well balanced education. I really want public schools in this country to be not just good, but great! When we moved to Corvallis, OR, I felt that some things slipped. While most of the educators in our school here seem good, there seems to be less unity of curriculum, and during the 2nd grade, my daughter slipped in math.. basically, she learned more advanced stuff in the 1st grade in Seattle and was considered gifted! Anyway, my point is that the public school system seems to vary a lot around the country, or even around a single city. My opinion is that having the money to have enough teachers to keep class sizes low is the single most important thing that would help. -- RonJandrasi

Ron, the "Public School" system that we have is flawed in fundamental ways. The system was adopted from the Prussian model, with the purpose of creating skilled-but-manageable drones. That hasn't been always the purpose of the teachers, parents, or students (certainly not the students) but with time, and the liberal application of more and more of the psych "sciences" we've achieved a system that conditions and indoctrinates more than it educates. The parents and students still resist that model, but the teachers have become (largely) assimilated into the psych-borg. I worked as a consultant with the NEA (National Education Assn) over a four year period, and I can tell you with certainty, they are not your friends. The system is rotten from the top down. The only answer is to be better at educating your kids than the system is at indoctrinating them. -- gh

You may notice that I don't air everything I know/believe/understand in public. Public can be a bad place for that. Certain paradigms really threaten certain sacred conventions of today's "enlightened" academia, so if you flash too much of that stuff around, the "enlightened" crowd will stone you to death to prevent contamination of the sacred "truths" they so cherish. So some of this stuff I reserve for quiet, private conversations. I had an experience with a "guru" who allowed me to thrash around for weeks before I finally asked him what to do. The answer was (for him) simple and well known. I asked him indignantly why he let me waste so much time thrashing. His answer was, "I don't dispense advice or knowledge unless it's asked for." I've had a hard time with that lesson, since I keep hoping that certain knowledge will register with some people if I give it freely. I'm nearly always wrong. But I'm always happy to convey what I know to anyone who asks. Sometimes what I know is even useful. And that makes it worthwhile. -- gh

Was television mentioned? Why let a young child know about television when they could be learning?

Television is quite possibly the greatest communications failure of modern record. Because of all that it could be, what it actually is falls tragically short. As political manipulators have discovered that TV provides a direct conduit for data (or a "message") modulating a "carrier wave" of entertainment, what TV has become is an indoctrination platform. Cute/fun/hillarious/emotional programs carry embedded social/political messages. You're talking to your kid one day and realize that he/she is spouting the most absurd social engineering crap you've heard. You ask where they got this from. They can't tell you. "Everybody knows" it's this way or that way. Occasionally, they'll identify the TV as source. But the real damage happens when 200 kids all get the same message from the same TV program, then get together and laugh/joke/discuss and agree about the message content.
Here's a question for you: is there anything at all that you've seen on TV - ever - that was so important that you couldn't have a) gotten it somewhere else b) done without it entirely? This does not count all the programming that people use as social shorthand in intra-office collisions - [Hey, Bob, how's it going? Hey, Tom, live long and prosper!] or [Oh, Dude! That was such a ToolTime? moment!] - and my personal answer to this is no, TV just lets me turn off my mind and coast. Yes, I love a good story. I even like a good movie. But the packaging of television is wrong.
My parents, on seeing what TV was doing to our family, traded it in for a stereo. They didn't own another TV until I was over 30. I've gone for years at a time without one, and suffered not at all. The most damaging social content requiring the most repair and intervention in our family has come from a) television and b) schools. If I can ever get my wife to agree to it, we will purge our household of the damned things. Which means it's not likely to happen.
-- gh

Here's a question for you: is there anything at all that you've seen on TV - ever - that was so important that you couldn't have a) gotten it somewhere else b) done without it entirely?

Answer: No, but the same answer applies to books, newspapers, conversation, movies, music, and other media.

Tonight I saw a Japanese documentary about the history of Baghdad that described the battle of Talas between the Abbasid caliphate and the Tang dynasty. The Arabs won and captured Chinese prisoners who knew how to make paper. Paper was much harder to erase than parchment and provided a more secure method for transmitting information. The Arabs used this to consolidate control over the entire Islamic empire in Baghdad (and also create what are probably the first promisory notes.)

Could I have learned this somewhere else? Sure. I've had 40 years to pick it up but somehow it's escaped my notice. TV brought it to my attention. Could I have done without it entirely? Absolutely. But why? I work in the checking industry and this sort of perspective enhances my life immensely. I've done some work on creating secure electronic documents, but I've never thought about how the porous and water-soluble aspects of paper make it more secure than parchment. It's given me a lot to think (and read) about, just like most of the TV I watch.

This documentary was in hi-def, too. I got to see some remarkably clear images of the places and documents involved. It was the next best thing to being there, and chances are I'm never going to visit Baghdad.

Tonight I also got to watch the Rath Yatra festival in Jagannath Puri. Last night I learned a little about the history of organized crime in Russia and the "bitch wars" in post-WWII gulags. I love TV.

-- EricHodges

Eric, you make a good point. I'm going to venture a guess, however, that you didn't pick this stuff up on the Comedy Channel or TBS or <popular channel here>. There is a limited selection of channels that more closely approach what TV could be. Sadly, I would imagine we're looking at viewership in the single digits. Television, as practiced today, has a pretty poor SignalToNoise ratio.

Now, if I could have 20 channels instead of 150, and if, on 10 of those channels, I could schedule the content I want to see (starting to sound rather internet/web-ish), so that on a given night I could choose from a catalog of material (searchable?) and see "History of the Kahns" and "Swordmaking for Everyman" without wading through car insurance sold by a lizard, medical advice from drug companies, and YET ANOTHER BLOODY CLOTHING SALE being held right down the street from YET ANOTHER BLOODY AUTO SALE then I might be less inclined to rant about it.

-- Garry

You mean like a system that provides channels like History, History International, Science, Discovery, Discovery HD, Discovery Times, National Geographic, PBS, PBS HD, NASA and INHD2? A system that archives shows you might be interested in so you can watch them when you have time? A system that lets you skip commercials? It's been around for several years. The entire setup (all cable fees plus hi-def DVR rental, hi-def channels and HBO) adds $15 to my cable modem bill. No setup fee, no hardware purchase. I've probably seen 10 commercials in the last 5 years.

There's plenty of signal and cheap technology to filter out the noise, at least in my neck of the woods.

-- EH

Getting closer. Trouble is, currently I get to watch, for instance, BlackSky? when they think it's a good idea. Having channels that specialize in historical or scientific or DIY programming is good, but if I want to reprise that DIY program on setting tile because I'm actually doing such a project this week, there's no provision for that.

Imagine: go online, log on to the DIY Channel site, select "Tile Setting for Beginners," schedule it for 9:00 am. Now set your DVR to record the 9:00am-to-10:00am segment and drive off to the tile store to choose your style & color. When you get home, your program is waiting for you.

Another model might be programming-by-election, where viewers vote on a selection of programs for a given day of the week, and the programs with the most votes make the cut. Different set of problems to solve.

In any case, broadcasters would immediately have stats on the popularity of given content without having to survey viewers because the viewers already told them what they were watching. Ratings would be based on hard data. I wonder, though, if the broadcasters would think that's a good idea.

-- gh

You realize that all this is coming on the internet with broadband, right? And keep in mind that Swedes have 100 MB fiber for IIRC 70 euros.

If you're interested in politics, you might consider joining Essembly. Word of advice, it only works right with Firefox.

By the way, regarding surveys (I think I had the discussion with surveys with you), check out the very different results for essentially the same item:

 -- RK