Week 44
In the past, I created a couple of weekly video updates (you can find a couple of those on Diode Zone, a PeerTube instance), but it seems written updates are gathering momentum, so I figured I’d give it a try.
Locations chek-ins on the blog
I started looking into location check-ins in Micro.blog two weeks ago. The idea came to me one early morning and woke me up, as these ideas do often enough. Since I use the blog to keep track of my photos, my reading list, my books, and my movies, why not use it to keep track of my visits to certain locations? For that, I started using OwnYourSwarm. Unfortunately, OwnYourSwarm postings are pretty fragile. It took a long time to get it to work the way I wanted, and now it’s broken yet again, and I’m tired of figuring out why.
I’m considering doing this process half-manually. My latest post from Central Park is an example of that: it includes a picture of the place, a “soundtrack” I recorded while I was there, and a map which I grabbed directly from my Check-in in Swarm through Foursquare. I like how it came out.
RSS organization & Bookmarks in Micro.blog
I wanted to consolidate my RSS feeds since I have two three RSS stashes: one on my Android device, which I use for reading (it’s also my dedicated ebook reading device), Emacs on the Mac, and a small list of news outlets on my iPhone.
The best place for feeds For me is Emacs with Elfeed, as I use it to write my posts as well. Emacs also opens links in EWW, the script-free Emacs built-in browser, which makes reading easier without annoying ads and links.
I’m mostly done at this point, with a couple of places I visit in a browser: Micro.blog’s Timeline and Discover is one, and my interest-specific lists on Mastodon are the nother. I can check these sources once or twice a day and look for interesting articles to bookmark on Micro.Blog.
Speaking of which, I rediscovered Micro.blog’s bookmarking feature. It’s excellent. It reminds me a lot of Pocket, but it goes further by storing the articles I grabbed in an Amazon bucket, stripped of any ads and annoyances. This means I can go back and look at something I read five years from now without worrying about the original content being down. The premium plan I’m on allows me to tag these bookmarks, and I’ve decided on three tags so far: read, reply, and post. I tag the bookmarks after I skimmed the article so that I know if it contains good nuggets I want to learn or implement in my own workflows (read), if it’s just a good post from someone and I want to write back to (reply), or if I want to use the highlight feature (another perk of Micro.blog’s bookmarks) to create quotes and write (post) about it.
Cross-posting to Mastodon
The issue I previously had with cross-posting to my existing Mastodon account from Micro.blog was the replies. I wanted folks from Mastodon to reply to my blog so that the discussion would show there. But Manton’s book made me change my mind (see Cross-posting and Silos.) I realized that I’m missing out on good discussions I’ve had for two years on Mastodon because I want readers to read my content the way I tell them to. And that’s dumb.
While Micro.blog does come with a basic “built-in” Mastodon account, it’s not optimized for Mastodon as well as my full-time Mastodon account on Fosstodon. Thankfully, Mastodon allows me to edit posts now, so I can go back to any post automatically created by Micro.blog to add hashtags and edit the content in a way that makes it easier and more welcoming to folks there. This worked better than I thought, as folks boosted and started discussions with me on Mastodon I would otherwise missed - sometimes from folks on Micro.blog itself even.
I’m considering copying over some of my stuff to Instagram as well since this is where I have more friends and family, and they can’t be bothered with RSS feeds and websites.
The Wiki
I haven’t added something substantial to the wiki this week, but I should mention I’ve added personal notes about meditation and mental health in the last month or so. This week, I added a note about following Mastodon users with RSS feeds, Improved instructions about accent above letters (and other symbols) in Emacs, and updated the About section in the wiki.
Location: Conservatory Water
“Conservatory Water is a pond located in a natural hollow within Central Park in Manhattan, New York City. It is located west of Fifth Avenue, centered opposite East 74th Street. The pond is surrounded by several landscaped hills, including Pilgrim Hill dotted by groves of Yoshino cherry trees and Pug Hill, resulting in a somewhat manicured park landscape, planned in deferential reference to the estate plantings of the owners of the mansions that once lined the adjacent stretch of Fifth Avenue.”
A walk outside for a break is always a good idea.
They didn’t send an invite to the meeting they scheduled. Then, when I asked what’s going on, they sent one 40 minutes late. Then I waited in the meeting lobby for 15 minutes before giving up. Then they rescheduled while keeping on misspelling my name. “Microsoft: attitude is not just for our apps.”
Youtube’s Anti-adblock and uBlock Origin - And a Dinosaur
YouTube isn’t rolling out the anti-adblock to everyone … there are a bunch of people … spreading misinformation.
The uBO team members are all volunteers … there’s a limit to how much they can take … at some point, they will leave uBO for good. It’s one thing to play cat and mouse with YouTube. It’s quite another to deal with a wave of angry users. Maybe that’s how YouTube will win this war of attrition.
This is a thorough technical article about Ublock Origins and the fight against YouTube.
I’m working on consolidating my reading process on the web. It involves RSS feeds, of course, but also going into more depth and visiting people’s blogs and posts at times.
With the temperature outside in lower 50s, it’s still 80 degrees in my room. Yesterday, it passed it. At this rate, I will run my AC into November. 🔥
I’m turning on cross-posting from micro.blog once again as an experiment.
After organizing my photos, I finally got to edit and work out some of my photos 📷from Bar Harbor in September. More work to do, but progress…!
If You See a Teal Pumpkin This Halloween, This Is What It Means
The teal pumpkins are part of the Teal Pumpkin Project, put on by the non-profit Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE). Non-food items may include glow sticks, pop-up toys, playing cards, pencil toppers and temporary tattoos.
This is a good idea. Plus, the color is nice!
Also, sorting my photos, I’m considering a couple of features I’d like in a future camera 📷:
- GPS tagging (so I can find photos by looking at a map in Lightroom)
- WiFi syncing to Synology / DNS
- Mirrorless Sony (so it fits my current lenses)
- Longer video clip duration
- Higher sensitivity (low light)
One of the things that was holding me back from editing my photos was the mess. I now organized them by week numbers (that’s how I work, and yes, I’m crazy), and I already feel better sorting through them.
Files are organized into folders by year and week; collections reflect events.
After all this time, I still can’t evaluate inches in my head. I bought a new shower head, an “extra long 60-inch hose.” I contacted Amazon to complain about it being the wrong product before I took my measurement tape to it. I imagined it would be twice as long. Wouldn’t happen with centimeters.
No One Will Save You, 2023 - ★★½
You know the taste of a well-done steak left on the grill a bit too long? They add more spices in, some more exotic than others, to make it interesting, but really what it does is to try to compensate for the somewhat burned flavor.
This is not a bad movie. I've seen some horrific movies, and not in the fun Halloween way. It's entertaining and good to watch with a friend - or a few even - with a drink, which is fine. It's fine.
It's just not the kind of movie that fucks with your head. It doesn't have the ability to do so. It starts with familiar tropes, and you can guess what happens quite easily all the way to the end.
To her defense, Dever delivers a good performance. I bet she'd have a couple of good things to say if only the movie would let her (the film is almost 100% speech-free, for "reasons.") the quality of the effects is also alright, but in this day and age when nearly every horny 20 year old can create deepfakes of their most disturbed fantasies, I don't think it's much of an achievement.
The main issue of this film is the plot. It's there, somewhere, a basic and familiar one we've seen before, and it could work well. The film's trying to do this little dance of "maybe it's all in her head?" But it's clumsy, and it gets stepped over by the special effects. Speaking of those - the aliens (it says there are aliens in the description, so I'm not spoiling anything, right?) are a bad joke of monsters you get in horror films. You can't tell if they're messing around or really are that dumb because if they are, how in the world (or Mars, or whatever) can they fly those spaceships?
You want a pizza night with a drink and a couple of friends? This is it. You want good psychological horror to keep you up at night, second-guessing your life? Move on, this ain't it.
I’m at about 60% reading Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane 📚. I somehow picked just the right book for Halloween for me.
A note about location “check-ins” in MB:
You might have noticed a couple of locations posts on my blog, like this one, for example. I’m experimenting with OwnYourSwarm, a tool that exports check-ins from Swarm and posts them to my blog.
I’m not happy with it yet, but hopefully soon.
It’s a small thing, almost unnoticeable, but I do have a bit more willpower and the ability to regulate my thoughts. For example, if I’m tired, I will go to bed for a nap, and I don’t play another round of World of Worships first. I believe it’s thanks to the increase in meditations.
Emacs vent
I know I’m grumpy this morning, but I think I’m getting tired of Emacs. Every time something doesn’t work, you have to dig in and find the one comma you fat-fingered last night or whatever, and sometimes you just don’t have the time and energy for that.
The problem is, because it’s such a huge part of my workflow, I can’t just let it go and deal with it later when I have the time. When something breaks, it’s like someone just tied my arm behind my back, and there’s a good chance I’ll have extra work later.
I don’t know. Just feel a bit lost about this whole thing.
After not sleeping well a second night, nothing is better than the nice calming noise of a leaf blower 🤪
Morningside Park - 113th St. Playground.