Well, color me embarrassed.

Suva, Fiji, mid-80's. 

My icebreaker, the USCGC Polar Star (WAGB-10), had just pulled in to port in Suva, on the island of Viti Levu in Fiji. 

It was a beautiful austral summer day, and we were welcoming visitors from the local community aboard for tours of the cutter. Many of these visitors were local dignitaries and politicians.

I was on duty, standing watch on the Quarterdeck, welcoming everyone aboard the ship. Most of the people were speaking perfect English (naturally enough, since Fiji was a British Crown Colony and is a member of the Commonwealth) and I'm enjoying answering questions about the United States, the Coast Guard, Antarctica, and the Polar Star; and also asking them about Fiji.  It's important to remember that I have serious social issues, and it's difficult for me to interact with people face-to-face, but in this instance, I was having a good time.

Suddenly, with the Quarterdeck - and the rest of the ship - packed with excited english speaking visitors, the Executive Officer comes over the 1MC (think of a public address system broadcast throughout the entire ship, interior and exterior) advising us all to be careful and use condoms, because 70%* of the adult population has sexually transmitted diseases. I almost died of embarrassment.

* 70% isn't the precise percentage given, but it was in that general area.

A quick way to clean up screenshot compression artifacts in the GIMP

People love sharing things online. Screen captures from Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and a multitude of other sites are regularly saved, edited, resized and resaved.  A lot of the time, this is done to files that use lossy compression - such as JPEGs.

Multiple saves of files with lossy compression can lead to compression artifacting. Compression artifacting creates a serious distortion of all sorts of different types of digital media that uses lossy compression; however, I'm referring to images right now - and more specifically screenshots of text on a white background. This is illustrated in the image to the right, which someone shared on Facebook (I do not have permission from Cloyd Rivers to use this, but it is all over the place, so I'm looking at this as educational fair use).

The compression artifacting in that image is quite distinct.  I want to clean it up some, in as simple a manner as possible, using the GIMP.  There are actually a number of ways to do it, but I'm going to show one that generally works pretty well for me.

Using the original JPEG, and a couple/few duplicate layers with different modes, I can clean it up significantly without having to fiddle around with selections and drawing tools.

The process is remarkably simple.  You open the original file that has the artifacting, in this case, I changed the color space to sRGB.

 Now, just make two or three duplicates of the layer, the first one or two layers should use the mode "Screen", and the final layer should use the mode "Hard light" (give "Darken only" or "Multiply" modes a try also, to see if they give a better effect than "Hard light").

This is how my final image comes out. I can actually clean it up even more without too much effort, but it's much more pleasant to the eye even as it is.

I then export the image as a PNG, to avoid the whole lossy compression issue.

Pretty simple huh?

The lack of interaction is too damn high.

A long downward spiral

It started out pretty well

I have been online since the early days of personal computing. My 8-bit Atari computers and my 300 baud acoustically coupled Atari 830 modem spent way too many nights and weekends linked up to The Source, Dow Jones Information Service, and assorted early BBS systems. I later progressed to CompuServe and GEnie, and NNTP newsgroups.  Eventually, I ended up on the web in the early 90s. These were the good years, where I actually had fun most of the time that I was online, and contributed to the fun being had by others - with my own work, not just sharing something funny that had been posted elsewhere.

I realize that it is me

I have had social issues for a long time.  They were exacerbated by my time in the Coast Guard, and really came to a head during my tours onboard polar icebreakers, where I'd be cooped up with people for many months in the Arctic

USCGC Polar Star - from Wikipedia

and Antarctic, with no way to escape. However, in the eighties, I was still attempting to look normal.  Once the nineties arrived I'd pretty much given up all pretense of being normal socially, and most of my interaction with other people came through various online outlets.

This was reflected in my online life, I think.

The 1980s

In the eighties, everything was pretty carefree all over the place. Lots of jokes and discussions about everything under the sun.  As I mentioned earlier, these were the 'good' years. Computers and online communications were new to all of us. We could carry on conversations for months, sometimes after not having seen the other person for weeks. There was very little trolling that wasn't obviously meant as fun, and everything was good natured and laid back. 

The 1990s

The nineties were still pretty busy. Nowhere near as much in the way of lighthearted banter though.  This was the Clinton era, and the 2000 Presidential campaign.  There was a lot of communication with other people, but it was generally pretty serious, if not downright acrimonious. 

Democratic Underground

The 2000s

The Bush administration, 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still a lot of back and forth, but I was noticing changes. I was on a lot of online forums, since the newsgroups were dying down.  Things were OK, but I noticed big changes even then.  As the years progressed, it was harder to get actual responses to posts on places like Democratic Underground. Other people had great 'fan clubs' - they'd routinely get hundreds of replies to their posts, and people wondered where they had gone to when they were offline for a while.  I might get three to fifteen replies to my posts, and when I was gone and then came back, I'd be lucky to get an "Oh, I think I remember you." - even though I'd been a member since 2001 - almost the beginning. I pretty much stopped posting to all forums around 2007 through 2008.

The 2010s

Most of my attempts to deal with people, other than going to the store and having someone ask me a question, are done through various online avenues. I have this blog, and the one I use for my online store, The Wits' End. There is Facebook, of course.  I have to admit that I've never really liked Facebook very much and only hang

The Wits' End

around there because that's where my wife and kids (along with a family member or two on the wife's side) hang out. There are also members of the local Atheist group, and some retro computer related groups that I enjoy.  But I only have about 70-80 'friends' on Facebook, after having been on it for many, many years.

Social networks like Google+ and Twitter

Google+ and Twitter are different matters. I have two different Twitter accounts.  One for me personally, and one for The Wits End. Each of the two accounts have approximately 1,500 followers. My Google+ profile shows me that I currently have 1,732 followers. This sounds pretty good I suppose, but it's not really as impressive as a person would think. I have run tests on Twitter over the years, asking questions, saying controversial things, asking for help with something, replying to conversations being conducted and more.  I have never received a reply to one of my own posts that didn't involve a link to a page from someone else. I have had a few comments from a couple of individuals relating to the atheist related items in my online store and Etsy shop, so there is that I suppose.  I do; however, get loads of likes (well, favorites now) and the occasional retweet, so I do know that people are seeing things.

Google+ is a little better.  I do, in general get a little more interaction.  Nothing spectacular, but I enjoy it because it's the place where I actually feel like a human being that someone wants to communicate with.  My original posts look pretty sad compared to other people - there are a number of people I interact that have a quarter of the number of followers and yet they have five to six times the number of views on their posts.  About 20 percent of my posts probably get a reply.  On the average, those that do get a reply, get about one to three of them.  I look at the streams of friends and see that they're getting three or more replies on almost all of their posts. 

The blogs

Then there are the blogs. I've had this one for many years - July of 2008 was my first post. The other one, which is for my  online store - The Wits' End since July of 2015. While I will be the first to admit that I am not exactly a great blogger, it always seems strange to me that I don't get any sort of interaction on them at all, even when some of the posts might get fifty views in a day, and many hundreds of views overall. If I remember correctly, when you don't count the comments that originate on Google+ (and there have only been three instances of those), I've only had one comment on my blogs, and that was a SPAM comment.

The stores

Between my Etsy shop and the online store, I have receive many tens of thousands of likes, retweets, pluses and favorites on the items that I make and sell; these would be through Etsy, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. Those thousands of assorted likes and retweets in a month result in about ten to fifteen sales for that month, but that's a different matter.

So why am I posting this?

That's a good question. I don't really know, to be honest.  Judging from the very things that I have been talking about, I am unlikely to get any sort of reply. However, even with that knowledge, I'm hoping to buck the odds and get some insight from people into what I might be doing wrong, and what steps I can take to change direction.

Score! Two points!

or: "and the Lithuanian judge gives that an 8.6!"

Buffalo, NY, early 1960's. I'm somewhere in the range of five or six years old, wandering the railroad tracks that I've been told innumerable times to keep off of. This being me that we're talking about, I am oblivious to the world around me; totally engrossed in whatever weird 'young Terry' world I happened to be occupying on that particular day.

Suddenly a huge locomotive comes barreling around a blind curve at 500 MPH* and starts blaring the horn of imminent manglement.  Imagine, if you will, how I instantly dove head-first off of the tracks, cruised gracefully down the embankment, passing through tree limbs and brush on the way, and ended up jammed to the shoulders in one of those wooden bushel baskets used for apples (that had been dropped amongst said bushes) - with my head poking out after having busted through the bottom.

Damned trains have no consideration.

*  Note that '500 MPH' is possibly a slight exaggeration.

To all the authors I've loved or hated, "Thank you."

Thank you

I wonder sometimes what it means when I say that I love to read?

Does it mean that I only want to be entertained by someone, and then discard them and their work without a word of thanks?

There are a number of authors that have influenced and inspired me over the years.  People who have taught me things that I otherwise never would have known, or even thought to consider. Yet I never made an effort to thank them. Of course, many of them were long gone even before my mother and father spent that night on the riverbank near Charlotte, North Carolina.  However, there are others that I could have contacted and expressed my appreciation to at the time, yet they too are gone now.

I'm thinking about this because I'm completing one of my periodic re-readings of the essays of the physician and researcher Lewis Thomas, specifically: The Lives of a Cell, The Medusa and the Snail, and Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony. It occurred to me as I was reading that I didn't even know whether he was still alive; although I was pretty sure that I'd noted his passing many years ago.  I checked online afterwards, and found that he died in 1993.  That makes me sad.

It makes me sad because everywhere I look today, people are complaining and screaming about how awful everyone else is.  Very few people want to think about the intrinsic beauty that can be found in a myriad of items all around them, including the people that they encounter in the course of their lives on a daily basis.  So yeah, it makes me sad because I look at our own (yes, mine too) bad examples and cringe internally. It makes me sad because I remember how much hope I had growing up, how essays like those moved me and made me want to do whatever little part I could to help improve the world; and I have done some things, things that only I'll ever be aware of, but I wish that I had done more.  Mostly though, it saddens me because I never took the five minutes to write to Mr. Thomas, or any of the others, to tell them how much they had moved, improved, and inspired me.

Too late now, but I'm sorry Mr. Thomas... ...and thanks for everything.

I think that they're spying on me

Even in my car

Yesterday, while my wife and I were driving to pick our oldest son up at school, I noticed a late model Jeep with a huge "WILLIES" decal on both sides of the hood.

That's not a Willys Jeep

That started a discussion between us where we were talking about Willys Jeeps, then Chrysler Jeeps, and finally AMC Jeeps.

Sorry, what's an AMC?

My wife was not really around by the time that American Motors went out of business, so I brought up two of their models that I knew that she would be familiar with; the AMC Pacer and the AMC Gremlin.

Hey, wait a minute now

Today, this showed up on the sidebar on Facebook:

AMC Gremlin used in a Colon test ad

Coincidence?  I don't think so!

My very first exercise bike

Simeri Crichi, Italy, early 80's.

In the late 1970's through the early 1980's I was COCO's Assistant (Coordinator Of Chain Operations)/Chain Communications Petty Officer for the Coast Guard Mediterranean Sea LORAN-C (LOng Range Aids to Navigation - a precursor of GPS) chain, at the Master Station located outside of Sellia Marina, Italy.

Google Maps view of Sellia Marina, Italy

This being southern Italy, it tended to get quite hot during the summer.  Luckily, in addition to some cars, I also owned two motorcycles (mostly just buying vehicles from people ending their tours and heading back to the states). I used the bikes quite often, since I'm not really a big fan of hot climates.

A view of the station from Google Earth.

On one of these 100+ F (about 38+ C) days I took my Laverda GTL 750 out to enjoy the twisty-turney roads available throughout the mountainous foothills of the Catanzaro Region. At about 2:00 in the afternoon, I decided to take a break, stretch my legs, and enjoy the scenic views.  Finding a suitable location on a somewhat safe curve in the road which had a grand vista due to an abrupt (though relatively gentle, considering) drop-off, I stopped the bike, put it on the side stand and went off on a walk to stretch my legs and explore a bit.

Well darn, I should have seen that coming

I'm sure you see where this is leading.  Black asphalt.... 104 degree Fahrenheit sunshine.... 750cc motorcycle on a skinny little side-stand.... 150 minutes later, after finally having manhandled the bike back up the 80 foot, 60 degree slope - with numerous zig zags and loopbacks, all I could think of was how happy I was that I hadn't decided to take my 1200cc BMW.

The Model I had -- a 1974 Laverda 750 GTL-S