Oct 24
Last week I experienced something that all web page owners dread. My website, timepage.org, was hacked.Â
I only noticed it because some of the formatting suddenly became garbled. I didn’t see any new comments or activity. When I went into the web files I saw that most of them had long bits of random spam inserted into the code.  I, being the strong logical person that I am, immediately panicked and started flailing around the web directories, trying to see if I could figure out some pattern. It soon became apparent that it was a pretty complete graffiti attack.
Eventually I had the web people restore a backup (Thank goodness for those.) and I have been fiddling around with various permissions and file updates all week to get it back to where it was. I think I may be OK now. We’ll see.
The really bad part is the insecurity it has introduced into my computing life. We had a break-in at our house many years ago and I remember how we felt violated and vulnerable for a long time. It seems that way again. They apparently had used a password to gain access. My ISP thinks that they must have got the password off of my personal computer with some kind of virus/malware that I picked up. I can’t find any such application with any of the pile of security applications I know about and have access to.  Very disturbing. I am in the process of removing password caches from my browsers and applications and changing passwords to more secure versions.  Who knows where he got the darn things.
Computers were supposed to make thing easier, remember? When something like this happens, all of the efficiencies you have spent all this time building up go down the toilet. It is really getting harder and harder to have fun on these things.
Tagged with: tech • timepage
Oct 05
I was out yesterday and although it was a bright, sunny day, fall was definitely making itself known. The air was crisp. When the wind blew, and it did blow briskly at times, it blew right through you. It is surely that time of year and the calendar is only needed for confirmation.
Since I have retired, I have found myself driven by these seasonal changes more than before. When I was working, it wasn’t nearly as sharp edged as it is now. I was aware of the seasonal metamorphosis, but other than the short days and a lot of driving in the rain, it was happening over there somewhere. Now, as the yard goes into hibernation and the outdoors loses its charm, my whole focus moves indoors. One of the things that seems to then happen is all of my computer projects finally get more time. This blog is only one of those projects but I hope to use it to explore some of the others and hopefully you will see a little more life here in the future.
One thing you can watch is the Cycles tab on the front page. I am going to build a little summary of the generational model of social cycles that forms the basis for the TimePage web site that is my main contribution to the cyber world. Â My draft is coming along but it is still too long for its main purpose. Â And, of course, I am going to keep working on the Family tab. Â That has to be coordinated with my family tree and other genealogical resources so it is a little more complicated.
Tagged with: TMT
May 23
In an earlier post I hinted that I was thinking about trying to incorporate my Family Tree into the TimePage structure. I have just made my first baby step in that direction. The Family Generations web page lists my family ancestors in relation to the social cycles of U. S. history as set out in the TimePage. As time goes on, and in concert with other updates that I am working on, I will be expanding the scope of this content and integrating it into the timelines.
Tagged with: Genealogy • timepage
Apr 05
Monday is opening day for the Seattle Mariner’s American League baseball team. They are my team of preference, me being from the Seattle area and all. Baseball has been a big part of my life. My father’s family were baseball people. My grandfather played on local baseball teams in Montana when he was a young man in the early 20th century. My dad and his brothers played. I played organized and sandlot ball all the way through high school.  Needless to say baseball is in my blood.
This time of year I get a little excited when spring training winds down and the final lineups are set for that first game of the season. It’s a little harder when your team hasn’t been playing well but there is always something to get you going. Ichiro has developed an ulcer problem so he won’t be starting the season but Jr. is back. Ken Griffey Jr., possibly the most exciting player I ever watched, has returned to Seattle for a career ending stint with the team who brought him out. He won’t be the player he was but he will probably be the person he was and that is worth a lot. Good omens and bad. We are starting and I am ready.
It was about this same time of year, 2 or 3 years ago that it occured to me that it would be really interesting to look at major league baseball history from a generational standpoint. That gave me an excuse to spend hours pawing through old baseball statistics online and in various giant baseball statistics books. I eventually ended up with a web page I call Baseball Generations that essentially proposes generational all star teams for each of the generations since major league baseball became a reality. I made some changes recently but it is essentially the same idea. It was a blast and I would invite you to visit the page and see if you agree with my picks.
With all that in mind I wanted to announce that, once again, I have started thinking about baseball in the spring and I have decided I need to recognize all of the baseball Hall of Famers on my baseball page. I am in the process of adding them into the generational lineups and I am glad I am doing it. A lot of people that get picked for the Hall of Fame do so in spite of not ending up on the Top 10 lists because their ongoing, consistent contributions are overshadowed by the statistical wonders that dominate the headlines every day.  To me, that seems like a good enough reason to make a spot for them on my lists.  Also, since my lists spans the entire history of major league baseball, this exercise brings back some deserving names that have faded with time.
Tagged with: history • sports • timepage
Mar 12
I have been working with the TimePage, in one form or another, for a dozen years or so now. Â It isn’t surprising, then, that my notion of history has been thoroughly shaped by the generational model of social cycles in history. Â About two years ago, for reasons completely unrelated to my TimePage activity, I became interested in my genealogy. Â I spent many hours grinding through the seemingly endless databases at Ancestry.com, wandering through old family photo albums and bothering relatives with requests for information about the family. Â Then, just recently, I was quietly staring at the family tree one night when a thought suddenly pushed its way into my old, cluttered brain. Â You know, my TimePage time lines and my family tree are really the same thing. Â Wow. Â Talk about a light bulb moment. Â In retrospect, it seems so obvious that I don’t know how it could have escaped me. Â At one time I had even mentioned a couple of my direct ancestors in the time lines. Â Maybe, all this time, I have been tapping the same, hidden need to understand my past in both of these commitments.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I am now trying to come up with a way to combine the two elements within the TimePage structure. Â I have mentioned in earlier posts that I am instituting a slight philosophical shift in the content of the TimePage. Â In fact, part of that shift is related to the inclusion of genealogical data into the timelines. Â I haven’t completely sealed the deal yet in my head but as time goes on expect to see a few more family tree details appear in my time lines. Â If you think about it, the representation of social cycles are really just a family tree for everyone. Â I just have to come up with a good way to hook the two together.
Tagged with: Genealogy • plan • timepage
Feb 28
It is becoming more and more apparent, as time goes by, that we are living through a truly historic time. The politics of the recent election and the enormity of the economic and governmental crisis that we are facing, will both someday rank right up there in the top events in our country’s history, maybe even the biggest. And that doesn’t even count the Big Three issues of energy depletion, climate change and population control that I discussed in an earlier post. We are living large my friends and I’ll bet you can feel it swirling in the air around you. Continue reading »
Tagged with: history • society • timepage
Feb 16
As the TimePage evolved (see earlier article), there was little thought given to the sense of the content. I spent a lot of time gathering links and timeline items so there was obviously thought given to the quantity of content presented. I tried to review and check everything so I was clearly concerned about the quality of the content.  But I really didn’t have a strong vision for the total sense of the content and how it would advance the point I wanted to make with the TimePage.
Continue reading »
Tagged with: timepage
Feb 12
Back in the early ’90s William Strauss and Neil Howe published a book titled Generations. I read the book and I was captivated by its ideas.  At about that same time I was getting drawn into the computer world that was exploding around me.  I built a little set of tables in a new-fangled piece of software, called a spread-sheet, that illustrated the ideas that I had read in Generations. That little spread-sheet sat on my computer for a couple more years until, about ‘96, I ran head-on into the internet. As soon as I understood what the world wide web was all about the first thing I wanted to do was get my little spreadsheet out there so I could find out what others thought of the ideas. Continue reading »
Tagged with: timepage
Feb 12
So many possibilities.
I have been thinking about what I want to do with this blog. I have come up with a few possibilities. All of my immediate ideas fall into the general catagory of documenting my TimePage adventures in the past, present and future. The TimePage has a blog but I have decided to limit it to discussion of the TimePage ideas and to serve as a supplemental repository for content related to the TimePage and the subject of History. Therefore I am going to pursue some, and hopefully all, of the following topics in this blog.
- History – I have wanted, for some time, to put down in writing the history of the TimePage. It has been online for 12 years now – an eternity in internet time – and I need to document it while I can recall it.
- Genealogy – One of my other time eaters is my Family Genealogy. I have noticed that the generational history of the timepage is a natural fit with the generation in my Family Tree. I have made a feeble attempt to incorporate the one into the other but a lot more needs to be done.
- Philosophy – Just recently I made a major decision regarding the direction I want to go with the TimePage. The TimePage is long overdue for a major overhaul and it wouldn’t be worth it if I didn’t bring something new to the table. This philosophy begs to be organized and written down before I begin the ugliness of redoing the pages.
- Online Direction – I think I need to think out loud a little bit about what I really want to do with my online presence. I think I have drifted into a plan recently but, again, it needs to be fleshed out a little better. This is where the rubber meets the road.
- Personal – Lastly, a place to document my opinions and my uncertainty about the other things in my life. Books are a big part of my experience and I am going to be talking about them for sure (see previous post).  Pictures are going to be shared. I don’t know at what level yet, but they are also an important bit of my existence. And maybe a little about movies, music and TV, but not as much. I won’t be talking about my family, as much as I love and cherish them all. I don’t presume to know what they would like to share with you all, so I won’t try.
Tagged with: plan • TMT
Feb 12
Over the years I have started and discarded a few blogs and a few websites. Today, I probably have a half dozen or so active sites that I set up for really good reasons at the time, I’m sure. But I am getting a little bored with all of the “social” sites, and sharing blogs out there. Therefore, I think I am going to close a few of them down and back off to just the ones in which I am actually providing content, and this one. This site is obscure beyond reason, and it will essentially just be for me, but I want to have a single open place to call my own.
The one exception to that general plan is Twitter. Right now, for reasons I have yet to decipher, I like Twitter. There is a feed on the front page of this blog for my last few posts on Twitter, as well as links back to the last few posts in my TimePage blog, The TimeLog.  Those two and what I write here will pretty much cover my internet presence.
Well, here goes nothing.
Tagged with: TMT
