Recently I published a roadmap of the major features for a “Twitter using rssCloud” tool that I am calling MyStatusTool. As of this weekend, I have the major pieces in place (have a text box to enter a short post, to create a RSS feed based on the posts, for each post to have a page, to ping a rssCloud server when a post is live, to have the posts be displayed in reverse-chronological order, and to display posts from other tools that create RSS feeds supporting rssCloud). I spent some time looking at integrating Passport.js to provide multi-user capability, but it turned out to be more than just a day’s worth of work. As a result, I am going to push my current version to Github this weekend after writing some docs. More news to come!
January 2023
Dave Winer writes today about his Morning Coffee Notes podcast as a place that documents the history of podcasting. In my links zettlekasten, I also have a section on podcasting history (go to Podcasting, then History).
Blogging at the Oregon coast
My wife and I are having a mid-week get-away to the Oregon coast – the weather is lovely!
Emissary install problems
I have been in touch with Ben Pate about his Emissary app, and tried to install it on my Windows 10 laptop, but had some problems. I decided to copy my debug log to a blog post and send the link to Ben for further review.
Downloaded Go (https://go.dev/dl/) (https://go.dev/dl/go1.19.5.windows-amd64.msi) and did install.
Downloaded MongoDB Community Server (https://www.mongodb.com/try/download/community) and did install.
Started Emissary, got the following error message:
go: downloading github.com/jmespath/go-jmespath v0.4.0
# github.com/chai2010/webp
cgo: C compiler “gcc” not found: exec: “gcc”: executable file not found in %PATH%
# github.com/pjbgf/sha1cd/cgo
cgo: C compiler “gcc” not found: exec: “gcc”: executable file not found in %PATH%
PS C:\Users\sylve\Documents\emissary-main\emissary-main>
Installed gcc++ from Cygwin, got this set of error messages:
# command-line-arguments
C:\Program Files\Go\pkg\tool\windows_amd64\link.exe: running gcc failed: exit status 1
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-cygwin/11/../../../../x86_64-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find -lmingwex: No such file or directory
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-cygwin/11/../../../../x86_64-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find -lmingw32: No such file or directory
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
Added C:\cygwin64\lib\w32api to PATH (see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4272139/gcc-cygwin-compile-error), got the same error.
Downloaded https://winlibs.com/ GCC 12.2.0 Win32 and Win64 downloads, unzipped the Win32 download. Copied mingw32 folder to C: drive, then updated PATH environment variable to add C:\mingw32\bin
Tried server install again, got same error messages (cannot find -mingwex, -lmingw32)
Deleted Cygwin entries from PATH environment variable, leaving just the mingw32 path
Tried server install again, got a new set of error messages:
PS C:\Users\sylve\Documents\emissary-main\emissary-main> go run server.go –setup
# github.com/pjbgf/sha1cd/cgo
cc1.exe: sorry, unimplemented: 64-bit mode not compiled in
# github.com/chai2010/webp
cc1.exe: sorry, unimplemented: 64-bit mode not compiled in
PS C:\Users\sylve\Documents\emissary-main\emissary-main>
Some resources for thinking
- Zettlekasten.de – How Richard Feynman achieved brilliance
- Farnam Street – How to Think Better: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught
- Foundation for Economic Education – How To Create Like A Bastiat: Study To Create, Capture Your Ideas, Write Out Your Ideas, Share Your Understanding
A roadmap for MyStatusTool
Yesterday, I mentioned that I was working on a blog tool not ready to show off yet. Since then, I thought I should follow Colin Walker’s lead in describing some of what I am developing. The working title is MyStatusTool, you can think of it as “Twitter using rssCloud”. The minimum functionality I am working toward is to have a text box to enter a short post, to create a RSS feed based on the posts, for each post to have a page, to ping a rssCloud server when a post is live, to have the posts be displayed in reverse-chronological order, and to display posts from other tools that create RSS feeds supporting rssCloud. This pretty much describes the “Read user feeds…” functionality in FeedLand (link works if you have a FeedLand account). You can also think of the Twitter web user interface as an example. I will probably create a temp Github repo soon to start putting the app under version control. Stay tuned for more updates!
Wired has a feature on Sam Zeloof, who has created his own IC chips in his parent’s garage – amazing!
More COBOL resources
I recently came across this post which discussed adding COBOL to a function as a service (FAAS). It linked to several articles from 2020 that I also noticed back then. Here are some other COBOL resources mentioned in the post:
- Open Mainframe Project – The Open Mainframe Project was founded in 2015, as a focal point for deployment and use of Linux and Open Source in a mainframe computing environment.
- COBOL Programming Course – Created by IBM and contributed to the Open Mainframe Project
- FreeCodeCamp – Video that accompanies the course above (August 2020, 116K views – wow!) (1.5 hr)
- YouTube – How to practice COBOL programming (15 min)
- YouTube – Learn COBOL in One Video (2.5 hr)
Colin Walker is working on a new blog tool, it’s fun to read his posts narrating his work. I am working on a tool as well, still not ready for public view, but looking forward to completing my MVP.
Remembrance of the 2nd anniversary of the January 6th Insurrection
Two years ago today, Donald Trump sent a mob to the US Capitol to disrupt the counting of the Electoral College votes and attempt to have Donald Trump named the winner of the 2020 presidential election. We did not know then that this was the final step of a coup-conspiracy to keep Donald Trump as president. I was at my laptop computer, watching the events of the day on C-SPAN, thinking this was going to be the final step to take for the election of Joe Biden as president. Instead, a horrifying set of events unfolded where our democracy hung in the balance. In the end, the rioters left, and the counting of the electoral votes was completed. I have a liveblog that I created that day, it is still amazing to me the comments of the senators and congressmen/women who tried to protest the results of the election. The work of the House January 6th committee has documented what led up to the events of January 6th. In the published version of the report from HarperCollins, MSNBC legal correspondent contributed a foreward describing the eight crimes of this coup-conspiracy (parts of this are available as a podcast and a Substack newsletter, and discussed on the Brian Lehrer Daily Politics podcast).
Last year, there was a ceremony at the Capitol where the only Republicans in attendance were Liz Cheney and her father, Dick Cheney. Today, the House Democrats met on the steps of the Capitol in remembrance of this event, with one Republican attendee.
Joe Biden gave a speech and awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to individuals who helped keep that election safe.
A remembrance rally was held in Washington DC:
Let us not forget, so that this cannot ever happen again…