Gardner's Beacon, Vol XV, No 1

This issue of Gardner's Beacon continues our interest in regular presentation of ongoing work as well as reviews of common interests. ...

Topics:

Activity, 2025

250th, 400th of the U.S. 

Technology

...

GB XV, 1 (PDF w/links)

Mobile-friendly issue of

GB XV, 1  

See Vol. XV, No. 1 of Gardner's Beacon for links to Sources.

Note: Our software is bespoke and will remain so until some serious discussion takes place (computers, philosophy, science, and more -- what we really need for truth engineering). HTML/CSS/Javascrpit is the basis with two blogging editors plus the following: Sea Monkey's Composer (html); Microsoft's Notepad (html, css, and javascript); Chrome developer's tools (mainly, at this point, for execution for debugging -- I have access to the development environment). So far, I have avoided co-pilots and Gemini's insistence that it's smarter than I am. People, this easy-peasy software development is creating a slippery slope to hell or, at least, perdition. I have logs and comments along this trek of TGS, Inc. (from 2010 with changes in 2012, 2014 and after with many updates pending time and effort). Mark my words as I slough along. 

Remarks: Modified: 12/14/2025

12/14/2025 --  1st release. 

Bespoke software

TL;DR --We have slowly been working on our portal in a bespoke manner. Ten years ago, there was lots of attention on the web in understanding HTML/CSS/JavaScript with examples provided by those who had the time and interest. At the same time, development in machine learning lead to thoughts of autocode (as in the machine doing the coding). Now, we witness countless offers for robotic development of software. Something is wrong.We will look at this, over time, since it's not of prime concern. Yet. Besides we will see shakeouts of methods which is normal for progress. Too, we have lots of pending work to do. One that is high on the list is getting regular attention to the date of the death (29 Dec 1674) of Thomas Gardner (Salem planter). 

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Want an example? Our Gardner's Gate or portal. We have used the phrase a few times but intend to use it more. Our first reference was this post in January of 2020: Gardner's Gate. In that post, we mentioned a few of the types of research that we were doing. At that time, we may have had some notion of the coming technology interest but did not mention the subject. 

Guess what? A month later, we were informed that a city that we had visited had cases of confirmed COVID. Life changed, then, for a while, as everyone adapted to the new regime brought by the pandemic. For us, we got into research that was more involved (the US interior). One particular problem took us almost two years to resolve; but, we stuck to it and accomplished the necessary feats. 

A little before, we had started the portal (https://TGSoc.org). That was in 2017. In doing so, we took advantage of some earlier work. But, we took a "bespoke" path and will continue. 

Why mention this? Well, algorithms, computing, and such has been John's work in advanced computational systems. The TGS main blog started in the Microsoft world due to the influence of ASP.NET. There were jumblings in that world in 2012 to which we adapted by leaving the Microsoft realm and going over to a Linux server. By the time of the portal, we had a strategy (somewhat). We needed resources and continual involvement, but there were other factors controlling time. 

For one thing, research came first. We have been doing issues of Gardner's Beacon and printed several releases of The Gardner Annals. There were meetings and research for other groups. But, as John worked the bespoke issues, he kept notes and published some of them (we intend to organize links to this material -- see Devlog). 

Too, some organzational work became more involved taking time and energy. But, we kept the TGS, Inc. fires going. Until COVID came along and changed things. Eventually, those constraints went away; people started to get their lives back. 

But, the underpinnings of technology were changing. We'll detail our views and experiences. But, GenAI/LLM appeared three years ago. Our first experience was with ChatGPT after which we settled with Bard/Gemini. It wasn't much later that we had looked at the problems with finding algebraic solutions (Technology and its influence).

Sometime later, interest in what's known as "vibing" to some came to be; too, using LLM  as a tag, people began to develop methods that allowed the facilities to assist in development (co-pilot in some cases; in others, there is more autonomy). We will discuss this from the framework of maturity and dependable/stable computing. 

So, bespoke will be spoken in our world. 

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Again, research? Thomas Gardner died 29 Dec 1674 (post written 3 Jan 2019). One of our research topics was, where is he and his remains? That topic will be mentioned yearly henceforth. We will put a page on this at our portal in the coming months. 

Notice in the ChatGPT session (link above), we brought in information about Thomas that had been thought right for a couple centuries now. Not long afterwards, we learned that during our absence from WikiTree, they had been analyzing newly-digitized documents from Sherborne, Dorset, UK. Adjusting to that new information is on our plate - Gardner Research. 

Remarks: Modified: 12/13/2025

12/10/2025 -- Some edits of typos and adding new information such as a graphic. 

12/13/2025 -- We started with Microsoft's Office on-line and its developer's tools. The intent was to carry on with the ASP.NET approach (I liked C#), even though my early web work was in Unix, for the most part. Office 365 came along; that was our first instance of seeing companies falter as they learned that their processes no long worked. What did we do? Surveyed the alternatives. Picked a Linux server. And, fell back to HTML where buttons were captured by image and the behaviour was coded using CSS. That worked. The next step was to covert to Javascript. That continues. The issue was content versus configuration and continues (AIn't notwithstanding - map/territory issues will be discussed) Our focus was content and still is except the AIn't emergence changes things. So, bespoke? We're putting out a new issue of Gardner's Beacon (Vol. XV, No. 1) and will be starting to redo our analysis. We'll report regularly as we go along. As we will stop and discuss choices in the vein of engineering tradeoff analysis. 

Research, using the internet and AI

TL;DR -- Time goes by. Things happen. Technology can be a boon or a bane. It's wonderful when it works. With the redo of the focus of AI, we are starting a few new approaches. One deals with sharing data but, at the same time, keeping some control on usage. The sustainable future of computing that has slipped out of our fingers can be recovered. 

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The past couple of weeks have been busy. The year has been busy with new events. Of old news, these dealt with the 250th which we started to mention a decade ago. Now, it's on the doorstep. Of current news, the AIn't, as we call it, happened three years ago last month (Nov). That whole trek is worthy of attention under our the TGS, Inc. focus on technology. 

Then, there is the future which includes many categories. Some of these are familiar. One of late was research started this year with one of the GenAI/LLM offerings. It was neither ChatGPT nor Gemini which we have used and commented on. We'll get to the specifics. After the spring start, there was some redo in the summer that had to do with common errors associated with the techniques involved. 

So, there was a restart. This post is about that (see below). Also, the White House announced their Genesis Mission which is involved with AI (note, I do not use AIn't, in this case) which is a more full look at the software capability. We will go into that more. But, we were happy to see that DOE is driving the thing. One of the first to announce their participation was the INL which is in Idaho. We were there for a few years a while ago. 

One writeup of the project noted that 400K scientists and engineers will be involved in making AI what it was and can continue to be, before the sidetrack of machine learning which may have been a necessary event but was poorly managed for several reasons which we'll get to. 

For now, looking forward. A recent post by David T. Gardner explains the new approach which we will look into further. In this post -- The Anomaly of the Miles Defuncto (Knight, Deceased) -- see the "Citation & Legal Status Dataset" which is about the use of Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/records/17670478) to control access to and use of documents that are made available for information only while a project does its work. Expect this type of thing to become more prevalent. 

For now, we will push handling details of David's project to a later time as we get a better notion of the expected changes what will accrue from the recent decisions. However, we will be reading David's material on a regular basis. The plan is for us to support his work; a bit of groundwork is necessary prior to that work in the sense of preparedness. 

The internet started to encourage cooperative work by people at disparate sites and of different organizations. That was a collegial focus. With busyness and profit, people get paranoid about someone stealing their ideas. That is quite rational. 

AIn't? It proved the concept by copying and using data from all over without permission and trampling over copywrite rights. That sort of thing will be worked out for a more mature use of AI and computationally-framed data in the future. 

Remarks: Modified: 12/08/2025

12/05, 06, 07/2025 -- Zenodo reading requires a login. Changed the calling sequence. See records via this: https://zenodo.org/records/17670478. DTG changed the section on Sir Christopher. We will focus on this for a while. He's like Nathaniel Eaton, first head of Harvard. Misunderstood. GGP of Ann and many others.  

Sir Christopher Gardiner

TL;DR -- Winthrop and New England disliked Sir Christophere Gardner. We were intrigued by the bad-boy aspects. Can a modern approach help us make a better determination of the facts of the case which was handled 400 years ago in favor of the powers that were? This case is not unique. But, the tie-in to the technology fiascos of late cannot be ignored. 

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When we first started, our attention was on Salem, MA and the crew that came into the area of Cape Ann in the timeframe of 1623/24. Later, we learned of another Thomas Gardner, who was of Roxbury in MA. Turns out that Ann is descended from both. 

But,we heard from lots of Gardner families such that we defined a category: All things Gardner. We still had an early New England focus but had to modify that to cover other times and places. Turns out that Dr. Frank had a list of Gardner families in his 1907 book which was updated in the 1933 book. 

Sir Christopher Gardner was an early name of interest. We had place his name of the "todo" list and can finally get active in the necessary research. Earlier, we ran into details about his life as told by others such as that told by John Winthrop (on Christopher Gardner). As one can see by the image, those in power in New England did not like the guy. 

Now, along the time of our research, we were contacted by David T. Gardner (DTG) who had researched his family for decades. They came into the Philadelphia area in the latter part of the 1600s. 

DTG started a blog with the title of King Slayer's Court. He wrote articles for the Gardner Beacon and The Gardner Annals. Recently, DTG has been using various GenAI/LLM systems for research. His findings are interesting. This post provides some information on one. 

In general, the use of these systems have been both of the bone and the bane type. Which is stronger? Depends. At one time, things looked dire from the systems generating "hallucinated" results. How would one know is a proper question? 

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David had been pulling records from old English files, getting them transcribed, and building a database with which to look for correlations as one would expect. Earlier (prior GenAI/LLM), that was doable but slow. The AI part offered the potential for improvement. But, when a good majority of the results are bogus, analysis stands no chance. 

After a good start in the spring of this year, the realization of the problems with provenance of the data caused some headache. David took a break. We on the other hand kept sloughing through the issues as they will be important to eventual resolution of the messes. As mentioned, there are pros and cons. The world seems to be split. 

One factor in success would involve proper control for controlling the wild potential that is as destructive as not. How to handle this matter has had a lot of attention. Enough reports of some good quality have come out this year. 

So, months later, David is attempting again while using multiple systems. The results are interesting with respect to the original study of Gardner relationships with the Tudor dynasty. However, another topic came forth today that offers us something that we can get our teeth into. Namely, Sir Christopher Gardiner who was on the "list of infamy" of Winthrop. 

David posted this recently: The Enigmatic Knight of the Wilderness: Sir Christopher Gardiner Revisited Through Modern Eyes. 

Our approach will to use the different stories to build a more complete picture of Christopher Gardner. While doing that, we expect to learn about the systems, the peccadilloes of each plus gain some insight into the "control" aspects that seem to be missing. 

This is a cursory look and is about a beginning. Stay tuned as we march further down the road. 

Remarks: Modified: 11/23/2025

11/23/2025 --

Emphasis, technology

TL;DR -- BBC talked about AI to one of its providers. Irrationality was raised. Yes, we used "AIn't" to describe the vacuous conditions (many senses) from about 2019 with respect to these types of approaches to knowledge handling and intelligence pretending. 2025 saw these things pushed out to the world. Ramifications will become rampant in 2026. With our technology focus, we will look at truth and what that means to us and our computational playthings. 

-- 

BBC talked to Google who spilled some beans. Here is an interesting summary. 

Google and irrationality

Of course, the use of irrationality got my attention and the use of "some" which might be considered an understatement. Also, it was Google who forced Gemini on us this year; analysis of the ramifications of that choice of theirs pends. 
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Now, to the BBB video: https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/w3ct6s7l. 

You all, remember that Newton got pulled into some hyped positions in is day whose ramifications were unpleasant? 

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Youngsters gone awry is one way to look at this. Two generations or so. But, it did not have to be done this way. We can trace decisions over three decades in order to set a tone for analysis. But, we need to go back 200 years in mathematics, from a technical sense dealing with what it means.  

The Thomas Gardner Society will focus on providing summaries over time with regard to what is what, at our "truth" portal, defined about 2017. We were waiting for data to arise of sufficient sense, beyond that related to the mania of a decade with the past three years being especially burdensome to rational thinking.

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We were late in paying attention to the Nov of 2022 release from OpenAI as we had spent a decade plus looking at the going-ons from a distance and continually as the series of choices became more troublesone. 

Finally, we did a post in Feb of 2023: ChatGPT. What got us to look were reports of failing at algebra by the systems. Later, the use of "hallucination" became in vogue. But, the whole issue was the misuse of mathematics which could have been foreseen; reports of this type of problem started to rise to the surface after about a year. We will look at that in depth. 

To be fair, Wolfram (of Mathematica fame) took ChatGPT under his wing, tamed it, and made it contributory to his system and products. There are other examples. There are few. 

Meanwhile, in 2025, these systems were cast out everywhere. A technique called "vibing" with regard to code came into vogue using these systems. It needs a serious look with respect to issues. There is not much about the past three years that is exemplary. On the other hand, neural nets were given attention by the Nobel Prize committee in terms of its contributions to mathematical physics. That topic is on the table, too. 

We have our work cut out for us, as the world tries to recover from the ramifications. More on that later. 

Remarks: Modified: 12/15/2025

12/15/2025 -- Recovered image which disappeared after a small length of time. 

Charlotte (Coffin) Gardner

TL;DR -- On FB, I saw an article that reminded us that the author had created a related blog which contains very good articles. On browsing, we ran into Charlotte (Coffin) Gardner. She kept a journal on her 3-year voyage with her husband and son. Along the line, she mentions New Englanad folks and natives as well keeps record of their progress along the continents to the Cape and back up. Names overlap our earlier research. So, we will recoup the interest level. 

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An article today on Facebook got me to looking at the articles of Melissa Berry on her blog. Here is an example article in American-Archives. The topic is a wive who went on a three-year voyage with her husband from New England around Cape Horn and up to San Francisco and Washington State. 

These links point to pertinent material about Charlotte and to a Journal that she kept during the voyage. She is a descendant of John son of Thomas and Margaret. Her husband is a descendant of Richard, brother of John. 

• Journal of Charlotte (Coffin) Gardner
• Charlotte's profile on WikiTree

One thing that is of interest would be to use Google's map to follow her on the voyage. The next link goes to a view of the western hemisphere with a location marked.  

• Google map to find and link to locations noted in the Journal 

There were many stops mentioned in the book. Here are three Wikipedia articles. We will have more. In addition, Charlotte marks her location on a regular basis as the above Google map shows. 

• Isla_de_los_Estados
• Strait_of_Juan_de_Fuca
• Port_Ludlow,_Washington

In the articles and in the blog, there are many names mentioned lots of which are familiar from our studies of New England with some being kin of various sorts. Too, we have a theme of the long reach of New England which our posts on Bunker Hill West which is in Downtown Los Angeles show. 

A few years ago, we did posts on the barque, Bostonian, that was owned by Hentry Gardner and his brother. In that material, we learned a little bit about the nautical ways after spending lots of time looking a movements across the middle of the vast area of the U.S. The Bostonian wrecked in 1850 along the Oregon coast. The pilot was noted as Capt. Boyling. 

Charlotte, in her blog, mentions Capt. Boyling which got our attention. So, as well as studying her Journal, we will pick up our study of the barque, Bostonian. Again, here are a few related postts. 

• The Gardiner that was
• Some info on merchandise handled by the Gardners -- 
•           Gardiner’s Rheumatic and Neuralgic Compound
• General search on the Bostonian

Several themes were mentioned here. What this represents is that the 250th has lots of open research pending. But, in general, here is no end to the study of  New England.    

Remarks: Modified: 11/13/2025

11/13/2025 --

400ths, in Massachusetts

TL;DR -- As the Siege of Boston continues its slow course, we can look at other areas which need more attention. Such as, the celebrations of the Massachusetts start will go until 2073. 

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Of late, GenAI/LLM has gotten our atttention. That will continue under the theme of technology as we look at the mathematical underpinnings of phenomena (multiple variants) as well as get into the psychology and human interest aspects of the big chimera which we termed by buckets'o'bits (replacing AIn't which was misunderstood). We see a serious map/territory problem. 

But let's get back to history of both a family and regional nature. 

200 years ago, New England was still in the Siege of Boston stage which started back in April. Winter ws setting in. Washington had arrived in July. In September, he sent Arnold north on an attempt to make some headway in Quebec. Knox, in November, took his men to get artillery and supplies from Fort Ticonderoga. We have yet to see the Declaration of Independence.

Some reading material:

• Wikipedia, per usual, has a marvelout collection of information: Siege of Boston. This post has a good overview with secondary material. 
• An example is the post on Knox's effort: Noble train of artillery.  

The 200th of the Siege continues until March of next year. That gives us four more months to learn about the events and to appreciate the efforts of the colonials who got the U.S.A. started.

For instance, once the artillery arrived, in March, Dorchester Heights was fortified. 

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While we have paused to reflect on the 250th, we need to remind about the 400th anniversaries that will go on for a while. This post provides a list of the towns and villages that will be celebration. For instance, Salem is on the list for next year (2026). Cape Ann (Gloucester) had theirs in 2023. Before that, the Mayflower arrival was celebrated in 2020. Here is the timeline for celebrations. 

Timeline of Settlement

These go on until 2073. In 2026, Beverly (one of the places known as the birthplace of the U.S. Navy) shares the same settlement year as Salem. 

 Remarks: Modified: 11/09/2025

11/09/2025 --