Micro.Blog

There are 222 posts filed in Micro.Blog (this is page 3 of 23).

A short review of the Huffduffer podcast feed service

Recently, I posted some ideas about podcast subscription lists/listening lists, and one of my readers (John Johnston) suggested I look at the Huffduffer podcast feed service. I found out that I already had an account – amazing! Must have forgotten!

I tried it this evening. After I logged in, I clicked on the “Huffduff it!” button at the top of the page. This took me to another page which had text boxes for the audio URL, title, description, and tags. I filled in the fields and saw a file added to the previous file that I had “huffduffed”. I then took the feed URL, and was able to subscribe to it to PocketCasts, and to listen to one of the files. Bing!

This service provides the basic functionality of creating a feed from audio files, and also hosts the feed, so the user does not have to provide any hosting. Nice! In the next few days, I will review some other services that I discovered after Huffduffer. Many thanks to John Johnston for mentioning the Huffduffer service.

The perfect response to Trump’s territorial trolling

Via Brian Beutler, the response from the Mexican President on convicted felon Donald Trump’s idea of changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America:

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum suggested Wednesday that the United States revert to a historic name for the territory, America Mexicana, in a clapback at President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico.

And on the subject of making Canada the 51st state of the United States, MP Elizabeth May puts forth a proposal for Washington, Oregon, and California to become the 11th province of Canada:

Take that, Mr. Convicted Felon!

Music is a robust language

I sing in a church choir, one which typically sings four-part harmony. For many hymns, we start in unison for verse 1, then add parts in later verses. Sometimes, my fellow tenor and I will try to sing our part, but decide to shift to unison. Sometimes, when I sing, I sing the wrong pitch, or the wrong words. However, the music goes on – in general, the choir continues singing. Even in cases where the director may make a change (going to another verse due to the entrance of the priest not being complete), the choir follows, using their musicality to keep the music going.

In all these instances, the printed music provides the framework for the musical performance. As a counter-point, source code for computer software is a fragile language – one semi-colon out of place and everything stops…

The sentencing of Donald Trump

Today, Donald Trump was sentenced for his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election.

Coverage: (CNN – Takeaways) (CNN – live blog) (CNN – audio of hearing) (MSNBC – audio of hearing) (USA Today – article and downloadble audio) (CBS – audio excerpts from hearing).

I listened to the USA Today audio (download), it was a little clearer than the audio file provided by the NY State Unified Court System (download). I am providing the USA Today audio download in a player at the end of this post.

Here are my notes of the hearing:

  • Counsel introductions (People and Defense)
  • Both sides are reviewing the probation report, neither side had anything to add to the record
  • Clerk informed People and Defense that they could make statements before sentencing
  • People/Josh Steinglass
    • People recommend unconditional discharge
    • Reviewed how Trump showed no remorse and threatened to retaliate against prosecutors in this case
    • Jury reached a unanimous verdict
    • Probation report says defendant sees himself as “above the law”
    • Must be mindful of the office of the presidency
  • Todd Blanche
    • Disagrees with what the government just said
    • Case should not have been brought
    • We will seek an appeal
  • Donald Trump
    • Very terrible experience
    • Political witch hunt
    • Lots of complaints
    • DOJ is very involved
    • I won the election
    • This is a weaponization of government
    • I was treated very unfairly
  • Juan Merchan
    • Wishes to explain reasoning for sentencing decision
    • A judge must decide what is correct sentence
    • Court must consider the facts of the case and any other mitigating circumstances
    • Extraordinary circumstances involved in this case
    • One power that the presidency does not provide is the power to erase a jury verdict
    • Pronounced sentence of unconditional discharge

Court Documents

Musing about podcast subscription/listening lists

What is a podcast subscription/listening list? Well, let’s start with talking about subscription lists. For most, if not all podcast clients, OPML files containing a list of the podcast feeds being monitored have been the defacto standard for import/export of podcast feed lists. Prior to use in podcast clients, OPML files have been used as a defacto standard for import/export of feed lists for feed aggregator apps.

As far back as 2012, Dave Winer was pushing for the use of OPML subscription lists within podcast apps. In this context, he wanted podcast apps to be able to subscribe to an OPML file with a URL, so that people could automatically get any updates to the OPML, and subsequently, anything new would be added to their podcast app.

In the fall of 2024, Dave Winer brought up this idea several times and later created a page describing this idea in more detail, and calling it “listening lists”. Dave Winer created a Github issue to collect feedback on this idea, and Dom Christie suggested the following:

I have been wondering if the episodes from curated lists could be published in their own RSS feed? That way, users (and not just podcasters) could created their own feeds, listenable in any app.

That same day, Dave Winer linked to a page describing a RSS feed made up of first episodes of fiction podcasts. An overview page lists the podcast episodes and also provides audio players for them – neat! From the looks of it, this is a made-by-hand page, although there could be some tool or tooling involved.

This suggests several ideas to me:

  • App to create a podcast feed which merges a list of other podcast feeds
  • App to allow users to create a podcast feed of podcast episodes that they select (it could include the ability to host the created feed)

I did some experiments over the holidays with Dave Winer’s RSS NPM module to create a podcast feed of some audio files that were not organized as a podcast. However, the experiment shows how this type of feed can be created. I am going to start working on this concept. If anyone reading this is interested in collaborating, let me know!